Man of Valour

Everyman Palace Theatre. Previews June 21-22 €15 Opens June 23-25 8pm (Sun 26 mat 3pm) €25/€20 021-4501673 everymanpalace.com

The news is bad. The future's bleak. It's really cold for this time of year . . . We need a hero. Such nagging powerlessness is enough to drive you into the folds of fantasy or to set your demons loose and shrieking into the world. That is roughly what happens to the tax office drone Farrell Blinks (a creation of the quick-witted physical performer Paul Reid), whose solitary, subservient life creates a ferocious alter ego in his mind. Think Walter Mitty meets Jerry Bruckheimer over a game of Portal 2and you're halfway there.

An action-adventure movie funnelled into a one-man stage performance is no small order and though The Corn Exchange is working with restricted means in straitened times, the canvas for imagination has grown wider and more vivid.

The special effects in this story of quest and redemption are mostly in Reid’s performance, though, conjuring spaces and sounds from nothing, while director Annie Ryan and writer Michael West help sculpt the world around him.

A man of action may offer escapist entertainment, they know, but he can also let us realise our own agency and creativity.

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