Michael Harding brought his acclaimed one-man show plus musician to Garter lane and The Tinker’s Curse lived up to expectation as he took on the traveller persona of Mikey Rattigan, a struggling traveller, coming to terms with prejudice, expectation, resentment who had a wife suffering from nerves and the haunting memory of a dead boy child and a wild child daughter in an unsuitable relationship with Rattigan’s nemesis Axelgrease Reilly who acted like Elvis in a yellow jacket.
Harding measured out his researched folk myth and folk legend of a vanishing tribal way of life with his memory card and rosary beads on Croagh Patrick. While it fell short of Everyman status, his sad woebegone face underlined a life of sorrow and travelling to named places of shelter. You could feel the sorrow on his brow, the attrition of open spaces in all weathers.
