**** The Black Wolfe Tone
A mind on the mend – or is it?
Kwaku Fortune as “Kevin,” photo by Carol Rosegg
Even those familiar with the Fishamble “brand” (it’s a Dublin-based theatre company with a mission “to uplift and support underrepresented voices in Irish theatre”), you may need to brace yourself for this lower-depths solo piece written and performed – brilliantly – by Kwaku Fortune in Irish Rep’s dungeon-like basement theatre space. The title has at least two ready referents: Wolfe Tone was an early Irish separatist, and the image of a “black wolf” has long served as a mythic symbol of disruption.
In scripting and enacting this monolog tracing an extreme psychotic break, Fortune does not shy away from some of the grosser possible manifestations. (By comparison, Sam Kissajukian’s 300 Paintings, a standout of the ’24-25 season, was a cheery romp in the park.) This account – which I hope, for the actor’s sake, veers far from autobiographical – gets down and dirty. In fact, it’s outright scatalogical (mimetically): delicate sensibilities had best steer clear.
But what an acting feat they’d be missing! In the program notes, Fortune recalls a flashpoint memory that prompted him to shape this script: “I was accosted on a bus by a heroin addict. He claimed I was ‘plastic,’ not Irish, fake, and that I should ‘go back to my own country.’” (Fortune hails from County Wicklow, as does the character he portrays.)
We encounter “Kevin” in a cement courtyard, waiting for what he hopes will be an exit interview springing him from the asylum. The conceit is that we, the audience, are real, but also chimeras of his imagination: “You exist because I brought you into being?” he muses. Satisfied with that framing (“I AM GOODDDD!”), he launches into a precis of his fall from normalcy. Drugs come into the story, passingly – “But who even needs drugs when you can be limitless?” Ah, the chemical-free benefits of megalomania.
Fortune occasionally lets his own innate charisma twinkle through – or is that the ploy of a psychotic charmer? Fortune is skilled at shifting between schizo and normative modes (Kevin’s assurance — “I can do calm” — covers both bases). When Fortune summons a winning smile, is that the actor trying to ingratiate himself to the audience amid a tsunami of dysfunction, or Kevin trying to pass himself off as warm, cuddly, and ready to rejoin the general population?
The character will leave you alternately rooting and fretting. In New York and no doubt Dublin, we encounter all sorts of untethered souls acting out on the street. Perhaps this exercise will prompt more compassion? At the very least, it will validate the perfectly insane wash of impressions, memories, and off-the-wall imaginings that we all drag around with us daily as we try to make sense of a chaotic world.
Irish Repertory Theatre, to June 1