Last night’s performance of THISISPOPBABY’s WAKE doesn’t take the form of a usual production with a narrative flow, tonal progression and characters. It doesn’t even make much sense.
But it is brilliant.
It’s a cabaret, a “glitter-filled celebration of life”, and from the little red Speedo striptease from Philip Connaughton that kicks it all off to the light catching on the holographic, disco-ball priest during the final monologue, WAKE is delivering on this promise.
It plays on and subverts the rites and structures of a traditional Irish wake, where friends and family gather at the house of the dead for food and drinks to honour and celebrate their life.
The performance starts as a solitary woman in a black veil walks onto the stage, singing low and loud. She is soon joined by the rest of the cast, all turned out well in tight-fitting black funeral attire and sunglasses.
The priest, played by multidisciplinary poet FELISPEAKS, breaks the tension and begins to speak slowly and deliberately:
“This is a wake for everything that is never coming back.”
A strong start: maybe it’s a particularly sensitive day, or maybe it’s the way she pauses and looks deliberately across the whole audience before continuing, but I’m already emotional.
“This is a christening for the glorious radical nothing that we are facing.
“You have come here to be with everyone. To see the seams where your sorrow is stitched to you.
“The wake welcomes you.”
And welcome it sure does, because before long this start is a distant memory and we are swept up in 80s, 90s and early 2000s club bangers suffused with reels and jigs from a four-piece band.
The tone changes like the crack of a whip.
We go from a spellbinding aerial performance from Jenny Tufts set to haunting vocals to a scene right out of Alice in Wonderland where two men dance an intricate Irish jig balancing balloons, two metres wide, on their heads.
And as the balloons wobble to the beat of the music, it was absurd enough that in the middle of the laughing crowd I really did begin to contemplate what could possibly be the purpose of humanity, if not this.
Each of the cast is given a moment to shine, and I particularly enjoyed the moment towards the end when it all stops and accordionist Darren Roche sings a gentle mourning song that tells us dawn is coming.
All that lights the stage is a large circular lamp that glows like the sun, and the priest returns.
The final monologue lasts for a while but it feels fitting, like a long breath out.
FELISPEAKS paints a picture of a world where the dead return, where we can hear their wisdom and meet the many billions that we never had the chance to, and reunite with the people we have lost.
But still they are dead, she says, and we will have to bleed and feel and fight twice as hard to make up for the fact they can’t.
WAKE is not really about the dead at all.
It’s about the living that is left to do even during grief.
WAKE is a brainchild of THISISPOPBABY, an Irish theatre company whose work draws from high art and queer counter culture, and commissioned by the Irish Arts Centre and supported by Culture Ireland.
WAKE will be showing at Factory International until April 21st.
All photos: Ruth Medjber
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