The New Electric Ballroom

Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaois Apr 11-12 Town Hall Theatre, Galway Apr 15-19 Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork Apr 21-25 8pm €15-€25 (depending on venue)
For a writer with such a remarkable way with words, Enda Walsh has rarely shown much faith in the things. "What are we if we're not our stories?" asked The Walworth Farce, a startling play where nobody could ever be defined by their ridiculous yarns.

In The New Electric Ballroom, Walsh’s grimly amusing, skewed fairy tale, it’s three sisters who talk themselves into a corner.

Shut off from the world beyond their kitchen – which, in Druid’s production, gives the impression of a universe in ruins – Rosaleen Linehan, Ruth McCabe and Catherine Walsh, joined by Mikel Murfi, slip compellingly into Walsh’s riveting predicament: to be “stamped by story”, and “boxed with words”.

Those confines give the playwright ample opportunity for wicked fun with sacred traditions: families, biscuits, the Virgin Mary and a hot-pink sponge cake each come in for rough treatment.

That dark surrealism somehow touches a nerve and leaves you with questions that linger long after the final bow. What are we, for instance, if we really are these stories?

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Moby DickKilworth Village Arts Centre, Cork and touring the country.