★★★★★
ANU & Cois Céim
*Extended run: 25th Oct – 13th Nov*
Sept 27 – Oct 16th
85/86 Upper Dorset St
Dublin Theatre Festival
These Rooms, a collaborative endeavour of ANU Productions and Cois Céim, is an immersive theatrical experience, combining drama and dance. Taking historical accounts of a massacre that happened on North King Street during the 1916 rebellion as its basis, the performance explores how trauma can seep into buildings. Space holds memories and ghosts, forever held in the thrall of the past. Housed in an old bank on Dorset Street that also happened to be Sean O’Casey’s home, the setting has been transformed into an uncannily accurate space from the 1960s, at the 50th anniversary of the Rising. The rooms are furnished with meticulous attention to detail, so much so that walking through them is incredibly surreal. The actors – all giving fantastic performances – traverse the space, seamlessly blending dance and movement pieces into their interactions and monologues. These pieces are searingly effective, touching and disconcerting all at once – another dimension is given to their lines when accompanied by movement that baldly displays the emotion of the moment.
The audience begins their experience in a bar for the first scene, before being split up and ushered through different routes where the rooms become steadily more surreal. In one, wall-to-wall mirrors completely disorient you, while surprises lie behind every door – some shocking, some touching, all deeply affecting. The emphasis is on the impact that the massacre had on the women who were left behind after their sons and husbands were brutally killed. Sound and lighting design accentuate the experience, and a creeping nervousness follows each audience member as they make their own way through the space. The experience is dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish – you feel simultaneously engaged and voyeuristic. There is no chronological narrative to follow, just pockets of action taking place throughout the house, the threads of which each audience member has to pick up of their own accord. Each person’s experience of These Rooms is unique, but all will leave the performance with the feeling of having experienced something deeply personal.
Owen Boss’ production design is startlingly good – no stone is left unturned when it comes to detail. Some of the rooms reflect mindscapes or the topography of a dream, with gaping holes in the walls framing the actors perfectly. Stories are also woven into the space through video installations and recordings. The experience feels cinematic at times, with the views from one area of the space granting another perspective on the action happening somewhere else. Sounds from other rooms spill over into others, and the whole building is alive with movement. The production plays with perspectives on multiple levels – on the top floor, a hollow-eyed British soldier sits stricken and speaks a haunting monologue. Potential individual encounters with the actors make the piece intense and sobering: there is no nobility in the deaths and suffering experienced by the residents, and in the brief hour you wander through the space you feel as if you know the women and men affected. The beauty and cleverness of the piece lies in its ability to deftly present intensely real people, who require nothing more than observation to see how human they are, and how shattering the losses they suffered were. The actors inhabit the space like ghosts, stuck in repetitive action, unable to move past trauma. In the wake of the 1916 centenary celebrations, this brilliantly executed piece prompts disquieting questions about the nature of history, trauma and the past.
