Musings in Intermissions

Floating World Productions, ‘Picturing the Soul’: Hey Soul Sister

2012-02-20T04:15:00.000-08:00

TheBack Loft, Dublin

Feb18-19

My review of Picturing the Soul comingup just as soon as I hand you a butterfly …

In a recent academic paper on the work ofMarina Carr, the playwright was quoted as saying: “No one writes about the soulanymore”. Carr’s meditations on the soul place the concept in systematicprocesses of ‘birth’ (Portia Coughlan),‘life’ (16 Possible Glimpses) and ‘death’ (By the Bog of Cats). Yet,even her attempts to capture the soul have been muddled lately and thus thequestion presents itself: in a territory that has been well explored how doesone claim new ground?

Andrea Scott and her Floating WorldProductions sent out such a call and received responses from practitioners ofvisual and sound art, film, music, theatre and dance. The result is thismulti-disciplinary line-up, presented in the Back Loft in perhaps the bestutilisation the space has ever seen. One enters the space through a whitecurtain with the sweet crooning of Lioba Petrie’s cello ringing in thedistance. The performance space stretches the length of the room, with theaudience seated either side. Installations are situated in the aisles, one ofwhich is a tent that contains objects that weigh 21 grams – the observed lossof weight when a body dies and attributed by some to be the weight of the soul.

What do we mean when we refer to the soul? Afterall, isn’t it the first abstract notion (wouldn’t the soul need to beconceptualised before religion was?) . It usually connotes an incorporeal andunique essence of a person that continues the presence of the individualsomewhere beyond this life. Scott and her collaborators’ take on the subject isbest summed up in a message projected on a screen during Cait Canavan and HollyCooper’s playful movement: “ You can see your face with a glass mirror. You cansee your soul with art”.

A lot of the work accesses the subjectthrough human connections, following the logic that the soul is the unifying thingwhich every individual has in common, further emphasised by the sense ofcommunity Scott creates by mapping the space into a horseshoe shape and placingeveryone in close quarters. Canavan and Cooper strike this chord though theeffect is more sentimental than revelatory and their efforts to mirror eachother’s actions can be imprecise. Sue Malone and Shadaan Felfel’s dance’s is abolder play, starting off as an absurdist one-sided conversation but anintimate duet then reveals their synchronicities of being. Unfortunately, theperformance was muddled by the low volume of the dancers’ speech. I think formercircus kids/aerialists Paper Dolls captured the sentiment best with theirstylistic turns from a mid-air hoop as a dark musical score played behind them.The spell of the performance was so effective that at times when the women wereintertwined in the spinning hoop their physical beings seemed to melt into one.Fantastically intrinsic and hypnotic.

As the evening played out the approach ofrevealing the soul through co-action was recurring. Therefore, the solo actsbrought some nice daring to the event. Elizabeth Hilliard’s soaring vocalcaptured an invisible and supernatural presence with Trevor Furlong’s projectionsgrowing behind her. The length of the piece does rob it of its climax though.Rebecca Reilly’s dance with Furlong’s movement-sensor visuals was trulyinspiring. As the geometric graphics responded and anchored themselves toReilly’s movement, the effect created the most tangible impression of the soulof the night: a correlation of the physically human and the ghostly digital.

This is an exciting venture by FloatingWorld Productions, and just as admirable as the work featured is Scott’sability to mobilise so many exciting members of the arts community. Moreplease.

What did everybody else think?

CoisCéim, ‘Touch Me’: Tables and Chairs

2012-02-20T04:06:00.000-08:00

TownHall Theatre, Galway

Feb14

My review of Touch Me coming up justas soon as I hand you some keys ...

Upon entering the Town Hall Theatre onValentine’s one might remark that there’s possibly not a more appropriateevening in the calendar for the cheeky sexual candours of choreographer DavidBolger, who two years ago with CoisCéim’s Faunasked the audience for a scarf with which to masturbate. The mood has sinceshifted for CoisCéim, who have always been exceptional at keeping pace with thecultural shifts of Ireland since their emergence in the mid 1990s. In a culturemarked by debt and the wrongdoings of the ‘one percent’, Touch Me points some fingers but thankfully doesn’t give into apolemic. More urgently, there’s an Irish innocence still recovering from thelatest fallout between the human and the economic that is seeking symbols withwhich to pave its future.

With straightened palms the performers measurethemselves, registering their heights against the walls of Monica Frawley’sderelict but beautiful set. The performers joyously connect with one another. Apoint of contact between two dancers becomes treasured as their hands massageand nurture the physical impression between them. Kenneth Edge’s luringsaxophone releases brass notes that both linger and fire rapidly, giving thedancers their beat. The influence of the music takes the piece into a radicalturn as the heavy strains of an electric guitar sends the performers slamminginto the wall, followed by a physical allegory depicting the corporate greedwhich snatched what capital it could. In the aftermath of this explosivesequence they explore the abandoned space, finding various objects and property,and attempt to renew the relationship between the human and the economic.

Bolger’s wit comes into play in sharpeningthe political edge of the piece. At one point Robert Jackson gestures anecdotallyas he embodies the sentiments of liberty and leadership of De Valera’s ‘TheIreland I have dreamed of’ speech. Emma O’Kane, bothsweepingly elegant and warrior-poised, proves to be a satirical weapon,miming Mary Harney’s unfortunate choice of words: “We did it with the economy,and now we’ll do it with health as well”. But it’s O’Kane’s heroic movementsthat inspire more, as if Irish liberty has found a new hero in a time when sovereigntyand leadership are failed values. It is apt that she is the one who the otherperformers coat with keys. As they slip and fall to the ground with every shiftin her movement, the moment is a sublime one, conveying a multitude of opportunitiesbut also the failure of how to effectively wield them.

The intimacy the title of the piece suggestsis that between humanity and materiality. Since Marx, thinkers haveinvestigated and distinguished the commodity, technology and art, and theireffects on human development. CoisCéim’s contribution to this discourse is bothtimely and enlightening. Jen Fleenor and Nick McGough’s(*) close dance on atable and chair is reliant on one always holding the other to save them fromfalling . During pauses they request that the chair be repositioned, untileventually they instruct it to be removed all together. One could interpretthis outcome as a prioritisation of the human over the object or maybe as a humanfailure to properly ‘use’ the chair. When lanterns in the shape of monopolyhouses are placed on McGough’s body and they tumble as he moves it may refer tothe weight of the crushing mortgages in this country or as another misuse inhuman interaction with the material.

(*)I’m probably at the risk of sounding unprofessional but does anyone else thinkthat McGough is probably the most beautiful human on the planet?

TouchMe reminds us of the importance of humaninteraction in a superficial society but it also poetically proposes arenegotiation of the relationship between individuals and objects. Today’ssociety is one which failed in the maintenance of this bond. As CoisCéim siftthrough the wreckage, they find that a new value needs to underlie such arelationship: a virtue to ensure that we engage with materiality in a mannerwhich allows us to access our opportunities as opposed to letting them tumbleto the floor.

What did everybody else think?

Sheer Tantrum, ‘The Master Builder’: Once Upon a Time There Was a Crack in a Chimney

2012-02-12T04:24:00.000-08:00

The New Theatre, Dublin

Feb 6-18

My review ofSheer Tantrum’s production of The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsencoming up just as soon as I hang a wreath on a weathervane ...

In theplayography of Henrik Ibsen, The MasterBuilder comes near the end – at a point where his writing has subverted classicalrepresentation, buckling at the symbolist seams as in the case of Peer Gynt, while also receiving a definitedose of realism with the likes of A Doll’sHouse. This play, sharing the symbolist energies of Peer Gynt, grounds itself in more realist territory, though lacksthe singular thematic slam of A Doll’s House.When the great architect Halvard Solness climbs the tower at the play’sconclusion, a director can place what happens next within the narrative syntaxof “happily ever after” or “they all wept”. For Sheer Tantrum’s productionVincent O’Reilly doesn’t send the master builder to his castle in the air.

Solness seems topossess a natural sense of luck, for the sight which he desires most – his owngreatness – tends to manifest before his eyes, thanks mainly to a series offortunate coincidences. Such is not the case for the women in his life. Hisbook-keeper Ms. Fosli would rather impair her ability to see clearly, removingher glasses as if a blemish to her appearance. His wife Aline catches theirgestures towards each other and it is enough for her to paint a picture, oneshe doesn’t wish to see but yet can’t remove her eyes from. Solnesss may havethe superior view but he’d have to share it before long, for when he respondedto a knock on the door he didn’t expect to walk into a woman’s long awaited anddesired picture: her reunion with her Master Builder.

Like lastNovember’s The Applicant, the performancespace is bare, reliant on the actors to clue us in on their surroundings. ColmIvors throws an occasional square of light onto the stage, suggesting scenic change.The performers are in a hurry though, and lines are regularly mowed over.O’Reilly pre-starts the play with a tableau of the cast repeating individualgestures, possibly intended as a reference point to significant actions thatoccur later. If these gestures correspond with later moments, these latermoments receive no punctuation or lull for the audience to register thatcontinuity – another indicator that the production needs to slow down.

Lauren O’Toole’sforeword in the play’s programme discusses the character of Hilde, who, fromeverything down to her arrival, history, and infatuation with Solness, sticksout as a non-realist figure. She’s reduced to this notion here, and I wouldlike to see O’Reilly and Jane Myers not play all their cards on the character’schildlike mannerisms but try and explore the romanticist complexities that havesuch a strong influence over her life. Melissa Nolan also never seems to getunder the surface of her role, wearing a severe Beckettian expressionthroughout but never accessing Aline’s immense grief.

The delightful turnin the evening comes from Patrick O’Donnell, who expertly crafts his architectinto a form very human, exposing the flaws in Solness’s design while continuingto build his egotistical path to success. O’Donnell covers a lot of emotionalbases as Solness comes under the mysterious power that Hilde holds over him,and ultimately manages to turn a dislikeable character into a sympathetic one. Theproduction is further complimented by charming performances by Duncan Lacroixand Áine Lane.

O’Reilly clearlywishes to abandon theatrical realism, and one can see what would draw hiscompany to The Master Builder. He’sstill searching for his stage vocabulary though. It will be interesting to see,if with continued exploration of physicality, lighting and sound, what tantrumthe company will throw next.

What dideverybody else think?

Gúna Nua and Civic Theatre, ‘The Goddess of Liberty’: Madame O Diva

2012-02-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

ProjectArts Centre Cube, Dublin

Jan31-Feb 18

My review of The Goddess of Liberty byKaren Ardiff coming up just as soon as I talk to a middling actor man fromAmerica ...

With recent collaborations such as OwenO’Neill’s vengeful Absolution, AnthonyBrophy’s calculating Chicane, and ElaineMurphy’s award-stealing Little Gem, GúnaNua has become a dependable company insofar as the continued output of clevernew writing in Irish theatre is concerned. Performer/novelist Karen Ardiff setsher new play, The Goddess of Liberty,on the edge of the world and spans the journey of two Irish women from their meetingon a famine ship bound for New York to their present day lives in gold-rushAlaska. The challenges facing director Paul Meade involve drawing more thanjust gold from the stone.

Aboard the famine ship, aside from stealingher exquisite pastry, it was the thieving woman’s odour that annoyed FrankieHarmon – stage diva/centre of the universe – which, she says, all the perfumes ofthe Arab world could not supress. When she then discovered the woman’s suburb talentfor sewing lace, she struck up an alliance, one which continued decades lateruntil the scene before us, where she (May) tends to Frankie in their cabin home,left mute and disabled after a stroke. When May’s daughter T-Belle returns withnews that the gold has dried up, spelling doom for the town’s trade, May knowsexactly what symbol will rally and raise the community’s spirits: therecreation of Frankie’s Goddess of Liberty act. One could brand her optimism for her friend’srecovery either as denial or hope but either way they're both intrinsic.

Ardiff wisely demonstrates rather than haveus assume the virtuosity of her jaunty celebrity. The fragmentation ofexpression through a bodily infliction is not exactly a novel idea (TomKilroy’s Double Cross and BrianFriel’s Translations quickly come tomind, while a stroke victim is seen as recent as Michael West’s Freefall in 2009) but it does allow poetics toshift, and on this occasion it gives Geraldine Plunkett licence to own thestage with all her swagger and charm. Ardiff uses the conceit of Hermione andher restoration from statue to human in Shakespeare’s The Winter's Tale – the role May most fondly recalls her friendperforming – as a metaphor throughout for Frankie’s own possible revival(*).

(*)Anyone willing to bet that Ardiff played Hermione herself at some point?

Despite the writer’s sensuous flare for textures,scents and songs, and the sharp-edged dialogue of her strong and sometimeslacerating characters, The Goddess ofLiberty can’t help but stilt more than stir. The economic depravity of theoffstage world, which further fuels the need for Frankie’s recovery, doesn’treceive enough representation for us to care, rendering most of the expositionabout the town and its figures inconsequential. There is confusion as towhether Emma Colohan’s T-Belle is to undergo redemption or remain antagonistic,leaving her sorely unsympathetic throughout. If it’s the latter, Megan Riordan alreadyfills these shoes as tactless harlot Nelly, underscoring the darker side of Ardiff’swit with a delivery and timing more sharp than T-Belle’s treasured knife. Thisleaves Máire Ní Ghráinne’s dutiful May and her relationship with Frankie as ourlast anchor to any emotional investment in the content here. Her loyalty imbuesthe play with needed affection but her final comments to Frankie seem so leftof field, partly because Ní Ghráinne treats the revelation without muchdramatic emphasis. Meade’s production engages when it jolts out of itsnaturalist mode (with Maree Kearn’s set cleverly doubling as a ship-deck) andbrings Plunkett to life, but otherwise he hasn’t emphasised these crises orcharacterisations in a way which makes them revelatory.

Ardiff’s Irish Times Theatre Awards-nominatedperformance in Rough Magic’s Peer Gynt turnedthe production around from transcendental fancy towards a realism and emotionmore appreciated than spectacle. She evidently grasps the complexities oftheatrical realism and puts it to practice in her play. Unfortunately, her ‘theatricalmoment’, plotted to be equally as miraculous as when the music strikes and awakensHermione, never finds its note in this production.

What did everybody else think?

ABSOLUT Fringe and Project Arts Centre give us Turn Around

2012-01-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

THEATREclub’ssonorous and rompous The Family finished its run this weekendat Project Arts Centre, thus leaving a void in our lives as we await that rare contemporarytheatre piece unbound by convention until our Fringe overdose in September.

Thankfully,both the Fringe and Project will be making the wait easier as they announced lastweek their Turn Around season. InApril we will be reunited with five Fringe shows from the past. The releasestates fringes, so it’spossible we’ll see productions not just from last year but the 2010 and 2009 festivalsas well. The ~~Final~~ selected five haven’t been revealed yet but it’s funto speculate.

So I posethe question: if you could bring back five Fringe productions – whether to relivesomething you loved or rewrite the past and see what you had previously missed – whatwould they be?

Here aremine:

i) World’sEnd Lane, ANU Productions (originally ABSOLUT Fringe 2010)

Laundry receiveda lot of attention last year but ANU’s excavation of the Monto area began withthis previous piece. Supposedly equally as compelling, World’s End Lane gives its audience their own experience in what was once themost notorious red light district in Europe. Director Louise Lowe is handlingtheatrical realism in such a way that hasn’t been seen in this country before. Several times I ran to the venue in hopes of areturn but alas ...

Chances of it in Turn Around: I imagineit’s really important to ANU that their Monto plays be staged in the areaitself. Plus, its site-responsive nature probably isn’t suited to the Projectindoors.

ii) EternalRising of the Sun, HotForTheatre (originally ABSOLUT Fringe 2011, pictured at top)

If youhaven’t already gotten yourself to I ♥ Alice ♥ I and met the charming and talented Amy Conroy, thenI strongly advise that you get to the Peacock where the show begins its previewstonight. In this follow-up production,Conroy plays an inner-city mother who takes dancing lessons in an attempt to assertcontrol in her life. Not only is Conroy capable of delivering her own writingwith sheer sincerity but this production will likely see her exerting somephysicality, which is exciting considering her (and director Veronica Coburn’s)history with Barabbas.

Chancesof it in Turn Around: Very likely. Eternal Rising wasa sold-out, critical darling and Conroy’s Irish Times Theatre Awards nomination(and hopefully win!) will surely gather a crowd. Plus, the timing doesn’t clashwith Alice at the Peacock.

iii)Who is Fergus Kilpatrick?, The Company (Originally ABSOLUT Fringe 2009)

Once upon a time it was recommended to meas a theatre student to go see Who isFergus Kilpatrick?. Needless to say: I fu*ked up. I have since beencurious about the production that proceeded the wonderful As you are now so once were we. The Company exercise adeconstructionist philosophy that is rendered accessible and fascinating throughthe natural charisma of the ensemble’s relationships. Fergus Kilpatrick has been described to me as a meta-theatricalromp, extracting postmodern irony by transforming Jorge Luis Borges’s shortstory and the theatre space into a simulation of itself.

