2 shows 20 September 2008
It’s strange being home so to mark that I did something I haven’t done in a while – I went to 2 theatre shows today. The Dublin Fringe Festival is drawing to a close and the Dublin Theatre Festival is about to kick off so it’s a dream time for theatre here in the capital city. The shows could not have been more different. The matinee, called THE DARK ROOM, was like a gay cabaret but dark, dark, darker than that – mostly about a drag queen who infects unsuspecting lovers. Great, interesting, disturbing, though not quite as shocking as I think we were supposed to find it (that’s the jaded 21st century for you – we’ve kinda seen it all) Tonight it was a show based in a disused secondary school about school days, so that of itself was scary. I don’t think there was anyone there who didn’t feel they were more than 5 minutes away from being hauled into the principal’s office to be read the riot act, or about to get detention for cheek or not handing in an essay. I think that is a universal thing for us all – we never lose those feelings, it’s probably still a residue of guilt left over from not working hard enough when we were ‘in the system’. The audience of 14 got keys and followed the action alone in each room in whatever sequence the starting number dictated and there were also communal scenes too. It was fab. So inventive. Some of the rooms just held installations, others were full on action. It made total use of a great location (genuinely a disused school) and there was a kind of creepy feel to the place. Oh, and my cousin, Maeve McGowan, was fantastic in it as a teacher who just could not handle those nightmare kids (she got to spend most of the night in tatters crying, then had a wonderful end scene in which she was really funny). The whole spectacle was directed by Louise Lowe for her own company Performance Lab and anything she does is always worth going to.
So what can I tell those of you who ain’t in Dublin? Well, the G cat is a bit miffed not to be blogging more but is acting all cool about it, which means her retribution will be biblical and awful (and guess who’ll get smote most? yup, yours truly).
Richard is aghast that a Russian translation thingy on the interweb that he uses every so often to help him when he writes to people is actually probably not telling them what he intends. I told him that’s what it’s like for me when I use him as my translator. I remind him of the time I asked the people at the fabulous Klara Bara in Odessa whether the cat always outside was domestic and had really asked ‘is that a homemade cat?’ Language, eh? We say one thing and mean another..and then some…
