Sass, humour and hidden depths in 'The Water Orchard'
Have you ever kept secrets?
Do you ever talk to yourself?
What did you think this show was going to be about?
Do you ever worry about holding onto the past?
These are just a few of the
questions I found myself playing over in my mind when I finally sat down to write this review of the latest play in The Project Arts Centre, The Water Orchard. Despite uproarious comedy and fast paced farcical drama, one couldn’t help but peering beneath the layers of fiction and theatricality to observe a more poignant core.
The complicated play out of technology versus human interaction and the related tension between tradition and modernisation is well expressed in this new ‘Kaleidoscope comedy’ by theatre company Collapsing Horse. We are all well versed on how reliant we are on the internet, smart phones etc; how they have become extensions of ourselves and the now blurred line that seems to exist between our digital lives and real lives. It therefore somehow doesn’t seem that strange when we as an audience are confronted with an old woman being interrogated by a talking projector, complete with sassy emoticons and an unnerving ability to gather and disseminate information.
In a heightened performance style, akin to expressionism or even Brecht’s epic theatre; the actors, each with distinctive painted faces, cavort around the stage delivering frequent soliloquys to the audience whilst assuming or ‘acting’ alternative roles and fronts to their cohorts. Important and burdening themes such as the nature of performance versus truth, family and companionship, fortune and means, ornament the bones of the play. They lie cleverly in wait in order to tickle ones subconscious long after the actors had left the dynamic set and the lights were called upon to reveal the walls of the theatre once again.
A fantastic production leaving ones sides sore from laughter, head spinning from a wonderfully ambidextrous tale and an appetite hungry for more.
Writer/Director: Eoghan Quinn
Co-Director: Dan Colley
Cast: Breffni Holahan, Peter Corboy, John Doran, Rachel Gleeson,
