The sharp and the blunt

The latest reviews from the Dublin Fringe Festival.

Seeds 3: Caligula
Project Cube

If life is meaningless, arbitrary and unreasonably cruel, why shouldn't that also be a system of governance? That's the question posed by the ideological tyrant Caligula (Will O'Connell) in David Greig's recent version of Camus's play, in which the Roman emperor - who is quite, quite mad - delivers a manifesto for psychotic existentialism. Conor Hanratty's absorbing production is alert to the momentum of the debate, but also aware of its shortcomings: it is hard to sustain the ruse that Caligula's perverted logic is irrefutable. If the increasingly one-note exchanges do not always hold our focus, then, the aesthetic will - a blend of serene minimalism and stately (if inexplicable) Asian allusions, playing sly games with gender.

The play rarely allows human feeling to clamber out of Camus's schematic - "that's a side issue," says one character, referring to the slaughter - but Hanratty, O'Connell and his cast find the necessary restraint and purpose to make this an involving - and relevant - discussion on the perversion of logic to dreadful ends. (Runs until Sat) Peter Crawley

Dog Show: Fido
Samuel Beckett Theatre

With an excellent cast, solid production values and an original idea at its centre, Peer Pressure's production should be worth at least four stars. But while Garrett Keogh's script begins very strongly and engages the audience with its depiction of the bloated selfishness of contemporary Celtic Tiger society, it rapidly runs out of steam and drifts away into tedium. Lack of pace is a serious problem, as is inconsistency. For example, the production uses video clips very effectively for one episode, but then drops the idea, leaving the video monitors unused on the stage.

The cast works very hard: Johnny Murphy as the eponymous stray dog, Lisa Lambe in an underwritten role as a Wag and Luke Griffin as her hapless partner in crime all do their best, and there is strong support from Pat Laffan and Gerry O'Brien. But ultimately this dog lacks bark, let alone bite. (Runs until Sun) Noeleen Dowling

Ciotóg - How Did We Get Here?
Project

Playfulness comes across in, this as in Ríonach Ní Néill's other work. The three dancers - Ella Clarke, Karla Holden and Niklas Laustiola - appear even before the actual start of the piece (or at least, before the security announcements), mummified by pink knitted costumes pulled over their heads. After inching and writhing about the stage like caterpillars, other times erect with slow, Butoh-like movement, the white noise clicks out and the atmosphere changes.

"I am the performer, but you are the show," the dancers sing as house lights go up. The energy of the performance feels light-hearted as the dancers test one another's strength and resolve like wilful but good-natured children.

The final accordion-spiced waltz feels the strongest element of the production, with all three dancers echoing the 3/4 rhythm in their seamless interaction with each other.

Although enjoyable, this is not the finest example of dancer and choreographer Ní Néill's ability - one anticipates increasingly notable work from this talented artist in the future. (Runs until Sat). Christine Madden

Some Explicit Polaroids
Players Theatre, TCD

"We started out with society and ended up with individuals." So speaks a character in Mark Ravenhill's shrill 1999 play concerning a generation's decision to jettison ideology and devote itself to hedonism. Following the travails of a recovering class warrior as he emerges from prison after serving a sentence for slicing up an archetypal fat cat, the play, with its unsatisfactory structure, carries inadvertent echoes of that dissolution into discrete quanta.

The drama's various emotional transactions - between lovers, friends and politicians in a poisonous version of Blair's London - feature copious acute social observations, but fail to merge into any sort of cohesive whole. Still, despite some serious problems with wandering accents, GoLightly Productions, under the direction of Shane Carr, manage to fashion a fairly respectable production out of the flawed text. Jason Nelson is excellent in the central role and the sparse settings nicely mirror the baldness of the dialogue. (Runs until Sun) Donald Clarke

Dublin City Counselling
New Theatre

Nine people file into a Dublin waiting room and their interconnected stories emerge as forcefully as bullets from a scattergun. An arachnophobic joyrider loses a father; a bereaved taxi driver loses his mind; a raped girl-guide loses her moral compass; a gay escort loses his heart and nerve. This highly-charged, coal-black piece of theatre, written and directed by Neil Watkins, is about the lives of those on the margins in Dublin and is devastatingly funny in its relentless cruelty.

Confessions by the wounded of society here are not therapeutic; they are disturbingly convincing testimonies of people who know they cannot be mended by simply acknowledging their pain. Although uneven in places, and sadly let down by its attempts at conclusion, this is still a terrific show. To carry the audience across the Styx of this show is a brilliantly subversive and hilarious use of Irish music throughout: Dana's All Kinds of Everything, where the cast mime the use of "all kinds of everything", including drugs, drink and dildos, is particularly unforgettable. (Runs until Sun) Rosita Boland

At Peace
O'Reilly Theatre

In this, the final part of Declan Gorman's Border Trilogy, Upstate Theatre Company commits to representing the complexity of contemporary multi-ethnic Irish life. However, even if At Peace were a trilogy itself it couldn't possibly contain such an abundance of conflicting storylines and performance traditions.

