Threshold | Turn Around | Project Arts

Star Rating: 2/5

Turn Around: Threshold
Cast: Steve Cash, Hannah James and Sarah-Jayne Quigley
Written by Aoife Crehan
Direction and Choreography by Maisie Lee and Aoife Crehan

The corrosive effect that money has on ones' morals is also the theme in MIRARI Productions Threshold, playing downstairs at Project Arts in the Cube as part of their Turn Around series. Watchable, mainly thanks to the performances of Sarah-Jayne Quigley, Steve Cash and Hannah James, Aoife Crehan's brittle script and haphazard direction (in conjunction with Maisie Lee) leaves the audience tender when the lights come up but not exactly piqued by what they have just seen.

We open on fisticuffs, a man decking a woman, before jumping forward to a police interrogation room where three characters automatically start to contradict what we have just seen. Jumping back and forth between the now and then, we watch as the characters slip up, contradict each other and cast light on the off stage assault of a second man, beaten to a pulp by Cash on a ghost estate he built and resides in.

The problem with the piece is that in choosing to have all three characters on stage at the same time as each is being interrogated the revelations come in the same tone, the pace never alters and we never get a sense of the twisting tension as the truth unravels. It could have been avoided by having a separate spot come up on each of the performers as they spoke, throwing the others into darkness when not talking. But by having all three constantly in vision it removes the element of surprise from the individual performances and makes the whole thing staid.

A study of desperate measures in desperate times Crehan's characters are aggressive, angsty and too often come out with admittedly witty put downs that seem trite given the circumstance, particularly James' well played, foul mouthed spurned wife.

But really it neither succeeds as a study of monetary and marital bliss (and how one impacts the other) nor as a psychological thriller and seems like an odd choice for revival out of all the possible plays that could have been brought back from Fringes past.

Story by EI Team | 09:00 | Tuesday 1st May 2012 | Theatre

356

Comments

• No comments have been posted for this article yet. Be the first!

Log in to leave a comment

Login or register to leave a comment

Enter your email:

Enter Password: Lost Your Password?