The Magic Tree

Can a group of boys really be driven to rape a girl out of sheer boredom? In The Magic Tree, the latest play by award-winning Irish playwright Ursula Rani Sarma, this certainly seems to be the case. First performed at the Midsummer Festival in Cork earlier this year and inspired by Rani Sarma’s travels in South East Asia, the play hatches a far-fetched plot that doesn’t convince, despite the strong rapport between the four cast members.

The ominous tone is established from the outset: when Lamb breaks into an empty house for shelter during a thunderstorm on her way home from a night out, she is followed by Gordy, a nervous, hooded boy who strikes up a seemingly innocent conversation with her. The tension between them soon dissipates but is reintroduced when it becomes clear that his soothing words are all part of an attempted gang rape.

Gordy is played with compelling vividness, and his acute confusion and vulnerability become the momentum on which The Magic Tree relies to keep the audience fixed on its action. His partners in crime are equally captivating and even the affection between Gordy and Lamb has a genuine quality to it, despite the perverse way in which they meet. But the casual twists in plot simply aren’t realistic; when Gordy ultimately saves Lamb from the rape he helped to plan, their quick reconciliation just doesn’t ring true.

Similarly, their subsequent escape to The Killing Fields of Cambodia makes little sense other than to expose Lamb’s more inhuman qualities, and it is never fully explained. The audience is excluded from what seems to be a major turning point in the lives of the couple and the wilfully ambiguous ending simply leaves us detached and unfulfilled.