A combination of 1984 and The Truman Show, Enda Walsh’s Arlington was the first production I have watched in a while where audience members consistently left the theatre.
When watched in 2024, the production could easily be seen as a reflection on human relationships during periods of extended isolation. However, as the society slowly unfolds across three acts, the play expands its reach, and the torments experienced on stage quickly move beyond confinement.
The set is split into two halves. The main stage is furnished like a 1 star motel’s waiting room. Simple chairs flank an analog radio, two 360 degree surveillance cameras loom above, and 20th century roadtrip music plays. A control room sits nearby, fitted with monitors and a messy desk.
Choosing to ground the surveillance in a physical space heightens the awareness of the audience but the set also moves away from representing the incarceration as penal. As director Anna Houston emphasised to me, “Arlington is not a play about prison reform.” From the very start, we are positioned to believe anyone can end up in these rooms.
When we first meet Isla (Phaedra Nicolaidis) and her new rookie overseer (Jack Angwin), the play does not lean into its dystopian context, but rather the isolation of Isla becomes a way for Housten to examine how people learn to socialise.
As the guard fumbles around learning the new controls the pair exchange jarring compliments and strange personal details. She tells him that he is “handsome in the darkest light” and he tells her about his fear of feet.
There is a sense of pity at her longing for conversation as she dreams of cities or just getting a job but Nicoladis’s performance is so endearing that the room, while small, begins to feel warm. The guard, whose previous job was “cleaning the street” mirrors the audience’s fascination at just how bright Isla is.
Whether you label the relationship a romance or not, the fateful decision to let Isla free should be a hopeful moment but somehow wasn’t. We never see the outside and Isla just exits into a bright light.
Isla is the only name we ever get. In the next room, we meet a woman (Emma Harrison) who either can’t or won’t speak. What begins simple fidgeting in the centre of the room quickly decades into a cruel dance.
Harrison’s movements are a masterclass. As if she was born in the room, the woman can only respond mechanically to the music, developing habits like running her hand across the floor, hitting her head against the wall and rolling over the chairs.
The audience was forced to watch a husk and four people exited the theatre before the 25 minute act ended. Juxtaposed with Isla’s sense of self, the full extent of isolation is chilling.
When she jumps from the window it clicks for the audience what the guard was cleaning. There is shock but also a cruel sense of relief that the pain within the scene, her’s but also ours, is finally over.
By the time we return to Isla’s room, where her guard companion is now held, caught and broken, there are no more reservations about what these places are for. He‘s told by his new matriarch-esque overseer (Gerogina Symes) that “we don’t ever kill people in the way you imagine.”
The entire set darkens. While Isla and the guard were in sync, playing music for each other, the room turned on him. Wall screens blast light, sound, and faces. Angwin appears overstimulated and bloodshot.
When the curtain falls, a lot of questions about the society remain unanswered. Why these rooms were first built is only gestured too. Why they need guards and ask people to recount their past is a mystery.
Housten suggested to me there was “extreme human tenderness and hope” in the play but perhaps the genius of the production was that, by the end, the audience was not only questioning if there was hope, but questioning if the hope they saw was all part of a show.
Angwin’s character still believes he will meet Isla again but the second woman’s experience suggests Isla was impossible— just a figment of the guards imagination.
Arlington is playing at the Seymour Centre until August 24th
