The estate of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, could probably claim royalties from the current Dublin theatre. Jung lurks just below the surface of The Gigli Concert, at the Abbey, and is extensively quoted in Chair, at the Peacock. Now, Gerard Stembridge's Nightmare On Essex Street, the second part of the Barabbas festival at Project, is essentially a meditation on Jung's description of a dream as a theatre in which the dreamer plays all the parts.
The question, of course, is whether it also works the other way round. If a dream is a theatre, can theatre be made of dreams? Or, in this case, nightmares. The piece is essentially a compendium of the fevered visions that haunt the sleep of actors. And while our own dreams fascinate us, those of other people tend to leave us cold.
The surprising answer is not just that the nightmare is mostly good fun, but that when it fails it is partly for the last reason you might expect. The obvious fear with a show about the inner anxieties of actors is that it might be too full of in-jokes.
In fact, there are too few in-jokes. The opportunity for some pointed mockery of Irish directors, actors and playwrights is largely missed. This lack of a satiric edge blunts the impact.
The other difficulty of the piece is that there is no overall structure to drive the show forward and make it more than a series of sketches. Sometimes, for example, the action is played out by Veronica Coburn and Raymond Keane in the style of a play that is being performed offstage: The Importance Of Being Earnest or Waiting For Godot. Sometimes, the offstage play is mere background noise. The lack of a consistent set of conventions means each episode has to make its own way.
Within these limits, however, there are considerable pleasures. The nightmares - rehearsing the wrong play, mixing up drama and reality, stage fright, missed cues - give ample scope for the physical clowning that is the company's forte. Many of the best moments are wordless: warm-up exercises turning into a wrestling match, Keane's manic miming of the loss of his voice as he is about to go on stage in The Seagull, Coburn, as the dope fiend Mary from Long Day's Journey Into Night, menacing Keane with a gigantic syringe.
Best of all is a slice of old-fashioned farce as Keane gets his dream role as Captain Boyle in Juno And The Paycock only to discover that Coburn's high-concept director wants him to play the captain as a camp sailor coming out of the closet. Squirming like a bag of eels and contorting his bony frame into more angles than a geometry set, Keane proves that the spirit of Buster Keaton is alive and well and living in Essex Street.
