Writer & Director: Gosia Wdowik
DEEPER is one of the most seasonably apt pieces of work in this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival. With Halloween at the end of the month, a piece of horror theatre, bolstered by a strong moral and social backbone, is required, and Gosia Wdowik’s play fits the bill. Disturbing, bewildering, occasionally shocking, and very skilfully made, it is a fine piece of work, though it will not be for everyone (my companion for the evening derived more from it than I did, and I owe at least some of these reflections to them).
Wdowik and Aleksander Prowalinski created the set design, and this is the first arresting thing we notice on stage. A circle with moon-like patterns and striations hangs above two screens, with a structure to the right that resembles a flowing waterfall of rich, verdant poison – or the bushes in which a body is discovered, it can be hard to tell.
Jasmina Polak is the main performer, and she describes to us an image that has been implanted in her brain since childhood, of a dead woman found in the forest; evidently the image that we are invited to spy upon. Her voiceover begins interrogating this image, and indeed the nature of images – why do some things stick in our heads, and others don’t? What impact does it have to take these images on board, and carry them around with you? And where do they come from? I can’t necessarily say that Wdowik answers these questions thoroughly or coherently, but she takes us on a journey of exploration.
Our character’s obsession with this scarring image leads her to audition young Irish authors to “play” the role in the scene that she is shooting in front of us; in turn, each earnestly describes their suitability to play dead on screen. This willingness, or need, for young women to disguise and conceal themselves is the core of the play, and after a short critique of the male gaze in classic violent film scenes, we see and hear the reflections of young Polish women on their experiences of growing up in a pornified online world. This is grimly predictable, but helps to bring an element of coherence that had been somewhat absent previously.
A nod must also be given to Karin Tanghe, who plays an older woman who disrupts the male gaze of the camera, inverting and collapsing the fantasy of the young, blonde, female victim. Along with the (likely AI-generated) distorted images of abused and sexualised women projected onscreen, Tanghe plays a non-idealised woman who seems to think she’s the opposite, with intrusive close ups of her face also shown on screen. She brings an almost distressing level of horror camp to the role, but like with everything else on stage in DEEPER, it works on multiple levels.
Runs Until 8th Oct 2025.
