It seems that whoever I have spoken to recently has lamented our missing summer. Many claim that this year is wetter than last year “and that was bad, mind.” But I like to look at positives and I know there were at least two evenings when we sat under canvas on the green at Ballydehob and watched open air theatre.
It wasn’t just the quality of the performances, or the positivity of the audiences that kept us warm. It was the actual yellow hot sun up there in a blue evening sky doing its contracted summer job.
The shows I saw as part of the West Cork Fit Up Theatre Festival deserved good weather because they were exciting and creative pieces that received great support from local theatregoers.
‘Chicken’ by Eva O’ Connor is a fascinating and hilarious piece of theatre that follows the tale of Don Murphy who tells us frequently that he is ‘a proud Irishman.’ Don leaves his adoptive parents and his home town of Caherdaniel, “home of the great liberator Daniel O’ Connell” to travel to New York where he seeks his fortune as an actor. Don is also a chicken – a Derry Cock to be precise.
So far, so Kafka-esque! In short order, once Don arrives in New York, he meets Paolo, a Glaswegian pigeon, his career takes off, he becomes addicted to Ketamine, wins an Oscar and goes into rehab. Along the way he has sex with many humans (he especially loves vets) and then with another chicken who is also a performance artist. He also treats us to a vivid description of her pink nether regions. We also learn that procreation is difficult for cocks because they don’t actually have the part that is named after them! Don is also played by a female actor – this time Rosa Bowden spectacularly playing the role created by the show’s writer Eva O’Connor.
Chicken played in the round on the grass under the white Fit Up Festival Tent and for 60 minutes Bowden as Don circled, pecked and strutted through the bird’s life story. This was a real physical theatre tour de force performance as she led us through the character’s emotional journey while maintaining his unique avian characteristics and movements. There were lightning fast flashes in and out of other characters and accents that were all done with incredible vocal precision so that the audience missed nothing.
The script is well-structured with some totally killer comedy and it approaches many subjects including celebrity, addiction, immigration, gender identity and factory farming. What it needs to take it to a higher level is a point of view. The writer’s approach is intelligent and witty but we are never quite sure why each subject was discussed. However, I am sure that Ms O’Connor has more than enough talent and creative vision to take Chicken to the next level.
‘Nettle Horse’ written and performed by the incredible Little John Nee similarly offers us a different way of looking at the world. This show is more traditional and follows a long line of Irish storytelling but it sprinkles in enchantment by combining the tale of the Nettle Horse with music played live by the performer on multiple instruments. Nettle Horse also has a point of view that is enticing, engaging and entertaining.
In the best storytelling traditions Nee does not offer us a linear tale from A to B but takes us on diversions into fantasy, politics and sometimes just plain silliness. Readers of a certain vintage may remember the comedy show ‘The Two Ronnies’. Towards the end of each show Ronnie Corbett would sit on a giant highbacked chair usually dressed in a golfing jumper, and lean forward to tell us a story. This would invariably involve a misunderstanding or a mishap that would take the tale on diversions, deviations, side roads and the long way round for a few minutes before Corbett tied up all the ends in the final 30 seconds. The Nettle Horse provides us with a similar structure.
We are taken into a world just far enough removed from ours that it is able to offer perspective on how we live but close enough to our own experiences to be recognisable. Our narrator is selling beetles as snacks (“because everything started with The Beatles”) and we soon learn that Ireland has changed. Electric cars are the norm and traffic roar has been replaced by the ‘humming of a thousand cars’.
Along the way a boy stings his backside while trying to have a poo in some nettles and meets a horse whom he befriends. Nee introduces us to a magical phrase that will lift anyone’s depression just by repeating it; “State of the Art Scandinavian Horse Plough” – apparently chanting of this phrase has a wondrous effect on our mental health.
This is exactly the kind of item we might see sold by hipster lifestyle influencers eager to convince us that ‘having’ something will add meaning to our lives – a concept the play tries to dismantle.
The Nettle Horse also features a widowed Boston billionaire who wears a lampshade and buys thousands of acres of Irish land to build a pyramid, there is a shopping centre car park and above all there is magic. Little John Nee manages to pull these seemingly random strands together with a technical skill that is the theatrical version of the big top’s trapeze artists performing without a safety net. But with a bravery built on street theatre and punk, Nee corrals the audience into his world of pure imagination.
In ‘Nettle Horse’, Little John Nee takes us away from a tent on a green by an estuary on a wonderful summer’s evening and transports us to worlds created by our own sense of wonder. This is the magic of live theatre.
