The Great Potato Trial

Coming away from ``The Great Potato Trial', a play co-authored by Nollaig Tate and the late Jack Mitchel, I had this feeling: if Jack were still alive the play would have ended in the same way it did, with his voice echoing around the theatre, hauntingly telling us that `The Praties They Grow Small, Over Here, Over Here....'. The only difference would have been that Jack himself would have been standing on the stage, hand cupped over ear, demanding and commanding the complete silence and attention of the audience - and getting it.

The Great Potato Trial has finally been staged and while Nollaig Tate has the satisfaction of seeing her efforts rewarded, Jack unfortunately died last April while the Trial was still in the distance and the Spud was still on remand. However, bringing the Lumper to trial took patience, hard work and money and even in death the Mitchel influence persisted... lacking the finance to stage the play a number of concerts and sessions were organised in Jack's name and all of that came to fruition this week. At least someone in Galway has made an effort to mark the Great Hunger. It seems that the city has all but forgotten that black chapter in its history, since apart from a thought-provoking display of news-cuttings and notices in the window of Mullin's Butchers, protesting against absentee landlords, Galway has quietly allowed 1995-97 to pass by with little regard to the 150th anniversary.

Tate and Mitchel's Great Potato Trial is an attempt to redress that and the `trial' itself is an irreverent swipe at history á la revisionists. Rather than a weighty tome and a history lesson the audience sees a non-pedantic placing of the spud in imperialist history, an exposé of British plans to de-populate Ireland prior to the Famine, and a re-telling of the agony endured by this country a century and a half ago. It is all achieved by `blaming it all on the spud' but the potato goes on trial, not in a conventional court but in the Court of Erehwon... and Erehwonian courts are noted for their disregard of procedure. Witnesses are summonsed from the past, Trevellyan, Pizarro the Conquistador and Mrs Murphy all turn up for and against the spud and a satirical drama ensues.

The dialogue is fast and funny, but sight is not lost of the purpose of the play as the accused, a grotesque talking potato writhes in a lazy bed as the trial unfolds. I thought the final few minutes of the play lost some of the energy of the rest of the drama; maybe I didn't quite grasp `the verdict', but that's my opinion and others thought differently.

The judge, prosecution and defence all keep the audience entertained. It's a pity these briefs couldn't be left in charge of the Tribunal industry! The set - like the curious posters which heralded the arrival of the play - has to be seen for its cheeky depiction of the legal profession. Direction of the play was by Brendan Murray - normally to be seen in an acting role in the TnaG soap, Ros na Rún.

The play has now finished its Galway run and Sickle Productions are apparently hoping to take it on tour. If they do, you should make a point of seeing it - if only to think of the Famine and its causes in a more off the wall way. The Tate and Mitchel way.

By Eoghan MacCormaic