The New Electric Ballroom is a play that relies heavily on rhythm: the rhythm of narrative, the rhythm of the sea, the rhythm of day to day life, the rhythm of the Irish language. It is a piece that has its own internal rhythm, one that I don’t know if I entirely managed to move with. It is a strange piece of theatre – not strange as in bizarre, but strange as in weird or eerie or uncanny. There is a sense that the boundary between times is thin. One night, twenty years ago, is still as close as if it were yesterday - and somehow, despite all the time that has passed, it was just yesterday.
Sisters Clara (Genevieve Mooy), Breda (Odile LeClezio) and
Ada (Jane Phegan) live together in a little house. Only Ada, the youngest
sister, ever leaves, and the only visitor is local fishmonger Patsy (Justin
Smith), bound to them in ways that none of them understand. Twenty years ago,
Clara and Breda shared a night at the New Electric Ballroom that traumatised
them both so deeply that it rendered them unable to leave the house. Ada has
relived that night over and over again through the constantly told and retold
story, and in many ways, the scars it has carved upon her are deeper than those
of her sisters.
The weakest part of The
New Electric Ballroom was the premise. I found it hard to believe that this
one night could have so deeply scarred Clara and Breda that it essentially
became the moment they stopped living. However, if you can suspend your
disbelief, the deeper meanings about what it means to be part of a story and
the mythic nature of narrative are very powerful. It took me a while to settle
into the play, to relax into the rhythm and let it wash over me. I found
myself trying to psychoanalyse it too much, to try and understand more about why Clara and Breda were as agoraphobic
and fixated on this one night as they were. I don’t think it’s a particularly
flexible text in that sense, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If
nothing else, it was interesting, trying to think in a different way synchronise with the piece’s
internal rhythms. I do think it made The
New Electric Ballroom a bit of a slow starter, but once the patterns became
established, it became a lot clearer.
...that is quite a bit of confused highly subjective
philosophising right there. (That’s kind of what I do. Sorry.) I certainly
think that it’s possible simply to enjoy The
New Electric Ballroom simply as beautiful, lyrical language, because hot
damn does writer Enda Walsh have a turn of phrase about him. There were some
gorgeous performances – I especially enjoyed the work of Justin Smith as Patsy,
but all four actors were stellar. I found the soundscape a little intrusive at
times, particularly for such a claustrophic, aggressively domestic play. One of
the most poignant moments in the play is when Ada stares at a kettle, waiting
for it to boil, and I think a little more of this and a little less seascape
probably would have been better. Despite this, it was overall a great
show from a technical standpoint, and director Kate Gaul deserves high praise.
The idea of the power of narrative to transform and to
consume is one that really resonated with me deeply. The New Electric Ballroom has some great funny moments, but its
four characters were quietly tragic, doomed by this ravenous, insatiable story,
this ouroboros of a tale, unable to escape it even as it eats them alive. It’s a play I liked but I found quite difficult to grasp. I don’t really
know how to describe the thinking, the rhythm, innate in it, but suffice it to
say it’s not a way of thinking I’m particularly attuned to. What The New Electric Ballroom is is a
thought-provoking piece of theatre, and a haunting one. The uncanniness of it
is certainly going to stay with me for a while.
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