Chancesof it in Turn Around: Iwould like to wish “yes” but I honestly don’t know. It’s convenient that bothNyree Yergainharsian and Brian Bennett have both just finished working onproductions. If we say hypothetically that the ensemble are waiting until Septemberfor Fringe to debut their new work, Politik,and taking into account that they revived shows the past two years around thistime, then there’s a possibility they’ll stage something. On the other hand, FergusKilpatrick has already been revived and it might be a question of whetheror not there’s an audience left to see it.

iv)Soh, Spilt Gin (originallyABSOLUT Fringe 2010)

Spilt Gin’s Fringe offering last year – You Can’t Just Leave – There’s AlwaysSomething – was a show that I really liked but didn’t get the time towrite about. This site-specific production took us to a Georgian House (somewherein Rathmines I think – don’t know my South side very well) so enormous that itrequired twelve actors and four playwrights to fill. But fill it they did, andStone’s treatment of the space was tantalising. The previous year the companyproduced James Hickson’s Soh,which appears to be a sensuous knot of gothic melodrama and romantic poetry,stylized by electric-coloured ribbons which anchor themselves to a typewriter.

Chancesof it in Turn Around: Can’treally say. I would love to see this exciting company getting to produce morework.

v) Man of Valour, The Corn Exchange (originallyABSOLUT Fringe 2011)

I really miss The Corn Exchange (the last Isaw of them was Freefall in2010) and I’ll be kicking myself for a long time for missing Man of Valour. In this blockbuster an office drone freeshimself from the humdrum of reality through the Commedia mayhem that we’ve cometo love, powering through with a superhuman performance by Paul Reid.

Chancesof it in Turn Around: Along shot. I understand that the tech and design in this show is on a grandscale, so it doesn’t come cheaply. Also, Reid will be gracing the Abbey boardsin Alice in Funderland at thattime. Sigh

(Also: WillFredd’sFollowneeds to be seen by more people).

What iseverybody else’s picks?

THEATREclub and Project Arts Centre, ‘The Family’: We Begin and End With a Family

2012-01-19T06:09:00.000-08:00

ProjectArts Centre Upstairs, Dublin

Jan17-28

My review of The Family (withspoilers) coming up just as soon as I see Mrs. Green on Sunday for book club …

In a recent interview with Entertainment.ie,THEATREclub’s Grace Dyas revealed how the company had become centred on atrilogy of plays about Ireland, commencing with The Family, followed by the already acclaimed and unforgiving Heroin (both of which are intending totour), and finally a project commissioned for St. Michael’s estate called History. If all goes according to plan Iwill get to see and write about these plays in that order (I’ve already seen Heroin but due to its sheer antagonismI’m still undecided as to what side the coin has landed for me, so a secondviewing will be required).

If you’re going to put a sociologicalhistory of Ireland onstage, there is nowhere more appropriate to begin than thefamily. From the very beginning, as a unit of individuals, it is influential toour development as social beings, even teaching us our first words. Culturally,it holds great power in Ireland as some notion of ‘family’ constituted thenucleus of our legislative history, the effects of which are still seen todaywith phrasing in the constitution that still perceives women primarily ashomemakers and overlooks the underdeveloped rights of children. In the presentfrom which THEATREclub are harking back from, the complications of such aconstitution are increasingly evident and the process of resolving them isfrustratingly slow. If there is a need to review ‘the family’ in Irish society,the company’s approach isn’t to battle it out in some frictional politicalarena.

Instead, THEATREclub bring us all home.

Doireann Coady’s set gives us Portmarnock throughway of 1950s Pleasantville America. Louise and Lauren, their hair classicallycurled, scuffle over a black dress while Shane and Ger get up to mischief inthe estate, a possible parallel to Richie Cunningham and Fonzie. Barry is amore mature guy, always wearing a tie, always drinking tea. However, in akitchen made from plywood a scarlet kettle is not the only thing that reachesboiling point. Tempers rise as individuals aren’t listened to, or saying enoughas the case may be, and a cacophony of voices all speaking at the same timebecomes a glorious symphony of miscommunication that will leave the Irish son,mother, daughter or father with a grin. It’s a scene we all know well.

Our families are in here too, in some guise.Performers slip in and out of the performing roles of parent, child and sibling,and in this ambiguity we can glimpse resemblances to situations with our own kin. The idea of afamily meal is wonderful but the effort of producing it can be another story.Lauren might as well take to the carrots with a pick axe, and while herapproach may be destroying their dinner and worthy of Louise’s protests, at thesame time we see a daughter’s determination for independence. When Louisestands tiptoe to teach the colossal Ger to waltz, as if a mother teaching herson to dance, with an unexpected belt of MoonRiver: the scene becomes completely disarming and moving. And you know aTHEATREclub show has gone dark when Lauren Larken needs to light up a cigaretteand cry her eyes out. That little woman has a huge heart.

Dyas is in greater control of herspace than ever before. If the punches and slams of her beat poet playwriting waswhat had people taking notes in the early days, her confidence as a directorimpresses here, using a theatrical code which causes Aristotelian poetics tofuse, spark, and the physicality of her performers basks in the ensuingfireworks. When Shane Byrne takes to the air, pirouetting to the club musicbehind him, there is no fixed interpretation to the action. All we’ve got isour intuition, and what we know to feel. Perhaps we’ll never really understandShane. But when Ger takes up position to the same song, it could suggest thatsomebody does.

The Family are not alone, of course. BrianBennett plays his silver bow tie-wearing neighbour with delightful cheese(*)and an eerie sense of suspicion. When he tells disappointed Gemma that she cancome into his house any time, it’s hard to know whether to consider him kind orpossibly dangerous. I suppose you don’t ever really know your neighbours.

(*) Italways gets me how Bennett can make the simplest statement funny. His out ofthe blue “I’m going to go inside now” is funnier in retrospect of the fact thathe was purely setting up the knick-knacking gag later. Also, does he always endup nick-naming other performers in the shows he’s in? I think he did in ‘As youare’ and ‘Jumping Off the Earth’. Here he christens Gemma “Gem-Jam”.

THEATREclub’s work always considers itselfin the urgent present, and in the effort to make a cultural conversation aroundThe Family a series of post-showtalks have been planned this week in Project Arts Centre. The fake grass and white picket fence could literallyhave been blasted here from the postmodern explosion of the Sixties but wheresuch ideology was born in uncertainty, THEATREclub gives us a discourse that wecan rely on, and the universality of which makes everyone an expert. WhenLouise Lewis realises she’s not abandoned as she believed, asking us all“Can you see me?”, we see in her someone we've seen all our lives, yet somehow different.

What did everybody else think?

Thoughts on Irish Times Theatre Awards Nominations 2011

2012-01-14T11:12:00.000-08:00

The nominations are in for the Irish Times Theatre Awards2011 (to be held Feb 26), and the details are here. I think this year’s shortlistis a good reflection of the work produced. Here are some general thoughts:

When you’re right, you’reright

I agree with the judges’ comments about how 2011 was great fordesign, direction, but not writing. Pat Kinevane and Mark O’Halloran earnedtheir places here. Haven’t seen the others.

… and I was right!

Misterman a heavy contender in the tech categories is notsurprising. What I did predict successfully was that Pan Pan’s Aedín Cosgrovewould be giving them some competition.

We all need to gonorth

The Lyric is obviously a force to be reckoned with, with 5 nominationsfor Conall Morrison’s The Crucible.

The Male of theSpecies: Commedia Action Man

I can’t comment on Patrick O’Kane but the rest sounds right.Really happy to see Philip Judge get the nod, and while I sorely missed Manof Valour from what I hear Reid was phenomenal. In the Supporting category I’ve only seen JohnOlohan but Phelim Drew as violent Saranzo in The Making of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore comes to mind.

The Female of theSpecies: Amy Conroy has arrived

I didn’t see Conroy in the role she’s been nominated for but thedisarming I ♥ Alice ♥ I (bound for the Peacock Jan 30) along with consensualpraise in press indicate that she’s a hot ticket at the moment. It’s an obviousmove to nominate a Tony winner, and while Marie Mullen had her moment(singular), I’d remove her from the list on the basis that Testament just wasn’tgood. Insert one of Selina Cartmell’s leads (Camille O’Sullivan and KateStanley Brennan), or Pineapple’s Caoilfhionn Dunneinstead. As for Supporting Actress, great recognition for Karen Ardiff butCaitriona Ní Mhurchú (who I am a big fan of), along with every other performerin 16 Possible Glimpses, was squandered due to no fault of their own. Whatabout The Making of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore’s Cathy Belton, DerbhleCrotty for Corcadorcha’s The Winter’s Tale, or Bairbre Ní Chaoimh for her intimateperformance in Laundry instead.

What’s Missing?

Would Neil Watkins and The Year of Magical Wanking havebeen considered for last year’s nominations or this years’? Either way, why thehell isn’t he here? As for The Blue Boy and Follow, I imagine theirbest chance of getting in here would probably have been through the techcategories but those are flooded with Misterman nominations. Drat.

What’s going to win?

You tell me.

Úna McKevitt, ‘565+’: The Woman Who Walked Into Theatre

2012-01-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

Project Arts Centre,Dublin

Jan 12-14

My review of 565+ coming up just as soon as Igive Sam Shepherd a thumbs up …

Úna McKevitt’s collaborators, or “compatriots”, as they havebeen deemed several times, are an interesting bunch. 2009’s Victor and Gord saw the theatre maker puther sister Áine onstage along with neighbour and friend Vickey. As the twoshared stories of their inseparable childhoods and distanced adulthoods, undeniableon one hand was their charm and courage as non-actors, and McKevitt’s aestheticachievement of crafting theatre text from human bodies and experiences on theother. She would go on to push this methodfurther, incorporating four more individuals into Victor and Gord, and itssuccess has been a testament to both the director’s fondness for ‘reading’people and the battles fought by her compatriots on the grounds of reality outsidethe metaphorical remove of the theatre.

With 565+ McKevittturns to her cousin Marie O’Rourke: a sixty-something school teacher, athleticchatterer, and natural-born comic. This is the story of her history withdepression she explains upon entering, along with a footnote citing her onstagenerves and her uncertainty as to whether or not she will be able to emotionallyconnect with her recollections on this particular night. These events didhappen a long time ago after all, and obviously McKevitt is not interested inpre-rehearsing her cousin’s emotional state but rather let it dictate itselfnaturally in the live performance.

Marie charts her depression as beginning with her husband whosuffered from alcoholism, and the stress it put on their household. Having tomake a choice between him or her family, she got a barring order. He later diedfrom liver failure. On the suggestions of a counsellor, she tried out activitiesto put her mind at ease, ranging from unsuccessful group counselling (sheclaims she was the best talker but not the best listener) to surfing under the tutelageof an eighteen-year-old sand haired, blue eyed beau. Someone then proposed the theatre. She went toa production of Jane Eyre (one of herfavourite books) and found solace: “That’s when it started”. She’s since seenover 565 shows.

O’Rourke’s presence is warm, charming, and inherently theatrical.Discussing her childhood she recalls tuning into the classical music played ona local radio station and seeing her first play: a community production of thePassion. “What do I need to get myself up there?”, she remembers thinking toherself. The fact that she trips on lines is forgiven and affirms her wonderfulhumanity. McKevitt herself is positioned nearby, throwing a line prompt whenrequired. When O’Rourke fails to notice a button falling unplanned from her jacket,a minor mishap, McKevitt picks it up, acting simultaneously as stage-hand andfamily.

It was O’Rourke’s calamitous attempts at arriving in time forthe curtain that set me giggling (particularly an episode involving a car crashand Hedda Gabbler). It is beautiful thoughhow the act of theatre-going becomes intrinsic to her identity, combing referencesto plays into her story. It was a moment during her recall of the stageproduction of Roddy Doyle’s The Woman WhoWalked Into Doors that we saw that on this particular night, despite herfootnote at the beginning forewarning otherwise, Marie did emotionally returnto the pain of the past. And that was devastating.

565+ features aspart of the First Fortnight Festival: a mental health arts festival aiming toend cultural prejudice toward those suffering from mental illness. In onemoment, Marie describes being surrounded by the domestic frustrations of herhouse. From the steps at the top of the seating rig she shares her tendency to siton the stairs, away from the bedroom and the kitchen, feeling neither high norlow. When some of her ten-year-old students knocked on the door one day askingif she needed help cleaning the house, the audience share her immensegratefulness.

Marie’s story sheds light on another aspect of the humanpsyche. Her accreditation of the healing power of the theatre can suggestsomething about the essence of spectatorship, the ability of the art form to affectour mental state inside and outside its presence. The show structurally poses severalquestions. Are we to take McKevitt’s theatre as some extreme form of naturalismor does it turn the tables on realism all together? What are the consequencesof a theatre devoid of metaphorical presentation? Is there a limit in terms of sourcesfor theatrical text?

Most importantly: what happens to an art form fascinated withdeath (narratively obsessed with conflict, temporal in existence) when it isoccupied with fighting compatriots, full of wonderful and surviving life?

What did everybody else think?

Irish Theatre in 2011: When the Heroes are Gone

2011-12-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

It’s that time when bloggers write their end-of-year contemplations,trying to count down the ‘Best of’ moments of whatever had them gushing intotheir keyboards for the past twelve months. You might recall that I did a ‘Bestof’ list last year. It then became increasingly obvious to me that comparingperformances and declaring a winner is a problematic and possibly fruitlessexercise. For example, how do you measure something like Laundry against Misterman anddecide which is the “best”? Also, some of my favourite shows this year such as Mimic and The Year of Magical Wanking had technically received their debutsbefore 2011, so would they be “qualified” for such a list?

Instead, I decided to write an impression of the year that was, ofwhat we can say happened and the significance of such. And where is a moreappropriate place to begin than Enda?

In February 2011 the Fianna Fail government that oversaw ournation’s bankruptcy and loss of sovereignty was shown the door, and Enda Kennywas given the seat at the head of the table. A new commander, he received andhosted powerful state dignitaries, one which bore enormous symbolic resolutionto our nation’s violent past, all while showing off the country at its mostgraceful. He proclaimed the Irish Act ofSupremacy over Rome in light of the systematiccovering up of child abuses by the Roman Catholic Church in the Cloyne Report,reminding it that “This is not Rome” and thatthe “arrogant morality” of industrial school

Ireland

has no place in today’srepublic. In Enda Kenny we saw not just a respected and defensive Taoiseach butalso, in his heroics, a continuous point of reference as to how we canapprehend with hope the Irelandof today: global, progressive, protected.

However, heroic narratives, whether political or religious, cannever hold on for too long; eventually they’re disenchanted. And sure enough,disappointment after disappointment rolled in: further austerity, referendumsmore concerned with state power than vulnerable citizens, a shrinking economyat home and in Europe, an investigation intothe Magdalene Laundries that will likely destroy their records than salvagethem for public record, topped off by a completely unheroic State of the Unionaddress.

We no longer live in an Ireland where unity and progress isdefined by the glorification of patriots, by the taking up of arms in the nameof sovereignty, by the consolidating of our culture through myth and historyunique to us, or by God’s words of salvation whispered in our ears. That RomanticIreland is “with O’Leary in the grave”, as Yeats wrote. The institutions ofleadership and faith that were once heroic have now betrayed such values,exposed as increasingly corrupted and flawed.

If Kathleen Ni Houlihan – the aged rural woman, the mother ofnationalism, dependent on the bravery of soldiers to protect her – stood as theemblem of early capitalist andmercantile Ireland in the early twentieth century, what then can be said to bethe symbol of industrial capitalist and factory Ireland? Irish theatre in 2011seems to have found the answer. There is no doubt that the most significant andcommonly produced image this year has been the suffering child, deniedchildhood.

Gary Keegan and Feidlim Cannon of Brokentalkers seek to give noiseto the silenced. This ‘noise’ in the past has been carefully postured, relievedfrom the individuals’ isolation and let sing with elegance. But not even thewell-composed Brokentalkers could help get emotional at the realities of theRyan Report, at the incidents in the industrial schools which shadowed bothmen’s childhoods. The Blue Boy (itstitle taken from a local ghost story that scared Keegan and his brothers whenthey were young) was a roaring storm of bruising choreography, haunting music, andheart-shattering testimony that seared our ideological landscape with themessage: “never again”.

ANU Productions revealed the Magdalene history of oppression in thepowerful site-responsive Laundry. DirectorLouise Lowe gives her audience the gift of agency, to interact with and observethis hidden history, and some of our most startling discoveries concern youngpregnant women and the inevitable separation of them from their child. We are disturbedby the distant cries of babies, by the sight of abandoned cots, and by a youngwoman’s telling of her child being taken from her with a majestic stained glassportrait of Mary holding the baby Jesus serving as an unavoidable and ironicbackdrop.

Neither historical or anonymous, Neil Watkins’ eloquent, furious anddevastatingly sincere The Year of Magical Wanking for THISISPOPBABY was a drug and sex bent tale of destruction andseeking help. One of the play’s crushing blows comes when Watkins unsympatheticallyshares that a crime was committed against him as a child, a crime we laterrealise can be traced to the roots of his torment, and responsible for the pathhe’s chosen where intimacy is only realised in violence.

To briefly lift the focus from 2011, we will remember that ThomasKilroy’s Christ Deliver Us!, producedby the Abbey last year, was also a strong portrayal of children robbed of theirchildhood. In this case they were defeated by a dense silence, of the neglectof both parent and church’s social function to enter communication withchildren about sexual maturity.

