Don DeLillo's play Valparaiso, now having its Irish premiere by the Iomha Ildanach company, is a play conceived and executed at many levels, all of them fascinating. It merges the real with the surreal, the physical with the spiritual, offering a powerful parable of psychic disorientation for our times.
Michael Majeski is a business analyst who substitutes for a sick colleague to keep an appointment at Valparaiso, Indiana. An error sends him to Miami to connect with Valparaiso, Florida, to be compounded by a further glitch which forwards him to Chile, a pawn in the grip of systems which leave him disorientated.
Out of all this comes apparent fame, making him the subject of a film, a magazine article and - finally and fatally - a guest slot on a national TV interview. Michael's entire life comes under the spotlight. He is a man who sees others as throbbing corporate entities while he exists in a vacuum, abhorred by nature. The thought of living alone terrifies him, but he looks with disgust at his wife, and quails at his own lack of generosity.
The play asks questions which reverberate in the mind. What happens when we stop talking; what fills that unimaginable void? Can we survive self-knowledge? How do we cope, as participants or spectators, with media having the instincts of piranha fish? Is anything really important in life; is it worth clinging to?
Gerry O'Brien is immense as Michael, and his inquisitors - Stewart Roche, Aoife Molony and Emma Lowe - take him and the play by the throat. Niamh O'Shaughnessy is his addled wife, and Niall O Sioradin is magnetic as the TV interviewer's demonic assistant. A chorus of three, in need of better physical and vocal choreography, supplement the action. This is a hypnotic realisation of an extraordinary play.
Runs to August 26th; to book phone 01-6713387
