Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom was one of the hits of this year’s Edinburgh Festival fringe. In its tale of three sisters recreating a calamitous incident from their long-lost youth, it sounds like a female counterpart to this earlier play, The Walworth Farce, which arrives on the South Bank via last year’s festival and a season in New York.
The Druid production by Mikel Murfi had its premiere in Galway in 2006 and seems to be still running off the same highly charged batteries. As in Walsh’s break-through play, Disco Pigs, there’s a frightening energy pumping through this writing, here translated into performances of overwhelming force and brutality.
High in a council flat on the Walworth Road near the Elephant and Castle, Dinny (Denis Conway) is presiding over a daily ritual of recreating the family history with his two incarcerated sons, Sean (Tadhg Murphy as an alarmingly bald and devastated victim) and Blake (Garrett Lombard as a crazed, cross-dressing extrovert).
With their Mam’s cardboard coffin, a sports trophy and a wardrobe of wigs and costumes, life back in Cork, and the bizarre, fatal confrontation with a horse in a hedge, not to mention (and perhaps you’ll wish they hadn’t) the sorry destiny of a dog and a tent pole, the frantic action is like an old Eugene O’Neill vinyl disc played at the wrong speed. The Three Stooges meet Stones in His Pockets with a dash of Joe Orton, Martin McDonagh and a curious reverberation of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming.
The men are joined in the second act by Hayley(Mercy Ojelade), a check-out girl from Tesco’s who has turned up with the shopping they left behind. She is immediately commandeered to cook a chicken in the way their old Mam used to and is further enlisted in the fun and japes to the extent of having her black face whitened while Sean applies dark make-up and a Muslim cap.
This heightened sense of cultural displacement is a running theme in the plays of Tom Murphy and Brian Friel, but the intensity of frustration and despair finds a heightened metaphor in this crazy quagmire of submerged identity and role-playing. Sabine Dargent’s design is a riot of cheap furniture and bad taste spread across three adjacent box rooms. The two-hour show is totally exhausting, but the rollercoaster ride is worth it.
-Michael Coveney
Reader Reviews
Score
Comment
Date
For me, it gets 2 stars for the brilliantly detailed set and the energy of the performers, but one deducted to counter the three 5-star ratings from the same poster below. The play itself quickly becomes tiresome as the authoritarian father bullies his two sons through what seems to be a daily re-enactment of their family history. An interesting idea stretched way beyond its limited worth. I didn't noticeably improve in act 2 either. By the way, I wish the WOS system was able to block multiple entries from smug pillocks like joesmith with his juvenile little snipes. - Sycamore Flint
20 Nov 08
As someone else pointed out here "what works after four pints at a fringe venue doesn't at the Cottesloe...". A lynching would be more likely! Even Denis Conway's Dinny, whose resemblence to Oliver Hardy was uncanny, failed utterly to do anything for this comtemptable piece of shite. The whole kit and caboodle should be sent packing back to Galway, NOW! - Should be Bloody Angry - but just pissed off!
27 Oct 08
Exhausting and interminable! I really am not sure what Edna Walsh was trying to do apart from taking the piss out of the audience? Utter self-indulgent crap. I have said before on this blog that there ought to be a society for the protection of actors, and audiences of course, from certain playwrights and directors. This production must surely bring that need forward and with some urgency. God knows why the NT brought it in? Another reason I feel to question the artistic credibility of Mr Hytner. "The Walworth Farce" - it wouldn't know farce if it came up and bit it on the arse! So yet again I have to resort to saying "better luck next time then?", but now I am getting rather bored having to do so. - rds
26 Oct 08
Some good performances, but I was a borderline 'walk-out' at the interval. Had I spent more than £10 for my usual seat in Row T, I would have felt aggrieved. - Andrew B
10 Oct 08
Its not perfect and its nots everyones can of Harp. As with others comments, it gets better after the interval. This is a play that rewards and stays with you. - CAA
08 Oct 08
Absolutely dreadful. It may not be for the hard of thought but then again, you can safely leave your brain at the door because its as intellectually demanding as your standard Xmas pantomine - John S
04 Oct 08
I had very high hopes based on the Edinburgh reviews but i'm sorry to say what a disappointment. Its noisy, confusing, poorly acted and actually rather tedious. - Mandy
27 Sep 08
As I said...not for the hard of thought. - joesmith
26 Sep 08
I totally agree with the most recent reviews though I must confess I'm one of the lucky ones on an aisle seat who managed to escape early. This was like some poor 6th form production. There wasn't a laugh to be had in the entire duration. Having seen The Waves as the last thing in the Cottlesloe, what a shame to see this dismal piece in its place. - Simon T
26 Sep 08
No, no, no. If you only choose a few things to go to, try the wonderful War Horse, and avoid this bizarre thing. - lord charleston
26 Sep 08
I was very disappointed by this. The play within a play is just confusing and unless you think men wearing dresses is hilarious there's absolutely not a laugh to be had. Torture! - mike n
26 Sep 08
Admittedly this could be a five star production post the interval. I wouldn't know as I felt my intelligence had been roundly insulted well before that point - probably about five minutes in - and if only the Cottlesloe didn't have those noisy steps, I might have exited then. A shame I didn't because the pantomime plot of the first 5 minutes promised what was to come. I can honestly say that I have never seen such a pointless, shamelessly bad exercise in Theatre at the National and yes, I did see both Fram and Afterlife. A woeful season from the National continues... - Martin B
25 Sep 08
A superb piece of ensemble acting. You really have to stick with it and not be put off by the first half as after the interval it gets better and better. The audience roared their approval at the end. A must see at the National this Autumn - ILS
25 Sep 08
A love it or hate it thing - I would sit through every performance of Fram rather than sitting thrrough 45 minutes of the worst thing I've ever seen at the National. What works after 4 pints at the Fringe does nothing for the Cottesloe after a day at work, as attested by the number of empty seats in the second half... - dgr1
25 Sep 08
agree with kilburncat. at forty minutes, this might have been decent. at two hours it drags and drags. once you know the fact of the play within a play, the content is irrelevant. so you end up forced to watch an hour-odd of pointless and not terribly funny mugging. the actors do a decent job trying to lipstick this pig. - fred
24 Sep 08
Fantastic! Don't go and see it if you're expecting an out and out farce. Silly, unsettling and disturbing in its themes, with a brilliant cast. - plutoanddragons
24 Sep 08
P.S. Not for the hard of thought. - joesmith
22 Sep 08
The single theme of this drama is not a bad one, but it is drilled remorselessly throughout act one, only to be repeated, often literally, in act two. This makes for an evening which might be described as tiresome. A sub-plot, new thoughts or insights would have improved things considerably but the playwright is clearly a man who thinks that one idea is quite enough for one evening. Energetically enacted by a talented cast. - kilburncat
21 Sep 08
Saw this in Edinburgh last year, it is sensational, DON'T MISS IT ! With a bit of luck they will also transfer the companion piece, "female version", 'The New Electric Ballroom'. - joesmith
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