Theatre for One: This Ireland Cork Midsummer Festival ★★★★★ Theatre for One: This Ireland is a succession of totally immersive one-to-one engagements from which there is no retreat. Each visitor is ushered into a comfortably padded booth that, as the door to the world outside closes with a thud, is vaguely reminiscent of a cell. The full cycle, staged by Landmark Productions and Octopus Theatricals , involves 12 five-minute plays, half by the six writers featured in the initial, 2019 production – Marina Carr, Stacey Gregg, Emmet Kirwan, Louise Lowe , Mark O’Rowe and Enda Walsh – and half by new writers whom they have mentored: Iseult Deane, Susannah Al Fraihat, Aoibhéann McCann, Joy Nesbitt, Ois O’Donoghue and Aoife Delany Reade.
The three selected for performance on Saturday share the effect of imprisonment, internalised in each case by the requirements of the script. The single, silent audience member has to be sharp to catch the clues, but the writing and the playing are themselves so clever and so committed that when the lights brighten and the door opens, one emerges both reluctant and elated. In Bait, Una Kavanagh is a woman struggling into a dress.
She appeals for an opinion as if from a friend sharing the fitting room, but it’s for her safety that she is appealing: the costume must please her abusive partner, who is otherwise inclined to describe her efforts as putting lipstick on a sow. The power of Louise Lowe’s subtle writing shows an exhaus.
