Strung together like the Real Pearls of its title, images, sounds, music, text, emotions and humour follow one another in a bewildering kaleidoscope in John Scott's latest piece for Irish Modern Dance Theatre. And, on the back wall of the black-box set of the Project @ The Mint, a patchwork of broken mirrors reflects the faces of the audience beneath designer Katherine Sankey's silver chandelier, surrounded by bare branches as though a forest was taking over a ballroom.
"Where to next?" asks a dancer in a line of spotlit faces mouthing strongly-felt emotions like a silent-film sequence. But then melodrama naturally features among the interchanges of these old-time actors, simultaneous dancers, comics, ventriloquists and tightrope-walkers, giving full reign to their triumphs, failures, jealousies, insecurities and suspicions of journalists.
Andrew Synnott's music is as varied as the movement and mime, ranging from the music hall to the orient, as Daryn Crosbie, Justine Doswell, Lucy Dundon and Jonathan Mitchell, in Helen McCusker's costumes, change their footwear, flap their coats like the flutter of pigeons' wings and move effortlessly from impersonating mice to caricaturing the stage detective via a wealth of athletic and graceful movement. Mark Gallione's lighting sometimes creates freeze-frame effects and sometimes suggests sunlight filtering through woodland branches. Not everyone's cup of tea, perhaps, but excellently done and very well received by the packed house.
Continues at Project @ The Mint until February 21st, with matinees on the 18th & 19th, before touring to the Gothenburg Irish Festival in Sweden, then to Drogheda, Tralee and Cork.