Sylvan – Tinderbox have left the building with their new site-specific outdoor show (Belfast and Coleraine until 5 November) #offthegrid

When the team at Tinderbox Theatre Company put their minds to a concept, they deliver with gusto. And so it is with Sylvan, a deliberately sustainable, aptly outdoor and haunting piece of theatre being performed as part of their Off The Grid season.

In a world where natural photosynthesis has been replaced with oxygen generating machines, timber has been removed. So when Rosie from the adoption agency discovers that Paul and Deirdre have an illicit forest hiding in their house, she bends the rules and negotiates regular access to the verdure. But the young family’s nightmare is only beginning.

Staged at night in a forested area of Victoria Park, the audience at first sit on wooden seats in a natural clearing before shifting into the forest alongside the actors. The reclaimed set is simple, list mostly by torches and wireless lights (more usually seen in conference venues) scattered throughout the undergrowth. Sound effects amplify the sense that not all is well in this home.

Maria Connolly is a master of the scowl, at first officious, later crazed. She plays one hopeful parent off against the other as Rosie barters and inveigles her way into the lush recesses of their home in order to be at one with nature and close to someone from her past. Meanwhile Ruby Campbell and Seamus O’Hara portray Deirdre and Paul as a couple who make disagreeing look like a well-executed dance, finishing each other’s sentences, contradicting each other, and ultimately getting both their ways. None of the hardy cast is phased by the weather, and they all throw themselves about the set as if playing on a beach.

Deception builds, trust is tested, and longing overrides common sense and love. (And behind the scenes, the props are strewn around the forest floor in a way that must cause the stage manager to perpetually have kittens thinking about the dirt on the Enda Kenny’s multi-faceted costumes.)

Over 30-40 minutes, the initial unpacking of the world in which the characters live is fabulous theatre. The snappy dialogue, stereo effects, symbolism and props are all enthralling. Director Patrick J O’Reilly’s choreography creates some beautiful chains of movement, whether as an ensemble illuminated by the strobing lights, or as individuals exposing a character’s demons. A lot of fine detail is portrayed in spite of the harsh climatic conditions.

Unfortunately, Jonathan M. Daley’s script loses the plot about halfway through. The play trudges through a forest of ideas and endings that sprout up like poison ivy (a little like his earlier Assembly Required) and this all goes to stretch the piece out to 90 minutes when 60 or 70 would have sufficed. Are we witnessing Deirdre’s post-adoption depression, Paul’s verdant spirit, or Rosie’s insanity, or all three? There’s a definite whiff of horror about the staging and some of the themes: but it doesn’t quite commit to the genre. The eventual enigmatic conclusion – at least in the way it is staged in this production – denies the audience of any chance to applaud or receive a sense of closure to the novel production: there’s shock on some faces as we reach the car park and our escorts explain that the show is over. A simple and swift blackout much earlier in the script could still have left the audience thinking yet overall less confused.

That said, Sylvan makes the complex job of running theatre outdoors, at night, with light and sound but no sense of infrastructure look very easy. Tinderbox have created a theatre space in parkland woods. And they’ll be recreating the magic in a number of venues throughout the run. It’s very innovative and a huge investment in new sustainable techniques.

Sylvan continues its sold out run in Belfast’s Victoria Park until Sunday 1 November, before resetting its imaginative world in the Ulster University campus at Coleraine on Thursday 4 and Friday 5 November. Do wear shoes suitable for tramping around a forest, and bring a hat and waterproof coat in case the weather turns. 

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

Department Story – site specific physical and online theatre from the masters of mayhem (Big Telly until 31 October) #BIAF21

Department stores have been disappearing from Irish high streets in recent years. But could Maguires be next? As the audience step inside the Royal Avenue store (or log on from home) there’s a frenzy of activity, some intense encounters, and plenty of emotion as word filters through the various departments and a veil is lifted about the retail changes afoot.

With a Big Telly production, you know you’re going to get lots of tomfoolery and physical gags. Two years ago, The Worst Café in the World included an actor climbing in the window in the middle of the show. But Department Story takes this unpredictability to a whole new level. There’s a lot of charging around, the mother of all wind machines, a vacuum cleaner with a mind of its own, and heavy items of furniture being shifted around. Other than a couple of clunky gear changes, the harried shop assistants keep the audience of late-night shoppers on their toes throughout the 75-minute performance, never quite able to second guess what will happen next.

