Audiences get a particular thrill from stories of commonplace situations; moments of recognition that offer them that narcissistic “aah” that generally leads to reminiscing about their own personal experiences. DISCOnnected is a mine rich with such moments. Invited down into night-club we are presented with the usual Irish set-up; man and woman meet, they  panic, drink themselves silly and finally make the beast with two backs.

Sarah Baxter and Stephen O’Rourke go through the motions of the club-world with a free and fluid choreography, where the specificity of repeated gestures tells a story we all understand, lifting it out of the mundane and endowing it with real beauty. O’Rourke’s mechanised movements in ‘the Gents’, as he physicalises room-spinning feelings of drunkenness, are highly evocative and skilfully executed. These re-enactments are interrupted by the on-screen Bouncer, whose likeable wisdom and charm fail only when he waxes lyrical about a drunk man slumped against a wall. After all, we are Dubliners forsooth! Jaded, cynical and thoroughly immune to the roadside drunk’s poetic potential.

In proposing a story of dysfunctional and abusive sexual habits associated with clubbing, the piece doesn’t reckon with its anaesthetised audience. Over-exposed to images and stories similar to the one we see before us, nothing here shocks and not a lot is added to a familiar story, in spite of its imaginative framework.

Star rating: ★★★