IThe National Dublin Theater Festival program is jam-packed with new perspectives and inventive productions, Safe House (★★★★★)The new collaboration between writer-director Enda Walsh and composer Anna Mullarkey is a dazzling feat. In the form of a song cycle, with a live performer on stage, the experience freezes the senses through film images, orchestral settings, undulating sound design and a stunning performance by Kate Gilmour. Following him with opera trilogy composer Donnacha Dennehy and his Lazarus score by David Bowie, Walsh continues to explore original ways of bringing text and music together, working with frequent collaborators lighting designer Adam Silverman and videographer Jack Phelan.
Combining elements of torch songs, soulful folk and synthpop, Gilmour takes us inside the mind of Grace, a young woman growing up in the West. Ireland in the 1980s and early 90s. Scenes filmed on the walls of an abandoned volleyball alley reveal her past in fragmented memories. In Katie Davenport's playful design, images reappear to create small, safe spaces to crawl through. episodes of childhood obscured by alcoholism; miserable children's parties, followed by small-town teenage isolation; Escapes to the city and attempts to stave off trauma – all presented as fleeting recordings, underscored by Mullerkey's velvety ensemble of electronics, strings and vocals. In this beautifully realized, multifaceted work, we see Grace find her own way to make a life for herself, either by making peace with her broken past or moving on from it.
The guest host is the stranger ghost (★★★★☆) There should be light on its feet. Kate Heffernan's play for Ones of Productions has been performed in theaters around the city, on stage sets of other festival productions. “Who can afford a set these days?” asks Maeve O'Mahony before taking on her role as Deirdre, introducing this brilliant, stage-surfing show. One of the three characters who share the house of an elderly woman in a care home, Deirdre fears that the owner may die at any moment and they may have to leave. Drawing attention to Dublin's housing crisis and acute shortage of rented accommodation, Heffernan shows the impact of insecurity and short-term living arrangements with strangers.
Deirdre and her friend John Paul (Finbarr Doyle) act like immigrants when they invite a fast-food delivery man named Fran (Shadaan Felfeli) to accompany them to help them rent. Director Eoghan Carrick creates a tone of unease with the three fronts, with an air of enforced inaction, in the dim light cast by their phones and laptops. The owner's landline is interrupted by a beeping sound, which they avoid answering, while a power cut leaves them sitting in the dark. We see the bond between them gradually grow, but it is so weak that one of them disappears, like John Paul's lover. Ghosting here takes many forms, whether through avoidance, withdrawal, or immersion in online distractions.
The consequences of a young couple's hasty decision to move in together are troubling Breaking (★★★☆☆), Amy Kidd for Fishamble Theater Company. Dealing with issues of coercive control and consent in an intimate relationship, Kidd's script is an elaborately constructed puzzle that depicts the characters of Sam and Charlie first as two men, then as a man and a woman, and then as two women in different combinations. Finely directed by Jim Culleton, the committed cast – Curtis-Lee Ashquar, Evan Gaffney, Matthew Malone and Jean-Nicole Ni Ainle – each picks up where the other left off in a series of short, intense scenes.
While setting up a sitting room with six doors suggests farce or comic drama, the intention here is entirely serious. With a diverse cast of roles and characters switching genders, the audience is provoked into some self-examination. Our assumptions are challenged as Charlie's emotional manipulation of Sam underpins his sexual and physical abuse. However, halfway through, patience is also tested when Kit takes a cue from Pinter and reverses the timeline. The dramatic impact of this ambitious introduction is diluted as one tearful apology or earnest request for reassurance fades into another.
Next Last O'Casey Productions returns to the work of Sean O'Casey Starjazzer (★★★☆☆)Adapted from this short story set in an early 20th century Dublin tenement. To create an intimate, site-specific performance, writer-director Louise Lowe and designers Owen Bass, Ciaran Bagnall and Rob Moloney have staged it in a Georgian building with their usual visual flair. Briefly overlap.
As a married woman in 1923, tired of childbirth, poverty and endless housework, Liv O'Donoghue (“Stargazer”) takes a moment to admire the stars by standing outside in her small yard to study the night sky. As she dances, her eyes fixed on the audience, the sense of wasted emotional life is intense and affecting. Upstairs in a sparsely furnished room, his young lady in present-day Dublin also lives on the fringes – in Ciara Byrne's makeshift performance of Lowe's text, whose circumstances are not entirely clear. Connecting the two women throughout this century is a shared experience of deprivation, although the notion that women's victimization is almost inevitable requires more elaboration than it receives here.
The language was pushed to breaking point in Forced Entertainment's latest show, Signal to Noise (★★★★☆)Marks the company's 40th anniversary. In their third visit to the festival, the artists – Robin Arthur, Chek Simutengwende, Richard Lowden, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naughton and Terry O'Connor – exude the ever-inquisitive, anarchic spirit that has made the group so influential. . Bouncing across the stage carrying potted plants and furniture with frantic intent, they attempt to lip-sync to recorded lines created by director Tim Etchells using AI and text-to-speech software.
“Is this my voice?” Each of them listens in turn. “Are we living? Are you alive?” asks another. Each actor jumps from one to the next, trying to outrun the insistent, disembodied speech bubbles that seem to speak through them. While talking about dystopian weather disasters, dancing through chronic illnesses, bodies on stage and recorded voices are separate, out of sync, creating absurd and surprisingly poignant effects. Pitting new technology against our instincts to express ourselves, this clever, chaotic experiment presents a clash between man and machine.