Department Story also promises to offer a quality online experience for audience members at home who get a birds eye view of the mayhem supported by a roving camera, ceiling mounted moving heads, and microphones galore dotted around the two floors that stage most, but not all, of the action. Having dared to enter the store, I might have to return some night and do a bit of online shopping to catch the other view through AFEW’s Remote Control system.

Local writing (Cathy Carson, Jan Carson, and Roisin O’Donnell) along with adaptations of some classic tales make up the spine of the show. Niamh McGrath’s kickstarts a long and elaborate version of Hans Christian Andersen’s Red Shoes (moral of story: don’t wear the red shoes to church!) with a handful of quick changes as the shop assistants circle the audience.

Chris Robinson creates a haunted forest in the tent department (much enhanced by a brilliantly apt fit of hysterical giggling by an audience member at our show), while Cillian Lenaghan is rushing around trying to purchase the last remaining overcoat, and Laura Hughes is looking to cash in unwanted goods.

Department Story’s success is as much down to the attention to small details as the giant melodrama. like Nicky Harley casually snacking on a Greggs sausage roll or rearranging items in a shop counter drawer, adding depth to her formidable character on top of the larger than life shenanigans and timeless twerking she revels in.

Inside the store, it’s easy to forget – a sign of success – the technical complexity of producing and stage managing the multi-level, cue-tastic walkabout version of each performance, never mind supporting the online experience. There’s a rich soundscape emanating from all manner of speakers and devices that drives the tempo of many of the scenes (kudos to Garth McConaghie). And everything is drawn together into a coherent offering by what must be the much-bitten nails of director Zoe Seaton and tech manager Jack Hardiker.

It’s been a while – eight long years – since it snowed at a Belfast International Arts Festival show, but when it happens, it’s always good! Since the show I’ve walked a mile back to my car, driven home, and typed up this review. I’ve still a grin on my face remembering some of the antics and the feeling of being trapped inside Maguires unable and unwilling to escape. Catch Department Story in-store or online before the final offers disappear and the lights go out on 31 October. 

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The Grimm Hotel – who knew that Cityside Retail Park had so many spooky rooms! (Cahoots NI until 31 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF21

The nights are getting long and Halloween is just around the corner. You could check in somewhere for a nice break, or lose yourself in a creepy story. Or perhaps you could do both. Check into The Grimm Hotel in Cityside Retail Park and experience Cahoots NI’s latest production which opened as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

The brightly dressed bellhop will greet you in the foyer and keep you teased and entertained until the receptionist has checked you off his list. And then you’ll enter the mysterious hotel through a door you’ll never have noticed before between Home Bargains and the Chinese buffet restaurant.

Expect to be confronted with reimagined stories from the Brothers Grimm in numbered rooms – 210 rooms, one for each fairy tale, and would you risk doubting the legendary tellers of tales? – dotted along long, winding corridors.

The Grimm Hotel is an exercise in control. A mixture of lighting, background music, sleight of hand, visual effects, and live performances will greet you and maybe even grab you in every new location as your group’s bell hop guides you through the treats on offer.

Maybe you’re not quite ready to sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers in a theatre auditorium? Maybe going to the theatre isn’t your thing and you want something you can park outside for free and get the weekly shopping on the way home? Maybe you were intrigued by some of Cahoots NI’s online Zoom shows and want to see the live action version?

Each cohort of guests that enters the hotel is small, and there’s plenty of space to stay in your bubble and sit away from other families who checked in at the same time. Audience members, I mean, guests will be called upon to decide where the group goes next, and maybe even to rescue a trapped character from one of the stories before being guided through to the next scene in another location.

After months of theatres lying dark and stage shows either happening outside, online or not at all, it was great to enjoy the acting talents and familiar faces of Kyron Bourke, Hugh W. Brown, Holly Hannaway, Allison Harding, Sean Kearns, Caolan McBride, Lennin Nelson-McClure and Philippa O’Hara, along with the words and music from Charles Way, Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney and Garth McConaghie. And the design work by Diana Ennis and David Morgan certainly adds to the immersive experience. As does the hard work of the pixies behind the scenes who make some of the magic happen and keep the technology working.

