We will all come to a particular moment in our lives. The split second where our collective universes align and we arrive at the realisation that all of us perceive the world differently. A sense of acceptance rushes in.
The Company, winners of last year’s Spirit of the Fringe Award, has been deadlocked in that moment for the last three weeks. It took them a long time to get there.
It all started, as it did for Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, in the morning. It’s Dublin 2010 and members of the ensemble begin their day. It’s this very day on which we watch their performance. Their worlds inevitably intersect. They eat together, make their way to the theatre and set up.
The only problem: their individual perceptions of these events are entirely different. Launching into a re-enactment of the day’s journey, the actors often disagree. They play with sequencing, feed one another lines, dictate each other’s actions and physical shape. Cardboard boxes are manipulated into an ever-changing landscape, morphing into streets and shops. Stories become muddled, disorganised and, ultimately, unrecognisable.
Using Ulysses as inspiration and their own lives as material, The Company’s creation is amusing, cynical and deeply frustrating. I’m just not sure what really happened.