Shows of emotion at the Fringe

THE sun has set on another Dublin Fringe Festival and on the five-year tenure of its artistic director, Róise Goan. She should be proud of the performing arts festival, even if this year it was hit-and-miss.

Dylan Coburn Gray’s monologue play, Boys and Girls, about four college students enjoying a night of abandon in the city, won the Fishamble new writing award. The coveted Spirit of the Fringe award went to Louise White, for her slice of contemporary theatre, Way Back Home, which used multiple formal practices to express the waywardness of Ireland post-boom.

Another winner was Lippy. A piece of post-dramatic theatre penned by Bush Moukarzel and Mark O’Halloran, it won best production and best design. Lippy was the real-life story of the suicide pact of four women in Leixlip. Rather than dramatise the psychological narrative ‘behind’ the women’s actions, the play emphasised the impossibility of ever knowing. Moukarzel and his co-director, Ben Kidd, suggest that ‘truth’ is merely a projection. The latter is a familiar refrain in modern art, but its delivery in Lippy was impressive. Lippy created a delirious, fever-dream aesthetic midway through.