Irish Times writers review plays from the Dublin Fringe Festival including The Best of Everything, The Duchess of Malfi, Executioner No. 14, and Georgie's Disease.
Behold Me Large
International Bar
Well, one audience member found it utterly hilarious. But Der Lovett's meandering hotchpotch of yarns and yearnings left the other eight people scattered around the pokey confines of the International's upstairs lounge with expressions of fearful bemusement frozen on their faces. Bemusement, that is, not amusement.
Lovett's exercise in spoken-word performance saw him talk his way from one end of the stage to the other, and from one snatch of narrative to the next, over the course of 40 minutes, through poetry, comedy, and commentary, merging death wishes with a child's fondness for bananas; instances of what are presumably intended as flashes of a wacky, offbeat stream of consciousness. Lovett might dismiss the question of gathering these slight fragments into a consistent piece; such contrivance is probably against the ethos of spoken word. However, tightening and cohering these ramblings would have lent to them more substance, and to Lovett time to work on his jokes. Runs until October 12th.
Belinda Mckeon
The Best of Everything ****
Bewley's Café Theatre
Review by Stephen Dixon
Walter is 50 - "or 175 in gay years" - and has lost his lover to AIDS. Sometimes resigned and guilt-ridden, sometimes jauntily optimistic, he unburdens himself to a barman whose concern is probably just part of the job. Still, Walter is grateful for small mercies. Other characters are introduced, among them his remote father, a TV self-help guru and a game, old chanteuse whose career died when disco came in. Their funny, sad, downbeat little stories are deftly interwoven in American actor Frederic Andersen's one-man play, which has had several successful runs in Philadelphia. In most of these snapshots a backdrop of aching desperation and fear of loneliness mutes the brittle wisecracks. A contrived note of hope at the end seems arbitrary, and we suspect that there are more disappointments in store for Walter. Andersen is a skilful performer and a sympathetic storyteller, and this modest slice of theatre is bittersweetly rewarding. Runs until October 12th
The Duchess of Malfi ****
SS Michael and John
Review by Belinda Mckeon
The manic language of John Webster's 17th-century tragedy teems with fury, seethes with savagery; the untrained voice would crack to pieces beneath its force. Good thing, then, that it's the four actors of Rough Canon, fresh from their daily drill in vocal and physical elasticity, who tackle this fiery drama of desire and revenge; under their steadfast interrogation, Webster's text is boiled down to its horrible essence of evil and humanity locked in unending combat. Jason Byrne steers his astonishing cast clear of melodrama with gripping, visceral and intense realisations of their roles; Karl Quinn disturbs the blood as Ferdinand, the brother who covets the wealth of his widowed sister and orders the murder of her new husband Antonio (a suitably whimpering Bryan Burroughs) by the servant Bosola, envisioned in all his gnarled ambiguity by Kevin Hely. And not to take away from her brilliant, unbreakable Duchess, but Deirdre Roycroft makes a chillingly convincing corpse. This is not gentle theatre. Runs until October 12th.
Executioner No. 14
Meeting House Square
Review by Ian Kilroy
In Harum-Scarum's production of Adel Hakim's Executioner No. 14, the last survivor of a civil war relives the horror. Striding a strobe-swept, minimal set, sole performer Frédéric Dalmasso delivers his monologue to an intimate audience in the round. Starting as a kind of war criminal kept behind Perspex, he goes on to rant out the movement towards mutual obliteration of the Adamites and the Zelites: the two opposing factions in this fictional civil war. Images of Srebrenica and Rwanda resonated. This was subject matter that should have moved. However, while the production had its moments - thanks mainly to Dalmasso's delivery - ultimately the hoped for universality of the invented setting tended towards vagueness and the lack of invention in the play's language found refuge in cliché. Part of the problem may have been a translation that appeared awkward when rendered in English. Phrases such as "communal being" are clunky; possibly they work better in the original and more philosophical French. Some members of the audience dozed, others suppressed laughter. Never a good sign. Runs until October 12th
Fully Committed ***
Andrews Lane Studio
Review by Giles Newington
'Reception, how may I help you? Please hold." So begins - and continues - this extended sketch by Becky Mode, in which out-of-work actor Sam (played by Scotty Fults) is manning the phone lines at a top Manhattan restaurant. Squeezed between the demands of egomaniac celebrities and a high-living, low-tolerance superchef, Sam has little time to keep his own life afloat - though in the course of a frenetic hour, he learns the trick of playing all sides off against each other, to his own benefit. With a set consisting of a table and a couple of phones, Fults races through his repertoire of voices, jumping from wavelength to wavelength with impressive accuracy, like an apolitical Rory Bremner (though, as with Bremner, you sometimes wish the material itself was as sharp as the technique). A feat of memory and timing (five stars for whoever was co-ordinating the ringing phones), this would perhaps make better radio than theatre - though Naomi Campbell, among other well-known names, would be advised not to tune in.
