Chicken – feathery fantasy with a cocky critique of the acting profession (Belfast International Arts Festival at Lyric Theatre until Sunday 10 November) #BIAF24

While the show begins with a wordless Bouffon-style entrance – fluffy chest puffed out, head nodding, pecking at the audience – Chicken soon switches to a surreal story of a Kerry cock (who is “a proud Irishman”) with thespian ambitions.

Physically hunched over with bent knees for the whole 50-minute performance, Eva O’Connor draws the audience into the cockerel’s world. We grow comfortable with the normality of chickens interacting with humans as peers. Sure wasn’t Buzby able to make and receive telephone calls, so why not chickens?!

From an obscure start as a feathery Christ-child in the school nativity, Don Murphy – the Kerry cock in question – is soon on a feature film set, starring in scenes with Michael Fassbender’s pecker (don’t worry, it’s all very dignified) before sniffing one too many lines of ketamine in New York, falling apart at the Academy Awards, facing up to a performative chicken vagina (not quite so dignified, but still very funny) and returning to Kerry to work on Martin McDonagh’s remake of Chicken Run.

Away from the chicken capers, the performance is also a critique of the puffed-up film industry, full of consideration of body image, the abuse of power, casting couch #MeToo moments, snorting your way to stardom, not to mention the British tendency to appropriate any Irish on-screen success.

Sitting in the round – just 72 seats are arranged around the four sides of the square stage – O’Connor struts around in circles for the whole performance. It’s intimate but never intimidating, though part of the joy is being able to watch the reaction of audience members sitting opposite you to the most surprising moments in the story.

The script is gently puntastic, and a range of accents and mannerisms allow O’Connor to morph into Pablo the Glaswegian pigeon living in the Big Apple, and ‘Hairy Arms’ (Don’s agent) amongst many other characters.

With a relatively short runtime, Chicken doesn’t try to overegg its pudding. At times, the sheer mix of ingredients threatens to scramble the story, pulling the audience’s thinking in all sorts of directions, including some commentary on animal rights and the poultry industry. But overall, the allegorical absurdity is a success, and we stand in awe of O’Connor’s craft and Hildegard Ryan’s writing and direction. Chicken finishes its run at the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 10 November. And the Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 26 November.

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