'The Mental' is spellbinding

Any story is only as good as it is written, and then only as good as how it is told, writes Brian Byrne. Both those conditions were met, in spades, in last night's performance of The Mental in Woodbine Books.

John MacKenna's 70 minutes straight as 'the man who looks after the crows' is spellbinding. It is funny, sad, angry; and cathartic as a revelation of a mental health era we hope is gone. And ultimately, it is beautiful.

MacKenna's protagonist John Salter is one of the last residents in the mental institution of the title. His opening concern about the facility's imminent closure is 'who will look after the crows?' and suggests there was reason for him to be there, but we should pause judgement. Because, as he tells his story, we come uncomfortably close to a period and practices that are in the living timeline for many of us.

John Salter is not bitter about his four decades of incarceration in The Mental. Indeed, we very quickly realise he had to be there, if only to be rapporteur for the many others involved, inmates and staff alike. His own story is a frame on which to chronicle all their lives. To validate those lives when they could not do so by themselves. The few square feet that was the 'stage' in Woodbine Books last evening was populated by Salter with a cast arguably as large as the full-house audience.

So we had among them the Head Doctor, Little Hitler the orderly, the Reverend who looked after The Dippers, the Young Nurse. Occasional residents included The Bookkeeper and The Ladder Man. Permanent companions like The Man from Mayo. And St Joseph too, a key player.

There were also the people who had constructed John Salter's own life. His father, mother, his older brother. The Master who beat him, and the Guard who used to bring him fishing and who eventually took him to The Mental for safekeeping.

After 70 minutes when John Salter left us, listening to one of his 'voices in the stones', and John MacKenna bowed his thanks and left the stage, we had become intimately involved with any small town in Ireland from the 1950s and on through the next 40 years. We had been enthralled, amused, and humbled.

The Mental was hosted by Dawn and the team at Woodbine Books as their keynote contribution to the Kilcullen 700 celebration. If there is a hierarchy in the various events — and there is not — last night's presentation should be at the top of the list.

If you weren't there, you really ought to try and pick it up in a number of venues where John MacKenna is performing during this month. These include, locally, the Blessington Book Store next Thursday, Croi Anu in Moone on Saturday 11 May, and the Prosperous Theatre on Friday 17th. The production is directed by Angela Keogh.

Tonight, though, MacKenna will be presenting The Mental to a small audience of ten. In the bedroom of a man in Greystones who has had a stroke which leaves him physically incapacitated.

"He's a man who never missed a play that I was involved in," John Salter's alter ego told me last evening. "He can't come any more, so we're bringing this one to him."

What else would you expect from a man with the empathy to look after the crows?

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