Georgie's Disease
Ss Michael and John
Review by Louise East
Psychosis, mental illness and addiction have always held a powerful appeal for dramatists, and Group X is the latest company to attempt to make real those altered states. There's no doubt that such fractures can provide powerful theatre, but to do so requires a mastery not on offer in this production. The story of Georgie, a man tortured by his mind and his need for drink, is told by Orla Cotter and Peter O'Mahoney, seated and deliberately blank, to the accompaniment of live music by Anth Kaley and Arsen Nikoghosyan. Director King Mob has chosen to stage the production in the round, yet does little to justify or explore his choice. But it is the script, unattributed in the programme, which really lets the performers down. Do lines like "the stinking social glue" and "sucking on the ancient leathery paps" really shed any light on madness or do they just add another cliché to the pile? Runs until October 12th
I Don't Wanna Play House
Project Cube
Review by Rosita Boland
There is no doubting that Tammy Anderson, an Aboriginal Palawa who grew up in Tasmania, had a horrible childhood. We know that because she re-enacts the lowlights of it for us in Playbox's production of her autobiographical monologue. This is confessional theatre at its murkiest, in which the audience is forced to watch Anderson retell her story of dysfunctional family life, both by mime and by playing multiple parts. Her childhood was primarily defined by fleeing from the latest violent brute her mother had been having a relationship with, hence living in 19 residences before the age of 15. There is also graphic re-enactment of the sexual abuse she suffered from neighbours, which is a cheap attempt to emotionally hijack an audience. The uneasy monologue as a whole ultimately fails to transcend the personal pain it records, and throughout it all, guitarist Don Hopkins drones on at intervals, providing a dreary soundtrack for a depressing evening. Runs until October 12th.
Nothing
Project Cube
Review by Peter Crawley
As shards of broken plates ricocheted off the walls and past your ears, Fergus Kelly's aimless noise-art begged the question, has anyone here considered the audience? During a sonic smorgasbord of heedless experimentation, insular electronica and rough-hewn indie-rock, a mutual distrust occasionally flared between performer and listener, born out of the mode of production (computer screens obscuring the indistinguishable electronicists), the context (a gallery space encouraging aesthetic detachment) and surly defensiveness broughton by incoherent hecklers.
More successful acts softened their new musical confrontation with a dash of good humour. Under his pristine Panama, Simon O'Connor's mulched CD soundscapes somehow became more palatable, while Rats of The Shining Path poured furious irony into their faux-cow-poke angst. The Chalets belted out a wonderful blur of hybrid pop by way of synth, punk and noise, although a defeatist The Tycho Brahe confessed to being under-rehearsed and, despite some accomplishments, retreated into sullenness.
Psycho Analysis
THEatre SPACE
Review by Gerry Colgan
Four short plays in an hour, from a company that calls itself The Enemy of Art. The first two are by David Ives. In Sure Thing, a young man in a café politely enquires of a woman if the seat next to her is vacant. There follows a ping-pong exchange of conversation in which the two go through permutations of character, motivation and literary chitchat.
Words, Words, Words has three monkeys with typewriters trying to write Hamlet; an old gag with a new twist. Lanford Wilson's Ikke, Ikke, Nye, Nye, Nye, about a breathy relationship between a boss's son and a switchboard operator, is a pointed piece of beady-eyed observation.
