Ruvheneko
Boys’ School, Smock Alley
★★★☆☆
“My existence is a celebration,” declares Kayssie K, laying down a verbal gauntlet in a powerful opening to this multidisciplinary one-woman performance. Balancing spoken word and music, Ruvheneko illuminates the strength and resilience of migrant women, guiding its audience through a compelling generational journey.
Addressing the room at the outset, Kayssie K invites us into her story, highlighting the journey that her foremothers have undertaken in order for her to be standing here before us. Throughout Ruvheneko, Kayssie K plays with dualities of past and present and light and dark, skilfully interweaving potent and tactile imagery through her poetry. The performance’s literary complexity and vocal clarity empower the stories being told, Kayssie K’s direct-address approach raising the stakes by questioning who gets to truly hear these stories.
The collision of past and present sits convincingly in the monumental architecture of the Boys’ School stage. But the visual simplicity of this is interrupted by an intrusive video backdrop. Structurally, Ruvheneko also struggles. The fierceness of the opening spoken-word section is undermined by an unwieldy musical interlude that feels like an abandonment of the already established frame. This clarity re-emerges at the play’s conclusion, as the cyclical ending revisits the production’s original potency.
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Despite the structural challenges, Ruvheneko has something important to say. These stories are a celebration, and they are powerful enough to stand unadorned, centre stage.
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Continues at Smock Alley, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Tuesday, September 12th
