Dublin Fringe Festival reviews of: A Clean Sweep, A Quiet Afternoon, Lunch (By Stephen Berkoff), Mind Your Fingers, Monty Python's Flying Circus - At Last in French, Sandwich, Spiked/Butterfly Fairy, Steiner Graffiti, The Artist Needs a Wife, The Friends of Jack Kairo, The Masterpiece, and Troubador.
A Clean Sweep
The Ark
Sweeping brushes, toothbrushes, bottle brushes, chimney brushes, feather dusters and pot-scrubbers rained down on the stage of the Ark. This potentially anarchic shower of cleaning paraphernalia was orchestrated by performers Ian Cameron and Tim Licata with less vim and vigour than their audience may have been anticipating. Cameron and Licata's gentle clowning and unhurried mimetic movement as they attempted to tame their brooms and negotiate peace with their clothes-brush was spasmodically energised by music from Andrew Cruickshank. Despite some welcome, if familiar, double-act clowning, the piece never really ignited. Billed as an entertainment for all ages, adults and older children may find this slice of visual storytelling vaguely tedious; that said, however, my three-year-old was rolling in the aisles and thought it was the greatest thing since Postman Pat's braces snapped. Highly recommended for younger children.
Until Thurs
Hilary Fannin
A Quiet Afternoon
Andrews Lane Studio
This gentle comedy, based on a short story by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, is tip-of-the- iceberg stuff, leaving a sense of depth far beyond what we see and hear. It is set in a pub beside a soccer stadium, where Mr Yupa regularly dispenses an omniscient and boring knowledge of the game and its history over his pints. One day a young man comes in, reading a book, clearly and provocatively not a regular. The youth, in an ingenious stage invention, morphs into a pompous oldster whose knowledge of soccer exceeds and often challenges that of Yupa - and talk about your collapsed balloons! A lifetime's vanity is exposed, ambition and status are derailed. It is beautifully acted, with Richard Sandra (looking like David Jason) brilliant as Yupa. His fellow actors, Jonathan Young and Ben Lewis, are also fine, under Lucinka Eisler's direction.
Until Sat
Gerry Colgan
Lunch (By Stephen Berkoff)
Focus Theatre
My sense of the over-familiarity of Steven Berkoff's plays is clearly not shared with Wall Fly Productions, who are apparently so little acquainted with their writer that they misspell his name. It's clear why emerging companies like Wall Fly gravitate toward Berkoff: focusing on language and the actor's craft, his plays don't require huge budgets, and their trademark brashness guarantees a certain in-yer-face effect. The conceit of this play - a whole sexual relationship played out in 40 minutes - is strong, but the commentary on 1980s greed (he's a salesman trying to peddle air) and all that bloody Berkoff verbiage feel dated. The production is primarily a vehicle for the explosive, if distractingly balmy (think Albert Brooks in Broadcast News) talents of Tom O'Leary, well-matched here by Miriam Devitt. Alan Kinsella gets the direction right - the characters' movement tells the truth their words deny but we've seen this sort of thing way too many times before.
Until Sat
Karen Fricker
Mind Your Fingers
Andrews Lane Studio
The people responsible for this aberrative 45-minute show have named themselves Giddy Productions, and not without reason. The format consists of a series of comedy sketches, with video film episodes interspersed among the live items. It opens with the old chestnut of two drunken bridesmaids abusing the bride and loudly recalling their sexual adventures with the groom in happier days. It isn't funny. But then, none of this noisy, unsubtle show is. It reaches its zenith with a sketch about a snail raping a predatory crow, and slumps to rock bottom again with a prolonged physical fight between the two women (Simone Kirby and Oonagh McLaughlin), who seem to have compiled their own material, a new low in slapstick. The video might have allowed them to see their acts as others are apt to see them: an opportunity lost.
Until Sat
Gerry Colgan
Monty Python's Flying Circus - At Last in French
Andrews Lane
Andrews Lane seems on the small side to hold the exuberance of the Gallic Flying Circus. This stage version of the Monty Python TV sketches, as performed by Les Spectacles Remy Renoux (in French), comes with the approval of the two Terrys. This kind of humour lends itself well to live performance, and Remy Renoux wisely ups the ante slightly on the original to keep things spicy. Having the surtitles to the side of the stage is physically a little awkward, but they do add another dimension, acting like an extra character in places. Sketches include The Lumberjack Song, Sit on My Face, and The Olympics for the Stupid and Ridiculous. Four middle-aged men compete to describe the hardship of their younger days - "we had to live in a shoebox in the middle of the road" - a TV presenter attempts to discuss life after death with three deceased interviewees, and a convicted murderer charms his way out of a prison sentence. The performers enter into everything with gusto - it's clear they are enjoying themselves too. We left with a smile on our faces, though at least one audience member was glad she brought her umbrella . . .
Until Oct 8
Clare McCarthy
Sandwich
Bewley's Café Theatre
Desperate housewives have become the bread and butter of the entertainment industry. The glamorous girls from Wisteria Lane have set a precedent for exposing the seedier sides of suburbia, but Sandwich, produced by Roadshow Theatre, has failed to capitalise on the popular appetite for middle-class madness that Bree and her Valium-addicted girlfriends have pioneered. The female characters of the play provide two thick slices of middle-American suburban life, its concept promises a low-fat spread of light entertainment, but Sandwich ultimately lacks a decent filling. The overlapping dialogue is circular and repetitive and stretched thinly over the 40-minute show. The performances are uneven, with Rachel Krause as Harriet being far more convincing and unnerving than her psychopathic counterpart. The closing moments are not unpredictable, but they do result in a fantastic final tableau: an image of violence and domesticity that will turn you off sandwiches for life.