Other plays this year contributed to the disempowering of the heroicnarratives of the religious and the socio-political, exposing their flaws. EndaWalsh’s Misterman with LandmarkProductions showed how God’s gospel canbe catastrophically misinterpreted, as Cillian Murphy’s socially stuntedentrepreneur sets out to essentially create his own version of Genesis butultimately falls brutally from grace. Druid’s production of John B. Keane’s Big Maggie resounded with its aggressiveportrait of capitalism, gambling kinship for wealth. Pat Kinevane dispelscultural attitudes of arrogance towards mental illness whilst pointing a sharpand steady finger against ineffective health services in Silent. Mark O’Halloran’s Tradepresented to us a man who hasconcealed his homosexuality to a society voiced in Catholic conservatism, whoonly reveals himself in fragments, and finally assembles himself as a whole inthe presence of a young rent boy.

A lot of Irish theatre this year has been about uncovering the tollof living with these flawed institutions. Very little though imagined how wecould live on with such realities, with having failed to protect the victimisedchild haunting our history.

At the same time as the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, when The Blue Boy, Laundry, and Trade wereall running, down at the Cork Opera House Corcadorcha were presenting aproduction of The Winter’s Tale that wasundeniably resonant with these depictions of tragic youth.

Shakespeare’s tale is about King Leontes of Sicily (a powerful Garrett Lombard), fatherto beloved son and promising heir Mamillius and husband to pregnant queen Hermione. Consumed with paranoia, Leontesbecomes convinced that his wife has been having an affair with his friendPolixenes, king of Bohemia,and that her child is his. After a failed assassination attempt on Polixenes, bothkingdoms enter into conflict. Leontes imprisons Hermione,where she prematurely gives birth. The noblewoman Paulina (a towering DerbhleCrotty) brings the newborn to Leontes in hope of persuading him to see hisparanoia but he angrily demands that the child be taken away and abandoned inthe wilderness. At the queen’s trial we learn that young Mamillius has diedfrom grief, which causes her to also cease life. Leontes is left penitent, broken.

It was hard not to feel hopeful while watching the second half of The Winter’s Tale unfold. As coincidencewould align it: Perdita – Leontes’ child who he cast out in her infancy –sixteen years on, having been raised by a shepherd and unaware of her royalheritage, now shares affections with Polixenes’ son Florizel. She is eventuallyreunited with her guilt-ridden father, and her and Florizel’s unity reconcilesthe conflict between their nations. The play find a miraculous endnote whenPaulina escorts us to a statue of Hermione and claims that she can make it move ifLeontes places his utmost faith in such a possibility. Sure enough, the queenis restored and the king has his family returned to him.

With The Winter’s Tale weare given a narrative where a child makes their way safely back to theirfamily. Pat Kiernan’s production maintains the original accents of theperformers, giving this homecoming a particularly Irish feel. Furthermore, perhapswe are to seek these alternative narratives of spirituality such as that Leontesconforms to at the end of The Winter’sTale, or Amma the Hugging Saint who grants solace to Watkins in The Year of Magical Wanking, as a meansto live out heroic narratives once more.

Perhaps this disenchantment of the heroic is why something asmagical as Lynne Parker’s production of Peer Gynt for Rough Magic, though flawless in execution and performance, reallystruggled to make a connection. We can commend Parker for such a gambit at thisstage in her career though, similar to how Garry Hynes tackled The Silver Tassie last year. As forRough Magic, it’s wonderful to see them put talented directors such as MattTorney, Sophie Motley, Aoife Spillane-Hinks, and José Miguel Jiménez to work

Motley is one of my favourite directors at the moment. WithWillFredd’s ‘Spirit of the Fringe’ winner Follow,she presented a theatre lab where light and sound technicians sprinkled their stagevocabularies in sentience with Shane O’Reilly’s physical and verbal discourseon sign language. The result is a symbolic allegory demonstrating how signsconnect to their meaning, applied here to impart the experience ofcommunicating whilst deaf. Follow beautifullyglimpses at the infinite potential for the body as communication, fluent innuance

Maeve Stone achieved an uncanny state of naturalism directing SpiltGin’s Georgian house drama You Can’t JustLeave – There’s Always Something. Fregoli’s Rob McFeely and Maria Tivnancontinued to hammer out unflinching physical and desperate tales of survivalwith Breathing Water by RaymondScannell, The Secret Life of Me, and A Life of Words. Selina Cartmelldelivered sensuous and enigmatic work as The Lulu House and The Making of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore bore her unmistakable glossy signature. We hadexciting writing with absurdist offerings such as Siobhán Donnellan’s Chasing Butterflies and In the Garden, Caroline Lynch’s Almost a Fantasy, Vincent O’Reilly’s The Applicant and Darren Donohue’s Voices in the Rubble. One letdown wasColm Tóibin’s Testament, in which thewriter was too concerned with leaving his audience behind in the dust, and GarryHynes was too lazy in relieving from its cryptic humdrum and boredom. Herscaled back production of Big Maggie wasenjoyable but hardly adventurous. The pressure is on for next year’s DruidMurphy .

It continues to remain a constant in theatre that we are notsentimental to the pre-recession days. Bizarrely enough, the most nostalgicdisplay in the industry was not on stage but on television. Fintan O’Toole’s Power Plays conveyed the author’sfrustration with the sector’s inability to produce a large-scale politicaldrama which apprehended our post-boom existence, with interludes of Garry Hynes(another shabby string to her bow this year) and a troupe of performers enactingsnippets of Tom Murphy. O’Toole would receive his demands of an Irish politicaltheatre that autumn at ABSOLUT Fringe and the Ulster Bank Dublin TheatreFestival though claim none of the credit, as all such work was in developmentprior to the documentary’s airing.

Still, we kinda have to ask: why hasn’t there been a naturalistpolitical drama that explains everything? Instead, targets have been localisedand individual. Is political naturalism on stage, representative of nation, onthe course of its own heroic narrative doomed to failure?

With this seemly dissonance in our ability to present experiences ofliving in this country, relief was still found and at its most effective intestimony, in the catharsis of these survivor accounts, of the individuals whosurvived the blow-out of the heroic narratives, who survived postmodernity. Thepost-heroic Ireland can be found in these accounts by Neil Watkins, by VeronicaDyas in In My Bed, by the authors of THEATREclub’sTwenty Ten, by those silenced and nowheard in The Blue Boy and Laundry, by the Alices in Amy Conroy’s I ♥ Alice ♥ I, by the shattered men of Trade and Silent. Are these scattered pieces of work the true inheritors ofYeats and Lady Gregory’s nationalist project? After all, the Abbey, which beganthe year by giving fresh and inventive work such as The Company’s As You Are Now So Once Were We andTheatreLovett’s The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly runs on the Peacock stage, now ends 2011 receiving accusationsof conservative programming.

As the grander narratives of politics and religion continue to bedisillusioned, I imagine we will receive more theatre in the years to come thatwill constitute this post-heroic Ireland. The view thus far of 2012is an exciting one, with THISISPOPBABY’s Alicein Funderland on the Abbey stage in April, the reunion of The Company in Politik, THEATREclub’s The Family in January, WillFredd’s‘Spirit of the Fringe’ offering for ABSOLUT Fringe, Druid’s DruidMurphy, and the next chapter of ANUProductions’ Monto quadrilogy: The Boysof Foley Street. We will get to see Willie White’s vision for the UlsterBank Dublin Theatre Festival, and, likewise, Cian O’Brien’s for Project ArtsCentre.

The Ones That Got Away(ie. shows I sorely missed):

The Corn Exchange, Man of Valour:

It’s sad to write an overview of Irish theatre without being able tobring the amazing Corn Exchange into discussions. Sorry to have missed thisCommedia blockbuster.

Una McKevitt, The Big Deal:

If theatre is inherently illusionary, McKevitt comes the closet toshattering such a principle. Her work with non-performers has joyously reducedthe distance between performer and spectator. The Big Deal shook her formula up, handling (I assume) her darkestmaterial yet and deploying performers to relay stories in the absence of theirowners. The good thing about McKevitt is that she’s become really good attouring, so here’s hoping I’ll catch this in the future.

ANU Productions, World’s End Lane (again):

Seeing Laundry has made mewant to see this one so much more. Hopefully Louise Lowe will go for ahat-trick.

Abbey Theatre, Curse of the Starving Glass:

I suspect that Jimmy Fay’s production of Sam Shepherd’s materialistdrama was the Abbey at its best this year.

What did everybody else think of 2011?

Siren Productions, ‘The Making of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore’: Director’s Commentary

2011-12-17T04:30:00.000-08:00

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Dec 1-17

My review of Selina Cartmell’s highly anticipated TheMaking of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore coming up just as soon as I marry youdespite your teeth …

In my review of The Lulu HouseI briefly touched upon Cartmell’s directing style, a cinematically-endowed theatricalitythat unfolds action with the perceptivity of a film camera. Ever since, I havebeen intrigued and curious as to what statement, if any, she is trying to make in this communion offorms. When the Project Arts Centre announced its winter season and SirenProductions’ ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (whichwe knew was coming due to its continuous success in in the Arts Council ProjectAwards) gained a “The Making of” in itstitle, it seemed hopeful that maybe Cartmell would show her cards.

John Ford’s Jacobean tragedy has a history of being shunned by thecanon for its unforgiving portrayal of incest. Giovanni the bright student hasdeveloped passionate feelings for his sister Annabella. Despite being pursuedby suitors Saranzo and Bergetto, Annabella reciprocates her brother’sdeclarations of love. When she realises she has become pregnant, she hastilymarries Saranzo to convince all that the child is his. Her plan does not work,and though she refuses to reveal her incestual relationship with Giovanni whenSaranzo threatens her life, she is branded with the equally despicable title of“whore”.

Cartmell transplants her preoccupation with the camera on the stagequite literally and prominently, so much so that Louis Lovett’s Giovanni is ‘Tis Pity’s film director, punching Ford’s text into atypewriter as the words simultaneously project onto a screen, a yo-yo beckonedback and forth at his command. Surrounded by a film crew equipped with cameras,boom mics, wardrobe, head-sets, coffee and make-up, it would appear thatCartmell is trying to allocate more power and authority to Giovanni. Characterssuch as Giovanni’s counsel the Friar (Tom Hickey), his and Annabella’s fatherFlorio (Lorcan Cranitch), and Bergetto and his servant Poggio (Simon Delaneyand Paul Reid) only appear in pre-recorded video clips.(*)

(*) There needs to be aDelaney/Reid comedy produced at some stage. They’re hilarious here.

I usually associate Lovett with his colourful and animated presencebut here he is contained, brooding, replacing flamboyance with controlled and fierypassion. Both he and Kate Stanley Brennan perform the brother and sister’sexchange of vows with sweet intimacy, playfully rolling on the bed, he holdinga super 8 camera as if to document and immortalise her beauty, she embarrassed.The scene works in strong juxtaposition to the later bedroom scene when Saranzoviolently confronts Annabella as Phelim Drew swings a gun that holds the entireroom in suspense. Despite the danger, Brennan still holds rebellion in hereyes. Indeed, for all the authority that the play historically asserts over women,this contemporary production presents them in all their fight and glamour,further epitomized by Cathy Belton’s scorned diva Hippolita, who at Saranzo andAnnabella’s wedding stands above proceedings in a ruby dress, belting a thornyballad at the betrothed. If you’re going to go down; go down fighting.

Conor Linehan’s musical arrangements seem to accompany the actionalmost throughout, and never once do they overstep or understate. Sassykeyboards move affairs along as occasional brass notes flare romantically.Sinead McKenna spills some noir lighting onto this slick production, conceivedby a design team that includes Cara Christie, whose wonderful costume design receivesits inspiration from early Italian cinema, and Sabine Dargent and her set thatconstantly reveals. Cartmell has a strong grasp of sceneography and has obviouslyworked closely with Dargent to obtain the clamour, angles, concealment andrevelation she requires. One of the most effective of the director’s techniquesis to use the crew members to rotate beds and tables during scenes to give theeffect of a film camera panning.

Still, there is no answers here as to if Cartmell is suggestingsomething about cinema and theatre or the rewards of their fusion. Perhaps it’spedantic of me to think that such a mystery exists, but if it did it could shedsome light for me. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly Cartmellis trying to do with Ford’s ‘Tis Pity.We can rule out any attempt to exchange the play for postmodern capital in theway Pan Pan did with Hamlet in The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane, possiblyusing cameras and virtual images to dissolve the text into some hyperrealpastiche; it’s clear that Cartmell is prioritising the text. She wants to tellthis story. All I can think of is two possibilities: she is either staging ‘Tis Pity or a meta production of ‘Tis Pity. The first option would suggest that the film crew and set are nothingbeyond scenic suggestion, like how Rough Magic’s Peer Gynt had a suggestion of a medical institution in its design. However,the play’s violent conclusion suggests that we are to accept them as somethingmore absolute and integral to the action, as the discovery that Giovanni hasnot a prop heart at the end of his skewer but a real one is intended as ahorrific breach of realism. It would be like Peer Gynt became Peer Gynt ina medical institution. It seems more likely that we’re investing in thesecond option but there is no considerable fleshing out of a meta parallel.Characters are all isolated to the world of ‘TisPity and do not have agency in the world of its production. Nor do the crewmembers develop their personae. It’s as if the play sits undecidedly betweenthe “Whore” and the “Making of”.

Still, there is no denying the unsettling violence and psychological taboos of Ford’stragedy that still protrudes today, nor the majestic gloss with which SirenProductions have presented it. I do look forward to the day though when Cartmell brings the vocabulariesof theatre and cinema together for reasons beyond cosmetic brilliance.

What did everybody else think?

Live Collision | Bite Size, ‘Before Talkies’ & ‘Orchid’

2011-12-08T05:57:00.001-08:00

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Dec 1-3

A few thoughts on Live Collision | Bite Size coming upjust as soon as I have my photograph taken …

Lynette Moran has her finger on the pulse of contemporaryperformance discourse. As a curator of Project Brand New, she has providedartists a platform for developing alternative forms of performance, re-workingclassical questions of aesthetics to break new ground. With the morefrictionally named Live Collision (here in a three day mini-festival ‘Bite Size’format) we are treated to a line-up that promises to interweave theatre,virtual art, Eastern mysticism, physics, poetry, dance, and dirty music. ‘Technology’,the most obvious theme addressed by the two performances on the night Iattended, was interrogated by Raymond Scannell’s play Talking Babies and Adam Fearon’s immersive photography installationOrchid.

It makes excellent sense that Raymond Scannell would be wrapped upin this interdisciplinary web. The wonderful Mimic – in which he performed the duties of playwright, performer,and pianist – was emblematic of sweet virtuosity, and, in retrospect, glimpsedat the writer’s concern with an increasingly technologized culture. In BeforeTalkies a young man named Justin sits at a laptop, reciting his past in theform of a screenplay. After a horrific accident which claimed his speech andleft him mute, he is left in the care of his tough Grandfather. As they clash indignantly,Justin becomes ever more determined to breach the attic that his Grandfatherhas forbid him to enter. Encounters are complemented and contradicted by scenesfrom silent movies that play out behind him.

Scannell’s writing continues to be swift, clever, and almostvisionary. In contrast to the grim technologically advanced society obsessedwith self-betterment in Mimic, herewe are treated to gorgeous images of “screensaver dreams”, “laptop sunrises”,and “Tetris blocks reflected in teardrops”. Scannell sees how humanity has beenelementally changed by the advent of modern technology, especially in how thetwo have become existentially intermingled. Shane Falvey gives a humble performanceas the media-saturized protagonist. I would be very interested in seeing moreelaboration in the staging though. Hopefully this isn’t the last we see of thispiece.(*)

(*) It has been announcedthat Scannell is part of Irish Theatre Institute’s new ‘Six in the Attic’line-up – which provides creative and practical space for artists. That’scertainly an encouraging sign!

As technology reflects and responds to human emotion (and possiblyvice versa) in Before Talkies, it canbe argued that the case is very different in Orchid. In Adam Fearon’s immersive photography installation, theaudience sit in the dark as two cameras lurk like ninjas and strike withflashes that literally leave stars in your eyes. The image is then projectedvery briefly for us to see. Initially, the effect is charming as we seeportraits of ourselves and our peers stupefied and partially blind. However, itdoes get repetitive and the flashes do begin to feel like kicks to the optic nerve.The idea of making the audience the subject matter is interesting but the techniqueis cold. Fearon himself admitted in the post-show discussion that usually thepiece is performed in galleries, I presume, where an audience have more freedomin the space. It’s hard leaving this particular installation though withoutfeeling subordinate or unreciprocated.

These offerings have made me more curious about the rest of Moran’s line-up.I hope the festival returns as I suspect that, experienced as a whole, Live Collisionis truly calamitous, defiant and electric.

What did everybody else think?

Pan Pan, ‘The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane’: Revisited

2011-12-02T11:20:00.001-08:00

Black Box Theatre,Galway

Nov 30-Dec 1

I had forgotten how jam-packed The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane isbefore I went to see it for the second time last night in Galway. Despitehaving already written about the show (twice), I have some further commentsbelow, especially in relation to how this production differs from the debut runlast year.

Okay, so we have a few cast shake-ups: Garret Lombard and Olwen Fouéré are out, and Bush Moukarzel and Gina Moxley are in. Moukarzel proposed an interesting take on Hamlet with his gentle demeanour, and I would like to see how he would have handled the material (Madden got it again the night I went). I do think Lombard, with his difference in age and his distinguishable confidence, formed a more interesting side to the triangle though. Did anyone see Moukarzel in the role?

