Resonance – Éle Ní Chonbhuí
3.5 out of 5
Chloe Commins’ beautiful exploration of life growing up CODA (child of a deaf adult) is as mesmerising as it is meaningful. In this multifaceted theatre piece she combines aerial artistry, design, and ISL to create a storyline of struggle and relief. Though music pulsates throughout, no words are spoken and no text is given. Instead Commins uses light and movement with feeling to describe the richness of a silent world. The audience members participate in the show, in some cases directly but also by engaging with such a world many don’t participate in. At its best, Commins’ movement with the aerial ring highlights the inadequacy of words through the elegance of the moving human body.
Girl in a Cell Review – Tara Dempsey
4 out of 5
High energy, hilarity and doused in teenage bravado, the dramatic world of Jenna Walsh is brought to life by award-winning playwright Niamh Ryan in her newest piece Girl in a Cell. Ryan manages to strike a careful balance between juvenility and maturity in her script and in her performance as Jenna. Ryan displays a youthful joy that is underscored by the real depth of emotions Jenna feels as a young woman struggling with coming of age, illness, and bereavement. Effortlessly hilarious and captivating, Ryan keeps the audience transfixed in the form of a seventy-five-minute monologue piece. Where she gets her energy from is a mystery. The design elements of this show, though simple, add further substance to the piece. From the sterile white lights of hospital rooms to the dazzling fuchsia lights of Jenna’s dance competitions, Marie Hegarty creates a fantastical world with her lighting design. The set (Barbie-pink headstones adorned with teenage doodles) perfectly encapsulates the nuance between youth and maturity that is central to the show. Witty, tear-jerking, and thoughtful Girl in a Cell is a must-see this Fringe season.
MOSH – Éle Ní Chonbhuí
4.5 out of 5
Five dancers roar their way through intensive routines, snapshots of interviews, blaring recreations of performances, and heavy rock music in this invigorating show at the Project Arts Theatre. Rachel Ní Bhraonáin’s new show is, above everything else, life-affirming. It reminds you of how little in your life you actually get to push the capacities of the human body in a way that is exciting without being menacing. The live band frequently plays (extremely) loud music which allows the dancers to rage through an embodied performance that relieves all the stress and powerlessness that plagues us in our day to day lives. Moshing is explored as a concept using discussions of femininity and moshing, the unspoken etiquette of the pit, the feeling of performing to a crowd of moshers, and the kind of people you come across in the pit. Moshing emerges as an instinctive, almost animal, action of collectivity and joy.
Float – Libby Marchant
4 of 5
Perfect for college students, this play deals with heavy themes such as rape and sexual violence but also creates room for a discussion of identity and friendship as well. The girls (Kirby Thompson and Orla Graham) captured the dirtiness (like pure filthiness) of being a girl in her twenties. From the cardboard cutout of Danny DeVito, to last night’s vomit still sitting in your shower, they aren’t afraid to confront the reality of being in your twenties: which is that it can be really hard and lonely. With fantastic performances from Ellen Andrews, Leah Williamson & Annie McIlwaine, the show will have you laughing, crying and laughing some more. Please go and see it: And bring all of your most disorganised, most unlucky in love, most stressed out, best girlfriends.
Chiron – Alice Gogarty
2 out of 5
The choice to rework ancient myth into modern form may be bold, but stand-up is a fitting format for Chiron: A One-Centaur Show. It is the tale of the immortal centaur returned to the form of oral storytelling, this time right, if I may, from the horse’s mouth. Chiron’s roots are strong, the four-legged centaur costume a delight, and Fionn Cleary has a mean bank of impressions up his sleeve guaranteed to pull audible laughs from his audience. Overall, however, the show seems afraid to assert itself, lacking self-conviction – that essential ingredient which gives any live performance its spark. When Cleary shakes off the nervousness and breaks through this block with his sharply funny range of accents and deadpan delivery the show is animated and satisfying in the way all good belly laughs are. It is just a shame many of these moments are clouded by a return to the faint-heartedness
which colours much of the performance.
Who Wants To Write An Email – Amy Callery
1 out of 5
Who Wants to Write An Email is an interactive game show whereby the host, Laura Allcorn, invites audience members to finish the sentences of AI emails with the help of Jennifer Edmond, Associate Professor of the School Office Language Lit and Cult Studies at TCD. This show pitched an interesting idea that unfortunately was poorly executed. Allcorn seemed constantly hesitant towards her lines while Edmond’s academic explanations of AI led to the well-known conclusion that AI is “vague and expressive”. Tensions arose on multiple occasions between the hosts over timekeeping, audience members’ opinions were asked for then overruled and all of the game show’s rules were broken so that the chosen audience member may reach the next round. A show with no stakes, little integrity and poor theatre practise, Who Wants to Write An Email was wildly out of line with the artistic risk and passion expected at Dublin Fringe Festival.
Persona Metropolitana – Libby Marchant
2.5 out of 5
Look, I’m not the biggest fan of what my father would call ‘fierce modern’ art. Written at the Fringe Lab by Annachiara Vispi, Persona Metropolitana is personal, interactive, emotional and well-executed. Between being greeted personally at the door (by the talented actor Ciara Berkely), and then doing ‘hands up’ polls throughout the show, I felt a sort of awkward camaraderie with the audience members. Which I suppose is exactly what Vispi hoped to achieve. The piece is about the suffocation and excitement of cities. A partnership between spoken word and dance, at times the experience of watching the stage is psychedelic. However, at other times, it was just a little too Out There. Did Giulia Macrì really have to move those chairs with her toes? The show also gave a pretty bleak view of city life, which I suppose was a fair assessment but still left me feeling depressed at the end of it. Overall though, a unique, memorable and at times, amusing, piece of work.
