The Man Who Talks to Statues
Civic Theatre, Tallaght
★★☆☆☆
The great thing about a fringe festival is its faith in the new. The risks taken in a bid to unearth talent and ideas have driven Dublin Fringe Festival since its inception, in 1995, the implicit warning being that its oddball plays and raucous stand-up shows may see audiences hailing a fresh voice or searching for the exit. Shane Casey’s The Man Who Talks to Statues sits in the latter camp, unfortunately.
Casey, a familiar face from The Young Offenders, takes the Civic Theatre on a one-man mission that saw him rambling around Ireland following a car crash. Our protagonist monologues about the incident and his subsequent drunken escapades: dropping in on a pub in Limerick and picking a fight with the bartender after jukeboxing the Vengaboys on loop; playing a game of racquetball with a statue of Richard Harris; arguing with a concerned pharmacist; and having a run-in with Molly Malone in Dublin – who “looks a bit like Shaggy”. Throw in a midnight feeding of the ducks with Phil Lynott and it’s as cohesive as a whirlwind.
Its humour, primarily predicated on caricatures of Irishisms, feels a bit like a skit your mam might send around to the girls in her book-club group chat. Judging by the mostly stone-cold audience, it falls flat of the mark – although fleeting moments of laughter slip through the cracks.
Casey attempts a pantomime presence, oscillating between a melodic Cork drawl and butchered impressions you might hear from somebody down the pub, in particular his impression of Lynott. As such, his Three Stooges tomfoolery receives more mild exhales than the intended laughter.
A one-man show is not an easy feat, but occasional referrals to a script breaks up an otherwise well-flowing narrative. One can’t help but feel it would have been improved in the hands of somebody more at ease with filling the stage.
This self-indulgent performance leaves us with an inescapable feeling that our protagonist, much like our audience, has remained painfully unchanged by the journey.
Continues at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Wednesday, September 11th
