How many of us have escaped into the different worlds of fiction, folklore and myths, far away from overwhelming realities of life? Those who have know the warm feeling of an invisible blanket wrapping around the body as the mind runs away into the magical world where love persists, monsters lose, and all is well.
Mind you, Irish myths are a little darker and more complex than your usual Disney fairytale. But so is Sinéad O’Brien’s story. In what feels like the swiftest hour ever, we’re introduced to a tale of traumatic childhood, mental health, and teenage confusion, intertwined with hypnotising Irish folklore, conveyed through soberly uncomfortable nakedness and surprising lightness.
With nothing but a chair to accompany her, O’Brien relates a big part of her life, her mother — or more accurately, her mother’s mental health issues — clearly affecting O’Brien now as she searches for peace in this ‘love letter that she’ll never send’. Love is clearly in abundance but so is forgiveness and much needed boundaries, which she defends with a magical world that carries a strength of thousands of mystical warriors.
While the story begins with a retelling of a more recent day, we’re introduced to O’Brien’s life as a performer, scraping by to get a part, looking for distractions while she awaits that life-changing phone call. The call comes but is not quite what she was expecting. Here, the scene changes abruptly and we’re thrown into a life behind that magic world; a life that feels almost as separate as the tales we hear.
O’Brien manages to capture every shade of complex emotion with nothing but engaging storytelling and a simple switch of lights from cold to warm as she jumps between two worlds – one too hard to stay in and one a welcome distraction. The bravery needed to tell this story is matched with that of the folk heroes she talks about. As we near the end, the last story brings us to a revelation of sorts: O’Brien’s understanding of the complexities of having a mental illness and a decision to look beyond the pain, to name the monster that took her mother away and to actually fight it with a power of daughter’s love to her mother.
Words by Sonia Hadj Said
