Dublin Theatre Festival reviews: Anu impress with tale of inner-city Cyclone
Sheik Bah and Michael Glenn Murphy in Cyclone, part of Dublin Theatre Festival. Picture: Patricio Cassinoni
Anu Productions can always be relied upon to put the Dublin in Dublin Theatre Festival, and Cyclone is no different. It evokes the vanished world of Monto, Dublin’s old slum and brothel area near what’s now Connolly Station. It’s a place teeming with untold stories, of the kind Anu specialises in.
This time director Louise Lowe and her team focus on one Dublin character – an American boxer named Billy ‘Cyclone’ Warren who ended up in the city as a sandwich board man and boot black in the mid-20th century.
His hazy past, the mythmaking, the lore are deftly dealt with in Lowe’s script, which gives us a flesh-and-blood Jack Johnson, that debonair, high-living heavyweight who appalled white society in the US by becoming the first black champion. There’s vaguer mention of Dan Breen and Warren’s possible involvement with the republican movement. Crucially, Lowe has Warren himself remind us he’s a snake oil salesman, quite literally, in a beguiling sequence where he peddles his wares to the audience.
Unusually for Anu, we remain in one space in a building on Railway Street. It starts as a nursing home, but can become anything in the memories of Warren (an excellent Sheik Bah) and his blind Irish companion, and one-time opponent, Mike Farrell, expertly played by Michael Glenn Murphy. Definitely one to catch as it continues until October 10.
★★★☆☆
The much-heralded appearance of Ruth Negga in the opening show of the Dublin Theatre Festival failed to materialise as the Limerick star pulled out of Radio Bette in advance of the event. But if it’s one thing his production from the (mostly) New York-based ensemble the Goat Exchange didn’t lack, it was acting talent.
Just as well. You don’t take on lightly something like All About Eve, as classically perfect as a bone-dry gin martini, and starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Marilyn Monroe, et al. Here, it’s a potent mix, both shaken up and stirred in witty fashion.
The starting point is not, in fact, the film, but a radio adaptation, which retained much of the original cast, and added plenty of adverts for Lux soap, included here in hilarious deadpan. In a nod to the radio drama, there’s no set as such: just the vast, bare backstage, and a table for the performers.
Chloe Claudel (who directs with Mitchell Polonsky) plays Eve, or maybe plays Anne Baxter playing Eve. Later, she appears to play Anne Baxter playing Bette Davis playing Queen Elizabeth as scenes from another film, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, form a zany play within a play, and the vehicle for Eve’s rise above Davis’s Margo Channing in the pecking order of stardom. As for Marilyn Monroe, she appears as a puppet. Yes, it’s that sort of arch, referential wit that this production deals best in. As Davis’s Channing, Marcus Amaglo is wonderfully convincing, a poised combination of a star’s ego, grandeur and vulnerability.
Usually this sort of thing comes with a concept. The programme speaks of an “interrogation”, naturally enough, “of identity, celebrity, performance, persona and ownership.” That’s all fair as far as it goes, but the chief pleasure here is to revisit such a classic script in a playful way. It’s a reminder, with a nod to Norma Desmond, that the stars of Hollywood’s golden age remain big, but “it's the pictures that got dumber”.
★★★★☆
Finally from the first weekend of the festival is a show one hopes makes a return for a longer run. Co-produced by Glasshouse and tasteinyourmouth, Carrie, played with knowing zeal by Laoise Murray, likes nothing better than the “big shop”.
Heck, even the shop for “the few bits” will do. Her enthusiasm sets the stage for a pop opera about consumerism and totalitarian capitalism, depicting our transactional lives as a sort of techno fairytale where it’s possible to have a love triangle involving a checkout cashier, and the checkout system itself, incarnated as a kind of robot named, naturally, Tilly.
How very timely then, as we read about people falling in love with AI bots rather than flesh and blood humans.
The libretto by William Dunleavy, Grace Morgan and Laoise Murray has great fun with corporate jargon, and is filled with Broadway-musical wit and clever rhymes. Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada and Ned Dennehy are the two faces of remorseless capitalism. Zia Bergin-Holly’s set design and Sophie Cassidy’s lighting combine to create a neon supermarket Barbie would feel at home in. Not a natural colour in sight. Aran O'Grady’s score is perfect and ever adaptable: propulsive electro repetition gives way to heartfelt clarinet or violin as needs be. truly deserves another outing, or 10.
