Underneath
Peacock theatre, Dublin
Written by and starring Pat Kinevane
Directed by Jim Culleton
Everything's been better since death, claims the anonymous woman in Underneath, one of actor/writer Pat Kinevane's three one-person shows currently running at the Peacock. Under a section of a graveyard in Cobh (dark save for some lengths of golden fabric that hang from the ceiling), her skin blackened from decomposition, she recounts her life story from the moment she was disfigured after being strurck by a bolt of lightning as a girl, through the torments of bullying and isolation at school to finding kinship with sympathetic eastern European women in a Dublin flat.
Kinevane mixes unsettling confessional moments with chatty observations about pop culture to startling effect and his interaction with the audience is warm and funny: once he finds out the names of three of the people in the front row, he integrates them into the script in a way that makes the character seem touchingly vulnerable.
The play can be heavyhanded in its attempts to explore the primacy image over substance - the parodies of home improvement and makeover TV programmes are a little obvious - and the resolution feels unnecessarily neat but Kinevane is a magnetic physical performer who moves with grace and menace, the black make-up highlighting his twinkling eyes and flashing teeth
Like Silent, one of the other plays in the trilogy, Underneath gives a voice to a victim of cruel luck in a world where those on the margins appear to be increasingly isolated. Near the end of the play, Kinevane's unnamed character is explicit and direct in her plea to the audience to appreciate the people we have in our lives, a message that is always worth repeating.
No comments:
Post a Comment