Gorman's play attempts to explore the place of ritual, spirituality and transcendence in the modern world. But it is also concerned with the more pedestrian social circumstances that shape our lives; circumstances such as sectarian strife, racism, murder, domestic violence and deportation. Elements of Celtic, European and Yoruban mythology are woven into the fast-paced action through traditional storytelling and folk song, and the international cast adeptly negotiate their way between the different elements of the story unfolding in real and mythic time.

Unfortunately, the juxtaposition of outlandish plot devices and multicultural mythologies is chaotic rather than convincing. Dissonance may be the point of At Peace, but I doubt it. (Runs until Sun) Sara Keating

Caliper Boy
Players Theatre

A man and a woman prowl the stage, writhing and twisting as they bring to life the spirit of Caliper Boy, the mythic son of a prostitute who escapes his cellar prison. The confusion of the outside world is soundtracked by folk trio Left Without Pictures (who survived the theft of their bass guitar before the show without missing a beat).

Actors Pia Nordin and Terry O'Donovan move between physical synchonicity and schism. As their bodies contort around each other, corporeal distortions come to echo the mental confusion of the abandoned child. When all five figures momentarily weave their bodies into a tableau of exquisite clarity, it comes as a shock to note how deep into disorientation the performers have led us.

Overall, however, it is the score that sticks in the mind. Rambling and jarring, it tells of urban chaos and the city dweller's dislocation. Like the other aspects of this compelling drama, it speaks to the lonely and confused child inside every adult. (Runs until Sun) Denis Clifford

Seeds 3: Pilgrims of The Night
Project Cube

Any show whose motley characters are lured together in a hunt for UFOs demands a high threshold for kook and whimsy. While Len Jenkins's play stridently alludes to The Canterbury Tales, it's his acrylic-bright American absurdum with which Sophie Motley's production keenly resonates. To that end we get a set that is as much a TV studio or a playground as the suggested ferry terminal, where the pilgrims' time-passing series of comic yarns are as involved in telling stories as exposing the mechanics of their construction. Some, such as a dancing zombie skit and a mad-scientist sketch, have a disarming and hilarious silliness to them. It is not always easy to swallow - the character-based warmth often threatens to congeal into schmaltz, and overall it's too long - but you are won over by the enthusiasm and confidence of the cast, where the smooth role-switching of Joe Roch, John Hollingworth and Kelly Gough in particular underscores a production that has clearly worked so hard to seem so light, so effortless. (Runs until Sat) Peter Crawley

Maria Tecce
The Cobalt Cafe

With a shiny new repertoire, much of it soaked in a musky eau de Barcelona, Maria Tecce alights on everything from Ástor Piazzolla's Yo soy Maria to Sister Sadie and the Pointer Sisters' Slow Hand with the gracefulness of a ballerina and the attention deficit of a dilettante. Curiously, her voice soars further on her Spanish repertoire, as if the linguistic border-crossing lends it a further velveteen layer in which to luxuriate. Tecce's trio of musicians strike unexpected chords in the background, Oleg Ponomarev, Drazen Derek and Francesco Torrisi stitching fiddle, guitar, accordion and piano through her vocals with the ease of musicians as much at home with jazz and blues as they are with gospel and torch-song trilogies. The Cobalt Cafe proved a surprisingly sonically dead venue, swallowing Tecce's vocals prematurely, but her penchant for winsome eclecticism was tempered by interludes of sheer theatrical brilliance. (Runs until Sat) Siobhán Long

All Dolled Up
Project

"This is a collection of snapshots of a life in drag," drag queen Panti-aren't-I-fabulous declares. Although it's all great fun - scarily convincing lip-synching, audience repartee, demented messages she receives on her Bebo page - there is a serious and bitter-sweet undertow here that pulls ever more strongly as this autobiographical show progresses. The sharp, funny and moving observations of someone who performs in drag for a living tell us, through a series of stories, what it is like to be treated simultaneously as entertainer and outsider by society. There's a resounding irony in her story of being dropped from Celebrity You're A Star after establishment suits in RTÉ got nervous during rehearsal (her nominated charity was to be a HIV one); she tells us later in the show that she is HIV positive. A deserved standing ovation for this show, which is as thoughtful as it is high-camp. (Runs until Sat)  Rosita Boland

Come Up and See Me:  A Peek at Mae West
New Theatre

There is not really too much mileage to be had from Mae West today. America's sex symbol of the 1920s and 1930s was unique, a calculatedly vulgar icon of her times. So she discovered Cary Grant, wrote show scripts and was the highest paid woman in Hollywood; but that was long ago and far away.

Natasha Czopor does a good imitation of her subject in the manner of a cartoon. She exaggerates certain features - the sultry voice, body swivelling, style of singing - with verve, but hardly achieves a shift of identity. This is one performer paying tribute to another.

The songs, mostly razzmatazz numbers, are hardly memorable, and the performer is not helped by a defective radio mike. Only one, the slow ballad My Old Flame, still lingers. The five musicians are excellent, and the trumpeter, Bill Blackmore, is outstanding. (Runs until Sun) Gerry Colgan