Writer: Ciara Elizabeth Smyth
Director: Oisin Kearney
This intriguing and energetic production arrives in Edinburgh loaded with praise from last year’s Dublin Fringe and has already garnered numerous positive reviews. All I can tell you is: don’t believe the hype.
Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s play is about a woman who can’t sleep because she was attacked by an intruder. Faye (Charlotte McCurry) asks her brother Naoise (Thomas Finnegan) to help her confront this trauma in a very strange way. She wants him to don a duck’s head mask and jump out at her, from her wardrobe.
A second strand of the story soon opens up: the married Naoise has been accused by a co-worker of sexual assault. In his version of events, he merely gave the woman a drunken, consensual kiss in a pub toilet.
Now the action becomes weirdly incestuous, as Faye convinces herself that her brother was also her attacker. And so it goes – a rather thin, serious story about consent that’s inexplicably peppered with exuberant dance sequences.
Her over-the-top part gives Charlotte McCurry an opportunity to showcase her stage skills, which she does with great style, though both the essence of Faye’s character and the play’s wider purpose remain elusive. The character of Naoise is more immediately problematic, appearing first too naïve and then too worldly.
The play asserts facts and backstory without providing convincing action or dialogue to back them up. For example, the brother-sister relationship is established in name only, as there is a lack of basic familiarity between the two characters.
The repeated use of the duck’s head mask suggests the iconography of a fetishistic fantasy, though it’s not clear what this signifies or who it might belong to. Most likely it’s Faye’s, but this doesn’t make much sense.
Overall, the production seems half-baked. At 70 minutes, it’s not sure whether it’s a one-act Fringe play or a more substantial drama, and it ends up doing neither job satisfactorily. It’s watchable, but leaves a rather empty feeling at the end. Despite having some promising elements, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Runs until 27 August 2023 | Image: Ciaran Bagnall
The Reviews Hub Score
Disappointing
