Dublin Fringe Festival events reviewed
A Season in Hell, secret venue
The secret venue near Vicar Street at which this show runs (the audience is taken there) adds a seedy glamour to the mood the Stomach Box seems to be after. A Season in Hell is done with intensity and style. Two performers, Will O'Connell and Dylan Tighe, and three musicians, Sean Óg, Donal McErlaine and Cormac O'Brien, each accomplished, take us, cabaret-style, through Rimbaud's poem, written at 19, in anguish over the break-up of his relationship with Paul Verlaine. The songs are of gender confusion, colonialism, religion, the search for identity, social injustice and mortality. A camera projects scenes onto the back wall and sound effects boost the mood of despair. The 75-minute production is devoid of humour, sentiment or objectivity, but it raises questions about what drama is or could be, so it's exactly right for the Fringe. Until Sunday. Noeleen Dowling
Doin' Time Through the Visiting Glass, The International Bar
The child of a prisoner, writer/ performer Ashley Lucas culled the stories of people living lives as constrained as those of their loved ones. The voices of a hard-ass Texan woman, a bombastic preacher and an over-educated Chicano are stitched together a la The Laramie Project, a class of metatheatrical venture exposing the mechanics of every costume change and shift of character. The guiding voice - that of Lucas - is heard only twice; her personal experience is largely absent, and despite being centrestage, one can't help thinking that Lucas is hiding behind the stories of her subjects. Earnestly performed, if mannered, it's not the raw and powerful kind of evening that the concept promised. Until Sat. Susan Conley
Dublin Heads, Bewley's Café Theatre
Made up of four interlinked monologues by Shay Linehan, Dublin Heads is a witty and moving look at the notion of belonging in modern Ireland. Each of the characters has become detached from society - through bereavement, jail, marital breakdown - and is trying to find a way back. The first three short plays have brand names as titles, and supermarket and restaurant chains are used as arenas to work out feelings of guilt, anger and loss. The best is saved for last, with Paul Dignam's hilarious performance as The Fedex Man, a voyeuristic ex-con whose journey "from gurrier to courier" and back leads him to make benevolent interventions in the lives of those whose messages he is carrying. Until Sept 24. Giles Newington
Exit 3: Black on White, Leeson Street Bridge
Set in two derelict rooms in the basement of a gloriously unreconstructed Leeson Street house, Exit 3: Black on White is two separate but connected pieces conceived and directed by emerging theatre artist Kate McLaughlin. Both are meditations on man's ignoble condition and both performers muse in the melancholic monotone of the Beckettian anti-hero. Citing Hamlet, Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath and Paulo Neruda, Exit 3 resembles a suicidal teenager. You want to grab it by the collar of its exquisitely distressed vintage shirt, brush the layers of pretension from its despairing poses and wait for the beautiful adult being to emerge. It will take longer than 30 minutes of existential philosophising to do so, however, resulting in a show that is both utterly transparent and completely mystifying. Until Sat. Sara Keating
Full Blown Rose, Bewley's Café Theatre
When it comes to the cultivation of roses, apparently, the preferred fertiliser is cow dung. This earthy and entertaining one-woman show from Australian Roz Hammond may begin with a fragrant gentility, but as soon as Ruthie McGuire, an octogenarian spinster, admits that her twin sister, Sissy, was always "a bandit for cock", the tale becomes nicely perfumed with a scent of profanity. The declining fortunes of the eccentric McGuires, from "unmarried and exotic to bitter old crones" are conveyed through the glimpses, gossip and crude children's rhymes of an encroaching neighbourhood - each of Hammond's character portraits allowing narrative points to fall as delicately as shedding petals. Hammond occasionally mires her creations in caricature or dulls the edge of a good joke with repetition (her background is in sketch comedy), but, like a rose and its thorns, her performance is elegantly inviting and her humour stays pricklingly sharp. Until Oct 1. Peter Crawley
Haci Guigo, Project Arts Centre
They begin with a ghoulish cabaret, finish with an achingly sombre bow, and, in between, Italy's Comuna Baires & Fare Anima present history both as tragedy and farce, enacting scenes from the Holocaust and Hiroshima through a jarring combination of theatrical clowning and hulking multimedia. Physical performance and political theatre make for strange bedfellows, and a carousel through 20th-century atrocity is inevitably as disorientating as it is moving. Haci Giugo's aesthetic is often startling - a concentration camp train is depicted through the stomping feet of the interred - but its tone pivots oddly between the seriousness of Auschwitz and a Dr Strangelovian mocking of Los Alamo. And though writer/ director Irina Casali's stagecraft becomes ever more nimble and impressive, her political message - spelled out in smooth voice-overs - becomes conversely glib. Until Sat. Peter Crawley
Lucky, Players Theatre
