AnimalsAbbey Theatre\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease welcome to the stage myself.\u201d So begins this adaptation of seven short stories by Blindboyboatclub<\/a>, performed at the Abbey<\/a> as part of Dublin Theatre Festival<\/a>. We immediately recognise the plastic-bag mask and Limerick<\/a> accent. But is it the author and podcaster himself?<\/p>\n A winning coup de theatre soon suggests we are being had. And following an erudite excursion through the biological theories of Jakob von Uexk\u00fcll, the bag-clad performer frames Animals\u2019 playful opening in terms of Bertolt Brecht<\/a>\u2019s distancing effect.<\/p>\n Puncturing the illusion of theatre can serve to make us think critically about the social world depicted on stage. But whereas the German playwright sought to stir the audience\u2019s revolutionary consciousness, Blindboy\u2019s more modest aim is to prompt reflection about the burdens and creative charms of neurodivergence.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Blindboy unmasked: \u2018The thing I\u2019m most afraid of is having to work in an office… so now I work in an office\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n That central theme is most vividly captured in the recurring sight of Pat Shortt<\/a> carrying a fridge-freezer on his back while imparting a stream of historical and scientific trivia. Having won RT\u00c9\u2019s Blackboard Jungle quizshow as an adolescent, this astronomy enthusiast\u2019s flair for facts brought him academic and worldly success. Yet now he finds himself ruined by some mysterious skulduggery inflicted by \u201cDublin elitist c**ts\u201d (which becomes a splenetic mantra). <\/p>\n Another blast of oddball energy comes from Liz FitzGibbon<\/a> as a beehive-haired Limerick solicitor whose chaotic office belies her ferocious, if somewhat misdirected, sense of moxie. Her attempts to help Manus Halligan<\/a>\u2019s equally loopy dog trainer, accused of pepping up greyhounds with tea, build to a splendidly farcical ruckus at the dog track. The paint-spattered costumes (designed by Saile\u00f3g O\u2019Halloran) and live video projection here contribute to a woozy, carnival-like ambience.<\/p>\n The focus then shifts to Pamela\u2019s chipper yet diffident taxi driver (played by Emer Dineen<\/a>), who is struggling to find his place in the manosphere. Swipes at portentous, never-ending podcasts and homosocial preening in the gym may be a little predictable but still deliver some solid laughs.<\/p>\n After the interval the tone is transformed as a poit\u00edn maker (Halligan) recounts a supernaturally charged encounter with a cormorant that seems to threaten his child. Delivered as a pathos-laden monologue inside a hospital waiting room, it\u2019s an intricately crafted tale that gets a bit lost on stage.<\/p>\n Animals then swings back towards boisterous comedy without any appreciable transition. An egotistical director (Dineen) and her cast assemble for the first reading of a play about a lurid, fantastical encounter between \u00c9amon de Valera (Karl Quinn) and Michael Collins (John Doran). The scatological humour quickly becomes gratuitous and lacks any real provocative edge, as the characters themselves eventually point out. (A similar idea received vastly more sophisticated comic treatment in The Orphan and the Mob<\/a>, a short story by Julian Gough<\/a> centred on \u201cDev\u2019s Hole\u201d.) <\/p>\n After an accomplished and thoughtful first hour and a half, it is dispiriting that Dan Colley<\/a>\u2019s adaptation (which he also directs) ends up suffering from such a loss of focus and coherence. At three hours in total (including the interval), Blindboy\u2019s full-scale theatrical debut is a loose (plastic) baggy monster. <\/p>\n Animals is at the Abbey Theatre<\/a>, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival<\/a>, until Saturday, November 7th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AnimalsAbbey Theatre\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 \u201cPlease welcome to the stage myself.\u201d So begins this adaptation of seven short stories by Blindboyboatclub,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[34126,16955,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-640573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-dtf","tag-dublin-theatre-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}