WORDS Aine O’Connell

 

Dublin has always been a city of contrast. The wealthy walk swiftly past the poor. No work I have seen illustrates this more vividly than ANU Productions’ Constituent(s). It begins at a LUAS stop where the audience waits for forty minutes, watching shiny new trams glide by. They are then guided to a preserved tram from the 1900’s. It is easy to see where this is going: Dublin.

A LUAS stop and then a re-enactment of a Dublin long gone by.  A roughly-dressed Dublin lad hops on the tram, shouting about standing with Big Jim Larkin. He tells of a Dublin that is in chaos and would we not rise up with him? His brother is missing, the audience enraptured by his retelling of a Dublin mired in political chaos, poverty and hardship.

The performance is suddenly interrupted by two strongly-accented, tracksuit-wearing Dubs. Hurling insults, shouting, punching: the interruption is shocking.  The lead actor disappears and Fringe volunteers try to calm the chaos, but to no avail. The locals lock the door, and it’s just the audience and their rage.

By beginning Constituent(s) in a time gone by, ANU Productions have oh-so-cleverly created a contrast between actor and audience. The screaming row between the two Dubliners quickly dies down to heated debate – he has no money, she can’t feed the kids. She has to queue for bread in the mornings while he lazes about. The actors address the audience – “and here yous are, watching a play?”. The effect is mesmerising and terrifying. Instead of the poverty of 1913, the poverty of 2013 is brought sharply into focus – exposing the audience as those who turned their backs, the “scabs” of the 1913 Lockout.

Part of a series of thirteen spectacles linked to the Dublin Lockout, Constituent(s) leaves the viewer raw and uneasy, still unsure if what just happened was real or not. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter – be they actors or real people, the wealthy continue to walk past the poor, and Dublin remains, as it always has been, a city of contrast.