Two men seek closure in a late night Belfast bar in Quietly, Owen McCafferty's
new play presented by Dublin's Abbey Theatre in Jimmy Fay's firecracker
of a production. Robert the Polish bar-man is watching the
Poland/Northern Ireland match when Jimmy arrives, full of pent-up rage
and gallows humour. When Ian arrives, things threaten to explode into
violence, but quickly subside as the pair attempt to purge themselves
of what happened almost forty years earlier, when sectarian violence in
Belfast was at its bloody height.
What follows is, as Jimmy observes, a more intimate and less formal
take on a truth and reconciliation committee, as the pair unravel the
history that binds them. It's a devastating little power play that sums
up a battle-scarred nation's collective psyche in miniature, with the
football game on television pointing to pointing up the lingering
tribalism even more. Fay's production, played out in a working
bar-room, is blessed by a trio of performances from Robert Zawadzki as
Robert, Declan Conlon as Ian and especially Patrick O'Kane as a
simmering Jimmy. It's a tense and intense affair, with the play's final
powerful moments fully bringing home how echoes of the past remain, no
matter how hard you shut them out.
How do you be a wife, a mother and a hot-shot fighter pilot? The answer
in Grounded, George Brant's play presented by the Gate Theatre is that you don't.
Or at least that's the case for the vivacious Pilot played by Lucy
Ellinson, who makes her dream come true while navigating a life as
supercharged as the F16 fighter plane she flies. In no time at all
she's married and pregnant, and, no longer allowed to fly, is shipped
out to Las Vegas where she operates remote-controlled drones in the
Middle East. Juggling family life with a little girl who adores pink
ponies with the daily grind, driving fast in the desert is no
replacement for the blue skies she craves, and crash and burn is
inevitable.
Ellinson delivers her interior monologue from inside a gauze-draped
cube in Christopher Haydon's production, sporting her beloved flight
suit to the last in a work that says much about military misogyny, and
how institutions like the army, and indeed the nuclear family, can rip
the soul out of good patriots like the Pilot. Ellinson gives a bravura
turn as the Pilot in a high-concept production that explodes with sound
and vision in a quietly political piece of work.
Be careful what you vote for. You might just get the make-believe
democracy you don't want. In Fight Night, Belgian auteurs Ontroerend Goed's latest
inquiry into human behaviour, here in co-production with Australia's
The Border Project, politics is reduced to a gladiatorial arena, as the
audience are asked to vote for one of five candidates to lead them
into, well, who knows? Split into a series of rounds, the audience are
asked a series of questions which are then collated electronically
before the results are announced.
At first its easy enough, as the five parade around the 'ring' without
speaking, meaning the first vote is done on looks and first impressions
alone. Once each starts laying out their manifestos, however, which
range from the hard-line radical to unrepentantly reactionary with
some woolly liberalism thrown, the results look very different indeed.
The fact that each elimination is guided by the audience is the telling
thing, however, in a fascinating deconstruction of democracy, as
alliances and coalitions are formed in order for one or another
candidate to survive. In the end, and as the final image of data shows,
it is us who are in control,with all our prejudices absorbed and thrown
back at us. As revolutions go, however, it's the Smiths song that plays
as the audience leave at the end of the show that's most telling about
what is required.
Twelve years ago, Feilidm Cannon's father died after a misdiagnosis led
to botched surgery. His immediate response was to make an art video
based around placing a Guinness pint glass in various locations. More
than a decade on, and now one of the directors of the Dublin-based
brokentalkers company, Cannon shows the film at the start of Have I No Mouth, his very
personal response to loss, grieving and healing. So personal is it, in
fact, that both his mother, Ann Cannon, and their therapist, Erich
Keller, are on stage with him to share in the experience.
If this sounds like self-indulgent death tourism, think again, because,
over it's hour-long duration, Cannon and co serve up a witty and
intimate meditation that honours Cannon's father even as it mourns him.
Emotional totems are laid out, balloons are burst, cuddles are given
and Guinness is drunk, in a touchingly frank affair in which Cannon's
anger at the sheer unnecessaryness of his father's death may come
through. This is crucially over-ridden, however, by the sheer love
Cannon and his mother feel for him. By the end of this movingly
impressionistic homage, it's become a celebration of a man who really
might just live forever.
The Herald, August 7th 2013
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