Project Arts Centre, ABSOLUT Fringe 2011
Sept 10-15 (Omnibus on 17)
‘Spirit
of the Fringe’-commissioned THEATREclub played the Fringe this year with Twenty Ten.
Directors Grace Dyas and Doireann Coady told me the show was big. And that it
was. My review coming up just as soon as I think Jim Dale should narrate all
the audio books ...
“I’m closer to the end than I’ve ever
been” “Heaven exists”
- Anonymous - Anonymous
“Sisters
can read minds” “When in
doubt, walk under the moon”
- Anonymous - Anonymous
- Anonymous
“I’m not learning anything. I’m just getting hurt”
- Anonymous
“That
I really fucking hate her” "I learned that we’re all fucked and alone”
- Anonymous - Anonymous
"I’m
lost but it’s going to be okay because I’m finding something out”
- Anonymous
“How deeply I am in love” “That I am too fat. Again”
- Anonymous - Anonymous
"Show me some theatre THEATREclub”
- Anonymous
On one occasion in
THEATREclub’s Fringe offering a performer says: “Authorship is a powerful
thing” – an apt choice of words for the piece of theatre we’re experiencing.
This is just one of the thousands of anonymous contributions to Twenty Ten ranging from wise to daft,
lonely to thankful, honest to cruel. Everyday in 2010 THEATREclub sent out an
e-mail to whoever wanted to play, asking them: “What have you learnt today”? The
thousands of replies they received make the text of this show, appraising what
was a year where cities froze, a volcanic ash cloud disrupted travel, and the
country declared bankruptcy. It was also a year when hearts broke and healed.
These authors (who knows how many) played the game, confided, knowing that
someday their words would be spoken on a public stage.
Now it’s
THEATREclub’s turn to roll the dice, playing out these responses in the
spectacular arena of Doireann Coady’s game-show inspired set. Shane Byrne sings
Johnny Logan’s ballad What’s Another
Year? while Lauren Larkin holds up a showgirl’s placard announcing the
months we’re about to hear before falling hard on her face. Natalie Radmall-Quirke’s
account of how she played the game for the year hops to the refrain of Barry
O’Connor’s keyboard. “A lot happened in Twenty Ten. Now it’s all going to
happen over again”. These words ring especially true on this day: the day when
over seven hours we hear the entirety of the year.
Seated at a
table, the six performers start delivering what the authors learned in January:
“That I really have to stop drinking”, “That Dublin can’t deal with the cold”.
A chrome scoreboard hanging overhead ‘bings’ down the dates. Comparisons can be
made to Forced Entertainment’s durational Speak
Bitterness – a conference style confession where professionally dressed
performers read anonymous text such as “Our ex-husbands sat next to our
ex-wives” – but where the form seemed very open with that show (it can be hard
to tell sometimes) Twenty Ten is
strictly blocked and memorised. This does up the stakes, as we learn what the
procedures are for faltering on a line (clapping hands) or needing to go
backstage and check the script (waving at the tech box to play music and distract
with dancing). Directors Coady and Grace Dyas instruct some interesting
technique here to keep it interesting but by scale and design, and especially
in its durational capacity, Twenty Ten is
already as gloriously theatrical as it aspires to be. These co-ordinations are
welcome shake-ups though.
While the actors
are advocates of these anonymous voices, a sense of who they are in themselves
can glimpse through over time as well. Enduring and charming, they honour the
show’s authors, incarnating their words with all the anger (Conor Madden),
absurdity (Barry O’Connor), innocence (Lauren Larkin), heartbreak (Shane
Byrne), bravery (Louise Lewis) and passion (Natalie Radmall-Quirke) they demand.
Monitors connected to offstage cameras (a nice nod to Brokentalkers’ This Is Still Life, or possibly a trade
of other THEATREclub work I haven’t seen) allow us to match words spoken onstage
with presences that are off it, giving the identities that haunt the show no
singular body or belonging, enabling us to relate or not without the prejudice of
appearance.
Over the hours there
are survivors and there are casualties. An ambition to work in musical theatre
takes a sad bow and a fear of cancer is realised. We have obituaries for JD
Salinger and Mick Lally, struggles with bisexuality and monogamy, addiction and
abuse, Japanese adverbs and weight. Some
authors even accuse THEATREclub of exploiting their personal lives for the sake
of making a show. By the time the IMF arrive in town the mood has taken a dark
turn for the worse. Pennies are hurled to the ground in rage. “I’m not learning
anything. I’m just getting hurt” utters one writer. We hear the same grimes of
over-drinking, betrayal, and selfishness that we heard ten months before, and
we begin to think if the authors of Twenty
Ten have any hope of being able to move on from their previous grievances.
THEATREclub can
only work with the realities that are given to them but with subtleties they do
suggest that things can change for the better. An account of an individual gaining
weight and being powerless to a lousy diet is staged with all the actors eating
fruit. In dealing with heartbreak and loneliness we can surround ourselves with
the comforts of cigarettes and straight liquor. We can wear a party hat and be
happy for others because it will make them feel good, in turn making us feel
better.
Twenty Ten is an epic of survival and
living within the indiscriminate grapplings of reality. It probably suggests
more doom than hope but I will always pray that that one day that individual will
give musical theatre another try.
What did
everybody else think?
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