Tom Moran, Braving A One-Man Act at Abbey Theatre
Peacock Stage, Abbey Theatre, Dublin
★★★☆☆
Delivering a solo performance is an arduous enterprise. When you trim down the act to just one artist, it’s a gamble where the success relies solely on their capability. What makes it even more complex is the inevitable absence of a reciprocal dialogue, an element that keeps even the most indifferent of theatre audiences intrigued. Against all such evident hurdles that this niche of theatre needs to tackle, only a few brave performers dare to take the spotlight alone. Tom Moran, whose vast mental landscape we traversed in just over an hour, despite his admitted fallibility, proves that courage is one attribute he certainly owns aplenty.
Moran, the recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Award in 2023, is an emerging Dublin-based playwright and actor. “Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar” premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2022 where it bagged the Fishamble award for new writing, and is currently on a national tour, commencing at the Abbey Theatre’s Peacock stage. The play’s formation aligns perfectly with its central themes and its manifestation, almost as though the uncertainty and introspective anxiety induced by the sustained lockdown, which was familiar to most of us, were weaved into the framework of the play deliberately.
As the evening unravels, Moran guides the spectators through a no-holds-barred breakdown of his formative years in the 1990s and 2000s. Cultural references such as Big Brother and Love Island aid in setting the stage for the time Moran was growing up. As alluded to by the title itself, deception is the crux of the story – the falsehoods we concoct for others and, more significantly, the lies we persistently live with ourselves.
A dominant component of Moran’s narrative involves his parents. The motive behind his onstage soul-searching appears to be an attempt to navigate a web of trauma arising from a perceived lack of familial stability. Moran portrays his father as an embodiment of the typical Irish trait of struggling to express his affection towards his son directly. Still, Moran fondly narrates how he taught his father to convey his love through emoticons in text messages.
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In Tom Moran’s play, his mother takes on a complex role: She is recalled fondly from his youth as a source of comfort and genuine warmth, notably in a memory that brings to light the roots of Moran’s obsession with body weight. However, further through the narrative, she emerges as the origin of penned letters that destabilise the emotional comfort of his early years, engendering an omnipresent sense of family instability that would only be confronted, many years on, during critical therapy sessions.
There are instances when Moran’s effervescent personality a bit too abruptly plunges into a melancholic trance. Additionally, the intermittent infusion of bright lighting to indicate the approach of profound emotion can be excessive to the point of artificial, undermining the stark sincerity of these instances. Nevertheless, Moran’s affable charm manages to draw the audience through these uneven transitions relatively unharmed. His candid revelation of his life’s journey from self-loathing to self-satisfaction, attributed largely to his therapist’s insights, brings valuable life lessons for those willing to learn.
Tom Moran’s play, “Tom Moran Is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar”, will continue its run at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin until Saturday, May 25th.