Rial­to – first look review

When you’ve lived your whole life being told it’s wrong to feel a cer­tain way, to love a cer­tain type of per­son, how can you stop those feel­ings from destroy­ing you? In Pete Mack­ie Burns’ Rial­to, Tom Vaugh­an-Lawlor (yes, the one who voiced Ebony Maw in Avengers: Endgame) returns to his the­atri­cal roots in Mark O’Halloran’s adap­ta­tion of Trade, his own play about repressed homosexuality.

From his first unset­tling encounter with a male sex work­er it’s clear that Colm (Vaugh­an-Lawlor) is unfa­mil­iar with cruis­ing and is in way over his head. He nev­er dis­cuss­es the root of his desire or the fact that he’s gay to any­one. Instead his lust is some­thing he just needs to sat­is­fy, no mat­ter what effect it might have on his family.

Tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line stereo­types also play a big role in Colm’s trou­bled iden­ti­ty. He’s a beta male trapped between a recent­ly deceased vio­lent, alpha male father and his own lad­dy son, a grunt­ing teenag­er obsessed with rug­by. It’s no won­der pur­su­ing his gay impuls­es is so taboo for Colm.

Vaugh­an-Lawlor is tremen­dous as a man shred­ded by his own anx­i­eties and bul­lied into silence by the weight of years of homo­sex­u­al prej­u­dice with­in his com­mu­ni­ty. His rela­tion­ship with wife Claire (an excel­lent Mon­i­ca Dolan) is strained to break­ing point all because he can’t bring him­self to explain his feelings.

Society’s gen­der roles grind him down in count­less oth­er ways too. He’s unequipped for the emo­tion­al labour his wid­owed moth­er tru­ly needs, and instead snipes at his sis­ter for not help­ing with the phys­i­cal toil he sees as more impor­tant. At work, at the docks, he’s also a vic­tim of glob­al­i­sa­tion and mech­a­ni­sa­tion, fac­ing redun­dan­cy at the hands of two female bosses.

All of this threat­ens to make Colm a tox­ic fig­ure, but Vaughan-Lawlor’s per­for­mance is so ten­der and help­less you can’t help but hope he finds a way out of this emo­tion­al mess. Pos­si­ble sal­va­tion lies at the hands of Jay (Tom Glynn-Car­ney) the sex work­er who ini­tial­ly threat­ens then extorts mon­ey from Colm.

Despite his fear of fur­ther vio­lence, Colm so des­per­ate­ly needs to pur­sue his feel­ings that he strikes up a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship and a ten­ta­tive friend­ship with Jay, which brings out inter­est­ing points on the vis­i­bil­i­ty of queer cul­ture. Jay occa­sion­al­ly does gay sex work to pro­vide for his new­born daugh­ter, but for him, it real­ly does seem to be just business.

His no-non­sense atti­tude helps bring Colm out of his shell and, reas­sur­ing­ly, O’Halloran’s script nev­er gets so sen­ti­men­tal as to sug­gest the pair have fall­en in love. They have a grow­ing fond­ness for each oth­er, but their rela­tion­ship remains pure­ly trans­ac­tion­al. If any­thing their inter­ac­tions lack warmth, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a cru­cial sex scene which offers a very painful and unflat­ter­ing depic­tion of gay sex – hard­ly a moment that would con­vince Colm he’s made the right call.

Direc­tor Peter Mack­ie Burns may have slipped up on this point, but he excels else­where cre­at­ing a lov­ing but suf­fo­cat­ing fam­i­ly dynam­ic for Colm to sur­vive. Vaugh­an-Lawlor is the real star, with his sweet, sym­pa­thet­ic and lov­ing per­for­mance the heart of the film.