View from the Green Room: Mixed bag at Downses!
Writer and director Luke Corcoran.
Luke Corcoran brings a mixed-bag of three apparently ‘spooky’ plays to my old watering haunt of Downes’s in Thomas Street in Waterford city for a Halloween special.
Each play is introduced by Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula with ghoulish intent and an Eastern European twang that obscures the title and details of the piece.
‘The Loser Virus’, written by Luke Corcoran and performed by Luke and Jack Ruddle, certainly lost me as the script seemed to repeat itself half a dozen times without ever reaching a conclusion. So many turning points that never seemed to turn. Still both give it their all.
‘First Date with a Serial Killer’, written by Sam Jacob and performed by Jerome O’Sullivan and Kohneshia De Bhál, is an intruiguing and clever plot with two serial killers meeting up on Tinder.
The histories of both characters are revealed in a series of getting-to-know-you Tinder questions that lead to a mutual interest in murdering people they don’t know, for the thrill of it. Unfortunately, both actors are seated for the performance and when they become personal and intimate, they also become frequently inaudible. It’s a good script but one that requires more work.
‘Good Christopher’, written by Luke Corcoran, is a funny and entertaining script about mental hospital inmate Christopher (Peter Wright) who spends his days in a padded cell and is treated once a week by resident psychiatrist Dr Richards (Gillian Walsh).
Christopher is the complete fruitcake whose speculations on what are real and what is not is the heart of this short drama. His obvious interest in the attractive Dr. Richards gives an edge to the fun as his questions about what is real and what is not becomes more and more intruiguing.
As the play ended, the audience found itself questioning whether Dr Richards and itself were in the real world at all or whether we really all were on Planet Christopher where the only reality is his construct. As Alice’s Cheshire Cat once concluded: "I’m not crazy. My reality is just different than yours."
Peter Wright is excellent as Christopher as is Gillian Walsh as the psychiatrist who finds herself questioning her own sanity.
Three short plays of less than an hour with interminable breaks drag the whole evening out to almost two hours and wouldn’t attract me back.