Fans of previous Cahoots’ shows will have flashbacks to years gone by, particularly with the musical treat from a red cloaked girl who’s not so afraid of a big bad wolf crooning away at an extraordinary piano. For me – and as an adult attending alone, I’m decades older than the intended audience and you should heed much more the wowed reviews of parents who attended with children than listen to me! – while enormous effort have gone into creating the hotel environment and pulling off the spectacular illusions, and while the characterisations are very solid (Hannaway’s red elf and Kearn’s shoemaker were particular favourites), I found the actual stories more distant and less enthralling than Cahoots’ purely online University of Wonder and Imagination.

The producers reckon The Grimm Hotel is suitable from children aged 8 and upwards. There are a few scary moments, but nothing reaching out and holding hands won’t overcome. Do wrap up well as the hotel’s heating system is a bit grimm, but you’ll find the welcome warm throughout your 75-minute stay inside the north Belfast venue.

The doors of The Grimm Hotel are open six days a week until 31 October with staggered entrance times up to 7pm in the evening. While the run had nearly sold out, some additional tickets and performances have been released and are now on sale.

The Border Game – picking at the scabs of a breakup and a border that scars the land (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 23 October) #BIAF21

The Border Game is the latest play by the exciting writing team of Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney whose script The Alternative won Fishamble’s A Play for Ireland competition. On stage in the Lyric this time two years ago, their Home Rule counterfactual examined the power of the media to shape the theatre of politics, and the power of politicians to mix facts with belief to stir up irrational emotion.

This time the two playwrights have turned their creativity to tackle a more intimate matter: picking at the scabs of a breakup. The action is placed at the scene of another fault line, the border that scars the island of Ireland. The parallels are both obvious and intense in a play that was commissioned to coincide with the centenary of partition and the creation of Northern Ireland.

An old Customs hut now lies derelict on farmland that straddles the border. Once the scene of cross-community rutting by a farmer’s daughter and the son of the local grocery store, it’s now where local youths come to party, and where hungover Henry (Patrick McBrearty) spent the night to clear his head. When he wakes up he finds old flame Sinead (Liz FitzGibbon) clearing up the mess from the partying trespassers.

Ciaran Bagnall’s set – like a cut down version of Lally the Scut – has an autumnal grassy mound falling down to the fenced border line and the dilapidated hut.

Emma Jordan keeps the two-handed play moving by allowing the characters to work – tidying up the land and mending a broken fence (and sorting through their own baggage and healing a personal rift) – while they banter and bicker. Though if acting work dries up, neither are ready to switch career to fencing without considerable retraining!

During the first half, Henry and Sinead unearth aspects of their past that had gone unsaid until this unplanned conversation. The interval cliff hanger – the blurting out of a huge hurt – certainly ups the feeling of jeopardy, though the scene that follows once the lights go back down feels very abrupt change of gear, despite being the most powerful moment in the play.

There’s a good sprinkling of magic realism and fantasy in the storytelling that gives director Jordan scope to add colour and changes of pace. Whilst unpacking bagfuls of transgenerational trauma, Kearney and Patrick aren’t afraid to play for audience laughs and light relief with a rabbit hole full of mystery and a series of gameshow skits from their youth that Sinead and Henry readily lapse into.

Great on-stage chemistry between McBrearty and FitzGibbon allows the jagged emotional link that binds the pair’s past and present together to be explored in constant tension. Both actors slip effortlessly in and out of a myriad of characters from their past, usually replete with comedy accents and distinctive mannerisms. They sing, they disco dance, and FitzGibbon’s no-nonsense Sinead has the full measure of her old northern Protestant boyfriend and never lets him overpower her intellectually, emotionally or physically.

Through tales of smuggling, distrust, brutality, loss and enduring pain, Patrick and Kearney get to the heart of why the border is a political act, and why it’s a high stakes game to tamper with the fragile status quo that has allowed rootless moss to cover over the cracks.

