Theatre: Pigeon

Husband (Karl Quinn) has endless debts and is trying to hide them from his other half. Wife (Ruth Lehane) is busy buying fancy pasta and biscuits from artisan food shops. Their house is about to be taken away, and nobody is dealing with it. At a time when any Irish theatre that isn’t celebrating James Joyce seems to be agonising endlessly about our current economic situation, you could easily throw Pigeon on the heap. However, the narrative is not its merit. Ciarán Taylor’s production was created outside the literary tradition. The actors are in masks and don’t utter a word; a fitting format for a couple that refuses to communicate. The hinges fall off the letterbox, the drawer containing the hidden bills begins to open, and a banging noise increases around the house. Husband retreats to the attic in nostalgia under a pretext of saving mementos. The action, propelled by Jack Cawley, Mischa O’Mahony and Steve Wickham’s music, builds to a crescendo that sends everything crashing down. The tiresome habit of talking about ourselves has been recharged.