As the man who calls himself James X moves fretfully around the room, his surroundings offer small clues about his circumstances. His backdrop is a wall of collage, a dense and none-too-orderly assemblage of maps and letters, overlayed here and there with a grimy old piece of clothing, say, or a worn little teddy bear pinned like an insect specimen. But somehow what might be the most banal item in the room comes to seem the most haunting: sitting beneath a bench, unobtrusive, untouched and unremarked upon, a cheap red rubber ball.
The premise for Gerard Mannix Flynn’s James X, receiving a riveting production by Corrib Theatre that closes Sunday, is that James is waiting his turn to speak to the authorities, representatives of the powers of Church and State that have imposed their judgments and punishments on him throughout his life. It’s to be a trial, of sorts, but for once, at long last, James it seems has mustered some amount of clarity and courage that he might turn the tables, that he will be the accuser, not the accused.
And as this middle-aged Irishman unspools a colorful yarn that weaves itself, despite all James’ self-deprecating charm and dark wit, into a relentless torture device, that red rubber ball just sits there in the shadows, a symbol of childhood innocence not so much stolen as never granted at all.
“According to this state file,” James says early on, brandishing one document among the thick sheaf he’s collected, “I was a dangerous person — at three years old!”
