Dublin Fringe Festival reviews

A look at what is happening in the Dublin Fringe Festival

Automatic Id (AID)**
Project, Space Upstairs

The ease with which she interacted with the set for a later show in Project suggested an improvisatory feel to Vania Gala's solo. Unfortunately, so did the endless repetitions and flaccid structure. A sequence of walking from one pose to another, jumping down into splits, and folding at her joints was promised to lead us to a exploration of self-identity as it is assailed by modern-day ills, such as shopping and Hollywood. But aside from the rhetoric of flinging off her wig and heels - and the concomitant louder music - it was an unconvincing argument. Patience was pushed during running in circles that was ended by a foot snagged in the set and jitters that suggested robotic malfunction. The structural stasis wasn't helped by the aural techno-gloom and infatuation with contorted shapes at the expense of theatrical guile. - Michael Seaver

• Until Sat

El Conquistador!***
Players Theatre

Versatile American actor Thaddeus Phillips's technically flawed one-man show is set in Bogotá, Colombia, and loosely follows a week in the life of Polonius, a Colombian doorman. Having persuaded a clutch of Colombian TV actors to improvise scenes as the residents of a Latin-American high-rise, these snippets form a wall of video which Phillips, as doorman-cum-psychotherapist, stud and barman, interacts with by intercom. This could have been a funny and exciting evening, parodying the excesses of Colombian TV soaps, with a sprinkling of Hamlet and a meditation on what Christopher Columbus ever did for South America. In rapid-fire Spanish, while navigating his way through a complex design, Phillips (a former collaborator with the innovative Robert Lepage) almost made it happen, but the show was not ready for a first night. Besieged by technical problems, the evening turned into a public dress rehearsal; with the kinks ironed out, however, this could be joyous. - Hilary Fannin

• Until Sat

Exile*****
SS Michael and John

The Greek legend of Jason and Medea is a huge epic. It is both heroic (the Argo and the golden fleece) and tragic (Jason's betrayal and Medea's murder of her children). To stage it with any richness of texture would take a cast of dozens, a vast stage machinery and at least five hours. Or, in the case of the Swedish company Teater Slava's marvellous version, an empty space, six actors, one hour and a collective imagination of luscious fertility. The glory of this version is that it combines the minimalism of the 1960s avant garde with a big, brassy sense of scale, achieved not with array of resources but with the masterful use of a dazzling variety of forms. The actors are multi-faceted, singing superbly, dancing with power and conviction and enunciating in a sonorous Swedish that does not need to be comprehended in order to be understood. They draw on eastern Mediterranean folk song and dance, on jingoistic music hall, on illusionist tricks and shamanic rituals, as well on straight drama. With the economy of concentrated artistry, they populate the stage with animals and demons, with kings and witches, with sweet tenderness and terrifying savagery, giving life and meaning to the tired phrase "total theatre". What they create is far too singular and far too good to miss. - Fintan O'Toole

• Until Sat

Eveline Syndrome***
The Ark

In this experimental work from the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, four women - nicely contrasting in physical aspect and vocal timbre - use James Joyce's short story Eveline as the starting point for their attempt to, as the programme notes have it, "come to a proper understanding of their sex". Only they will know if they have succeeded in this lofty aim, but they have devised striking set-pieces and knotted together playfully entertaining narrative strands. One grieves for her mother. Another primly types magical stories. A gutturally polyglottal third gives birth to the fourth, a charismatic Northern Irish sprite. In truth, the striking individual sections don't fit together into any kind of cohesive whole. But, staged on a stark set containing mirrorless frames and cardboard boxes, Eveline Syndrome is captivating enough in spurts to distract from its overall obscurity. - Donald Clarke

• Ends today

I Have Before Me A Remarkable Document Given To Me By A Young Lady From Rwanda*****
Liberty Hall

Sonja Linden's play begins with a film of the massacres in Rwanda in 1994, when 1,000,000 people were killed in 100 days, and we are numbed. When the savagery is reduced to the story of two people whose lives are affected by it, the lesser comprehends the greater, and the tragedy bites until we feel the pain. A young refugee in London comes to a centre to learn how to write a book, an account of her family's near-extinction. Her tutor is a poet and failed novelist. His innate sensitivity reaches out to his pupil, and the book is finally written, while he rediscovers his muse in the process. Madeline Appiah's mercurial performance is wonderfully balanced by Michael James Ford's connected portrayal. Directed by Bairbre Ní Chaoimh, the play and its actors create a Fringe highlight to savour. - Gerry Colgan

• Until Oct 1