Always great to see Moxley onstage. How did I miss before the Gertrude-type character quoting Endgame (“I’ll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I’ll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me”)? Its use suggests a vulnerable side of Gertrude that we rarely see: her dependent relationship to men. Moxley slightly cracks at that moment and it’s heart-breaking.

Speaking of the Beckett, did anyone else have a call-back to All That Fall’s Mrs. Rooney with the Endgame monologue: “One day you'll be blind, like me. You'll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me”. The blackout and searing soundscape after the monologue was also reminiscent of the storming end of All That Fall. Pan Pan do Beckett almost too frighteningly well.

I had a suspicion going in that I wanted to see Derek Devine get the role. His Reynaldo and Horatio scenes are beautiful in my books. When we were voting I asked him how many times he had gotten ‘Hamlet’ and he replied that he won twice. Anyone out there attend one of those two performances? Anyone able to comment on how he did?

You can really see Quinn, Piesse and company staring into the audience during the “postdramatic” silence. It’s such a weird, tense moment. It occurred to me during it that it would be amazing to see the audience from Quinn’s table.

I’m glad they didn’t waste the opportunity to incorporate Madden’s injury from the Second Age Hamlet tour last spring. For the record, that series of athletic leaps he described he would do if not injured in the audition: he actually did do in the debut run, and it was one of the reasons why I voted for him then. He’s a great physical actor, and I really hope the injury hasn’t affected him that badly.

Where’s Toby? I hear that his owner moved to England and the great Dane had to follow him. Buddy was a friendly replacement though. Not too keen on playing catch with Yorick’s skull.

Judith Roddy as Ophelia: still steals the show for me.

Finally: I was intrigued by the difference in audience reactionsfrom both the Dublin and Galway shows. I heard quite a few negativereactions from spectators last night, some of whom found the pieceinaccessible, self-indulgent, overly-academic, and not really dramatic. Therefore,I feel it appropriate to revisit TheRehearsal, and to question if its scholarship approach is really accessibleto non-theatre historians and academics? I would be inclined to say “yes” butI’m interested in hearing what everybody else thinks.

TCD Department of Drama’s Debut 2011, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

2011-12-01T06:29:00.000-08:00

Samuel Beckett Theatre,Dublin
Nov 30-Dec 2

I don’t often write about student and amateur productionshere, mainly because it requires readjusting my criteria. Participants in such productionsmay not necessarily want to measure themselves against “professional”performers. We have to consider their reasons for performing, which may possiblybe more social or community-based than on the economic necessity of a trained performerwho has chosen a livelihood of the stage. This is not to say that there is adifferential between either student/amateur and professional in terms of creativityand who is capable of being creative. In fact, creativity can sometimes be betternurtured in non-“professional” environments, which I argued in my review ofNUIG Dramsoc’s The Hero Returns.

The production of AMidsummer Night’s Dream currently running in the Samuel Beckett Theatre isundoubtedly the most impressive student production I’ve seen. A component of theTrinity Drama department’s Debut series – in which graduating directors aregiven an opportunity to produce on a large scale, supported by sizeablebudgets, casts and production crews along with academic guidance – RosannaMallinson’s Midsummer feels more likea lost Fringe play.

The fading in and out of a jazz-era piano and a vocal nod toNina Simone by a Sixties-dressedTitania implement the musical genre as an ornament of the production’s design.Furthermore, ‘jazz’ is a very apt description of the approach of this piece toits source. Mallinson has taken the classical “scale” of Shakespeare’s comedyand used it to create an original, mischievous arrangement of her own which overlooks hardly anything.With the script condensed to an hour, she manages to cater the essentialswithout glossing over any opportunity for comedic flourish. The cast arewell-schooled in humour and charm, and all deserve and take their individualmoments to own the spotlight. A radical design trades in fairy wings formilitary rifles, and a serene forest for a radioactive dystopia. Coincidentally,THEATREclub designer Doireann Coady is listed as production manager, and thereis somewhat of a Twenty Tensimilarity in how the screwball stage is uncluttered while possibly threatening.This is not to overlook the members of the design team who have alldemonstrated a competency in interweaving these different aesthetics cohesively.

This production of AMidsummer Night’s Dream is entertaining and ambitiously designed. It alsointroduces some names to keep in mind for the future. Well worth the admissioncharge of 8 euro (3 concession). Let me know what you think.

Sheer Tantrum, ‘The Applicant’ & ‘Voices in The Rubble’: Keep Calm and Be Absurd

2011-11-27T09:27:00.001-08:00

The Pearse Centre,Dublin

Nov 21-Dec 2

My review of The Applicant and Voicesin The Rubble coming up just as soon as I make a poodle …

At a panel discussion at Galway Arts Festival this year,Michael D. Higgins observed that plays by Bertolt Brecht were never popular inIreland. It’s interesting to think about why this was the case, especially whenhis absurdist contemporaries Becket and Pinter were commonly produced. It promptsone to question what kind of home there has been in Ireland for the ‘Theatre ofthe Absurd’, that is, a school of performance that sought sense in thesenseless, the inadequacy of rationality in a human condition that isultimately at mercy to invisible forces outside their control.

Sheer Tantrum’s Vincent O’Reilly has found a suspect that fitsthe absurist M.O., the invisible string-puller: the powerful influence ofcapitalist auhority. In The Applicant heputs job hopeful Ian through an unorthodox interview process complicated by a sexualtemptress/employer (Nichola MacEvilly) and a balloon animal-wielding mute (SimonToal) also competing for the position. If only Ian hadsome indication as to what the job entails.

Whatever service Fern, Table, Tree and Bush Inc. provide, wecan assume the labour doesn’t merit the pay grade, giving a polite but politicalnod to the bloated bonuses of bank managers and other industrial/financialgiants who receive overpay. O’Reilly presents a relatable figure here, dole dryand desperate for an income, played humbly by Patrick O’Donnell. Duncan Lacroixcomically jukeboxes sound effects from behind the audience, and his menacingpresence as “Management” edges the piece towards darker territory and sharper critique(*).

(*) ‘The Applicant’ bringsabout the same agressive capitalism theme that was prominent this week in ‘Big Maggie’, specifically in how it also depicts the destruction of human relationsin the prioritision of economic capital.

As intrinsic as the economic and the familial are in the foundationsof our society, fitting it is then that Darren Donohue locates his drama in the home in Voices in The Rubble.When Tony (David Thompson) comes home to his wife Avril (Amy Dunne) with newsof losing his job and a candid description of having sex with the secretary,she requests for more sensitivity on his part. This is rich, considering thedead body Avril has hung up in the fridge and her complete inability toremember who he was and why she killed him.

Donohue’s writing takes fantastic leaps in irrationality.With a pace so frantic and quick, the inadequacy of logic is dragged throughthe dust and the effect is deleriously entertaining. Snappy deliveries byThompson, Dunne, and John Morton (inroduced as a wild-eyed adorer of Avril) spinand spin this narrative of domestic stillness until it turns on its head, becomingsome time-slipped romanticisation of how one chooses to remember their lover.The most bizarre consequence of this is that Morton’s character undergoes somekind of reverse Oedipal complex. The highlight though is a monologue by Dunne, anunexpected and beautiful avenue down a marital sadness where she describes herfear of her house crumbling to the ground. The moment is a touching portrait ofthe vulnerability of one investing their life into their commitment to another’s.

It’s arguable that both components of Sheer Tantrum’s double-billchase a Beckettian ‘stilness’ (though perhaps Bob Dylan is more of an influencefor O’Reilly, who makes literal use of the words of All Along the Watchtower). These works are contrived but that doesnot mean they are devoid of tangible substance. These realities are incrediblyreal, and these two playwrights appear to be enjoying not just dismantling thembut also their presentation on the stage.

What did everybody else think?

Druid, ‘Big Maggie’: Of Land, Of Lady

2011-11-23T03:17:00.001-08:00

The Gaiety, Dublin

Nov 21-26

My reviewof BigMaggie by John B. Keane coming up just as soon as I find MollyGibbons’s grave ...

In thefirst act of Keane’s play, Maggie Polpin, upon learning of her sexualrelationship with a married man, slaps her daughter Katie hard across the faceand drags her along the ground by her hair. She then remarks that she hadperceived of Katie as more of a woman but now realises she’s still a child.It’s a moment that makes us ponder what constitutes being a progressive ‘woman’in the harsh logistical realities of Maggie’s ‘Ireland’.

It is theday of Walter Polpin’s funeral, and no widow’s tears are spent as Maggie,coldly and professionally, arranges a tombstone and an epitaph (etched withsentimentality to spare). Then it’s off to open the family shop. For Maggiethis is freedom, the opportunity to exercise her consumer expertise and socialagency as she always wished but couldn’t whilst married to that “hard” man. Ifthe severity of her actions are to be accounted for by his harsh treatment ofher in the past then Walter Polpin’s shadow is to extend long and dark acrossthis story.

AislingO’Sullivan casts her Maggie in stone, wielding a vicious delivery, Kerry-thickand rampant like a boulder rolling down Carrauntuohil. Her smiles are rare,mostly found behind the shop counter, the relished success at the trade morevaluable than the contents of the till. Just as rare are the glimpses of fearwe see when she senses her entrapments of her children coming loose. GarryHynes does well to prompt these subtleties in her direction (*), while FrancisO’Connor’s Warhol-inspired set, in its symmetrical wiring and classicbrandings, invites us to deconstruct this socio-economic history of the Irish domesticsphere. Charlie Murphy (as proven in the Abbey’s Pygmalion earlier this year) can also go feral, her sharp-tonguedKatie the main resistance fighter to Maggie’s iron rule, while the innocence ofsweet Sarah Greene’s Gert calls Maggie’s credentials into question (**).

(*) Does anyone else sense that Hynes’s visionis less dominant here than in her previous work? Her direction feels verysubtle and the scale of the set seems more scaled back than in other Druidshows. It serves the play well, though. I may just about forgive her for thecryptic humdrum and drabble that was ‘Testament’.

(**) Sarah Greene has a pretty cool resumé. As well as previous work with Druid(including Keane’s ‘The Year of the Hiker’) and Rough Magic’s recent ‘Phaedra’and ‘Peer Gynt’, she performed in Randolph SD’s original musical ‘EllemenopeJones’. You will also see her playing the titular role in THISISPOPBABY’s musical‘Alice In Funderland’ in the Abbey in Spring. I’ve only seen her in supportingroles so I really look forward to seeing her in the spotlight.

Keane’splay was originally received on a controversial note in 1969. Women’s rightswere still being campaigned for, and the playwright was presenting to patriarchalaudiences scenes in which a single woman was managing family affairs and assumingcontrol over land and business despite the contestations of her sons. Asdetailed in the programming note, in this underdeveloped period of legislation,to get married as a woman was to enter a state of “civil death”. Her legalexistence was dependent on her husband’s, and if she were to leave him shewould forfeit rights such as access to the family home and to her children.Maggie is established as incredibly competent in legal and economicnegotiations of power, and as she sits Katie down and tidies her hair after heroutburst, it comes to our attention that she is grooming a generation of womanthat will inherit similar power.

Keane maybe pre-charting the development of equality in economic and legal rank for theIrish female, however, can this portrayal contribute to such a campaign? UnderMaggie’s authority, her family are miserable. Katie is made to marry a man shedoesn’t love (though his fortune has its perks) while Maurice is not allowed tomarry the woman he loves (because of her lack of fortune). Both he and Mick arecrushed that after all that they dedicated to the farm that it won’t fall ineither’s hands, thus robbing them of any livelihood independent of Maggie’sauthority. And poor Gert, on the receiving end of her mother’s cruelmanipulation to wade her off playboy Teddy Heelin (***). Maggie is well skilledin the art of entrapment, and for whatever outcomes she’s trying to impose onher children’s lives, her efforts are ultimately to ensure the economic andsocial sufficiency of her family.

(***) So, what did people think of Keith Duffyas smooth-talking Teddy Heelin? I actually thought he did alright.

Big Maggie is unsympathetically clever, hilariouslytactless and also occasionally moving. Its moral ground is tricky, as itusually is when lineage intertwines with property. Are we to side with ayouthful generation unable to claim independence in marriage and profession, orwith the woman who has lived her life oppressed by societal institutions? Eitherway, there is an unequal and superficial society at display here. To bematernal is to sacrifice kinship for economic and social sustainability. Inthis regard, Maggie Polpin can be viewed as the property-obsessed capitalism ofIreland in its most aggressive form, turning away family for the sake ofprosperity, and that message certainly has powerful resonance in today’sIreland.

Memorablequotes:

Gert andMaggie at the cemetery:

GERT: “He was no saint but he was my father. (rebelliously) I'mgoing over to the grave.”

MAGGIE: “(vehemently) You will stay where you are,or I'll give you a smack across the puss! I want no more talk out of you now! Ihave enough to contend with without my youngest wanting to desert me in my hourof need.”

Maggie onByrne’s patient calculating of the pricing of the tombstone:

MAGGIE: “In the honour of God hurry up!’Tisn't a supermarket we're putting over him!”

Maggie on Katie’s mourning:

MAGGIE: “In the honour of God dry youreyes and don't be making a show of yourself!”

KATIE: “I'm entitled to cry when my fatheris dead.”

Gert’sidealism:

GERT: “Maybe now that he's out of the waywe might turn into some sort of a family again.”

KATIE: “That's a terrible thing to say!”

Mauricedoubting Walter’s infidelity:

MAURICE: “Can you be sure?”

KATIE: “Look! I sawMoll Sonders running down the stairs in her birthday suit and my mother afterher. Is that enough for you?”

Neighbours paying respects to Maggie:

MAGGIE: “NellieRiordan at the door dragging three kids and a pram full of potatoes. Came topay her respects. She'd pray for the deceased and say the stations – whichwould take her a lot less time than she kept me at the door.”

Gert and Byrne on Teddy:

GERT: “Oh, go onout o’ that! Everyone knows he's a ladies’ man! They say he has more sex appeal than any othertwo travellers.”

BYRNE: “That's nobad mark against him. I could use a bit of it myself.”

Maggie being honest with Teddy:

MAGGIE: “I think weknow each other. At least I know a good deal about you. I know for instance,that you're no cock virgin with innocent dreams of romance.”

Maggie being honest with Teddy (after kissing him):

MAGGIE: “You're so uncomplicated.”

Maggie to Katie on the unpopularity of breast-feeding:

MAGGIE: “There's nonature in children since they stopped the breast feeding. Women these daysdon't seem to know what tits are for. In my day every child was fed from thebreast.”

KATIE: “Well, if you were fed from thebreast, mother mine, it didn't give you much nature.”

What dideverybody else think?

Nervousystem, ‘Weaving The Cry’: An Ocean and a Rock

2011-11-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Oct 27-29

My review of Weavingthe Cry coming up just as soon as I recognise my stitch ...

If you ever triedto picture Riders of the Sea sailingon Galician waters, strung up with Grotowskian discipline, it would probablylook like Weaving the Cry, anindependent reaction to Synge’s play by theatre laboratory Nervousystem. Choosingthis dark miserable territory to travel is brave, and what the companyultimately achieves with their distinct style is a harrowing allegory of aculture at the mercy of the fierce cruel sea.

Synge’s tale isthat of Maurya, her daughters Cathleen and Nora and son Bartley. Maurya haslost her husband and five sons to the ocean and now tries to prevent Bartley fromthe same fate. At the same time, Cathleen and Nora have reason to believe thattheir brother Michael has drowned. The plot highlights Synge’s eye for culturalinstitutions, with the influential figure of the priest used by Maurya as an attempted gambit against Bartley, andCathleen and Nora’s disapproval of her sending him off on an ill word.

Nervousystemopen up the plot further, exploring Nora’s sexuality in her romancing of thewaves and giving the deceased Michael a scene where the shirt that would laterserve as an indicator to his doom is presented as an emblem of his affectionsfor his family. After Bartley’s departure, Maurya’s pain is represented in theunravelling of a ball of twine that her daughters use to adorn the space,creating what resembles a ship-deck on which Weaving the Cry will take its own course. In the end, after Bartley’sbody is found, the production invites us to mourn in what is essentially awake. Maurya and her daughters wash the young man’s body and sing with alltheir strength. The scene seems otherworldly yet relatable, and also incrediblyhonourable considering Synge’s own ear for cultural ceremony.

As with itssource material, the piece is sailing on rough waters, so to speak, and havingour empathies keep up with these cold miserable affairs is a heavy order. Theseverity of the performances doesn’t do the production too many favours, and inthe midst of trying to portray the cruelty of the play’s environments, ourconnections with what is human and familial is often lost. This overpoweringbleakness is heavy burden to the production, one which they fail to relieve. However,with less science and more humanism, Nervousystem will be downright unstoppable.

What dideverybody else think?

Dragonfly Theatre in collaboration with Bluepatch Productions, ‘Chasing Butterflies’ & ‘In the Garden’: Afterlight

2011-11-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Nun’s Island Theatre, Galway TheatreFestival

Oct 29-30

My review ofSiobhán Donnellan’s two one-act plays Chasing Butterflies and Inthe Garden coming up just as soon as I look like my grandmother ...

Nothing violatesour abilities for rationality more than the indiscriminate occasion of death, atruth gently rendered in Siobhán Donnellan’s Chasing Butterflies, the first half of Dragonfly and Bluepatch’sGalway Theatre Festival duet.

