THE best theatre is meant to make you feel ill at ease, pull you out of your comfort zone and make you confront your own prejudices and challenge your beliefs.
Tea In A China Cup at the Lyric definitely made me feel uncomfortable but it wasn’t my prejudices that were under the spotlight, but those of a working class Protestant family in Belfast over three decades from the 1940s to the start of the Troubles. Fenians this, Taigs that; I shifted awkwardly in my seat among the nervous laughter from the audience, as well as some genuine belly laughs. My daughter leaned over at one point and whispered that she felt like a black person in 1950s America.
Celebrating its 75th anniversary, the Lyric Theatre is reviving a number of plays from its back catalogue. Tea In A China Cup, written by Christina Reid, was premiered at the Stranmillis Theatre back in 1983. The story follows Beth (Amy Molloy) who was born in 1940, and from the vantage point of the 1970s she looks back at the women who shaped her life from her two-up two-down redbricked street. Her uncle headed off to war when she was still in the womb and would not return. Those men from the family who fought for King and Country loom large throughout the play, their uniformed portraits peering down on the women as events unfold below in their homes and street.
Everyone is poor but the women content themselves that they’re not as poor as the Catholics, who don’t even wash themselves. And yet after the war they worry about Catholics taking advantage of free education, going to grammar schools and eventually taking over.
And yet through all of this they drink their tea from small china cups, the very act making them feel refined and superior to the Fenians.
Another generation joins the British Army
Beth’s mother (Mary Moulds) battles cancer but hopes she has another Twelfth in her and as she faces death watches the bands parade each evening outside her window.
There is an interesting dynamic between Beth and her Catholic friend Theresa (Louise Parker), but it’s Beth with her supposed Protestant advantages who feels trapped, while Theresa has more free will and options going forward, eventually moving to London.
The play is also very funny in parts, not least the washing and dressing of the corpse scene. Katie Tumelty (Great Aunt Maisie) is the stand-out actor in the play. Her comic timing and one-liners drew the biggest laughs from the audience and her appearances on stage with Marie Jones (Grandmother) were the undoubted highlights of the evening.
While the stage production felt dated, perhaps deliberately and probably not far removed from when it was first staged forty years ago, the writing is prescient, hinting at the loss of the Protestant working class hegemony.
At the end the sound of the binlid replaces the privilege of the Lambeg. Change is in the air. All the old certainties are gone. We're left wondering what’s the use of photos of dead soldiers sitting on the mantlepiece when the people who once loved them are no longer there.
And sure what's a china cup but a piece of porcelain that's ultimately just for show, never holds enough and is easily broken?
Tea in a China Cup runs until May 30. For booking details visit www.lyrictheatre.co.uk