Sitting in darkness dragging on a cigarette, with a start the artist stubs it out on the palm of his hand. Jordi Cortes Molina pushes both physical and emotional boundaries in this surreal work written by Claudia Mendez and translated from Spanish by Ferran Audi. It moves with ease from comedy to tragedy in a performance based around a father's death. Encompassing birth, childhood, sex and mortality, Molina contorts his body and stutters his words drawing the audience deeper into the maelstrom of his meditations. Drawing on elements of both dance and theatre, Molina is a clown-like figure despite the tragedy: musing whether angels have sex in heaven. This intense performance engages both the mind and heart. Until Thurs. Eoghan Morrissey
One Good Marriage, T36
The distressed 'Happy Anniversary' banner says it all: One Good Marriage is not a good marriage at all. The newly-weds' fate is sealed on their wedding night, and while the marital disruption is neither plausible nor ridiculous enough to really work, there is food for thought in the rituals that the couple create to distract themselves from their misfortune; like the routines and structures people use to find solace amidst tragedy and the uncomfortable silences that define our relationships to other people's pain. Featuring eager performances by Siobhan Power and Justin Conley, One Good Marriage is a comfortable production of a sound, if predictable, play. Until Sat. Sara Keating
Propelled Upright, Andrews Lane Studio
In this infuriatingly obtuse spasm of physical theatre from the Lonesome Crowd Company, a woman, played with malevolent childishness by Susan Anderson, wakes up to find herself puzzled by the oddness of objects. The entities in question - a mirror, a shopping trolley, a man with a watering can where others have sex organs - are all covered by sheets. After 15 minutes or so had passed, during which time Ms Anderson uncovered stuff, grimaced, then uncovered some more, a woman in the audience flung a cup of water at her. The assailant was almost certainly part of the company, but one could not be sure. Darren Donohue's scrappy production of his own impenetrable play - with some spoken text, though none worth noting - positively invites the hurling of any fluids that come to hand. Until Sat. Donald Clarke
Room Rage, T36
Theseus has been gone for four years, his kingdom gone to ruin. A powerful Aphrodite, the red-haired goddess strikingly played by Rachel Lally, is the puppet mistress. Hippolytus, a worshipper of Artemis goddess of chastity, shuns his friend Kalagoris for falling in love. Yet he suffers the fate of having his father's wife, Phaedra, fall in love with him. Kildare-based Crooked House theatre company bring Euripides' words to life with a strong cast and accomplished direction. Brimming with force and energy, this world premiere features powerful performances from Keith Burke and Nick Devlin illuminating this tragedy on the destructive power of lust and rage. Until Sat. Eoghan Morrissey
Rumble, O'Reilly Theatre
It's not the first hip-hop version of Romeo and Juliet, but Rumble is probably the most dismissive of Shakespeare. Words are shoved to the side - and even the plot of unapproved love is barely tolerated - as the feuding boys/girls strut their stuff. Giant scaffold balconies are dragged to different formations to create settings, but the spirit of hip-hop is in the cipher rather than the stage. It's about spontaneous vocabulary and expression, and so the performance's pitch leapt during the body-popping, locking and breaking in the dance battle between the Caps and Montis. Acrobatic jumps, quickfire feet and one moment of virtuosic head-spinning - like an upside- down ice-skater - were so joyously unleashed that it was a shame we had to return to the morbid finale. Rumble is archetypal fringe stuff: bold, raw, and forgivably over-reaching in its ambition. Until Sept 24. Michael Seaver
See No Evil, Focus Theatre
Trap Door theatre company has devised an anti-war attack aimed at the conflict in Iraq. It offers nothing new, except for a few intrusive fictional inserts. American soldiers bring a superior callousness to their mission, and the point is repeatedly made that their invasion has brought little but suffering with it. There is a strong focus on the abuse of Iraqis in the prisons, and the occupying troops' lack of understanding of the mindset of people they are there to free. Western hostages beg Bush and Blair to secure their release by withdrawing the troops. The entire thrust is to condemn the invaders. The cast of seven, each taking several roles, is excellent, and the play is directed with pace by Katherine Murphy. A good try, but form and style lose out to the unbalanced content; like, who's arguing? Until Sat. Gerry Colgan
Spurt!Sister!Spurt!, Bewley's Café Theatre
When Madame's away (and Monsieur's in jail), the maids will role-play - with her finery and mirror as their props. Servants Claire and Solange get their games of dominance, submission and revenge under way with a string of gleeful verbal insults interspersed with some wig-pulling and spitting ("our spurt of saliva is our spray of diamonds"), but become so caught up in their fantasies that they can't deal with the real danger they are in when Madame gets home (and Monsieur gets out on bail). This gender-bending adaptation of Genet's The Maids gains in comedy and suggestiveness over its more political original through having two of its three female roles played by men. It is essentially a romp, with strong performances (especially by Kieran McBride as the quiveringly masochistic Claire), an ideal venue and a large, enthusiastic first-night audience. Very enjoyable. Until Sat. Giles Newington
Stop the Tempo!, Focus Theatre
