Freshers Week has come to an end, you can put away your society salesmanship and free cinnamon donut vouchers. It’s time to start focusing on real work, and by real work I mean those things you were supposed to do before the drunken blur of shaking hands and remembering old faces but not quite old names. Dublin Fringe Festival 2017 has come to a close. It’s time to move on and put some of these average plays behind us, the plays that trickle in after the deadline, the plays that weren’t bad enough to make fun of but not good enough to really care about.
Murder Town was not a bad play, nor was it a particularly good one. In fact, the entire premise seemed to work better as an improv sketch show, but found itself falling into the trap of trying to tick theatrical boxes that seemed to get in the way. It is clear that Erin McGathy is one hell of a funny person. Before the play, I was familiar with her guest appearances in Harmontown, which led to her marrying the creator of Rick and Morty and Community, Dan Harmon.
Don’t let their brief marriage fool you, McGathy is funny in her own right. The show was successfully funny throughout, sometimes relying on stereotypical characters, all of which were impressively portrayed by McGathy. At times the simplest road to a laugh is the most effective. Despite relying on the hackneyed ‘American idiot’ character, McGathy notably captured the audience’s attention as this murder victim’s boyfriend. All of the characters had a certain blissful ignorance. This left regular playgoers in the audience a little confused who exactly they were supposed to be rooting for in this play; all of the characters seemed to be purposely unlikeable for simple comic effect. Yes, the audience laughed throughout, but is that really the only goal in comedy theatre? Shouldn’t the characters grow as people? It all seemed rather half measured.
One of the highlights of the play was seeing Erin McGathy interact with the audience in character, similar to the improv roles we’re more familiar in seeing her perform. It’s exactly the sort of thing she should have incorporated more into her performance. Her ability to work the crowd was fantastic, yet there wasn’t much of it. There seemed to be a certain amount of time that was wasted on making this a play when really it should have been an out and out sketch comedy.
Nevertheless, the play was consistently funny, well-acted and had the very occasional touching moment. All in all, seeing this play was an enjoyable experience although it didn’t excel. There isn’t anything wrong with that, you didn’t get a first but hey, you didn’t have any repeats. A 2.2 is pretty good, not great, but you passed. Now it’s time to move on to a new year, a new life, and a new play.
Rating: ●●●○○
