In the centre of the fluorescent White Bear Theatre ring, James McGregor’s Man regales the audience with a pulsating tale of passion, purpose and regret. Driven by Nicholas Pierpan’s sprawling script, director Paul O’Mahony presents The Problem with the Seventh Year, a thoroughly engaging dramatic monologue about a character caught between two worlds. Our protagonist, Man, is a former amateur boxer who tells of his struggle trying to balance a newfound life as a cutman with his medical studies, two vocations that he believes cannot co-exist.
The simplicity of the set design provides a brutally efficient clarity to the production, with neon lights adorning the corners of the White Bear Theatre stage, changing colour to accentuate the story, and a stool in the corner to create the impression of a boxing ring, one that Man finds himself trapped in no matter where his story goes.
McGregor delivers an epic performance as Man. A monologue can be incredibly difficult to pull off, yet McGregor’s performance never loses its bite and effectiveness. Man takes himself and the audience through the emotional ringer, waxing lyrical about his love of the sport but eventually revealing the depths to which it plunged him. Whether it’s moments of still contemplation or memories that inspire him to dance around the ring as he did in his heyday, McGregor rises to every dramatic challenge thrown at him and never once lets the material outbox him.
While the dialogue does not quite match the consistency of McGregor’s performance, Pierpan’s script still effectively delivers on its technically ambitious goal. Sure, there are moments of bloat when the monologue strays slightly too far into a tangent and loses the momentum of the scene, but this does not massively take away from the potency of the story as a whole. What makes the production truly moving is how thematically consistent it is. Pierpan presents a clear premise of a man caught between two worlds and how the competing philosophies of each of them slowly tear him apart, and this feels like the lifeblood of the show as opposed to an idea that is picked up and disregarded at will.
Overall, The Problem with the Seventh Year is a positively powerful production that pulls no punches. McGregor’s charismatic and layered performance means that his monologue rarely loses much steam, and there is more than enough substance to have you leaving the White Bear Theatre with plenty to chew on long after the final bell rings.
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