“WAKE is a dynamic variety show which uses old traditions and new approaches to celebrate Irish culture.”
Kate Stratford
3.5 Stars
Venue: Carriageworks
Sydney Festival
Dates : Until 25th Jan
You have an eclectic mix of aerial acrobats, singers, dancers, musicians and poets – what to do with them. Well, you create a sort of Cirque. Then you need a theme to create a show and as you are Irish … well nothing more Irish than a wake; a celebration of life in the face of death, where music, stories and laughter carry through the night. Sometimes even several days an always with an obligatory tap-dancing drunk uncle (Philip Connaughton).
Created and directed by Created by Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon (with additional creative input from Niall Sweeney and Carys D. Coburn) WAKE is a dynamic variety show which uses old traditions and new approaches to celebrate Irish culture. Some excellent fiddle playing from Lucia Mac Partlin elicits memories of sitting in a pub in Dublin whilst Darren Roche‘s haunted accordion playing gave me flashes of family gatherings when I was a child when my Dad, like Adam Matthews, would still the room with a song. Other musicians were as equally accomplished delivering traditional renditions with takes on more recent music, such as The Cranberries.
THISISPOPBABY’s take on an Irish wake journeys though a range of emotions as the acts juxtapose life and death. The aerial work is a delicate balance; beauty dices with danger and we are enthralled as Jenny Tufts and Lisette Krol defy gravity. There is tap dancing (of course!) and breakdancing and disco dancing and Irish jigs. There is awe and silliness and humour, grief and longing and love. Shared communally.
The acts are threaded together with musical interludes and storytelling by the poet FELISPEAKS. Almost Shakespearean in structure and imagery, the poetic challenge to embrace the now, to embrace grief, in the face of the inescapable is delivered brutally and could have perhaps been even more profound and engaging with moments of gentleness.
The lighting is superb. Peter Bond should give classes in how to challenge borders and create enigmas in staging. (He does, but one has to travel to Britain).
WAKE is part of the Sydney Festival at the Carriageworks.
Photos by Neil Bennett
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