The Border Game is a coproduction between Prime Cut and the Lyric Theatre. Performances continue until Saturday 23 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. 

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Heathers: The Musical … all done in the worst possible taste (Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 October)

Other than wanting to profit from a cult film’s popularity, it’s hard to fathom how the concept of Heathers motivated Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe to write the musical version, for producers to invest to stage it, and for Andy Fickman to continue directing the majority of the professional productions of the show.

Body image, eating disorders, weight, friendship groups, acceptance, sexuality, poor mental health, craving stardom, homophobic parents, wanting to massacre your annoying classmates: these teenage (and sometimes adult) issues and vices are quickly introduced. But if you wanted to start a conversation about tackling these demons, would you start with Heathers?

Maybe I’m overthinking it and underappreciating the attractive notion of a musical carved out of the horror genre?

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Veronica decides to throw her lot in with a girl gang – a trio of Heathers – purely to ease the pain of the next few years at Westerberg High School. The gauche girls demean all who fall into their shadow, conspiring to humiliate those with whom they are disappointed. Of course, the Heathers have issues of their own. But Veronica’s decision has particular consequences for her old friend Martha whose holds a flame for one of the school jocks.

At this stage, everyone in the stalls and circles might be starting to see parts of their own insecurities represented on stage. But it’s the quiet ones you need to watch. And the dressed-in-black bibliophile, JD, who has an uncanny knack of handling himself like a ninja in a fight, turns out to have a particularly dark and deadly side to his character.

Some of the other children haven’t fallen far from their parents’ tree, or have they? With first time sex (which rapidly unseated a few members of the audience), the threat of a double date rape, a mounting body count, and an explosive climax, the musical hurtles towards its impossibly saccharine denouement. It’s a finale full of cheap grace and self-forgiveness without any sign of repentance.

While showing off a powerful vocal range throughout the show, the script plays down Veronica’s obvious ruthlessness, and gives Rebecca Wickes little opportunity to develop the potential complexity of her character. Among the three Heathers, Maddison Firth is the original alpha, later succeeded by wannabe bitch Merryl Ansah, while Lizzy Parker manages to pull off an incongruous comical moment after being caught overdosing on pills. Understudy Ben Karran creates a brooding and sinister JD. The ghosts add a lot of comedy, particularly the ripped figures of Kurt (Liam Doyle) and Ram (Rory Phelan).

The precision and colour of Ben Cracknell’s lighting design accentuates key moments of drama. The sound was pretty screechy in the stalls at the performance I attended, but that might just be first night issues tuning the sound for the venue.

Martha’s solo Kindergarten Boyfriend and her duet with Veronica in the reprise of Seventeen are musical highpoints, along with the toe-tapping triumph that is My Dead Gay Son. However, Martha (Mhairi Angus) totally steals the show with her final appearance, and a protracted reversing manoeuvre that has the best comic timing of the night.

Heathers has a particularly sick storyline. It’s neither treated as snarky and sadistic parody (which might still be troubling given the subject matter) nor as a serious study of youth culture. Instead the show exists as a strange, uber-popular misfit, that defies logic to explain its enduring success. Oddly, given its subject matter, Heathers makes little effort to evoke any sense of empathy, leaving the audience as somewhat emotionally unattached onlookers. Groups of women turned up at the Grand Opera House resplendent in the striking yellow, red, green and blue outfits of their favourite characters. I’d like to think that any lone wolves who attended in dark trench coats would have been thoroughly frisked after having their Covid vaccinations checked.

Update: Having now caught up with the original film – available for free on Amazon Prime via IMDb TV with ads – Veronica is painted much more sweetly and naively on stage than Winona Ryder’s knowing cinematic horror. Heather (red) Chandler is much more vulnerable: subservient to guys and not the total top dog she is in the adaptation. The musical is peppered with crossover script references and props from the movie, some of which jar without the original context but mostly they don’t get in the way. Yet there’s a sense that the musical diminishes what depth, soul and brain that the film had captured.