As Annie Caryfordrecalls the image of Mary becoming a young woman, wearing a red dress and agolden necklace, we see the pride in her eyes with which she cherishes herdaughter. Big Story Hannigan fondly remembers how his son left jars in thegarden in hope of capturing the butterflies. These are the memories each parenthas chosen to remember their children by after a tragic night when one childkilled the other.

Donnellan’s playgives powerful glimpses into this unconceivable pain, effectively conveyed bytender and devastating performances by Martin Maguire and Donnellan herself. DirectorAoife Connolly surrounds the monologues with a tense blustering soundscape and achoreography where simultaneous movement adds scenic urgency. We flinch withthe thought that these two shattered bodies might collide in their geometricwanderings of the stage, choosing to unleash their aggression and obliteratethe other. However, in aligning their accounts separate from each other, withno forensic exposition to reveal how the tragedy occurred, Donnellan suggeststhat both children, whether alive or not, are victims of an illogical ‘darkness’,and that this perspective is perhaps of the most comfort to a parent grievingthe loss of a child.

If this ‘darkness’can give way to a ‘light’, it is suggested in follow-up piece In the Garden, where the accounts of twoindividuals residing in some kind of Eden trickles down through a series of stageglimpses. Again, Donnellan charminglyskips down the dark path, revealing the sad lives lived by these unconventionalindividuals, and in the presentation of their shared lack of human connectionsuggests a companionship that is possible beyond death. Donnellan and BenMulhern deserve mentions for their quirky but human performances, along withConnolly’s risky decision to stage the play as a series of stills, inciting anaudience to deconstruct events without compromising the momentum of thenarrative.

From Dragonflyand Bluepatch’s double-bill we are left with stories bittersweet and universal.Donnellan’s might as a writer lies in her articulation of the dalliances oftemporary lives, some to be celebrated and others not, and the devastatingresult of when such life is snatched away. Connolly continues to be a stand-outdirector at Galway Theatre Festival, spelling out performance spaces where nuancesare to be cherry-picked, deconstructed, and re-rendered in the spectator’s owntheatre experience. Their collaboration suggests that the circumstances by which meaningful connections are made can be just as confound as the occasionof death itself.

What did everybody else think?

Fregoli, ‘A Life of Words’: All Together Now

2011-10-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Studio THT, Galway Theatre Festival

Oct 26-27

My review of ALife of Words coming up just as soon as I sit in the bar where PabloPicasso met Salvador Dalí ...

Early into A Life of Words, performers onstage discuss the painter Salvador Dalí, a monumentalpillar of the surrealist art movement. It’s a moment where Fregoli, practitionersof a school of stage surrealism themselves, can be seen making reference to theirown aesthetic and heritage.

The scene isfrom Shane McDermott’s Mosaic of Dreams,a play from the company’s repertoire and the first of three short productionsthat form this A Life of Words presentation.Initially we fear that McDermott’s strict and art-obsessed mother will inflictharm on her impressionable daughter but the piece, with technicoloured performancesby Maria Tivnan and Rebecca Ryan, forms a different picture: a critique ofCatholic conservatism and insufficient mental health and social services. Whatis originally perceived as an unsuitable mother-daughter relationship becomes aunique one, using artwork and artist to speak metaphors for their own feelingstoward each other. Together they submerge their discarded clocks in water inrecreation of Dalí’s The Persistence ofMemory. The mother literally wraps her daughter in Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, using a star-patternedblanket. As they are torn from each other by two enormous Van Gogh ears, loomingonstage throughout, the mother likens her pain to that felt by the painter’s removalof his ear.

By the time wearrive at Maria Tivnan’s Blocked, Fregoliseem to be championing education, used here as a means for three youngconstruction workers to escape a Beckettian reality of restless routine. AronHegarty’s Macca is reluctant to find worth in his workmates’ nostalgicrecollections of Hansel & Gretel and geography lessons about Ireland.Director Rob McFeely measures the slow steady pauses of Tivnan’s script, timingperfectly the comic deliveries of Hegarty, Oisin Robbins and Jarlath Tivnan.The text is more so commentary than narrative, although this may be preferableconsidering the complex pieces propped either side of it.

Enda Walsh’s The Small Things is used to cap off thenight, a story of a post-apocalyptic world where language is considered such asource of disorder that people’s tongues are removed. Conceived by Walsh as twosurvivor accounts, Fregoli choose just one – an eccentric young girl played byTracy Bruen whose father is responsible for this extremity that has struck theworld. From her armchair, Bruen masterfully runs the monologue through herfingers, jittering along its dark violent territory, left ruinous by its effects.In the wilderness of Walsh’s world, semiotics such as those at play in Mosaic of Dreams and Blocked are left battling for survival.The piece serves as a powerful and devastating close to Fregoli’s presentation.

A Life of Words is essentially anallegory of expression versus conservatism. The effect of experiencing thesethree plays in tandem is gloriously exhausting but also encouraging, for ifcensoring minds ever approach our theatre doors they will have these roaring beautifulvoices to contend with.

What dideverybody else think?

Mephisto, ‘Almost a Fantasy’: My Moon My Man

2011-10-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

Nun’s Island Theatre, Galway TheatreFestival

Oct 26-27

My review of CarolineLynch’s Almost a Fantasy coming up just as soon as I think “there goesmy venue” ...

The Victorian drawingroom drama with its intellectual subjects and social trivialities oftenserves as a model for contemporary comedy. Never have I seen it swung to suchfantastical distance as in Caroline Lynch’s Almosta Fantasy, a debut which sucks logic, realism and other textual particlesinto its orbit only to fling them on their way again as far away as Pluto.

Newlyweds Donnaand George watch the sunrise from their honeymoon suite. She soon after wishesto tell him stories involving a tiny woman bearing a banner saying “shut up” andmoon-dust (which is more fizzy than one might think) but he’s too busy playingpiano in his mind to listen. George is seemingly suffering from some sort ofBeethoven complex, looking to adopt the composer’s history of falling in lovewith his students. Donna on the other hand claims to be amnesiac and can’trecall a wedding between them ever taking place. A chambermaid in a weddinggown enters proceedings, a runaway bride possibly carrying the train in thismetaphysical matrimony or threatening to knock the betrothed even further offcourse.

Lynch’s play isan anomaly of different aesthetics and cultural narratives. The glamour andflavour of her descriptions suggest a poetic fluency that well could havedominated and crushed this stage script into an epic poem. Instead, she managesto knit such artistry into an absurdist play, crackling with a wit that isflung like sharp cutlery across the stage with Mametian momentum. Such is alsoto the credit of expert deliveries by Lynch herself, as well as Martin Maguireand Helen Gregg. Wedding dress and tux are exchanged hands along with sexualaffections, and as the play swoops into the territory of gender performativitywe can’t help but wonder if Lynch is looking to throw her champagne in the faceof the ceremony of matrimony as well.

Furthermore, Almost a Fantasy could be interpreted asan assault on the Georgian notion of men playing the piano and women having tosit at the window and listen. The heroine of the tale, somehow endorsed by themoon, is gifted with a perceptivity that forensically renders the speckles and texturesof life so fantastical that her husband and his obvious lack of real musicaltalent are diminished. If this is a gender argument (with “shut up” serving asa lynchpin), Lynch does well to provide balance, revealing an insecuresexuality at the heart of George’s obsession with the piano. The high heels don’tstay on for long, and the play becomes more apparent as an individual arc ofcommitment and preparation. If theatre as psychiatry is this comical andmagical, I’ll certainly have another serving.

With Almost a Fantasy, Lynch successfully claimsher corner of the theatre universe, aligning the stars in a manner one mightthink impossible. Her gravity as a playwright is only beginning to be felt.

What dideverybody else think?

TYGER, ‘The Kimberly Tin’: All The Small Things

2011-10-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Nun’s Island Theatre, Galway TheatreFestival

Oct 25-26

My review of TheKimberly Tin coming up just as soon as I listen to Just Seventeen ...

While awaiting The Kimberly Tin to commence I was talkingto a man sitting beside me who asked if I had a biscuit tin at home containing memorabiliafrom my life. It occurred to me at that point that perhaps tin boxes (Kimberlyor otherwise) were a more universal means of storing memories than I originallyconsidered.

It is thisuniversality that TYGER’s latest production seems to draw inspiration from. DirectorJessica Curtis has decided that the miscellaneous voices uncovered in thediscovery of a mystery box of bitter love letters, diary entries, and musical recordingsdeserve to be heard onstage. She’s working with individual snapshots, evidenceof a bigger narrative. The challenge here is to give these smaller parts of awhole enough urgency to captivate an audience.

Performers enacta series of random and isolated episodes. We have a confidence-building correspondencebreaking up with a “self-centred pig from hell”, two friends’ adventures (withtypical complaints) whilst in America, and a personal description of a girl’s firstkiss (delivered by a boy). Piano and ballet lessons are gunned down by musicalsatires. A bare stage with the occasional stack of cardboard storage boxes compriseof the set, leaving most interactions with material objects to the mimingimaginations of the actors. This is ensemble theatre celebrated, where adults areat play (Emmet Byrne dons a Superman cape throughout). Most colourful of Curtis’stechnique though is her employment of the actor as musical instrument. Cacophonysettles to melody, gestures unite in choreography, and these are the main toolsby which these fragments attempt to weave together a cohesive whole.

Cohesion, unfortunately,is what slips through the hands of this piece, compromised by the looseness ofthe ensemble method. Curtis’s transitions are the chief offenders, lackingconsiderable punctuation and allowing scenarios to weaken and bleed into each otheras opposed to delivering the individual kicks they aim for. Furthermore, theplacement of bodies onstage can sometimes seem aimless and clumsy, and the cast,as versatile and likeable as they are, tend to race through the more emotionallyrich territory of the production.

Saying that, instoring away our own memories of TheKimberly Tin, it would be undeserving to dispose of its charm and variance.Its bite may need a crunch but the result isn’t stale.

What dideverybody else think?

Corcadorca, ‘The Winter’s Tale’: Godsend

2011-10-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

Cork Opera House

Oct 11-22

I managed tocatch Corcadorca’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale but I don’thave time to do an in-depth review. I have to say though that this is not only thefirst production of a Shakespearean text by an Irish company that I enjoyed andwould recommend (not including postdramatic phenom The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane) but it was also one of the most mesmerising and engaging pieces of theatre I’ve seen all year.

Director PatKiernan’s tribal-infused interpretation, keening with Mel Mercier’s score and steeledby Paul Keogan’s frosty lights, is both a chilling and hopeful experience. WhenGarrett Lombard’s jealous king Leontes clashes with Derbhle Crotty’s courtlyPaulina we have a stage equivalent of when an unstoppable force meets anunmovable object. Both actors give supreme performances. The second half of theplay is less memorable (Shakespeare did give this one a strange structure,starting off with road-signs towards a tragedy and then taking a comedydetour) but is held together by anamiable cast including Ronan Leahy, Mal Whyte, and the always charming RaymondKeane. I have more thoughts on TheWinter’s Tale but I think I’m going to save them for my end of yearwrite-ups in December.

What dideverybody else think?

ANU Productions, ‘Laundry’: This Is Not Rome

2011-10-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Magdalene Laundry, Sean MacDermottStreet, Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

Sept 27-Oct 15

My review (withspoilers) of Laundry (*), as well as a few thoughts on how it and The Blue Boy have dealt with the subjectof the Catholic Church, coming up just as soon as I remember four names for you...

(*) While I was stalking the Lab with thehope of getting a return ticket for ‘World’s End Lane’ (didn’t happen) I heard people from ANU tell audiences that they do hope to bring back‘Laundry’ next year. I would strongly recommend not reading this review untilyou see the show, even if it’s a long wait. The show is well worth alook.

A year ago I wroteabout audience reactions to the participatory theatre at last year’s UlsterBank Dublin Theatre Festival and how individuals felt (at Ontroerend Goed’s Internal in particular) abject andill-treated. My opinion was that audiences were mistaking the illusion inherentin theatre for a reality-based prejudice, and that no matter what alien andintimidating form art can take we can always trust our safety in that distancebetween metaphor and life.

Never have I hadto rigorously reassure myself of this than at Laundry, where ANU Productions unlock the doors of the GloucesterStreet Magdalene Laundry and bring us inside its majestic, antiseptic interiorswith an un-yielding naturalism. Sterile fumes of soap fill our lungs as soon asthe audience enter, only three admitted at a time. The floor tiles are hard andthe doors are heavy. Windows permit light but their glass is stained dark andis so thick and garbled that only the black shapes of the bars bolted outsidecan be seen through it.

Our coursethrough the building is a series of one-on-one interactions with actors in differentrooms. When founded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Magdaleneasylums were originally designed to rehabilitate “fallen women” (women ofsexual promiscuity or poor moral character, most notably prostitutes) but suchintentions later twisted into prison-like environments where unmarried mothers,abused girls and mentally disabled women were also committed and forced to dohard physical labour. Being considered too flirtatious or beautiful was alsoreason to be incarcerated. The Gloucester Street laundry didn’t close until1996, and it wasn’t until that decade that individuals started coming forwardwith allegations of abuse.

Director LouiseLowe gives these testimonies a powerful home not just in the performances she provokes from her actors but also in a competent understanding and utilizing ofthe sacred ground she’s been given. Lowe has earned a reputation for heroff-site work, being able to take the foundations of the theatre space andconstruct its architecture in chosen locations. The slam of doors and thevoluminous odour of soap permeates our intimate experiences with performers,constant reminders of imprisonment. She employs sharp ironies. A certificatecongratulating those who leave the laundry hangs in the same room where a girl(Fiona Shiel) opens a cabinet drawer full of women’s hair. A young mother (UnaKavanagh) still shows unconditional adoration of a stained glass portrait ofthe baby Jesus despite her own child being taken from her.

The mostpowerful of Lowe’s tools though is implication, bestowed to you by the piercingeyes of the women and their commands to carry buckets and enter rooms, and inthe discovery of what your presence can cause. Can we make a difference if wetry to reach out to Robbie O’Connor’s defiant young man skating and losing hisbattle with the confines that smother him, or if we tell somebody about LaurenWhite’s slipping presence, or if we stay and hold Sorcha Kenny’s shaking hand? Sittingnext to Bairbre Ní Caomh in the church, her character a widow self-admitted tothe laundry on the dying request of a husband who feared for her loneliness, givesus safe, sweet and eloquent insight into the complications of the times. Wecreate brief bonds with these characters, praying for each other, whistling in confessionboxes, and laughing together over pranks played on the nuns.

This performanceallows its audience something very special. Laundryallows its audience to be brave. The make or break of that bravery comeswhen a girl asks for our help in escaping the fortress, to leave behind thecurfews and the silence and the cold marble. And thus is perhaps one of themost important moments of Irish theatre this year: an opportunity to change, to help people that in the pastwe couldn’t.

A whirlwindescape later and you find yourself shoved in the back of a taxi with an armfulof rags, the driver of which (Peter O’Byrne) gives you a brief history of the Montoarea before leaving you at Scrub a Dub Laundrette. Here, locals Tony and Babsinvite you to quite literally iron out the remaining wrinkles of the Magdalenecontroversy, most notably informing us of survivor advocacy group Justice forMagdalenes, whose campaigning successfully caught the attention of the UNCommittee Against Torture. Despite the UN’s demanding of a statutory reportinto the issue, the Dáil in June announced a more limited investigation, onemore concerned with clarifying State interaction with the laundries as opposedto pressuring the authorities of those institutions to hand over documents thatmay indicate to the whereabouts of women and children who disappeared in the laundries. In July Taoiseach Enda Kenny, in response to the Vatican’s fabrication ofevidence in the Cloyne Report, declared what is surely the most controversialspeech thus far in his career:

“This is not Rome. Nor is itindustrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smotheredconscience and humanity, and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish-Catholicworld. This is the ‘Republic’ of Ireland 2011. A Republic of laws, of rightsand responsibilities, of proper civic order, where the delinquency andarrogance of a particular version of a particular kind of ‘mortality’ will nolonger be tolerated of ignored”

It feels to methat we are on the doorstep of a Catholic Ireland where the power of clericalhierarchy will be incredibly diminished, and as Laundry and The Blue Boy standas memorials to the victims of such hierarchy, and as evidence of its crimes, Ithink this will be a positive, safe, and healthy benefit to our community. Bothpieces also react to the creativity of this hierarchy, of the disgusting waysin which horrors were inflicted or concealed. Fitting it is then that ANUProductions and Brokentalkers, who are among the most important and innovative voicesof our artistic community, attack this horrible creativity with their ownunmatched imagination and practice; TheBlue Boy as an inter-disciplinary polemic, its movement and song raw withanger, and Laundry as both a complete relocation andredefinition of the theatrical experience.

Furthermore,both plays display criticism of how our legislators have yet to avenge thosewho were victims. The Blue Boymentions the long-waiting referendum on child protection laws, delayed stilleven in the some years since the Ryan Report. Laundry is waiting for the government to conduct the statutoryinvestigation into the laundries that the UN suggested. There is obviouslystill work to be done and a mess to be cleaned, and if this theatre has taughtus anything it’s that it needs to bedone. And we can do it. We all have soap now.

What dideverybody else think?

Kneehigh, 'The Wild Bride': Gotta Keep The Devil Way Down In The Hole!

