This site-specific project is set in a modern apartment in a new and trendy area of Dublin, with the audience divided into several groups by different-coloured wristbands. They are directed from one room to another within the apartment during the course of the performance, lined up along the wall to watch each scene.

Each wristband group sees a different selection of scenes, but all are based on two stories with two characters each, with some seeing more of one story than the other. The two stories have only a very peripheral relationship to each other but both explore the themes of apartments being either home or a consumer item - against the background of Ireland's relatively recent culture of apartment-living.

One story is of a thirty-something professional who buys the apartment for his young mistress to live in, while another is of a recently-separated middle-aged self-help writer, who finds that the young estate agent is using the apartment when she is not around, due to his homelessness. While the scenes from the stories are interspersed, which can be confusing at first, there is enough of each story for them to make perfect sense by the end.

As well as exploring the nature of property as a consumer item, the stories also show how it can be used to control others, particularly in the case of the couple. While there are occasional clichés, such as the older woman complaining about coffee culture, most of the points made are thoughtful and subtle, especially in several places where characters muse on the nature of 'home', or how people turn their homes into a collection of things rather than places to live. The discovery that the estate agent appears to be homeless has its own wonderful irony.

Carl Kennedy is excellent as the estate agent, switching from superficial professional mode to a lost young man with ease. Eleanor Methven is very real as Lilian the self-help writer, and Annemarie Galliard has one of the great comic moments with G's attempt to cook a gourmet chicken.

The use of recorded voices to express unspoken thoughts works well. Given the number of different scenes seen by various parts of the audience in a non-theatre space, the considerable technical challenges involved are more than amply dealt with.

The proximity to the actors, in such an everyday location, creates its own energy, lending an exciting but slightly unsettling reality that lingers after the performance is over, like that of a real-life drama unfolding through a neighbour's window.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Annemarie Gaillard - G. Carl Kennedy - Paul. Eleanor Methven - Lilian. Aonghus Weber - B. Other Voices – Ioanna Anderson. Andrew Bennett. Jack Cawley. Phelim Drew. Agata Kaputa. Carl Kennedy. Louise Kiely. Oonagh McLaughlin. Kate Perry. Michelle Read. Karen Scully.

Company Credits: Writer - Ioanna Anderson. Director - Tara Derrington. Producer - Michelle Read. Sound Design - Jack Cawley. Set & Lighting Design - Kieran McNulty. Costume Design - Suzanne Keogh. Co-Producer & Casting - Louise Kiely. Assistant Director - Oonagh McLaughlin. Production Manager - Des Kenny. Stage Director - Miriam Duffy. Assistant Stage Manager - Sara Matthews. Costume Assistants - Stephi Banks, Sundara O'Higgins. Graphic Design - Smudge Design. Associate Producers (Bedrock) - Alex Johnston, Valerie Murphy, Colin Baird. Marketing & Publicity - Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival & Bedrock Productions. Company - Living Space Theatre (formerly Readco), in association with Bedrock Productions.

END

(c) Colman Higgins 2008

reviewed Friday 3 October 08 / Apartment in the Italian Quarter, Dublin 1

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com