PaperDolls, 'Bunk': Bed, Wrath and Beyond

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 8-14

A quick review of Bunk after the jump ...

HotForTheatre, 'Break': Praying For Bells

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 7-8, 10-15, 17-21

My review of Break by Amy Conroy coming up just as soon as I take out my notes to signal the first sign of defense ...

In the Beginning Was the Spoken Word

Promotional Art for the PETTYCASH production GRINDR / a love story by Oisín McKenna.

"As a gay today you don't know who else is gay oftentimes. And so it's hard to figure it out, so I've always kind of wanted a way to find other guys".

This quote is from an interview with Joel Simkhai, co-founder of the smartphone application GRINDR, who seemingly set out to simplify the means of interaction in the gay community. Spoken word artist Oisín McKenna explores how the invention has made communication between individuals worse rather than better.

Described as a "geosocial" networking device, this application lists other users in order of their proximity. McKenna describes his own experience with it: "I found myself in a position where I was forming these intense attachments to people over the internet based on information on their profiles, thinking that that was the normal way to conduct myself. I eventually thought: this is stupid".

Looking at People Leave

Promotional art for ChalkTalk Theatre Company's production of The King's Feet by Louise Melinn and Máirín O'Grady. 

"Live in hope. You have chosen heat.

The desert. The King's feet".

Such is one curious quote from the upcoming new play by Louise Melinn and Máirín O'Grady: The King's  Feet. I meet the playwrights to discuss this dark comedy/dystopian fairytale. 

"The Irish emigrants moving to Australia - that was the narrative we were looking at", says O'Grady.

Not a "Composer" Composer but a Composer for Theatre

Promotional art for Animus by Denis Clohessy and Noelia Ruiz

You might remember Denis Clohessy's musical score strutting with the flamenco moving Tino McGoldrig in Silent or chasing Farrell Blinks through a train in Man of Valour. Now his compositions take centre stage in the new play Animus directed by Noelia Ruiz for Dublin Fringe Festival.

"There was a really strong impetus from Denis to create music that is not just ambience", says Ruiz. "To create a piece where the music is the main dramatic drive".

Clohessy is quick to credit the talents of the actors as well, who on this occasion are Camille Lucy Ross, Jim Roche and Anna Shiels-McNamee. There is also an impressive design team with Jack Phelan and Aedín Cosgrove. I ask him about the story of the play.

"It's a Murder Revenge story so there's an event, either accidental or on purpose, at the beginning of the show and the truth of it will be revealed through an investigation. It's kind of like a detective story". To go into it further, the play's press release reveals that a man is left dealing with the consequences of a tragic accident while two sisters seek their own version of justice. But it isn't as straight forward as that.

Man as Some Kind of Baffling Monster

Image of Dick Walsh's Some Baffling Monster from a work in progress performance

"Greek tragedy reveals Man as some kind of baffling monster", wrote philosopher Simon Critchley. It's one of several diverse references sourced from philosophers to screenwriters, Euripides to Paul Newman, that Dick Walsh mentions in our interview.

An Irish Times reviewer summed up their experience of his last play, a dangerman, as: "At one point in last night's show, I thought he might actually kill us". But while sitting in a café, Walsh kindly gets up from the table and asks the barista what flavour tea would best serve to unwind me from the stress of my day job. 

We then discuss his new play in the Dublin Fringe Festival: Some Baffling Monster. 

"I had an idea to re-look at the Greek play, where they discuss morals in a very overt way and characters have a very moral debate onstage". He goes on to describe how he adapted the plot of a Paul Newman movie, Hud, to an Irish scenario of a struggle between an old man and his son for the family farm. "I took this story as a set up for a moral debate: what makes a good man?"

In Beckett the Body is the Thing so Act Without Words

Promotional art for Company SJ and Barabbas's joint productions of Beckett's Act Without Words II and Rough for Theatre One

Samuel Beckett was the great painter of a landscape blasted and smoldering after the second World War. But does the effect of him translate from the shell-shocked spectators seeing Waiting for Godot and Endgame in the 1950s to contemporary audiences, or do the plays need to find a way to respond to the devastation of today?

If so, director Sarah Jane Scaife and performer Raymond Keane may have found a way to do just that, as they relocate two of Beckett's one-acts to the city streets at night as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival.

The mime play Act Without Words II (which comes in at just over two sheets of sheer stage directions) had already been produced by the duo in the early 1990s. Scaife was qualified with her sharp sensibility of Yeats and Beckett, and Keane had trained in the Marcel Marceau camp of French mime. Their collaboration then ended. "I dropped her", Keane jokes. The reality was that he was going on to co-found the Barabbas company while she was off to direct Beckett in every corner of the world.

Mephisto, 'Eclipsed': Raise Up Your Hearts, You Washer Women!

Photo: Hugh Quigley

Town Hall Theatre, Galway

Aug 22-31

My review of Eclipsed by Patricia Burke Brogan coming up just as soon as I have tea and toast in the small pantry ...

Gate Theatre, 'A Streetcar Named Desire': Don't You Just Love Those Long Rainy Afternoons in Dublin?

Photo: Peter Rowen

Gate Theatre

Jul 18-Sept 21

My review of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennesse Williams coming up just as soon as I instill a bunch of drugstore Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe ... 

Abbey Theatre, 'Major Barbara': What Price is Salvation Now?

Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Abbey Theatre

Aug 7-Sep 21

My review of Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw coming up just as soon as the vulgarity of it positively makes me ill ...