2011-10-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

The Gaiety Theatre, Ulster Bank DublinTheatre Festival

Oct 13-15

Unfortunately I’magain pressed for time and can’t write in detail on The Wild Bride. All I’llsay is that amongst the postmodern back-flips of the German companies and thesocial histories that our homegrown artists are illuminating, The Wild Bride sits triumphantly as thefestival’s international visitor and king of folk theatre. The virtuosic performances of Kneehigh give usa blues-infused fairytale that is funny, inventive, beautiful and disturbing. Highlyrecommended.

Othercommitments are limiting my writing time (I’ll explain once I get the chance)but expect a thorough piece on Laundry by the end of the week andalso something on She She Pop and Gob Squad.

Meanwhile,conversation is dry at the Festival Water Cooler (!). Let me know what you’veseen, what you thought, etc. Was Peer Gynt too chaotic for its own good? Did anyone find out where Camille O’Sullivandisappeared to at the end of The Lulu House? Were critics too easy on Testament?Is Marina Carr in trouble? What can we do with the truths Trade, The Blue Boy and Laundry have given us? Did you cry atShe She Pop? Tell me all.

What dideverybody else think of The Wild Bride?

Abbey Theatre, ’16 Possible Glimpses’: The Long Goodbye

2011-10-12T15:27:00.000-07:00

The Peacock Stage, Ulster Bank DublinTheatre Festival

Sept 30-Oct 29

I don’t havetime to write in depth about Marina Carr’s 16 Possible Glimpses. I wasinterested in seeing Carr craft a literary response to Chekov but the unfortunateresult is a clumsy exposition-forced soap opera which isn’t particularlymemorable.

Patrick O’Kane,Cathy Belton, and Caitríona Ní Mhurchú fall victim to the over-stated contentof Carr’s prose here, resulting in cringing and irritating performances fromsome of the industry’s finest. As usual, director Wayne Jordan makes the mostof a crowd, inspiring elegant choreography from his blocking and scene changes.His use of a live video feed though never finds its purpose. Hugh O’Connor’sfootage and Sam Jackson’s music arrangements provide beautiful backdrops tothis very confused piece. When the playtakes to a mediation on writing and ‘the artist’, and Chekov and Tolstoyexchange portfolios, we wonder if the subject of ‘eloquence’ has flown rightover the head of one of our once most fearless voices.

What did everybodyelse think?

THISISPOPBABY, ‘Trade’: Behind Closed Doors

2011-10-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

Meeting point: O’Reilly Theatre, UlsterBank Dublin Theatre Festival

Sept 29-Oct 16

My review ofMark O’Halloran’s Trade coming up just as soon as I wish my dental hygienist wasdead ...

One minuteyou’re walking amongst people and traffic on Great Denmark Street, the nextyou’re sitting in a tarnished bedroomin a B&B. A teenage boy sitting on the narrow bed takes a packet ofcigarettes and two condoms from his pocket and leaves them on the bedsidetable. The light shining from the bathroom suggests another presence.Unavoidable is the fear that in the meeting of these two men – one young andvulnerable, the other bloody and heavy – something abusive and horrible willoccur right before our eyes.

The danger of thisnever leaves our minds as O’Halloran’s script bridges the extraordinarysimilarities between the two men. On first impression one might say describingCiarán McCabe’s minor as a ‘man’ is overreaching but we’re soon corrected. Inbeing hurt by a broken family in the past he’s now determined to be responsiblefor his own daughter, Chloe, even if that drives him to money-making endeavourssuch as prostitution. McCabe’s performance is minimalist but somehow that’s howit clenches its fists. His numbed emotions show little fear, leaving us moreconcerned for him than he is for himself. And when he smiles in contemplationof Chloe and of someday being rich and looking after them both, we are remindedof the hope and idealism of youth.

Philip Judge’solder man is a case in point that such idealism can sometimes never manifest. It’s hardto imagine he ever desired to be at any point in his life a laid-offdockworker, a closeted homosexual, and a lying husband and father. He’sastonished that that this rent boy is somehow making his way into his dreams,is regularly invading his thoughts. Watching him inquire about the young man’slife is like watching a dialogue between father and son but his disturbingcommands that he remove his clothes remind us of the sordid premise of theencounter.

Trade hardly allows director Tom Creedthe lyrical quality that swept his more recent work but still he finds it in apace which quickens and arrests, speaks and un-speaks. In his staging he charts a crescendo from separationto contact. Furthermore, production company THISISPOPBABY continue to shake therafters of popular culture with the demanding voices of the marginalised.

O’Halloran’splay, in Judge’s crushingly sincere performance, becomes an unexpected lament forour social history. We see a man who has hidden his honesty all his life. Inthe wake of his father’s death he realises the fear that he’s living a lifewhere people only know him in pieces, never whole. To be acknowledged is toreceive indifference, and that is all too high a price to pay if the cost is keepingsuch great potential for beauty and love locked behind closed doors.

What dideverybody else think?

Landmark Productions, ‘Testament’: The Gospel According to Whom?

2011-10-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

Project Arts Centre, Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

Oct 3-16

My review ofColm Tóibín’s Testament starring Marie Mullen and directed by Garry Hynescoming up just as soon as I see Artemis for the first time ...

Upon entering Testament in the upstairs space ofProject Arts Centre you notice you have begun walking on sand. You turn throughthe blacks and enter from a wooden floored stage. Grey walls box us in with anenormous yellow canvas draped above. If these monumental production values thatfollow Garry Hynes wherever she goes don’t excite upon first impression,perhaps the notion of her reunion with Druid sister Marie Mullen will, or thefact that she’s gotten her hands on a new play by Colm Tóibín. On paper Testament sounds like a dreamproduction. In reality it is one of the worst plays I have been to this year.

Mullen appearsfrom the shadows grief-strucken. Her son(to mention his name would break her heart), a politically active individualwho can cure the sick, has been murdered. It has been the festival’s best keptsecret that Tóibín’s monologue is in fact a portrayal of the Virgin Mary at thetime of her son’s crucifixion. To give this monumental voice to her is a movingand clever notion but, really, who are we kidding? This production is all about beingimpossibly clever and leaving the audience behind in the dust, and furtherfrustrating is that poor Marie Mullen is made the mouthpiece of it.

Hynes envisions animmaculate space here but is careless in prompting variance in Mullen’sperformance. Physically, Mullen is caged by lighting beams, which are Hynes’primary means of using each corner of the stage. Tóibín’s text is too crypticallyheavy to be the main provider here. Perhaps his exhaustion of adjectivesmystify on the page but here they starve for our praise more than anythingelse. This is a demonstration of technical prose, not any shrine dedicated to motherhood.The only worthwhile moment is when Mullen’s woman cries out that thecrucifixion of her son, despite the good it brought to the world, was not worthit, and this is a testament to her talents as opposed to those of hercolleagues.

Testament is an epitome of how distastefullyremoved the artist can be from the audience in an elitist way, both creativelyand economically (in no way does this merit thirty five euro). In its efforts tohide and mystify its intentions it fails them, and I doubt anyone will mourn.

What dideverybody else think?

HotForTheatre, ‘I ♥ Alice ♥ I’: I Kissed A Girl And I Liked It

2011-10-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

Civic Theatre (Sept30-Oct 1) / Project Arts Centre (Oct 4-9) / Draíocht Studio (Oct 10-12) /Pavillion Theatre (Oct 14-15), Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

I unfortunately don’t have time to write in as much detail asI would like about I♥ Alice ♥ I, Amy Conroy’s sweet documentary of two gay Dublin womennamed Alice in their Sixties and the lives they lived together and apart.

It hadme smiling entirely throughout, except for when it had me welling with tears. Conroyand Clare Barrett give some of the most charming performances I have seen in awhile, and the show’s political poignancy is so strong because of the loving andflawed human relationship the two have crafted. It’s time Alices everywherewere seen and heard.

Whatdid everybody else think?

Brokentalkers, ‘The Blue Boy’: Our Last Days As Children

2011-10-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Lir, Ulster Bank Dublin TheatreFestival

Oct 8-16

My review of TheBlue Boy coming up just as soon as I make sparks ...

Two days ago Iwas driving in the car with my mother. I was leaving Galway and moving backhome for school. I told her I was going to TheBlue Boy and I asked her if she had known people who were incarcerated inindustrial schools.

She told me astory about some children who had come home after school and found their motherdead on the floor from a brain haemorrhage. My mother doesn’t know if it was thetwo nuns who arrived in a black car the next morning or society in general thatdeemed their father, a kind man, unsuitable to raise his children by himself.They were taken away to a school, except for the youngest; a small baby who washidden and raised by neighbours fully aware of the atrocities occurring in industrialschools. I was shocked to hear that the Church could tear apart a family likethat, and I was relieved to hear that individuals back then felt the same way.

My mother foundthe actions of the Church in those times unnecessarily cruel andlife-destroying but also emphasised that it wasn’t just the priests and nunsthat failed children in Ireland. Aftertalking to Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan I researched the industrial school inArtane, a suburb Keegan himself hails from. In an institution originallyestablished to take in orphaned, abandoned and criminal boys, it has beenstated that only five percent of those incarcerated where indeed orphans, astatistic said to be common to all industrial schools in the country. Thissuggests that a lot of children did not lose their guardians but rather weredisposed of by them. “It didn’t havemuch to do with God”, said my mother. “But it wasn’t just the church; it wasall of us. We were all mad”.

To be a youngperson in those environments must have been terrifying. I felt sad for ourhistory, how as a community we failed to protect our youth. At the same time Ifelt thankful for the time I have lived in, for the opportunities I have beenallowed here, that I can go to school. As one of the contributors to The Blue Boy optimistically says at onepoint: young people can see the whole world by the time they’re twenty one now.

Things are betterthan what they were but cases of child abuse still exist. We all know that. Andlegally, the necessary steps to fully prevent that past from returning have yetto be taken. In the time we have been waiting for a date to be set for areferendum on child protection laws, one of the Brokentalkers has become afather. When I think of their past work I think of that bravery that makes thelonely strangers of In Real Time orthe celebration of manhood in SilverStars incredibly precious. The BlueBoy is no intent to find beauty in something delicate or precious.

The Blue Boy is the Brokentalkers angry.

In introducingthe show Keegan shows us a fold-up yard stick which he played with in hisgrandparents’ house when he was young. Putting it to use either as a guitar ora saxophone or a dinosaur, he didn’t imagine that his grandfather actually usedit in his profession as an undertaker to measure bodies for coffins. He oftenhad calls to Artane Industrial School. Keegan talks about scaring his littlebrothers with the local ghost story of The Blue Boy, a child who had died inthe school under suspicious circumstances.

In a conversationwhich has been disturbed and exhausted by controversy after controversy whatelse is there we can say? Brokentalkers wisely take a movement-based approach withEddie Kay’s startling choreography mangling, crushing and shaking bodiesonstage. The performers, small and slight, wear distorted masks with faces frozenwith fear, their dark eyes twinkling through the narrow sockets. Lights flash throughthe darkness like search lamps, catching the petrified beings and sending themcrashing into Lucy Andrews and David Fagan’s hard white tiled set. Chalk andsteel scratch wooden benches. One performer holds a sacred heart above proceedings,its glow empty of warmth or salvation. Amongst it all, a child-sized mannequin sitssmall and defenceless, witnessing the horrors, and in one of the few beautifulmoments of the piece is picked up and protected. Séan Miller’s musical arrangementsbuild to frightening heights with haunting harmonies from musicians in balconieshigh above. A trumpet howls like a hound against the angelic vocals of LucyAndrews and Kim V Porcelli which resonate with sad beauty.

As with their previouswork, Brokentalkers gives us the stories of those silenced, played here invoiceover. A man recounts how he ran away from a school to the police for helpbut they beat him and sent him back, where he was beaten again upon arrival. “Noone listened to you” he says. A woman remembers having to make rosary beads forhours on hours and how pearls were the worst supplied material for doing sobecause they cut your hands if they break. Sometimes she was so hungry she atethe beads.

Among thedocumentary material is a video clip of a Seventies talk show where Brother JoeO’Connor talks about the Artane Boys Band. When asked about the treatment ofchildren there he casually dismisses the insinuation, saying his time there hasbeen the happiest of his life. The presenter then asks the boys themselves, allof whom smile awkwardly. He quizzes O’Connor about his hobby of breeding hens,to which he replies that he can tell if a hen is interested in another or not,the same way of telling if someone is lying, by the look in their eyes. Lookinginto his eyes at this moment I felt angry. I felt hatred, which is an emotion Ido not give into easily. It’s a malicious manoeuvre by Brokentalkers but acompletely necessary one to remember the deceit, the cruelty.

The Artane BoysBand becomes realised in The Blue Boy inan explosive sequence of blistering movement and roaring sound, dragged alongby the loud banging of a marching drum. Performers scatter desperately forsafety but there is nowhere to hide. They crash, kick, crush. It’s completelyhorrific. But as the show goes on we take what is harrowing and turn it intorage. A rage over a very obvious and fatal flaw in our society that is beingignored. Sometimes art is made by silenced voices, sometimes it’s made by someonesuffering injustice, and sometimes it’s made by a father who simply wants toensure the safe future of their child.

By the end,Keegan, much like how he scared his little brothers, has given us all Blue Boysto go home with. Right now the show will stay with you as a ghost, but whatfuries it instils will hopefully shape a better future. We can pray that somedaywe can look on that ghost as something else.

Someday,hopefully, we can look on that ghost as a blessing.

What did everybodyelse think?

Siren Productions, 'The Lulu House': Art House Cinema

2011-10-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

James Joyce House,Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

Sept 30-Oct 16

My review of Selina Cartmel’s The Lulu House coming upjust as soon as my hair defines me like the ornament on the hood of a car ...

Selina Carmel stormed the Irish Times Theatre Awards inFebruary with Robin Robertson’s new translation of Medea, with her picking up the night’s Best Director trophy. Nowconsidered one of the industry’s greatest assets (she’s received Project Awardsfunding each round this year) she takes to the Theatre Festival with The Lulu House – a multi-art formrumination of silent movie star and cultural rebel Louise 'Lulu' Brooks in James JoyceHouse.

It’s hard to picture anyone better suited than cabaret sirenCamille O’Sullivan, unflinching and pitch perfect, as Lulu. Her movements playand dart with the urgency of a silent movie figurine, and vocally she effortlesslyfinds and plucks the key of Conor Linehan’s majestic arrangements. She’saccompanied by Lorcan Cranitch playing an obsessive who chases the actress throughthe house in recreation of Pabst’s Pandora’sBox.

The Victorian interiors of James Joyce House are furnishedto create a participatory space that is part museum, part movie scenerecreation. Projectors throw footage of Brooks’ work onto window shutters and dressingtable mirrors. The contents of each room in their specificity invite us tocollect clues.

Cartmel creates an environment where scenes and images unfoldlike cinematic shots. She’s somehow managed to take the boundless perceptivityand reach of a movie camera into the theatre space and has given it to theaudience. As Roger Ebert put it in hisreview of Pandora’s Box:

“Louise Brooks regardsus from the screen as if the screen were not there; she casts away the artificeof film and invites us to play with her”

The Lulu House issheer sensory delight (and an enticing prelude to Cartmel’s The Making of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore inDecember). In the end we are left with the tattered image of the Brooks behind thesex symbol which society has created for her. She walks away across the river and disappears into the city, anotherbroken soul among many.

What did everybody else think?

Rough Magic, ‘Peer Gynt’: Daydreamer

2011-10-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

O’Reilly Theatre, Ulster Bank DublinTheatre Festival 2011

Sept 30-Oct 16

My review ofRough Magic’s Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen coming up just as soon as I lose mywife to an outhouse door ...

“O falling star, how we relate.

We fall, we shine, we obliterate”

- Peer Gynt

“My Peer can ride a buck,

That’s the truth”

- Aase

When you’retalking Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt youknow you’re talking an epic display of poetry and fantasy in deliberatedisregard of the naturalist drama; a true theatrical powerhouse. As a director,it must be like fairy-dust on your fingertips to have the opportunity to approachthis fantastical whirlwind of imagined beings and scenarios. After all, what isa finer subject for an artist than that of imagination?

Rough Magic haveprepared for this particular outing, working from a new adaptation by ArthurO’Riordan (Improbable Frequency) andscore by musical ensemble Tarab, a jazz outfit bridging Mediterranean and Irishinfluences. I’ll always have one scepticism with Peer Gynt though: how can it appeal to human sensibilities beyondits pageantry surface?

The reputationsof Peer and his mother are caught in social ruin because his father, once ahighly regarded farmer, left them in large debt. No matter, Peer would ratherchase reindeer on the wind of his imagination. His mother attempts to slap thesefancies out of him, angry that he failed in his opportunity withIngrid, the daughter of the richest farmer. With Ingrid’s wedding imminent, andrumour that she still holds a torch for him, Peer crashes the festivities.Greeted with mockery by the wedding guests, he finds kindness in the eyes ofSolveig, a girl new to the village and with whom he’d like to dance with. Hisreputation is his undoing. Instead he spends the night with Ingrid, beforebeing banished to wander the mountains.

