The production of Jean Genet's The Balcony currently in The Crypt is theatre in the round, with a difference. Here the audience sits in the centre, at small round tables, while the action unfolds around it in a number of surrounding alcoves. It is an ingenious and effective use of the space.
The play is set in a brothel in which clients disguise themselves as men of power. As a bishop, one hears confessions and proposes penance. Another poses as a judge who, with the aid of a torturer, dispenses both verdict and punishment. A general prepares for battle with the help of, mmm, a subordinate. Comely maidens fill the subsidiary roles in the fantasies.
Outside, a revolution is in full swing, which presents the brothel owner, Madame Irma, with a few problems. She depends on a lover, the actual chief of police, to protect her. He seeks immortality in the shape of a surrogate, someone who will come to the salon in order to imitate him. But things take a strange turn, and the clients find themselves acting out their fantasy roles in the real post-revolution world.
The analogies, metaphors and whatever you're having yourself are clearly here in abundance. What is reality, where does it begin and end, what are the illusions that sustain our mundane lives, how would we survive without them? The play's sexual explicitness no longer shocks, but its questions remain interesting, and Leticia Agudo's direction allows them to emerge.
The solid cast - Deirdre Monaghan, Kevin Hely, PJ Dunlevy, Denise Waters, Sarah-Lyn Hartigan and Des Kenny - play multiple roles without violating the necessary illusions. Nigel Hannon designed the imaginative set.
