Reviews

A look at what's on in the arts by Irish Timesreviewers

Falling Out Of Love

Civic Theatre, Dublin

Peter Crawley

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy attempts to bungee jump from Dublin apartment rooftop in mad attempt to get girl back again. Girl pleads with him not to. Boy jumps regardless.

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl cohabit in long-term relationship. Boy and girl have not had sex in three weeks. Girl has not noticed.

Boy meets girl. Boy dumps girl and evicts her with the smooth efficiency of a psychopath. Girl does not take it well. Girl trashes boy's apartment.

The deteriorating relationships of the three central couples in John Breen's energetic but gossamer-thin romantic comedy are literally stacked on top of one another, less a vertical slice through an apartment complex as a glimpse of the top floors of Heartbreak Hotel.

If the first flush of romance is a minefield of cliches (no, you hang up!), the final throes of breaking up have no fewer (no, you go to hell!), and Breen faces the challenge of extracting fresh comedy from the well-trodden universality of heartache. It's not for nothing that he frequently immerses these characters in the potency of cheap pop songs: what more can he add? His answer lies less in content than technique, with director Mikel Murfi funnelling the irreconcilable partners into a physical farce, superimposing simultaneous events on the same space, and playing games with chronology, à la Alan Ayckbourn, and uniting everyone through stunt falls and aerialism when Aaron Monaghan's near-manic Barry literally leaps into everybody's lives.

Those who do best in the play recognise that there are few depths here to plumb. Monaghan, no stranger to enormous gestures himself, plays Barry as more adrenaline than man, while Conor Delaney's contemptible David and Kelly Gough's fiery Ciara wisely never allow the needle to dip below crazy. But while their frantic behaviour is superficially amusing (Monaghan and Gough's slow-motion meeting in the air is a scream), laughter rings hollow without fleshed-out characters to cling to. We never discover what all of these people do, for instance, or how they met, and when in the second act the stunts stop and the flailing doesn't, they seem like strangers locked in a romcom schematic.

Sometimes Breen trails a more interesting idea - Barry's recent bereavement; the suggestion that his own near-fatal mishap might have been intentional; the emotional warfare of separating couples - but deliberately backs away.

It may be that with this light and ultimately forgettable comedy, Breen's agenda is the same as Barry's - to simply defy gravity.

• Until Saturday, then tours to Waterford, Dundrum, Castlebar and Limerick

My Brilliant Divorce

Town Hall Theatre, Galway

Patrick Lonergan

Geraldine Aron's My Brilliant Divorcehas been one of Druid's most successful recent shows. Premiering in 2001, this one-woman comedy originally featured American actor Glenne Headly as the unwilling divorcee Angela. The play then transferred to the West End, with Dawn French starring in a production that was later nominated for an Olivier Award.

Directed by Garry Hynes, this revival provides a welcome opportunity for Irish audiences to become acquainted with the play. We also get a chance to hear the script being delivered in an Irish accent for the first time, with Deirdre O'Kane providing a tremendously entertaining performance in the central role.

That casting decision proves hugely important. The original production was often impressive, but it was also difficult to understand why Druid was staging it. Because Headly delivered her lines in her own accent, the play's Irish elements seemed forced: it therefore felt like Druid had missed an opportunity to comment on divorce in Ireland, choosing instead to present something much closer to American sitcom. That production was also over-dependent on technological gadgetry such as voice-overs and visual projections - which at times felt like an attempt to distract the audience from what seemed an insubstantial script.

By depending almost entirely on O'Kane's skills as an actor and comedian, Hynes allows us to engage completely with a play that now seems compassionate, insightful, and extremely funny. As expected, O'Kane has marvellous comic timing, especially when exploring the thin line in sexual matters between desire and humiliation. She also fully exploits the comedic potential of accents, providing the voices of all of the play's supporting characters. But what most impresses is her ability to control the audience - not just with humour, but also with the use of silence, stance and gesture to signal changes of direction in the plot.

With so much to enjoy, does it matter if the conclusion contradicts everything that Angela says about gender, self-worth and individuality? Probably not - because what's being offered here is an opportunity to spend 80 minutes in a roomful of people who sound like they haven't laughed so much in ages.

• Tours to Ennis, Letterkenny, Longford, Sligo, Thurles, and Kilkenny until Dec 1

Slow Down

Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire

Michael Seaver

There are lots of ways for choreographers to create physical humour, but unfortunately most of them aren't really that funny. They can try slapstick or parody, but really, all those custard pies and camped-up tangos are merely prompting our own pre-programmed canned laughter.

True humour comes from the ordinary things in our daily lives, as proved by most stand-up comedians' material: pathetic little desires and self-importances that are hilarious because we take them so seriously.

In Slow Down, Martine Pisani has propped up a straight-faced mirror of ourselves that never cracks however much we laugh in its face. It's simple. Take the stand-up's template and translate it into movement.

Except it's not that simple. All of Pisani's stage nous is harnessed in creating a subtle bonding between audience and performer, where the stage becomes a shared playground. Yes, Slow Downis a collection of set-pieces, but most of the time it is the audience that must provide the punch-line. The humour is never bawled, rather left dangling in front of our faces until we get the joke, and that usually comes effortlessly, thanks to simple conventions with a logical - or, more funnily, illogical - conclusion.

The six po-faced performers face playful tasks such as making a comfortable bed out of bodies or taking a popular song apart so different people have responsibility for humming the tune, speaking the lyrics, miming the words, speaking the backing vocals and dancing to the rhythms. These are delivered with perfect timing by all of the dancers and the episodes gather a slowly rolling pace that never flags.

A lot of the humour is quite male, and the sole female, Tania Pieri, often plays the straight-gal who just looks on the guys with stony indifference. Each performer captures individual versions of this presence, which is a brilliant combination of bemusement, world-weariness and tolerance, making the meaningless tasks all the funnier.

Often there's no more serious business than contemporary dance, but Pisani's keen eye and skilled hand have created a dance that is light and witty in its delivery but razor-sharp in its significance.