Ignorance isn't bliss in Sean Denyer's delightful comedy of manners.
The Outhouse, International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival
May 5-8
My review of Tits Up! by Sean Denyer coming up just as soon as I know the score to Les Misérables (including the harmonies) ...
In Dublin's upper-class suburbia lives Clive and Suzanne, a married couple who have the big house, the high society nerve and its range of conservative comments ("I'm not judging ... but ..." is Suzanne's catchphrase). The only thing missing in their marriage is sex.
Ignorance isn't bliss after all but there's nothing like a midlife crisis to expand your horizons. Clearly queer Clive, despite his objections to such descriptions, is secretly cottaging in the Phoenix Park. Meanwhile Suzanne finds herself attracted to Polish maid Magda. It's time to come clean.
While playwright Sean Denyer rolls his characters towards sure scandal, most stunning is the zingers and one-liners, chock-full with witty and queer references. The play, written for the Dublin-based LGBT drama group Acting Out, is fiendishly funny.
Rachel Fayne's lacerating snob Suzanne is the weapon here. Fayne's sharp performance never quite reaches a ceiling, or if it does she takes a chisel to it, like how Suzanne does to all the political correctness in the world.
Meanwhile, Howard Lodge's sensible turn saves the performance from being committed to caricature. As he softly proclaims his love for another man, it feels that behind the laughs the production has something at stake.
What emerges is a sort of Wildean comedy of manners, satirising the Dublin upper class so as to deliver an ounce of liberal thinking, shaking the boat.
Going tits up.
What did everybody else think?
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