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drinks Monday 2 June 08
DUBLIN ... Colman Higgins describes the scope and history of Dublin Gay Theatre Festival ... and reviews two of its shows ... Down Dangerous Passes Road ... Confessions of A Mormon Boy /// LONDON ... film on now ... La Question Humaine / Heartbeat Detector /// BRIGHTON ... It's on till 26 May and here's at least 20 Things you might want to know about Brighton Fringe /// PEOPLE ... Who was there at Fringe Report's First Monday 5 May - photographs & article /// CULTURE ... One Culture ... film screening 30 May booking now ... details
Drive By
Verdict: Sensual feast of boy racing
Dublin Fringe Festival 2006 - Pigeon House Road – 22:00 (0:30) and 23:00 (0:30) - 16-23 Sept 06
Drive By is staged in the car park of a building attached to a power station in a lonely corner of Dublin’s docklands. The audience sits in cars facing the building and the actors move and dance in front of them, with their voices and soundtracks transmitted to the audience’s car radios.
It’s a true feast for the senses, with the three excellent performers dancing and swaggering around on the tarmac, speeding around the building in three souped-up hatchbacks. But best of all is the coloured lighting in each of the windows of the mock-Georgian building, which flash on and off like disco lights at appropriate moments.
While the show doesn’t set out to judge boy-racing culture, it doesn’t glorify it or hide from its dark side either: it switches several times to funeral scenes. The crash at the end has at least two of the characters walking off in the darkness, visible only against the streetlamps in the road outside. Directing this show must have been a huge challenge, given the unique setting.
There isn’t so much a conventional story-line as a series of impressions, punctuated by music and clips from radio broadcasts. It has a dig at society’s disapproval of boy racing and its hypocrisy over speeding in society at large. The script also refers to how car culture puts everyone in their own little box – a point underlined by the audience being in cars themselves.
Cast Credits: (alpha order): Tom O Suilleabhain. Ailish Symons. Aidan Turner.
Company Credits: Writer – Tom Swift. Director – Jo Mangan. Producers – Deborah Dignam, Maura O’Keeffe. Designers – Suzanne Keogh, Tia Petrovic, Tom Swift, Kevin Treacy. Companies - The Performance Corporation & Once Off Productions
END
(c) Colman Higgins 2006
reviewed Monday 18 September 06 / Pigeon House Road
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008
