IF you've ever thought that gallery attendants are snickering as you ponder perceptively on a Work Of Art, it's probably because they are. In the absurd comedy, The Exhibitionists (Temple Bar Gallery, until Saturday) from the Belfast company, Ridiculusmus, a pair of security guards (John Hough and David Woods) enact a form of performance art themselves, upstaging the exhibits and exacting revenge on visitors for the excruciating tedium of their existence.
A sly satire on the disposition of objects in art museums and on our behaviour when looking at art, the hour-long performance questions exactly who or what is on exhibit. In a series of private games, enacted in strict sequence, the pofaced men in uniform tamper irreverently with the exhibits, adding another pair to the battered pile of shoes on one plinth and squashing an insect bloodily across the base of another, which is, as one of them says with a contemptuous sigh, interactive. The tone shifts from quiet mockery to grotesque, black farce as they drag each other around the floor by their torn underpants (worn Steve Bell style), break into a Gilbert & George routine and mercilessly torture unfortunate members of the public. Good puerile fun.
A more serious kind of torture is enacted in The Animals (Pursued By A Bear Company, Andrew's Lane Studio, until Saturday) when a group of ill-assorted animal rights activists kidnap a woman who works in a medical laboratory and lock her in a cage in a basement flat. Craig Baxter's psychological drama is a perceptive examination of group dynamics, the creation of hate-figures, and the ease with which extreme ideas are allied to unacknowledged emotions.
While the performances are convincing and the characterisation is excellent, especially of the group's charismatic, manipulative leader (Richard Trahair) and the vulnerable, imprisoned woman who is attracted to him (Celia Nelson), the script tips over into melodrama. One member of the group turns out to be a very creepy undercover photographer, another is a misogynist psychopath, and it ends in concussion, a fatal asthma attack and two women locked in the cage. Before the overwrought finale, however, this is an absorbing, well crafted play, with a strong central theme.
When the subject of a play is life and death - how to kill, how to live and how to die - the danger is that the playwright is starting from a pitch of such intensity that the play has nowhere to go. In Jimmy Murphy's new one-man show, Aceldama (Andrew's Lane, until Saturday) a sniper (Patrick David Nowlan) on the hills above Sarajevo reflects on the circumstances that have brought him there, and on the fate of his city.
The narrative traces his emotional journey from initial bravado about killing civilians to self-loathing, with a final howl of anguish at the death of his wife and daughter - and all the deaths. "Perhaps I have already died and this is my punishment," he cries. With material that is inherently so heightened, the creation of drama is a challenge; this audience member remained strangely unmoved.
The Fringe Information Office is in Arthouse, Curved Street, Temple Bar. The Fringe phone number is: 01-605 6833 and information is available on these websites: www.fringefest.com and www.dkm.ie/events