Finally, The Age of Pie, by Peter Hedges, is set in an Anonymous group meeting ending in a slug-fest of custard pies. The young cast, mostly American, offer a goodly quota of laughs. What's to lose? Runs until October 11th
What The Dead Want
Project Space Upstairs
Review by Peter Crawley
Sometimes it's hard to let go. This is especially true of Alex Johnston's resurrected black comedy, in which the dead have risen, owing to a vaguely explained suspension of natural laws. Suddenly a deceased Diaspora turns up at customs en masse, old ancestors drop into the pub and twenty-something Karen is reunited with her boyfriend as soon as he passes away. Following one gleefully shallow circle of friends, this wittily macabre play blends together history, memory, politics, literature and pop muzak into an amorphous whole, where literary theorist Walter Benjamin doles out relationship advice while T.S. Eliot enjoys a Hollywood blockbuster adaptation of The Wasteland.
Performed earlier this year by the Gaiety School of Acting graduating class, the play may have since lost its context and some of its relevance. Hence performances and pacing appear uneven, while September 11th references lose their urgent bite. But Johnston's aloofly hilarious ideas, and their gloriously warm-hearted resolution, remain inspired.
Word/Casual Comedy **
The Crypt
Review by Christine Madden
When I entered the Crypt and saw the promising gothic spectacle of a female body in white draped across a bed dressed also elaborately dressed in white, I didn't know this was going to be the high point of the evening. In Casual Comedy (which was neither one nor the other), Gary Egan - as Darrell, an architect tormented by his unresponsive wife (Louise Kiely) and memories of Rome and a woman he left there - couldn't dignify, despite his efforts, what was in essence a sexually frustrated adolescent of a character without the sense or maturity to make decisions and act on them.
Word also began with promise, as a haggard poet junkie, Eugene (Rory Mullen), in juddering withdrawal begged to be able to buy a fix off poet rapper Ferone (Marcus Valentine), but the play deteriorated into sanctimonious rap about love and poetry.
The actors - particularly Mullen as the desperate junkie - gave the plays their all, but they were working with leaky, immature and underdeveloped material. Please, let rap in theatre die a quiet death. Runs until October 12th.
Druid Theatre, Galway's production of Sive by John B. Keane:
The core of Sive, Hynes suggests, is that it unfolds in a world that has layers of reality. There is a social and economic reality: Mena desperately trying to escape from poverty, to establish a modern nuclear family, to be part of the new Ireland that is struggling to be born.
And there is a spiritual reality: a world of curses and blessings, of pure goodness and pure evil, of paganism fused with Christianity. The trick, of course, is to make these two realities cohere on the stage. Hynes, her terrific design team and her outstanding cast achieve this by following a rather neglected aspect of Keane's achievement: his language . . .
Crotty's performance as Mena, Gary Lydon's as her husband, Mike, and Anna Manahan's as his mother, Nana, are all beautifully attuned to the human truths of people trying to achieve decent goals in an indecent world.
Held in a masterful balance, these forces create a sumptuous drama that could not tackle harder or drive on more relentlessly if it had been written by Roy rather than the late, great John B.
Extracted from Fintan O'Toole's review. The production opened at the Olympia last night and continues after the festival.
Lyric Theatre, Belfast's production of Conversations on a Homecoming by Tom Murphy
From one angle, then, Conversations is a tangy slice-of-life, an exceptionally vivid and well-observed enactment of the mating rituals of the Irish male with the Irish pub . . . Within this apparently simple form, however, Murphy contains a range of metaphors and reflections that make this so much more than a parochial piece. At the psychic level, the play continues one of Murphy's favourite metaphors: one whole, healthy personality split between two half-men, the bitter realist Tom and the ineffectual romantic Michael. As Junior, ever the truth-telling chorus, remarks: "The two of ye together might make up one decent man". At the political level, meanwhile, the play is as timely for its dissection of the American aura of world leadership as it is for its more local resonance . . .
The power of Conall Morrison's production for the Lyric is that it is a finely tuned engine, revved up with expert timing and then let rip. The ride is hair-raising and exhilarating.
Extracted from Fintan O'Toole's review. The production is at the Gaiety Theatre until Saturday.
