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Review: LAD, VAULT Festival

Equal parts hilarious and horrific, One Duck’s LAD puts laddishness under the spotlight at the VAULT Festival

Irish theatre company One Duck are certainly keeping busy. They’ve only just closed their run of John O’Donovan’s Flights at the Omnibus and now they’re opening LAD at the VAULT Festival. And across the two shows, it is clear to see the artistic themes driving them at the moment, looking how society has shaped modern masculinity and asking what kind of state it is in.

Writer/performers Alan Mahon and Rhys Dunlop’s LAD is all about Steve (Mahon), a nice enough chap who wants to work in a zoo and who’s prepping an upcoming best man’s speech. But there’s a nagging sense of trouble, he was an accountant but now he’s stacking shelves, and that nagging sense has a nagging voice, personified in toto by Dunlop, suggesting an entirely split self. Continue reading “Review: LAD, VAULT Festival”

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Review: Flights, Omnibus Theatre

A bold and sometimes brutal look at life in small-town Ireland, Flights is running at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham now

“All the things that I could do… 
All the ways it could turn out.”

It’s either feast or famine when it comes to John O’Donovan’s play titles, from the iconic If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You to Flights, now opened at Clapham’s Omnibus Theatre after a tour of Ireland. And it is perhaps indicative of his playfulness and skill with words as evidenced in this lyrical piece set in the depths of rural Ireland.

Barry (Colin Campbell), Cusack (Conor Madden) and Pa (Rhys Dunlop) have gathered to mark the anniversary of their pal Liam’s death, something they’ve done with all their friends every year for the last 17 years. But the numbers have been dwindling and this year, on the year when he’s been dead as long as he was alive, it’s just the three of them and though there’s more booze and drugs to go round, there’s also more introspection. Continue reading “Review: Flights, Omnibus Theatre”