Hit and Run

DAVID Bolger has again delivered the goods, only this time it's the baddies, in his brilliantly choreographed Hit and Run for CoisCeim Dance - Theatre in the Project at the Mint until Saturday.

Last night the invited audience roared its approval as the gangsters finally bit the dust in a hail of bullets after 55 minutes of frenetic dance without an interval.

I must not reveal the surprise opening, in which the biter is bit as, clutching our detectives' notebooks, we found ourselves eyeballed by characters we would hate to meet in Henry Place on the way home.

In a black box set, designed Bolger, with white lines, a bench and a juke box, we are confronted in turn by James Hosty's thug, Daryn Crosbie's sleazeball, J.J. Formento's sinister oriental, Muirne Bloomer's moll with her inevitable fag, the constantly chewing Bolger who might be a copper's nark, and so on.

As the apt score by Conor Kelly and Sam Park of Bell Helicopter ranges from smoochy to threatening to violent, with screaming sirens, the dancers don shades or feather boas, before reaching for the sky, pulling a gun, swinging a baseball bat, having their arms twisted behind their backs or, in Bolger's case, being beaten up and his privates kicked by the girls.

Liz Roche, Justine Doswell and Simone Litchfield compete for the spotlight, while the last named is brilliantly acrobatic and Bloomer and Formento outdo the Karma Sutra in their ultimately disastrous efforts, but all eight dancers execute exciting lifts, turns and jumps without ever going out of character.

Stephen McManus lights the show splendidly in this welcome new space with its fine floor for dance.

Call up the gang and hit the Mint tonight.