Writer: Siofra O’Meara
Director: Simon Geaney
After a successful run in the 2022 Dublin Fringe Festival Siofra O’Meara’s Blister returns to the stage at the Project Arts Centre, reprising its cast and director, and living up to its positive reviews. Blister is playing in the Cube, which is a wonderfully versatile space, and Jess Fitzsimons Kane’s set is an island of pillowy white to be explored with the eye as the audience waits for the show to begin.
O’Meara takes to the stage with her co-star Eddie Murphy as Linda and Patrick, returning to Patrick’s studio flat after a successful date. This is the beginning of their relationship, and it has all the hallmark moments of cringe and comedy that occur when two people are navigating a new space and a new connection. From the offset O’Meara is pure joy to watch, her writing and performance of Linda are bold and hilarious, her facial expressions alone could carry this 60-minute two hander, but it’s not only that – it’s the timing, the movement, the tone; Linda has so much depth as a character and is so completely herself, and O’Meara makes her extremely likeable, despite some glaring personality flaws. Patrick is similarly well written; a real and nuanced character that Murphy plays with aplomb, and the two bounce off each other with a lovely ease, their relationship and the power dynamic shifting and transforming over the hour.
The play travels through four or five months of their relationship, jumping from crucial moment to crucial moment cleverly, with the aid of Eric Fitzgerald and Shane Gill’s respective sound and lighting, and the pauses between these moments create a sense of poignancy that is both unexpected and welcome. Linda and Patrick argue and laugh and annoy and appease each other again and again over these scenes, and the audience is able to gain such a rounded sense of their relationship through the vignettes; it’s an impressive feat to create such substance in such a short space of time.
While the “unmentionable ailment” does play a large role in the plot, and the exploration of shame and stigma and our ability to overcome them is carefully and closely examined, at heart this is a play about two people who are flawed in very different and deep ways, and the dance that unfolds between them as one of them opens these flaws to the world and the other seeks to hide them deep within themself. Expect to laugh, often, but perhaps expect to also feel something uncomfortable develop over the course of this play as O’Meara confronts the audience with the growth and pain and self-examination that bubble to the surface in this piece. Not to be missed.
Runs Until 23rd March 2024.
