Reviews

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Seona Mac Réamoinn

3 stars

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Review by
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3 stars

Autobiographer

Review by
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4 stars

Bás Tongue

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Better Loved From Afar

Review by
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2 stars

Bird with Boy

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5 stars

Body Electric

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Chesslaugh Mewash

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3 stars

Criminal Queers

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Harvey O'Brien

4 stars

Cult

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Do You Read Me?

Review by
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3 stars

Does Anybody Ever

Review by
Sara Keating

4 stars

Dreams of Love

Review by
Shirley Chance

3 stars

Eternal Rising of the Sun

Review by
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4 stars

Follow

Review by
Derek West

5 stars

Gis A Shot of Your Bongos Mister

Review by
Clara Kumagai

4 stars

Hand Me Down The Moon

Review by
Susan Conley

3 stars

Happening

Review by
Peter Crawley

4 stars

Heidi and the Bear

Review by
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2 stars

In My Bed

Review by
Jesse Weaver

4 stars

It's Your Turn To Change Daddy

Review by
Jennifer Lee

2 stars

Jumping Off The Earth

Review by
Christopher McCormack

3 stars

Last Year

Review by
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3 stars

Love Songs For Losers

Review by
Donald Mahoney

3 stars

Luca & the Sunshine

Review by
Tom Donegan

5 stars

MaDam

Review by
Tom Donegan

2 stars

maKe, i mean

Review by
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4 stars

My Word Is My Bond

Review by
Derek West

3 stars

Our Father

Review by
Jennifer Lee

4 stars

Pocket Music

Review by
Tom Donegan

3 stars

Seeing and Dreaming

Review by
Jesse Weaver

4 stars

Seekers

Review by
Seona Mac Réamoinn

3 stars

That's About The Size of It

Review by
Susan Conley

3 stars

The Bright Side of the Moon

Review by
Donald Mahoney

2 stars

The Flamboyant Bird

Review by
Jesse Weaver

4 stars

The Yellow Wallpaper

Review by
Tom Donegan

4 stars

Twenty Ten

Review by
Donald Mahoney

4 stars

Welcome to the Forty Foot

Review by
Derek West

3 stars

When Irish Hearts are Praying

Review by
Harry Browne

2 stars

Where Do I Start?

Review by
Jennifer Lee

4 stars
  • Review
  • Theatre

Produced by Niamh McCann in The New Theatre

Welcome to the Forty Foot

20-24 September, 6pm

Review by Derek West

Reviewed 20 September 2011

Absolut Fringe 2011

Welcome to the Forty Foot

This is a bubbly evocation of  the chill of the Forty Foot, a homage to the ladies who swim all year round.  While some of the monologue veers towards the  purple of nostalgia,  McCann achieves some distance from cozy familiarity through a series of  narrative techniques – home movie (hand-held camera capturing the frigid plunges of  early-morning devotees, the Kish lighthouse blinking distantly);  sound-bites from authentic affionados, articulating the pleasures of momentary release from worry through icy immersion, mostly in the smooth tones of South Dublin (barring one feisty lady from Pearse Street); and a largely unvarnished conversational narrative from McCann.

She is writer, deviser, sole performer - a masochist-enthusiast, revelling in the spartan experience, finding a kind of hypothermic release that takes the swimmers out of this world, allowing them to be sea-nymphs if only for a few polar moments.
 
The New Theatre setting is unrelentingly black and bleak, counteracting McCann’s cheeriness. The cine-screen and sound-system are basic, the movement is adequately graceful, crying out for higher production values, music and choreography of the order of Bolger’s sublime dance-piece, Swimming with My Mother. The potential transcendence of simple pleasures remains for the most part earthbound by its limitations.

Derek West