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The Chairs: Northern Bank, Belfast. Belfast is currently basking in something of an Ionesco Fest. After Kabosh's stunning, unnerving Box comes the absurd slapstick of Tinderbox's The Chairs.
Jimmy Fay's production is a marvellous piece of other-worldliness, its characters a mixture of two-dimensional animated figures and Guignol puppets; its environment a claustrophobic, circular room, inset with eight single doors and two tall windows; outside the room lies nothing but water and silence; the lives inside are fuelled by a constantly-repeated mantra of rueful memories and word games, reaching back almost a century. It is difficult to find an adequate description for the extraordinary physical transformation, achieved by Sean Kearns, as the towering, bowed Old Man, and Carol Moore as the tiny, birdlike Old Woman.
