Stones in His Pockets review – immersive revival of the rural Ireland film shoot tragicomedy

Throw a stone into a lake; it sinks. Throw the right shaped stone at the right angle and it skims the water, flying through the air. Something similar happens when dreams meet reality, in Marie Jones’s award-winning tragicomedy Stones in His Pockets, first performed in 1996.
A Hollywood film is being shot in rural Ireland, bringing much-needed (but short-term) employment to people struggling to make a living from the land. The story of what happens when these two worlds collide is told by two of the film’s extras, who make up the “peasant” backdrop to the fictional historical drama (with just two actors on stage playing all 15 characters).
Seeming optimist Charlie (Gerard McCabe), with a script in his pocket, and bitter pessimist Jake (Shaun Blaney), newly returned from a failed attempt to make it in New York, both hope that the film will offer them a way out of their dead ends. The script bounces them through ups and downs of encounters with film personnel (assistants, star, minder, director – each cliche of the type, vividly embodied) to an upbeat resolution. By contrast, Jake’s younger cousin Sean’s dreams are all humiliatingly dashed when he tries to approach the film’s female lead. His are the pockets tragically filled with stones at the end of the first act.
The original production was mounted on an almost bare set. This reimagined version, directed by Jones’s son, Matthew McElhinney, gives us the full audio-visual experience of immersive projections and sound effects. Against this spectacular technical backdrop, the actors’ transformational skills – virtuoso sequences of split-second character changes – are set into relief. The effect overall is entertaining, but it detracts from the momentum of the drama. For me, the strongest moments were the simplest – as when Jake and Sean’s best friend remember the drowned man as a boy, skimming stones and dreaming of an impossible future.