Writer & Director: Mai Ishikawa
It’s easy to think the Dublin Fringe is an endless parade of drag, surreal comedy, topical pop culture references, and pretty much anything else that can be dressed garishly and doused in glitter. This is, pleasingly, quite often the case, but a show like Mai Ishikawa’s Constriction provides a radically different energy. It is slow, contemplative, and in parts haunting, with writer/performer Ishikawa the sole, unspeaking performer, with voiceovers from Kate Finegan and Fiona Breen.
The Lir’s inherent blankness, which can too often detract from a show, is in fact the perfect space for Constriction. While we are informed that this is set on a bullet train in Japan, it soon becomes evident that this could be anywhere, and is still nowhere; Ishikawa is concerned with interiority, with intimate relationships, and what is unspoken, or unfelt, at moments of emotional intensity.
Finegan and Breen are two women of different generations, discussing the story of a Japanese woman who travels West for an abortion – what she feels, physically and emotionally, who she is, what she sees, and what people see in her. Ishikawa moves slowly across the stage, becoming entangled with a chair she cannot bear to not be touching. She is both firm and fluid, fiercely powerful and beautifully smooth, in how she interacts with the chair, and in turn it leaves black grease stains on her body and red dress. The identification of the chair with the baby she aborts is not subtle, as she occasionally bears it like a newborn, but it is delicate and moving nonetheless.
Sound from Benjamin Burns and lights from Kevin Murphy heighten the mood at every turn; there are horror movie strings that shriek through the little black room, and Murphy suggests the speed and thrust of a bullet train in a tunnel with his lighting arrangements. These are vital for ensuring the piece is not without jeopardy, that it is not so self-contained that it is unapproachable for people without a prior investment in the piece. While it will not be to everyone’s taste, and is not the most instantly accessible show in this year’s Fringe, the poise, grace, and emotional subtlety of Ishikawa’s movement and writing will engage and surprise many.
Runs Until 14th Sept 2025.