Lynne Parker’sproduction thunders with pure theatrical might. The action plays out in JohnComiskey and Alan Farquharson’s majestic set, a palace interior with Ibsen’sforest visible outside the windows. O’Riordan’s rhyming verse, its metre wonderfullycontagious even days afterwards, twists and throws quips, occasionally with theslam of a rap. Tarab’s brooding plucks of a cello suspects a dark mystery, lateraccompanied by Irish flutes and tribal drums to heighten proceedings. RoryNolan gives a pillaring performance as Peer and is in excellent company. PeterDaly and Fergal McElherron, sharp and nimble, bounce off Nolan’s monologues sothat contemplation retains melody. McElherron is also chilling as the darkpassenger onboard the boat who wishes to dissect Peer’s corpse in order tolearn how dreams are manifested. A particular highlight for me going in, stillhaunted by the heartbreaking Berlin LoveTour, was Hillary O’Shaughnessy, hilarious here as power bride Ingrid. Incounterbalance to O’Shaughnessy’s exuberating confidence is sweet songbirdSarah Greene, angelic and funny. Add Will O’Connell (wit-abundant), KarenArdiff and Arthur O’Riordan (both of whom deliver the Irish idioms ofO’Riordan’s text brilliantly) to the mix and the talent here is marvellous.

Peer Gynt has always been vague in itsintersection of where reality and imagination meet. Parker’s interpretationsuggests a mental health issue, with Nolan dressed in patient scrubs and Greeneand O’Shaughnessy appearing occasionally as nurses. Early on it is evident thatthe strongest relationship here is that between Peer and his mother, performedcharmingly by Nolan and Ardiff. When Peer literally rides with his dying motherto the gates of St Peter it evokes a beautiful intermingling of reality andfiction that anyone who was read bedtime stories by a parent will no doubtrelate to.

From here onthough it’s spectacle all the way. Peer’s slave-trading enterprises in Morocco,being received as a prophet in Egypt, and scheming with intercontinentalpartners in the mad house all pursue an extreme empirical satire which doesn’tfeel particularly resonant, personally or culturally. Furthermore, the story ofGynt and the type of man he wishes to be seems to be drowned out. By the time O’Shaughnessy’ssphinx is wheeled out (one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen), thepageantry gets tiring.

Also vague isthe ending to Ibsen’s epic, which a director may choose to interpret as the deathof Peer’s life or a rebirth of it. Parker gives her performers black umbrellas,borrowed from the earlier scene of a peasant’s funeral, once held in mourningbut now swung in sweet waltz with the music. Even though Peer’s turnsinside out, he walks on, a patriot of his own glorious artifice.

What dideverybody else think?

Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2011 Watercooler

2011-10-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

I noticed thatin my Fringe coverage I was missing somewhere where people could discuss any aspect of the festival as opposedto just what I was writing about.

So here’s ourfestival watercooler. Take a break from your theatre-going and discuss in thecomments section below what shows you’re planning on seeing and your experiences at this year's festival.

Brokentalkers' Gary Keegan and Feidlim Cannon talk 'The Blue Boy'

2011-09-27T02:11:00.000-07:00

Regular readers knowhow much a fan I am of Brokentalkersand how excited I am that The Blue Boy isright around the corner. I talked to Gary Keegan and Feidlim Cannon in The Lir lastweek and we discussed why these stories need to be told.

How did ye guys start working together?

Gary: I’ll tellyou what really happened.

Feidlim: Thefact. The truth.

Gary: We’ve beenworking together ten years this year. (toFeidlim) This is like Mr and Mrs.

Feidlim: It is.(to me) The newlyweds, remember that?Before your time.

Gary: All Star Mr and Mrs back on thetelevision now if you don’t have anything better to do with your life on aSaturday which I don’t. We made our first show ten years ago this year butwe’ve actually been friends and college buddies since 1997?

Feidlim: Yeah.

Gary: Is thatright? 1996?

Feidlim: See, ifwe were a couple now I’d be very pissed off with him for not remembering that.

Gary: What’sthat, fifteen years? So we’ve been making shows together for fifteen years butprofessionally, as Brokentalkers, ten. We started off in drama school togetherin Dublin and we went to university together, from there to England for threeyears. We kinda just stuck together, didn’t we? For better or worse.

Feidlim: AnIrish Torvill and Dean. (to me)Remember who Torvill and Dean are? They’re an ice-skating couple from theEighties. Olympic champs. So an Irish Torvill and Dean. Showing my age nowGary.

I’ve always sensed that there was thisvigilantism to the shows. In a way you give voice to people in society youdon’t often hear, whether it’s the immigrants in Track or the kids in DYT or the gay men in Silver Stars. Was this an intention with the work?

Gary: Yeah, Ithink so. We always kinda felt, still do, that theatre is quite an elitist closed-offart form that involves a clear separation between the artist and the audience,and we always had a problem with that. We always thought that it is withineverybody’s capabilities to be creative and to express themselves. We justfound it quite enjoyable to find ways of placing non-professional people orcommunity groups or whatever it is, to place them or their voices or theirstories in a theatrical frame. So, that’s what we bring. We bring a certainamount of competency in terms of how to structure something, of how to developsomething, and they bring what they bring. They bring something that we couldnever invent. We never had the inclination to make up the stories because wefelt they’re there and they’re coming directly from the subject. For us it’smore compelling, more interesting. We bring what we bring, which is thetheatrical skill, and they bring themselves. The meeting of the two; a lot ofour work has been based on that idea.

How do the decisions come about to workwith specific subjects like gay men in Ireland or children incarcerated atCatholic residential care institutions?

Feidlim: With The Blue Boy, it was around the time the Ryan Report was going to be releasedand that kind of sparked off a conversation between Gary and I about our ownattachment to the subject matter. My grandfather was adopted. My family doesn’tknow his history prior to being adopted, so that always kind of stuck with me.Neither of my parents were in industrial schools. My parents were in school. Mydad was beaten pretty badly because he was left-handed and, you know, they usedto beat it out of him. My mother was beaten pretty bad in school. Mygrandmother was severely beaten by a nun and my great grandfather complainedand gave out about that. So, these were the conversations between Gary and I.Gary’s from Artane. One of the biggest industrial schools in the country wasArtane Industrial School, and being from that community, that has an impact onthe people from there. Not that they all necessarily went there but thebuilding is this large vista, it’s like a shadow over the community. Maybe it’snot anymore. I think at one stage it was. So they’re our own personal inroadsinto the subject matter and we found that interesting.

Who we are, bothof us, Irish, having never been to an industrial school but yet there’s somesort of baggage or past that has a connection to Catholic-run education systemsin the country and how brutal they were, how they had a real stranglehold andbasically ran the country. With that in mind, surely that’s every Irish person.That’s everybody. We’re all involved in this story. If you look at it that wayit’s very much an Irish story rather than just a story of industrial abuse. Butpull it back to its starting point: it’s children, in their earliest years whenthey need to be nurtured and loved and looked after, and as a country wefailed. Big time. Then in our investigation and reading the fucking RyanReport, you literally get headaches reading these awful stories, we just feltthat there’s a real need to make this piece. We kinda have to make this piece.We haven’t really got another option. It’s important that we make the piece.And with all those things as you mentioned with Track and Silver Starsand This Is Still Life, this isgiving a voice completely to a part of society who are silenced, who are stillgetting silenced now with the Redress Board. So yeah, these stories need to betold. And it’s hard for an audience to listen to these stories, you know. It’snot easy. For all types of reasons it’s not easy to listen to these stories.Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be told though.

The shows are so different as well. How didye decide that Silver Stars needs tobe a song cycle or The Blue Boy needsto be a movement piece?

Feidlim: The Blue Boy has loads of differenttheatrical levels of presentation. So there’s dance, as you mentioned, there’saudio, there’s video, there’s live music. A lot of strands that are already inour work, I suppose. With The Blue Boy wefelt that it’s important not to dramatise the piece. That’s been done in filmsand books. It’s been done in lots of places so if somebody wanted to they couldaccess that type of form. We felt with this piece that it’s important for theaudience to look at it a little bit off-centre or a little bit new. Because theinformation is hard. The subject matter is so hard to digest. I think for us itwas important to find different ways of telling the story, just to keep theaudience engaged as well rather than just sitting there and hearing thesehorrific stories for an hour. So you’re trying to find ways of finding a beautyin this ugliness and I think movement and music is a way in.

With Silver Stars that was more Seán Miller,Seán who wrote the piece. We had been introduced to Seán. He wrote two songs.We listened to them and the three of us had a chat about how we felt it shouldbe presented. With Track: why anaudio tour? Gary and I had just gotten back from university. We used to comehome for the summer then Christmas ... not in that order. Christmas, summer.You miss Christmas then. We were coming home in the late Nineties and that waskinda the beginning of this influx of interesting foreign nationals coming intothis country and making it more vibrant and interesting. When we were inLeicester there was a huge Asian population and Afro-Caribbean and we wereloving that, being these two Paddys seeing all these interesting people for thefirst time ... in large communities rather. Not for the first time ever but inlarge populations. So coming back to Ireland in these breaks and seeing asimilar thing was very exciting for us. They were the new Dubliners. That waskind of the impetus to Track:wouldn’t it be interesting to have somebody talking about Dublin and not have aDublin accent and not necessarily having been born here. So that’s where thatcame from. It’s just usually conversation. That’s usually how all work starts.And at that point how do we feel we can present it. To be honest, as much asthe audience are considered earlier, it’s the form and style that needs to keepGary and I interested.

Gary: It isinteresting actually that formally they’re all so quite different. I’d agreewith that. But I think it is those two things: it’s what we’d like to try andmore importantly then does it serve the content? Is this the best method ofdelivery for this content? And I think for TheBlue Boy it is. One of the first things we heard in interviewing was ajournalist who would probably be one of the leading authorities on religiousaffairs in the country. We interviewed him and we spoke to him about what wewere doing and one of the first things he said was that in his view, in termsof readership and stories and people engaging with stories of abuse in themedia, that fatigue had begun to set in on the part of the public. That theywere beginning to switch off. “Oh, another abuse story. Another revelation.Another report”. And we thought this was really interesting, that people werebecoming fatigued. And we asked ourselves why. And our explanation was that itwas the means by which the stories were being told, either in sensationalisedtabloid format or three-minute articles on the six o’clock news or PrimetimeInvestigates. It was all very kind of similar. If you watched them allback-to-back or read a string of those articles they would pretty much read thesame and have the same format. And we thought maybe that’s why people arebeginning to switch off. Literally switch off their televisions or turn thenewspaper to the back page, get the sports results or whatever. So when we beganto approach The Blue Boy we said oneof the main things we have to do is we need to make people not switch off. Weneed to show this thing in a way that will make people look at it afresh andthink about it all over again.

As Feidlim said,it’s not to sensationalise, to shock, it’s just to remind people to askthemselves, and as a community asking themselves, where do we go from here. Soit is forward-looking even though it’s talking about something historically. Weall know it’s still happening today, just on a different scale and in differentways. Abuse is still taking place, and the message of the piece then is to notdwell on the past but we need to remember and learn from and bring that forwardinto how we legislate for the protection of children in the future. DesmondTuTu, I don’t believe I’m about to quote from Desmond TuTu (laughs), how pretentious is that? Hesaid that the only thing we’ve learnt from history is that we don’t learn fromhistory. I read that last night on Facebook (laughs). I think if you look back you go: “shit, right, we’veallowed it to happen again”. We hope that things are at a point now where wecan get our act together. I’m not saying this piece will do anything but it’sjust to get that particular audience on that particular night to think aboutthemselves and what do they think should be done, how do they feel about this,individually and as a group.

Have you seen Neil Watkins’ The Year of Magical Wanking? It has asomewhat genesis from Silver Stars.

Gary: I saw it,yeah. I saw it the night the power cut in Project so I saw two thirds of it.But then, by special request, I got him to perform the last third of it inAuckland when we were there with SilverStars on his birthday, (to Feidlim)remember? I told him the story, I missed the last bit of the show, “oh hangon”, and he just did it. He fucking loved it.

Feidlim: YeahNeil, he’s a very talented guy. A fantastic performer. I think what he’s doingis very brave. Putting yourself up there. How he’s decided to do it, hispresentation is very interestingly artistic. We wish him all the best.

Gary: Yeah, welove Neil.

Feidlim: Yeah,he’s brilliant. His piece should go lots of places. It really should.

TheBlue Boy runs Oct 8-16 at The Lir.

WillFredd Theatre, 'Follow': Breadcrumbs

2011-09-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Lir, ABSOLUT Fringe 2011

Sept 13-17

My review of Followcoming up just as soon as I see another seahorse ...

Rarely have artistsadorned a theatre space with such invention and humility as Willfredd have donewith Follow, co-created by performer ShaneO’Reilly, taking us on a journey through a rich theatre vocabulary of light,sound and gesture, all to impart the experience of being deaf.

It starts with O’Reilly,patient and compelling, signing the act of drawing a circle on the ground witha stick. He makes good use of time and explanation so that those of unfamiliarwith the grammar are not left behind. A scene involving a boy and hisclassmates in a Christian Brothers school demonstrates the playfulness of thephysical language, complemented by the heavy reverb of Jack Cawley’s guitar queazinghis stomach as he queues for the bathroom. The effect is more vibration thanmelody; the circumstance of sound when you’re deaf. Furthermore, the principalof sight in such a condition inspires Sarah Jane Shiels’ design, as she throwspearls of white and blue light across the stage like breadcrumbs, leading O’Reillyand us through the darkness.

Director SophieMotley’s production gleams with innovation. One of the most precious moments isplanted in a segment where a woman watches a wildlife programme about clownfish.Then in a mesmerising scene where O’Reilly’s schoolboy is shoved underwater,his body, with all its fluency in emblems and symbols, slowly becomes aclownfish. “Deaf people belong underwater” he says; a most beautiful andcurious metaphor. It’s ‘underwater’, where Cawley finds melody with dew drops ofpiano and in Shiels’ sapphire glow, that we glimpse an incredible potentialwithin ourselves for endless communication no matter what condition we’re in.

Follow offers understanding and revelationand admirably it’s after justice as well. A scene where a deaf individual istold by an insurance man “It’s not my fault you’re deaf” is spelled outthoroughly as if a grammar lesson. A woman desperate to find her childrencannot communicate with the help services. There’s a devastating scene where afather, whose speech is captioned on a screen, asks his son (O’Reilly) to turnaround to test his hearing, and having still not been heard after screaming athim he leaves his son behind before he turns back.

Follow is the result of a true thinktank of ingenuity. When O’Reilly steps into that circumference he has drawn,holding his hand high in the light, we know new languages, human andtheatrical, are ready to be harnessed.

What dideverybody else think?

THISISPOPBABY, 'The Year of Magical Wanking': Wake Up Your Saints

2011-09-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Project Arts Centre, ABSOLUT Fringe 2011

Sept 10-17

I hope you took my advice to go see Neil Watkins’ The Year of Magical Wanking. My reviewcoming up just as soon as my bear falls unconscious on the couch ...

“Neil was a good wanker

Blonde and kind”

“Virginia Woolf knows pain like mine

With voices ‘tween her ears”

One of the mostmoving and mesmerising theatre experiences of my life was watching a scene in Brokentalkers’Silver Stars – a powerful song cyclewhich shared the stories of gay Irishmen – when Neil Watkins dons a pair ofglasses with printed eyes in the lens and lip-synchs to an audio recording ofJohn J. McNeill, a gay Irish-American Jesuit priest and former prisoner of war.McNeill’s story marches bravely with the beat of a drum, supported by woundedcellos and a male choir singing: “This ignorance of what I am forced my heartfurther joy”. Such are the words onWatkins’ lips but never actually speaks:

“The church so misunderstands us. It can’tsee the goodness and the beauty of our love, but see it as evil. That freed us andbecause the church failed – we could always look to the church for spiritualityand leadership – we had to go within and find the spirituality within us. So wehad to develop a new spirituality where we discern in our very experiences whatGod is saying to us. And I think this spirituality which is coming from the gaycommunity is the spirituality of the future. Our happiness is important tobring a message of liberation to the whole world. And there’s no greater joythan that, that knowing that you are helping to liberate other human beings toliberate others. For the love of life. The joy of life”.

In theconstellations of Silver Stars itseems Watkins realised that he needed to tell his own story and reclaim thespirituality that he felt denied to him, to such a degree that in The Year of Magical Wanking the poet crucifieshimself (aged 33, the same as Jesus) and rises again.

After sharing thedetails of his masturbatory ritual (with an opening for the audience to cheertheir own penchant for the action) Watkins, or indeed the ‘Neil Watkins’ hepresents to us, brings us through a marijuana haze of pent-house parties,meeting men in foreign cities (on tour with SilverStars presumably), and inner battles, all delivered in hypnotic verse. Anincident of child abuse drops without a tear onto the dark canvass, a violationan alternative saint suggests that he explore. The sexual behaviour thatfollows is juvenilely funny but frightening. Watkins becomes convinced that hisbeing abused is not the sin but the fact that he insists on recreating it,filling him with more shame than he can stand. The Year of Magical Wanking becomes a heartbreaking prayer formental health and love.

Brave andeloquent, hilarious and furious, Watkins is a weapon. He commands PhilipMcMahon’s bruising production with little other than streaks of warrior paintunder his eyes and a rhyming verse protecting him by structuring his story as aheightened reality, giving him safe distance from his wounds. Drawing on hisown performance history, Heidi Koont – Watkins’ Miss Alternative Irelandpersona – is revived as a witching rival to his mental stability, forcing himto tell a humiliating story involving a Garda in Cork. His confrontation withKoont suggests not only his reason to create that persona (“So I could besomeone on the scene”) but also his epitomising of her as everything feminineand wrong about him.

