The third element of Paul Mercier's Dublin trilogy for the Passion Machine, which opened last night, is an extraordinarily ambitious stage work which flits around the city's people and events of just over a century of living.
It starts today, with a pair of Bosnians waiting for a taxi amid a crowd of Dubliners, some of whom let their racism show while others jump to the defence of the city's newcomers.
It then sidles back, more like a scrapbook than a play, through a series of fictional and highly satiric incidents mingled with echoes of real events - protests against "development", the bombs from Northern Ireland, the bombs from the second World War, the Eucharistic Congress, 1916, the lockout, Queen Victoria's visit, the Boer War and a time of resentment against the Huguenot immigrants and back up to today when the Bosnians finally get the taxi they were waiting for.
There are no fully fleshed characters, but there are family names that run consistently through the various vignettes. There's usually a Lawless lurking somewhere nearby and likely up to not much good; there's often a Ward in the affray and a Troy not far off, and there are generations of the Traverse family, and a couple of Foremans and a Fury or two and some Keyes.
Sometimes it is richly comic (the Promethean Players doing "Where now Brown Cow", or the young couple out buying shoes for herself just before one of the bombs goes off) and sometimes dangerously threatening or briefly touching. It is never, in its two hours without an interval, less than entertaining and it provides a wonderfully tangential view of the past century of Dublin and Dubliners.
The excellent, large and highly mobile settings are by Anne Gately and are generally well lit by Megan Sheppard and Ciara McCarthy. John Dunne has provided a prodigiously apt and good musical accompaniment.
A huge, beautifully disciplined and athletically hyperactive cast of 30 play close to 150 parts between them and the whole lively hurly-burly is directed by Paul Mercier with great clarity and energy to make a most unusual, highly original and satisfying evening of theatre.
It plays nightly at 8.00 until Sunday, on which day it is joined at 4.00 p.m. by Kitchensink, the second play in the trilogy, and at 1.00 p.m. by Buddleia, the first. Kitchensink also plays at 3.00 p.m. on Saturday and Buddleia at 3.00 p.m. on Friday. What incredible creative productivity the Passion Machine provides!
Booking at (01) 454 4472 or (01) 874 8525.
