The Galloglass Theatre Company has revived an adaptation by Alan Leigh of Gulliver's Travels, with a different director and a significant change in approach. The mordant satire of Swift's original is emphasised to touch today's nerves more tellingly.
So Lemuel Gulliver is here a chauvinistic Englishman, thrown by chance and foolhardiness into the strangest of societies. In Lilliput he feels superior but offends the king and is obliged to flee. Among the giants he is the slave and jester, and is found inferior. On Laputa, impractical theorists boost his ego.
His final adventure unmans him. Revolted by the brutish Yahoos, unmistakably his own kind, and brought to worship the noble horses called Houyhnhnms, he is brought to the edge of madness, unable again to accept the morals and practices common to mankind.
This is meaty fare, well served up by the director and her cast of two. John Gannon is Gulliver, finally tragic in his self-awareness. Karen Scully is, with the aid of puppets and masks, Everyone Else, and deploys a vocal and comic range that is altogether beguiling. Their sophisticated capers are conducted by Theresia Guschlbauer with a fine sensitivity and a sure touch.
Katherine Sankey's set design is highly creative, adapting itself to a shipwreck, island, different terrains - a finishing touch to an absorbing production.
Continues in Clonmel until tonight, to book phone 052-26797; then goes on tour to the Friar's Gate Theatre, Kilmallock (Wednesday), the Everyman Palace, Cork (Thursday to Saturday), the Briery Gap, Macroom, (June 18th), Town Hall Theatre, Skibbereen (June 19th), the Community Youth Centre, Fermoy (June 20th), Danlann an Chlair, Ennis (June 22nd), the Town Hall, Nenagh (June 23rd), Prosperous Theatre, Co Kildare (June 24th) and St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, from June 29th; previews from June 27th.