Girl 5 years old, doing somersaults with her skirt, little boy showing his underwear while doing somersaults.
“Disgusting,” his scandalous grandfather grumbled. “What will Mary’s child be like?”
Virgin Mary, that is. If you grew up Roman Catholic, the phrase “child of Mary” may already sound familiar. Likewise, the notion of moral purity it evokes is early ingrained in the narrator of the terrific rush of Eimear McBride’s solo show, “A Girl Is a Half-Shaped Thing.” Stage adaptation by Annie Ryan It receives a wonderfully straightforward, intimate production at the Irish Repertory Theatre.
Both the novel published in the United States in 2014 and the stage version first seen in New York in 2016before the rise of the #MeToo movement. But they reflect a growing anger that McBride can express in the speed-of-thought tale of a girl whose name we will never learn: a boy who is empowered by what he has been taught to believe is his own evil, but is left vulnerable to the true evil of others.
Directed by Nicola Murphy in the tiny second act of Irish Rep, Jenn Murray rides the flow of the monologue like a river, with a mastery that easily draws the audience to her side with its flowing speeds, eddies and spaces of calm. On a backup set by Chen-Wei Liao, highlighted by lighting by Michael O’Connor, and by Nathanael Brown’s nuanced music and sound design, Murray slides in and out of a crowd of characters that are almost entirely legible.
The girl is in the womb when the game starts, but she is still sensitive and already fond of her toddler brother. The whole game is told to him, who was the most valuable person who had an operation wound when he was born and had tumor branches in his brain.
Abandoned by her husband and fearing for her son, their mother clings to religion. He may love his daughter. Mainly, he seems pushed by it.
Enjoying mischief as a little child, the girl runs into the rain to blaspheme lavishly – she says, “the best collection of my bad words” – in a place where no one else can hear. Part of the pain of the game is tracing the backdrop of this exuberant challenge by shaming the rules that dictate permissible female behavior and blaming those who don’t comply, either by their own choice or by someone else’s decision.
She is 13 when her aunt and uncle come to visit. The others leave the house, and Uncle sickly takes his chances. He goes to the girl’s room, fascinates her, kisses her. He thinks he wants more, but objects: “I’m not that guy.” Yet it is and it does. He is a child and must be his guardian. When sex hurts him, he says, “You’ll be fine.”
This is not true then, or in the years that follow, because her ferocity wreaks havoc, and what seemed like her own sexual empowerment turns into dreadful, long-term self-harm.
She wouldn’t even tell her best friend the secret of her uncle’s abuse while in college.
“What’s there to say?” she asks. He took his lessons well.
A Girl Is a Half Shaped Thing
At the Manhattan Irish Repertory Theater until December 12; irishrep.org. Working time: 1 hour 20 minutes.