Comic Book Drama Geeks

Dublin Fringe Fest was apparently putting on a play about superheroes gathering in a room the night before the world meets its end. Now if there’s one medium this sort of genre probably won’t work in, theatre is it, but Colin had peaked our interest. Since we had been writing our own superhero stories Karen, Colin, Sean and myself were to go. On the eve of the event, Sean was sick so Ben happily took his place, how could we pass up a superhero story, 'The Darkroom'.

Here is what we first read, and based our interest on:

"DC and Marvel superheroes and supervillains face extinction. The Anarchic Invincibility Deficiency Syndrome unmasks masked idols and Supermen fade to grey. When the world falls darker than Joker's soul, something sharper than Wolverine's claws will save us. Heroic Couplets, comic book duality and a touch of La Ronde from award-winning writer Neil Watkins. Directed by Karl Shiels."

We met up for a few drinks before hand and headed over to the Players Theater in Trinity College. The Fringe Fest is usually artistic mediums that are on the fringe of the accepted norm, this was my first time experiencing the festival and was happy to have free tickets! We filed into the small room which maybe fit 40 people, that was barely lit, scooted up the aisle and tucked all the way in, this would prove to be one of the more difficult aspects of the play. The lights go down, the smoke machine is up....

Scene 1: Out steps the first 'hero', and he is singing a song about the Pope and incest to the theme song 'Under the Sea'. Not sure how that was superhero like, but I am patient.

Scene 2: Then comes the Junkie Male Prostitute giving the cheating husband HIV. Again, superhero qualities?! Well maybe Villain but where are the heroes, but I will stick with it.
Check our tickets, yes, we are at the right place......

Scene 3: Another strange poetry reading throwing the cards down on the floor being as vulgar and immature as possible.

Scene 4: (Thirty minutes in) A woman dances naked behind a screen with just a light to create her shadow, a strange scraping and moaning sound in the other corner, women moaning and another poetry guy stands up there. The light goes up in the corner and there is a gimp that is removing stainless steel balls from his bowels thus cracking the toilet.

At this point Karen says 'Right so, I am outta here'. We all get up and leave mid play this is where it gets difficult trying to get out in a smoke filled room full of people. Lots of toes were stepped on. I have never done that before but apparently is acceptable during the Fringe.

With that strangeness behind us, we find a quiet pub in an old library and end the night with a few hot toddies. I mean how to you recover from something like that? Whiskey washed away all those thoughts and we had a good laugh over it. We rechecked our tickets and Ben checked the write up on the Internet and yes we were at the right place.

What we found later:
Out in the wilder regions of experimentation are two productions whose investigations are as much in the staging as in the language. In Neil Watkins's The Darkroom from Gentle Giant Theatre Company, our greatest superheroes take centre-stage. And slug it out in duels. To the death. It's an ingenious premise. To reflect further that Neil turns to heroic couplets and iambic pentameters to investigate the shadows that keep company with us all, and in particular the shadow of HIV, and that director Karl Shiels and designer Sarah Jane Shiels mean to keep it very dark, is to feel something very exciting in the making. Peter Dunne's Before Colour from Wicked Angels investigates language as untruth, setting one young woman's denials against the incontrovertible evidence of her two sisters' self-harm. A staging with the fluidity of the colour spectrum is keeping pace here with the quicksilver changes in the dialogue.

But no, that is still misleading and still sounds superhero-y!

This is better:
"After my first play's success, I managed to raise my profile, and the Fringe seemed a more viable option for me because I had a developed an audience for my work through Dublin's gay scene, and Alternative Miss Ireland and things, but I could tap in to the resources of the Fringe as well. My work isn't really mainstream [The Dark Room is about superheroes battling the villain of HIV] and it is frustrating trying to find support when there isn't really a place for it in Irish theatre, when theatres just want to do their Shakespeares and their Oscar Wildes. But the Fringe is happy to support the more edgy, non-conservative work that might not be seen in other contexts. The support that the Fringe gives you is practical too: even just being in the brochure cuts your PR cost immediately. Plus you're pretty much guaranteed at least one review in a national newspaper, and that's another vital thing. The reviews help you to sell your show if they are positive, but even if they are negative at least that's feedback, which you don't really get as a new company at any other time of the year."

Fair enough, he just wanted to get us in there. If it had been a more realistic write up, I still may have gone to it and just had a different level of disappointment, but wow, that was something! Can't wait to see what next year holds!