Heathers will be making what’s sick beautiful at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 October before heading down to Dublin. To pervert a catchphrase of Kenny Everett, it’s all done in the worst possible taste. But still, performed by a cast of 15 and a six-strong band rather professionally and with solid entertainment values.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith Photography

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Distortion – a very smart piece of political drama (The MAC, on demand until 24 October)

There’s something captivating about sitting in a theatre audience, mere metres away from the stage and being able to watch – unmediated – the live performances of a well-directed cast telling a story in front of your eyes. When they shout, bits of spit are caught in the bright lights. So close it’s intimate.

Of course, that’s an ideal scenario that hasn’t been open to most of us for the last 18 months.

Even before then, I remember some years ago sitting up in the gods peering down at the Grand Opera House stage to see a touring production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. While the vantage point offered a bird’s eye view of the full set and choreography, it was impossible to distinguish subtle facial expressions and any sense of emotion had to be gleaned from larger gestures, how an actor carried themselves, or through their tone of voice.

Pre-pandemic, I was semi-regular at National Theatre Live productions in local cinemas, where a wide-angled view of the full set (conveniently a large cinema screen isn’t far off the height from stage to proscenium arch) could alternate with close-ups of significant interactions. Something was nearly always lost in the action – the ability to turn your head and be distracted by some small detail happening in another corner of the stage was denied – but it was a good second best to travelling across to London to see something in person. And the Apple TV filmed adaptation of Hamilton probably improved the staging of the all-singing all-dancing theatre version.

Amanda Verlaque’s Distortion homes in on an ambitious political couple. A public relations guru Jo (Valene Kane) has been employed to increase their electoral success. Heather (Mary Moulds) is aiming at a seat on Belfast City Council, while Kevin (Michael Condron) has his eyes set on representing Belfast South at Westminster. As their preparation and campaign unfolds over 80 minutes, Verlaque’s writing sets up a regular rhythm of revelation, audience re-evaluation, and then follows through into the triangular reaction among the central cast.

The evolving power dynamic and never-settling question of who is playing with whom is engaging, sprinkled with the hypocrisy and duplicitousness expected in a political thriller. Where these three are concerned, it’s no spoiler to say that ultimately the player turns out to have been played. Enough secrets are spilled to fill more than one closet.

While one character is challenged “Don’t you want to be true to yourself?” it’s not clear that any of the individuals are comfortable owning up to their circumstances, motivations and behaviours. Where politics goes, sex tends to follow. As each layer is peeled off, the intrigue grows and the plot moves beyond a simple stereotyped representation of local Northern Ireland politics and into a morality tale that asks questions of how we view honesty, coercion, sexuality and control. And how what we believe and do and say can be distorted by ourselves and others.

Lata Sharma has a recurring role as political reporter Jane. Her lines are a bit too verbose, but her struggle to get to the truth of the story is real enough. Condron is doesn’t overplay the cheeky chappie card and excels as a canny opportunist, while Moulds successfully pivots her closeted character from being warm and earthy to expressing powerful lust as the plot unfolds. Kane wears Jo’s lesbian heart on her sleeve and really captures the strategist’s distressing loss of control.

Ciaran Bagnall’s set picks up a lot of the textures and hues of The MAC’s galleries. The faux concrete and low unfussy walls provide a great canvass on which director Rhiann Jeffrey can paint her characters.

Filmed on the The MAC’s main stage – and premiered as a film to a small audience sitting in the same theatre space, terribly meta! – you’re never not aware that this is a MAC production, yet Distortion never tries to stop being theatre and become TV.

Jeffrey often takes advantage of the camera angles to keep the three protagonists in shot, lining them up in a chain, or creating a visual triangle that allows the audience to track their reactions. The shots that work least well are the handful of full-face close ups which are too televisual and jar. But on the whole, the curation of vantage points enhances the feeling of drama and benefits the storytelling.

Garth McConaghie’s sound design picks up on the title, makes good use of the stereo imaging, and isn’t afraid to fade into the background at the points when the dialogue has no need to any external augmentation.

With only a few nips and tucks, Distortion – originally written for stage – could return to the MAC as a full theatre piece. I really hope it does, as it’s one of the smartest pieces of political drama to come out of Northern Ireland in the last five years.

Distortion can be viewed on demand (£12.50–25 pay what you can) until Sunday 24 October 

Photo credits: Melissa Gordon

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