Dublin Fringe Festival: “The Friday Night Effect” at Smock Alley Three young housemates, Jamie, Sive and Collette, embark on a night out in Dublin. We know from the beginning that Colette will be dead by the end of the night.

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Dublin’s Fringe Festival is a safe space to test the murky waters of audience participation in theatre. Towards the end of what has been a stellar festival of exploration, Smock Alley’s audience felt decidedly content and enthusiastic. The creators of The Friday Night Effect, Sunday’s Child, are a theatre group well versed in Fringe success, winning the 2015 Fishamble Prize for Best New Writing in Overshadowed and the 2014 First Fortnight Award for their production of My Name Is Saoirse. The premise of this year’s attempt is interestingly straightforward: three young housemates, Jamie, Sive and Collette, embark on a night out in Dublin. We know from the beginning that Colette will be dead by the end of the night, but it is up to the audience to unravel how this happens.

Upon arrival, a coloured card directs you to the other members of your team, conveniently sitting around you. At crucial points during the story, an extradiegetic narrator gives the audience options as to the decisions the girls can make, and it is the majority choice of the audience which dictates where the story goes. It is clever and compelling. One must question their morality in decisions such as giving in to drink, reporting sexual harassment, whether to lie to the police or tell the truth. While entertainment value was definitely a factor in the audience’s thought-process, after being asked “What would you do in this situation?” the more genuine moral decision usually prevailed.

The show teeters on the edge of both rom-com and social commentary. Interwoven between  friendship dramatics, drink, drugs and unce-unce music, the show’s discourse tackles mental health, alcoholism, domestic abuse, and boundaries of relationships. Interspersed with flashbacks and soliloquies, Eva O’Connor and Hildegard Ryan’s script heralds hilarity: Jamie justifying her affair with her mother’s fiancée as a ‘tragic collision of daddy issues and a dry spell’ being typical of the play’s quips. The skills of the cast were best shown in their realisation of the tropes of the modern Irish. Every stereotype from the arrogant D4 rugby-head to the well-meaning clueless culchie made an appearance.

While the audience is not quite given the agency I expected, this method works well in engaging the audience in a somewhat lacklustre plot-line and annoying characters. The Friday Night Effect might not reach the award-winning heights of Sunday’s Child’s previous efforts, but it will be a welcome addition to the Fringe canon.

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