The Party to End All Parties review: Plot and character disappear into a spectacularly beautiful cityscape

Taking place against the 1949 celebrations of Ireland becoming a Republic, ANU and Dublin Theatre Festival's streamed play is about unfulfilled promises and lives falling apart. Photo: ANU 

Dublin Theatre Festival

★ ★ 

Dublin looks truly beautiful in The Party to End All Parties, the new streamed play by ANU and Dublin Theatre Festival. The halogen yellows of streetlights on a quay near O’Connell Bridge bleed into a moody blue dusk, a spectacle that repeats on the river Liffey below. Elevating the cityscape to the sublime in director Louise Lowe’s production, its camera shots taking in the overwhelming tone and colour, the main drama here might lie in the scenery.  

Inside the sheeny office of a property developer, we see a grim vision for the city’s future, as a video presentation enthuses about the pandemic being a catalyst for the city’s next regeneration. While the project’s biodiversity expert (Nandi Bhebhe) frustrates over her colleagues' ignorance, the long-term consequences of bad planning manifest in startling ways. Carl Kennedy’s excellent sound design not only evokes the destructive rise of sea levels, it also allows for the horror of Bhebhe’s black woman getting shot by gunfire, the blasts blurring into the firework recordings of the April 1949 celebrations on the night Ireland became a Republic. 

As the production descends onto the quays, that historical event full of potential and achievement - immortalised in a striking photograph that shows O’Connell Bridge thronged with people - forms a shadow in which other characters are trapped. “My indecision to do anything is the strongest decision I ever made,” says a woman (Niamh McCann), staring self-defeated onto the river. Ignoring calls to pick up her husband at a mental health hospital, she seems stuck in this odd, serene paralysis. 

Less clear are the woes torturing a man (Robbie O’Conner) awaiting a court ruling about custody of his child. He details the breakdown of his relationship, the shame of telling his mother and the interference of family members, but his account becomes misty, possibly blurring into that of someone from a previous era. There are references to clashes on O’Connell Street, and of being outraged by what happened to someone named Terence. Could this be the Sinn Féin hunger striker Terence McSwiney? Are these episodes from the revolutionary period 100 years ago? It’s difficult to know for sure. 

If this is a drama about unfulfilled promises, of lives falling apart on O’Connell Bridge where the Republic was once ringed in, it seems to lack an emotional lift. There is a nice touch in recalling the old Ballast time ball, once installed on a building top overlooking the bridge, signalling that Dublin kept to a 25-minute difference to Greenwich Mean Time. There’s extra time to change things after all.  

Yet, the play doesn’t end with these stories reaching a conclusion, with either the discovery of renewed promise or with the devastation of accepting their personal limbos. An impresario of site-specific theatre, Lowe seems here to prefer the sublime environment as a way out, sending the characters out of focus to disappear into the spectacularly beautiful cityscape, the plot along with them. 

Online until Oct 10th.