Until Sat
Sara Keating
Spiked/Butterfly Fairy
Players Theatre
Dingle's Beehive Theatre cleverly uses the Dublin Fringe to highlight a festival of its own, presenting a greatest hits package from its own Festival of New Writing. By bringing three plays for lunchtime and early evening performances - Mike Venner's Bookworms, as well as the two I saw - Beehive provides a cheap and cheerful tasting menu of aspiring playwrights. This, then, is essentially amateur work built on a professional platform, and it has to be seen in that light. The professionalism lies in Wendela Rosenberg Polak's crisp direction and Malcolm George's intelligent designs. It supports quirky trial pieces by would-be dramatists and raw performances from relatively inexperienced actors.
David McCall's Spiked is a monologue narrated by a man who is gradually slipping into alcoholism and breakdown, who confuses real people with characters from kids' comics. Though more a spoken short story than a drama, it is nicely turned and considerably enlivened in the staging by Greg Ó Súilleabháin's interplay with his own projected drawings. Venner's Butterfly Fairy teeters on the edge of twee as Slaine Ní Chathalláin's fairy explains her dietary habits. But the writing is neatly poised between the naïve and the grotesque and Venner has a promising instinct for the shape of a theatrical text.
Until Sat
Fintan O'Toole
Steiner Graffiti
T36
When the performer of this solo piece edges offstage and sits in the auditorium, he's not just questioning performance conventions and the limits of "the empty space". No, he's figuring out the purpose of his whole life - and we've been invited along to watch. Christopher Marcus is a director and actor who spent years immersed in the ideas of the mystical philosopher Rudolph Steiner, whose prolific theories inspired, among other things, an educational movement. Here Marcus shares some of these ideas (not very clearly) while attempting to work out his own relationshipto them. Addressing the audience directly, he comments on his performance, illustrating Steiner's theories on a blackboard and making gracefully undulating movements (Steiner-esque "eurhythmy"). Hunger for spiritual enlightenment combined with his need to free himself from the influence of his teacher has precipitated an existential crisis - which, though undoubtedly sincere, is surely a private matter.
Until Sat
Helen Meany
The Artist Needs a Wife
T36
The darling of the Irish Student Drama Association's recent festival, this UCD dram soc production, presented by Clean Canvas Theatre Company, fares less well as it takes to a professional stage. The setting is a windowless hovel reminiscent of Endgame, the characters speak with the salty contemptuousness of Mametian mooks, and all sport the maquillage of a commedia dell'arte troupe. A narcissistic blowhard and an impotent milquetoast live in an existential vacuum in which proximity is confused with friendship. The female characters fare even less well. In fact, playwright Jesse Weaver has created a repellent space for women: one is nameless but for the sobriquet of Whore, the other is voiceless, a mail-order bride who doesn't speak the language; their victimhood is furthered by abuse and death. The flesh (performance) was willing, but the spirit (text) was weak.
Until Sat
Susan Conley
The Friends of Jack Kairo
Focus Theatre
Abundant enjoyment is to be had from this 70-minute romp through hardboiled American detective fiction in a Chandleresque odyssey to recover an artefact that is not the Maltese Falcon, but a Sumerian cold fusion reactor. The plot involves hard-drinking private-eye Kairo, flaky heroines, sinister energy moguls, a butler called Cheney, a mad genius called Hans Blicks and a helter-skelter search for weapons of mass destruction. Simon Toal wrote it and acts all the parts (apart from the glove puppet dinosaur barkeeper) and as he makes each character come alive, proves he is a dazzling stage presence. There are a few flaws - too many lovingly crafted words for a stage show, one too many pratfalls, perhaps. But it is great fun and the kind of production that gives fringe theatre a good name.
Until Sat
Noeleen Dowling
The Masterpiece
Mountjoy Prison
Performing a play about prisons in Mountjoy shows site-specific savvy. The Masterpiece, however, co-written and performed entirely by members of the prison population, makes for a different sort of theatrical experience - one that is far more honest and engaging than any clever programming could have engineered. Set in a German concentration camp during the second World War, Gustav Honess is a Polish artist desperately trying to negotiate his freedom in exchange for his art. Apart from occasional nods to sentimentality in the portrayal of the relationship between Gustav and his wife, the script is solid and fluent, particularly in establishing the friendship that grows between Gustav and Franz, another of the prison chief's selected trustees. Evocative music and expressionistic lighting design creates a sophisticated painterly touch that sidelines special effects for dramatic expression, most particularly in the strobe light scene in which Franz faces the horrific fate of the millions who have died before him.
Until Sat
Sara Keating
Troubador
FilmBase
The love poems of Rumi have become the province of brides and grooms across the globe, neatly kicking Kahlil Gibran into touch. In Troubador, Salim Ghouse purports to bring us a deeper interpretation of the Afghani Sufi poet and mystic's thoughts and words. The ideas are indeed complex; unfortunately, they are made much more impenetrable by Mr Ghouse's idiosyncratic approach to his text. An energetic and sincere performer, in possession of an enormously colourful voice, Ghouse has presence, but it is undercut by the unintelligibility of much of his delivery: alternatively whispering and booming, the already esoteric stories become almost impossible to follow. To expect the depth and breadth of Sufism to be laid out before us, in 60 minutes, in all its transparent glory is, of course, too much to ask. But to have come away without even the tiniest sliver of a fragment of enlightenment is a pity.
Until Sat
Susan Conley