By the end ofthe show the armour of the rhymed verse has worn thin and Watkins is left exposedto our sheer judgement, not of only his performance as an actor but as a man. Somecould find The Year of Magical Wankingthe highest feat of self-indulgence. But while obscene and selfish in theevents of his story, he also shows regard. When he asks a group of teenagers outsidehis room in Finland for a spliff, he recognises that one of them has a drugproblem and does his best to wade him off that path (*).

(*) Sitting in the front row, and possiblybecause of my age, Watkins directed this speech directly at me. For the record:I don’t have a drug problem but I’ll always cherish the concern.

The sacrifice ofWatkins’ honesty shows that shame lacerates homosexuals in predominantly Catholiccommunities, and if we are to have an internalised homophobia within ourselvesit can very well destroy us. If the church has indeed failed in this respect,then search for spirituality within.

As for Watkins, we’llalways remember his grin punctuating the darkness “For the love of life. The joy of life”. I’m so glad this showexists.

What dideverybody else think?

THEATREclub, 'Twenty Ten': Youth Novels

2011-09-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

Project Arts Centre, ABSOLUT Fringe 2011

Sept 10-15 (Omnibus on 17)

‘Spiritof 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 itwas. My review coming up just as soon as I think Jim Dale should narrate allthe audio books ...

“I’m closer to the end than I’ve everbeen” “Heaven exists”

- Anonymous - Anonymous

“Sisterscan read minds” “When indoubt, walk under the moon”

- Anonymous - Anonymous

“Biteme THEATREclub. Go make me a good play”

- Anonymous

“I’m not learning anything. I’m just getting hurt”

- Anonymous

“ThatI really fucking hate her” "I learned that we’re all fucked and alone”

- Anonymous - Anonymous

"I’mlost 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 inTHEATREclub’s Fringe offering a performer says: “Authorship is a powerfulthing” – 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 ane-mail to whoever wanted to play, asking them: “What have you learnt today”? Thethousands of replies they received make the text of this show, appraising whatwas a year where cities froze, a volcanic ash cloud disrupted travel, and thecountry declared bankruptcy. It was also a year when hearts broke and healed.These authors (who knows how many) played the game, confided, knowing thatsomeday their words would be spoken on a public stage.

Now it’sTHEATREclub’s turn to roll the dice, playing out these responses in thespectacular arena of Doireann Coady’s game-show inspired set. Shane Byrne singsJohnny Logan’s ballad What’s AnotherYear? while Lauren Larkin holds up a showgirl’s placard announcing themonths we’re about to hear before falling hard on her face. Natalie Radmall-Quirke’saccount of how she played the game for the year hops to the refrain of BarryO’Connor’s keyboard. “A lot happened in Twenty Ten. Now it’s all going tohappen over again”. These words ring especially true on this day: the day whenover seven hours we hear the entirety of the year.

Seated at atable, 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 bemade to Forced Entertainment’s durational SpeakBitterness – a conference style confession where professionally dressedperformers read anonymous text such as “Our ex-husbands sat next to ourex-wives” – but where the form seemed very open with that show (it can be hardto tell sometimes) Twenty Ten isstrictly blocked and memorised. This does up the stakes, as we learn what theprocedures are for faltering on a line (clapping hands) or needing to gobackstage and check the script (waving at the tech box to play music and distractwith dancing). Directors Coady and Grace Dyas instruct some interestingtechnique here to keep it interesting but by scale and design, and especiallyin its durational capacity, Twenty Ten isalready as gloriously theatrical as it aspires to be. These co-ordinations arewelcome shake-ups though.

While the actorsare advocates of these anonymous voices, a sense of who they are in themselvescan glimpse through over time as well. Enduring and charming, they honour theshow’s authors, incarnating their words with all the anger (Conor Madden),absurdity (Barry O’Connor), innocence (Lauren Larkin), heartbreak (ShaneByrne), 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 tradeof other THEATREclub work I haven’t seen) allow us to match words spoken onstagewith presences that are off it, giving the identities that haunt the show nosingular body or belonging, enabling us to relate or not without the prejudice ofappearance.

Over the hours thereare survivors and there are casualties. An ambition to work in musical theatretakes a sad bow and a fear of cancer is realised. We have obituaries for JDSalinger and Mick Lally, struggles with bisexuality and monogamy, addiction andabuse, Japanese adverbs and weight. Someauthors even accuse THEATREclub of exploiting their personal lives for the sakeof making a show. By the time the IMF arrive in town the mood has taken a darkturn for the worse. Pennies are hurled to the ground in rage. “I’m not learninganything. I’m just getting hurt” utters one writer. We hear the same grimes ofover-drinking, betrayal, and selfishness that we heard ten months before, andwe begin to think if the authors of TwentyTen have any hope of being able to move on from their previous grievances.

THEATREclub canonly work with the realities that are given to them but with subtleties they dosuggest that things can change for the better. An account of an individual gainingweight and being powerless to a lousy diet is staged with all the actors eatingfruit. In dealing with heartbreak and loneliness we can surround ourselves withthe comforts of cigarettes and straight liquor. We can wear a party hat and behappy for others because it will make them feel good, in turn making us feelbetter.

Twenty Ten is an epic of survival andliving within the indiscriminate grapplings of reality. It probably suggestsmore doom than hope but I will always pray that that one day that individual willgive musical theatre another try.

What dideverybody else think?

donjuandemonaghan, ‘Luca & the Sunshine’: Why Does It Always Rain On Me?

2011-09-21T04:05:00.000-07:00

Smock Alley Theatre,ABSOLUT Fringe 2011

Sept 14-18

I interviewed NickLee about his play Luca & the Sunshine and my gushing over the dream-team ofhim, Matt Torney and John Cronin. A few thoughts on the production coming upjust as soon as I break this interrogatory proposal and put it back togetherpiece by piece ...

“A boy can’t take back his only prayer inlife. Can he?”

- LucaDinkslavi

We are alltrained in distinguishing genre, identifying the gothic, the romantic, thecomedy, the tragedy. Delightful it is then to see how director Matt Torneybrings something curiously different as Nick Lee’s short story to stage, whichis part modernist poem, part fable from the East.

The elementsseem bent on punishing young Luca. It has not stopped raining in a long time. Hisbrother has been lost, presumably at sea, leaving his parents depressed. Swans glarethreateningly as he goes. In school the Bulshoi Brothers make his life a dailytorment, and in a moment of rebellion he loses the respect of Mr. Romany, hislinguistics teacher and advocate. The light in all the darkness: Maya, a sweetgirl from school. But when he stands to lose his father as well he decides he’shad enough. He prays for the sun to come out.

Lee’s writingshimmers quite beautifully, emitting glee and fear in descriptions such as thatof Luca fishing with his father or his mother in her dressing gown keeping abottle of schnapps cocked like a loaded gun against her head (and his). A metredriving along with ‘stream of consciousness’ revelation (“I find feet. My feet.Under me and move to go”) is an interesting lyrical exercise but its techniquecan uncrown its promise.

Cronin paces wonderfullythroughout though, especially the more joyous and proud his character becomes. Hearhim yelp with delight when Luca realises that his class will take place outside,grinning with pride for bringing the sun. He’s accompanied by the sweet andterrifying glaze of Lioba Petrie’s cello, wobbling with dread, ringing fondlyto Maya, and spiralling fearsomely in communion with Luca’s prayer. CiaranBagnall’s lighting design transforms the bare space effectively and smouldersTorney’s radiant production to a close.

By this timeLee’s story has left you with more questions than answers. Why he has his talehum with hope only so that it can burn to a cinder with some unknown forceresponsible is puzzling. We can’t accredit it to the ‘be careful what you wishfor’ motif because while Lee has crafted a charming personality of insecurity,confidence and desire, greed is not one of Luca’s flaws. It’s frustrating that ourinvestment in the character and story is lost immorally to this transcendent magical realism.

What dideverybody else think?

Fringe Talk: Nick Lee

2011-09-14T04:34:00.000-07:00

If you’re a geek like me, sometimes you can see a show in the listings that can excite you not only by the concept of the play but also by those involved in the production of it.Pineapple earlier this year is a good example, a show which starred amongst a terrific cast the charming Nick Lee. Delightfully surprised I was to hear that Lee had written a play in ABSOLUT Fringe – Luca and the Sunshine – and further thrilled was I to hear that Matt Torney (Plaza Suite, The Walworth Farce) was directing and John Cronin (The End of the Road, The Sit) was performing. Lee talked to me about the play and the story of friendship, weather, and skype that brought it together.

What initially excited me when I saw Luca in the programme was the creative team attached. Yourself, Matt Torney, John Cronin, Lara Hickey. Could you talk about how that whole team came together?

Basically, Matt and I are old friends from youth theatre years ago and we met up in Trinity College together. We’ve always wanted to work together but never quite hit it. And we ended up starting at the Abbey on the same day. He was the resident Assistant Director there and I did my first play there, Three Sisters, and he was working on it. So, by complete fluke we ended up working together, making faces across the room at each other, it was good fun.

Because we were in the same country at the same time – Matt had gone off to do a Masters in Columbia in New York and I was living in London – we decided that it was a good opportunity to do something together. And I had written a couple of short stories and sorta tinkered out a few plays. I did the Royal Court Young Writers Programme. But they were quite these domestic dramas sorta plays I had seen growing up but wasn’t actually that interested in seeing now and not that interested in developing. So I had written two plays like that because I thought it was kinda expected of me and whatever. And the short stories I was more interested in. They had a magical realism.

Matt was interested in the short stories and seemed to think that he could stage one of them, which I thought was ludicrous because of the kind of things that went on in them. We decided that the challenge was that I would rewrite Luca if Matt would stage it at Project Brand New in 2008. We decided to get John. I had seen him in a couple of things and Matt had just seen him in a play in Cork. So we approached him and asked him if he would be interested and he got onboard, and incredibly, in two weeks, learnt this … at the time it was about a thirty minute monologue. He performed it for Project Brand New and they did all this work together, and ironically I never got to see it because it was on while Three Sisters was on. I sort of ran over afterwards. People were really up for it and people just really responded to it. Colin Murphy very kindly wrote about it in the Sunday Tribune. So we kinda felt that we really should do something with it.

So, we met with Cian O’Brien who works with Rough Magic, and Cian very wisely suggested we do it in the Fringe. And then Lara, I met Lara around at shows and stuff and eventually just said “would you like to produce this thing, I hear you’re the go-to person (laughs) for young writers and young production companies”. And she immediately said yes. And then we went looking for a composer because I felt, Lucabeing a monologue, it’s not entirely vogue and if you’re going to do something that’s a one-person show it has to be a really interesting angle. Like with Man of Valour there’s hardly any words, it’s so physically incredible. And the honesty of The Year of Magical Wanking. I was looking at Luca and was wondering what made it an interesting one-person show. And I wanted to challenge the ‘one-personess’ of it and I wanted to give the other character in it a little bit of voice: Mia, Luca’s love interest if you will. So the cello sort of represents that. We were certainly working with that idea to begin with. That might change, it might become other things as we go. Matt went looking. He had a musician friend that recommended Lioba Petrie. So that’s the team in the room: Matt, Lioba and John.

One thing I was interested in from reading the copy is who is Luca? What has him down?

One of my favourite contemporary plays is The Pillowman. I’ve never seen it. Matt and I actually did a rehearsed reading of it a couple of years ago in Belfast. I was really interested in that transformative experience where something happens onstage because a character says it does and believes that to happen. Then, there was also the idea of fairytales and fables. I was always interested in them when I was younger. Lucacame about one summer. It was 2006. I was doing The Year of the Hiker with Druid at the Gaiety and I was writing this short story as I went. I just remember it being really really hot and people complaining about the heat, and I was like “I’d much rather swelter than be freezing cold”. And the idea for Luca came about just then.

Luca is at school, he’s nineteen, he’s unhappy with most of the things in his life and he lives in a small town where he’s very much on the edge of things. He’s not getting on well in school, he has to go to these counselling sessions every week to deal with this cloud that hangs over his head literally and metaphorically. He has rapports with certain people, like this girl Mia. And he basically decides one night “that’s it, something needs to be done”. In fury he says a prayer, not that he has any particular God, he prays to whoever’s out there for sun and wakes up the next day and the sun start to shines.

I had to laugh when I read that when John went out to New York to work with Matt they had to endure the earthquake and the hurricane. It sounded like all the elements had converged in perhaps a similar way to in the story.

It’s incredible. And now it’s really sunny and we’re all together. It’s very strange. There’s this line in Luca at the very start where he’s reading the newspaper and he says they’re thinking of building another arc, one for each race and creed. This is weather we’ve never seen the like of before.

So, I heard it was a very unusual rehearsal process. How did they manage the literal degrees of separation?

It was all about practicality really. Over the three years since Project Brand New I go back to Luca every couple of months and I’d read it and something new would come along. Early in the summer Matt was back directing for Rough Magic on Plaza Suite, and while he was rehearsing that John and I and Matt would work. That was more of a development period. Then the last couple of weeks have been a little bit about John and Matt developing a stage language to tell the story: “are we physicalizing everything or are we telling the story? When is Luca a narrator and when is he a participant”? That was when they were in New York. And then the skype stuff has been mostly about amalgamating or finding out what the music is. Certainly for myself and Matt it’s been about finding out about how the music talks to the piece, so that the music isn’t just incidental or telling the same story twice. So that it’s actually a feeling. You’re musicalizing a feeling maybe that Luca has or doesn’t want to feel and that makes him speak and say something. So there’s real drama going on between the music and the text. And as well as that Lioba was composing so she needed to hear John speak and respond to it. So, the skype sessions have been mostly about that.

Do you think the group of ye will work again?

Absolutely hope so, yeah. I think so. I’ve been kinda racking my brain for a new play (laughs). I definitely think we will. I think we’ll see what it is and how it comes about. I’ve had a brilliant time working with Lara. Like, Lara is just such a good producer. And it just made me realise that all of this is possible. Even if it was a case of doing a play I hadn’t written, maybe we could do that either. But it’s certainly given me the confidence to go “there’s no reason for me to just be an actor. I could do more than that whether it’s writing or developing work”. Who knows? Watch this space.

Luca and the Sunshine runs Sept 14-18 at Smock Alley Theatre

THISISPOPBABY, ‘The Year of Magical Wanking’

2011-09-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

Project Arts Centre, ABSOLUT Fringe 2011

Sept 10-17

I’ve beentelling people about how moved I was by Neil Watkins’ excellent show, which is afunny and dark allegory of destructive homosexual behaviour in Catholic Ireland.I’m finding a lot of the time though that people stop listening as soon as Imention the title, which is incredibly apt but proving to be a hard-sell.

I’ve decidedthat I’m going to wait to see it again before finishing my post on it (whichwell may be the closing show on Saturday). In the meantime, I stronglyrecommend that you don’t miss it.

Armoured withpoetic verse, Watkins brings the internalised homophobia of man, nation, andspirituality to its knees. And the price is devastating.

What doeseverybody else think of The Year ofMagical Wanking?

Rough Magic SEEDS Showcase, ‘Jumping Off The Earth’: Sailors Fighting In The Dance Hall

2011-09-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

Project Arts Centre, ABSOLUT Fringe 2011

Sept 10-17

I reviewed JumpingOff The Earth for Irish Theatre Magazine, which you can read here.

The show’s goodfun and I’ll watch José Miguel Jiménez and Brian Bennett’s work for a longtime, but I doubt this will gain the indie stardom that their As You Are Now So Once Were We did. JOTE lacks the charm, technique andcompanionship that made As You Are sowatchable, and when it tried to force its sentimental side we could care less. Reallyinterested in seeing all these performers in more projects though, and the ideaof a Jiménez and Aedín Cosgrove collaboration will always excite me.

Really interestingin hearing what everybody else thought.

Melanie Wilson, ‘Autobiographer’: Remembrance

2011-09-13T07:36:00.000-07:00

Smock Alley Theatre, ABSOLUT Fringe 2011

Sept 9-11

My thoughts on Autobiographercoming up just as soon as I sit next to you on the piano stool ...

“Ifthere is loss, then there must also be life, no matter how awkwardly shaped. Onthis we must insist”

- Melanie Wilson

The elements ofthe theatre space do not usually weave and coordinate in such mission as theydo in Melanie Wilson’s Autobiographer– an immersive experience that calls on music, poetry and people to preservethe mind of a woman suffering from dementia.

The audience sitin a curtained circular room. Four performers, assumingly four transcripts ofthe same woman, each from a different decade, move and speak among us. Wilson’stext is so carefully written and delivered, painting scenes on the interiorwalls of our imaginations. Deeply touching are her intentions, that is, tocreate a community that can catch these fleeting memories before they fall tothe floor.

While it is easyto lose oneself in the folds of Autobiographer,and as noble as Wilson’s intents are, I felt that in its execution it missedthe mark, which is a real shame. As beautiful as the writing is, it often feelstoo inconsequential. Precious descriptions are sweet to the ear but they are oftenempty of any manoeuvre. In one moment she defines herself as a pattern on adress that her mother made, a description reminiscent of how Virginia Woolfleant her characters inanimate objects such as flowers or typewriters to meltinto and become immortal in the vicious arena of modern social life. This is amasterful and gorgeous means of illuminating the woman’s relationship with hermother and it is one of the too few details we learn. Furthermore, the pace meandersand arrests such that the hoped for correspondence with the audience can belost along the way.

Delicate and fading,Autobiographer asks for our help. It’smost moving moments are its final ones but by then our own reasons for caringcan have slipped away.

What dideverybody else think?