Theatre review: 0800 Cupid leverages its Cork connections to create a five-star experience
Emer Dineen is the person behind 0800 Cupid, currently showing at Dublin Theatre Festival.
★★★★★
Emer Dineen’s 0800 Cupid will likely be remembered as a highlight – if not the highlight – of Dublin Theatre Festival 2024.
Set mostly in Soho in London, and based on real life events, the show opens with Dineen performing as her drag king alter ego, Cupid, before ricocheting from the Pinky nightclub to her caretaker home in a former post office to the call-centre where she just about manages a day job.
Her personal life is best described as tumultuous. She has Tourette’s, her father has dementia, her former girlfriend has taken up with a new lover named Grape, and she soon discovers that the old post office is also home to 70,000 bees.
Presented by THISISPOPBABY and directed by Philip McMahon, there are many memorable scenes in the play - an accidental psychedelic mushroom trip, an unfortunate call to a suicide helpline, an hilarious run-in with two devout Christians in a church - but it is the encounters between Dineen and her Cork-born father, who wears a cowboy hat and sits with his back to the audience, that are the most deeply affecting. They seem to ground her character, albeit in a challenging reality.
Many will remember their twenties as a time of great confusion, but working in the cultural sector surely amplifies the difficulties. Dineen’s inability to maintain relationships, to secure steady work, or even to find fulfilment in her creativity will surely resonate with anyone seeking to establish themselves in the arts, but it is to her credit that she always finds black comedy in the chaos of her life.
Throughout the show, Dineen is ably supported by Carl Harrison and Isabel Adomakoh Young, who play any number of characters - from her bosses to her colleagues and friends, and even some of the aforementioned bees - and an excellent live band comprising Osazee Aiguokhian on bass, Tom Beech on keys and Michael McCarthy on drums.
But Dineen is clearly the star. As well as writing the show, she co-wrote the songs, many of them immediate earworms, and proves herself to be a powerful singer.
0800 Cupid was supported by Cork Midsummer Festival and the Jane Anne Rothwell Award, and, given the enthusiasm with which it has been received thus far, will surely have a long life beyond its current sold-out run at the Project.
- Further information: dublintheatrefestival.ie
