Keeping down with the Joneses

The King’s Feet

The Lir Academy, Studio 2

***

Out in the dystopian desert, a “professional” couple are under financial pressure until family turn up to strike a deal in exchange for a dirty day job. Not even the shadow of Big Brother can cool down this bleak future of rationed wine and microwaved burgers.

Margaret McAuliffe offers a commendable performance, digging in her middle-class heels and resisting the step down of “doing the bins”, as well as articulating her frustration with her husband Liam’s (Barry O’Connor) increasingly low-rent behaviour and gig.

But Louise Melinn and Maírín O’Grady’s story feels both repetitive and incomplete. The process of recycling and talk of hypothetical prospective jobs, along with tedious interventions from a surveillance/communications bot (played well by Jill Harding), motor along until the hurried conclusion.

Surely there’s a more exciting hook on which to hang both resistance and compliance in a quasi-totalitarian society than chiropody and rubbish bags?

Ends Sept 14