We have a tie between two prospective bloggers for next season so we have opened the poll back up for one day. Who will be next season’s My_Project Blogger….Nicole or Liza…Voting closes at 4.30pm today ( Monday 9th of January)
_______________________________________________________
Nicole Flattery
About Nicole:
I am a Trinity drama graduate currently working as a theatre and film critic for Meg.ie. I am very interested in theatre criticism and would really appreciate the opportuniy to develop my skills with the Project Arts Centre.
Review: HEROIN
As I walk into Smock Alley theatre for TheatreClub’s Heroin, you are greeted by two young boys whose sole purpose appears to be to casually berate the audience. Telling us ‘to find a seat-it’s not hard’, wolf-whistling and being audacious to the point of being rude, it’s a fitting start to an incredibly moving piece of theatre. Despite being unflinching and honest in its depiction of the soulless cycle of addiction, Heroin always retains a certain fondness for its subjects. Taking us into a reality where horrible things happen to not very horrible people, and where drug taking is only morbid in its absolute mundanity, Grace Dyas and company are concerned with not only taking down the net curtains, but setting fire to them and forcing us to look inside.
Guiding us through the decades by the use of a very nice musical device, Heroin is unrelenting in its desperation and bleakness. By showing us that drug taking is a sickness that manifests in shabby rooms, punctuated by the noise of radio adverts that promise escape, it strips away the media hype and finds the sadness inherent in addiction. Frozen by a sense of ritual and weak ’not tomorrow night’ promises, the characters are caught up in dangerous and irrational violence. They tell us that their parents did the best job they could while knowing they did not, and beg us ‘to come at them.’ Theirs is a frantic search for feeling, an escape from arbitrary numbness and they believe heroin offers the ultimate form of emotional getaway. Yet, these are not excuses-tabloid childhoods invented to ease a sense of guilt-this is their reality and they state plainly ’we took drugs because we wanted to take drugs.’ As Barry O’ Connor begs Lauren Larkin and Gerard Kelly ’not to do that in front of me’, there is a sense of growing incomprehension and palpable unease. He is speaking for society, a society that does not want to see bodies being butchered but his pleas go unanswered. Certainly the role society played in breeding this illness and the responsibility we have to a community we ignore, is a demanding truth that is impossible to dismiss.
With this explosive subject matter, it would be tempting to resort to melodrama but Dyas draws emotive, natural and affective performances from her cast, who are all equally outstanding. Larkin is wonderfully childlike in her innocence, and her subsequent corruption is disturbing to the extent that a few audience members were visibly upset. O‘Connor‘s anger is righteous, unashamed and perfectly played, whilst Kelly elicits sympathy as the boy without a backbone. The lighting and mood changes are evocative and powerful, and Doireann Coady’s set demands special attention, as the more furniture that is added the sparser it seems to become. Herin leaves you with a huge sense of loss-but it does not leave you. Find a seat. It’s not hard.
___________________________________________________________
.
Liza Cox
About Liza:
Review: Slattery’s Sago Saga
What happens if, in the middle of a play, the characters, to their distress, realise that they are fictional? And what happens when they decide to take matters into their own hands, and seize control of the writing of the script? Slattery’s Sago Saga, brilliantly staged by The Performance Corporation, and directed by Jo Mangan, is an absurdist comedy, as energetic and imaginative a piece of theatre as one would hope from Arthur Riordan. He has succeeded in turning what was initially an unfinished novel by Flann O’Brien into a play that manages to be both contemporary, and faithful to O’Brien’s very distinctive style.
The plot, involving a maleficent Scotswoman, a human-sized leprechaun, a beautiful and mysterious typist,, and an evil plot to subjugate the nation of Ireland, is ridiculous, of course, and spirals out of control completely once the characters get involved, each manipulating events to suit their own various purposes. It’s all very meta-theatrical. But it never becomes too convoluted, managing to hold the audience’s attention throughout.
The cast of five all give strong performances, outstanding among them being Kathy Rose O’Brien as Imelda, the substitute author who takes over the writing while its real author is otherwise occupied, and Michael Glenn Murphy in four distinct roles; the idiot butler, the opium-fiend professor, the corrupt T.D, and the Irish-American millionaire.
It’s fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek, entertaining, and completely nonsensical, in a way that somehow makes sense, in keeping with Flann O’Brien’s absurdist logic. Conventionally, theatre attempts to induce in its audience a suspension of disbelief. Slattery’s Sago Saga inverts this, asking the audience to suspend belief, and challenging their perceptions of authorship, performance and reality. O’Brien would have been proud.