This odd little play by Gianina Carbunariu is set in Bucharest, where two young women and a man embark on a campaign of anarchism. They meet in a nightclub, and crash their car afterwards, which apparently seals a kind of comradeship. They are bored and disillusioned with life, and decide to liven it up. Their first escapade is to cut the lights off in the nightclub where it all started, causing panic among the clientele. This gives them such a buzz that they repeat the fun throughout the city, to the point where they are designated public enemies by the authorities. They turn next to theatres, and finally to a major event where it all goes wrong for them. No political or other philosophy is enunciated; just three losers out on a mindless spree. If there's more, I missed it. Until Oct 1. Gerry Colgan
Switch, Players Theatre
No words can hope to convey the free-fall into despair occasioned by the loss of a loved one. This is an area where the body will do a far better job: the premise for Switch, a production by 4Play about Emily, a young woman, and her relationship with her dying mother. As a devised piece by a young company, it displays some frequent flaws: workshoppy feel, a somewhat slim and patchy script, misjudged or misplaced humour. But it also indicates fresh new talent in the clever use of sharp, well-defined movement, which works best describing everyday situations and the trauma of impending loss, when its power is more evocative than poetry. The moments spent by Emily (played skilfully by Serena Brabazon) and her mother (Jayne Tuttle) at mundane chores such as hanging the washing are truly poignant and sometimes profound. Well worth watching. Until Sat. Christine Madden
The Timekeepers, Andrews Lane Studio
Dan Clancy's three-hander concerning the relationship between two prisoners in a concentration camp - a middle-aged Jewish watchmaker and a younger homosexual - is played with sincerity by a committed cast in this disciplined production from Ocean of Sugar. Rami Baruch, playing the older man, layers on just enough gruff carapace to obscure his character's obvious vulnerability, while Roy Horovitz has the precise gestures and delicate weight of Dom DeLuise when he was still funny. It is a decent, orderly play, none of whose humanist messages would be likely to offend those outside the theatre protesting the Israeli embassy's sponsorship of the production. Sadly, it also features some dizzyingly unlikely plot turns and, like most Hollywood treatments of this theme, feels the need to have everyone learn to understand one another a little better on the way towards a preposterous happy ending. Until Sat. Donald Clarke
Tropea, Project, Space Upstairs
A projected television shows a couch potato looking at us as she continually flicks through channels. What she watches is live on stage, so it's as if we are inside the . . . male dancer runs on in a red Real Madrid strip and, although alone, he goes through the motions of running, heading and feigning injury, looking towards . . . won't answer repeated questions from the presenter sitting beside them on an inflatable couch. It's the usual politician's elusiveness, but . . . swimming towards the safety of the bench the dancer escapes the jaws of Jaws. Luckily on the other side of . . . single drops of water are amplified as an orange-suited prisoner stands alone and vulnerable under a single spotlight. A piano sounds and the lone female dancer goes to comfort, touching . . couch potato, now joined by her husband, has dozed off. Then chaos, as the television characters . . . much to admire in the synchronisation, but the performance was as unsatisfying as an evening of channel-hopping. Until Sat. Michael Seaver
Urban Ghosts, SS Michael and John's
Since the company was one of the original creators of the Dublin Fringe Festival, it is apt that Bedrock should return to it after a six-year absence with two shows that embody the fringe spirit. Neither is, in the ordinary sense, a play. Each lasts for less than an hour. And each exerts a grip without being entirely explicable. Yet, the shows, presented under the rubric Urban Ghosts, are also, in some senses, opposites. One is a rich, literary text with minimal performance. The other is a rich, aesthetically lavish performance with minimal text.
Peter Handke's Self-Accusation, which is half-read and half-acted by the performance artist Amanda Coogan and the writer Alex Johnston, under Jimmy Fay's direction, is a mordantly witty word-game. Drawing equally on the Communist device of self-criticism and on the Catholic ritual of Confession, it bounces clipped, laconic admissions of guilt around like tennis balls on a court of judgment. Fay keeps its delicious restraint while allowing Coogan in particular to embellish the humour and absurdity with precise variations of movement.
Pale Angel, devised by Fay with text by Johnston and inspiration from the suicidal photographer Francesca Woodman, is both a more problematic piece and a larger achievement. Linked to Self-Accusation by a shared concern with guilt, it conjures the process of being haunted through an ambitious fusion of dance, drama and video. Perhaps fittingly in the context of the Fringe, the least successful of these elements is the text, which manages to be obscure without being profound. But the more dreamlike and surreal the performance is, the better it gets. The striking athleticism of the dancer Megan Kennedy and the fragile, evanescent presence of Lisa Lambe, both floating around the solidity of Ronan Leahy, do achieve a numinous power.
Fay's weaving may have some loose stitches, but the garment as a whole has a disquieting beauty. Until Sat. Fintan O'Toole
