Entertainment

‘Airswimming’ barely stays afloat

Two women are locked up for decades in a British hospital for the criminally insane. Their crime? Bearing children out of wedlock.

At least, that’s how the Irish Rep describes “Airswimming,” now having its US premiere. But it’s hard to tell from the play itself, which, inspired by a true story, depicts the characters’ gradual descent into madness as a sort of existential vaudeville routine.

Charlotte Jones’ play takes place from 1924 to 1972, as Dora (Aedin Moloney) and Persephone (Rachel Pickup) spend their time endlessly cleaning the institution’s dingy environs. As the years go by, they adopt alter-egos — Dorph and Porph — and retreat further and further into fantasy.

The tough-minded Dora, who embraces her fellow inmate’s description of her as a “cigar-smoking monomaniac transsexual,” makes the best of a bad situation.

“Look at Joan of Arc,” she says. “Incarceration didn’t get her down. She took it like a man.”

Meanwhile, Persephone, who was put away for being a “moral imbecile,” clings to her illusions.

“I’m coming out soon, you see,” the would-be debutante tells Dora. “Before the king.”

She becomes obsessed with Doris Day, donning a garish blond wig, regaling Dora with a rendition of “Que Sera, Sera.” and wondering whether Day was a virgin.

“She wasn’t to begin with,” Dora replies. “Then she became one.”

The play’s constant shifts back and forth in time make it hard to figure out just what exactly is going on. And while the playwright, to her credit, didn’t sentimentalize their story, transforming these tragic, real-life figures into characters from a Samuel Beckett play prevents us from caring about them.

Still, under John Keating’s sensitive direction, there are lovely moments, as when the women mime synchronized swimming to the strains of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.” If only “Airswimming” wasn’t so frustratingly airless.