Oona Doherty: Specky Clark evaluate – distressed orphan out-dances the abbatoir’s uncooked truth

Here we’re in an abattoir with a speaking pig carcass. You see, Oona Doherty places worlds on degree you gained’t see somewhere else. Best identified for her good ode to operating magnificence Belfast, Hard to be Soft, Doherty’s newest piece returns to her house the city in a tale impressed via previous generations, together with her great-great-grandfather (the unique Specky Clark), the place biography and fiction merge with messy edges. Specky (performed via petite Faith Prendergast, dwarfed via the tall dancers in grownup roles) arrives in Belfast from Glasgow elderly 10. Doherty herself moved from London to Belfast on the similar age – you’ll at all times query whose tale this in point of fact is.

The display is rooted in realism however briefly strikes to the mystical type after which full-blown delusion. “Let me tell ya a story,” says the narrator, conjuring backstories and private myths. Set at Samhain, the Gaelic pageant marking the beginning of wintry weather, it’s a liminal time when the barrier between the residing and lifeless turns into permeable. Even the anachronistic soundtrack – a David Holmes song thrown into what we suppose is an previous age – destabilises the sense of solidity.

When orphaned Specky is put to paintings within the abattoir, the pig he’s been advised to kill stands up and offers him a hug. This is the display’s maximum arresting, affecting scene. It’s the relaxation Specky wishes, however on the similar the instant his middle hardens. It’s comedic too, which is an important to Doherty’s tone (although that’s infrequently overegged).

The display offers us uncooked truth, and the get away from that. Specky dances with the sense of shedding (then discovering) your self. Dance is catharsis; it’s the portal out of right here. For all that Doherty leans against theatricality, she has an important method with natural motion, whether or not Specky’s inside misery erupting outward in full-body shakes, or the entire forged transferring as though Doherty has torn pages from a dance encyclopedia at random: an Irish dance leg flung top, a people reel, a manic floss, a hip-hop transfer.

This is daring, authentic, unique paintings. But the riding dramatic concept, Specky’s grief for his mom, is underplayed (in spite of dramaturgical enter from playwright Enda Walsh). It doesn’t burrow deep sufficient. We hope for an excellent redemptive arc that doesn’t come. Which is realism, needless to say.