Right from the get go, from the very second you walk into the theatre, you're thrown off balance, and you should prepare to remain in that state throughout the sixty minute run-time. Facing the entrance are two fully grown, fully bearded men in garish blonde wigs and homemaker dresses. There's a raised black square, which you might mistake as being the stage, facing the audience. And from somewhere, someone is commentating on the audience as they enter the auditorium. "Look at the ground. Look at your feet. Look at the ground. It's going to stay that way until you're dead." Lovely.
Once everyone takes their seats, we see the two men are sitting at a desk filled with electronic equipment; one will be the live DJ and the other the live visual editor, working together to create moment to moment art. The lights dim and bright orange spotlights reveal the "stage" is in fact a construction of black netting, with two completely naked women lying underneath, writhing in time with the music and sounds, sharing a microphone between them as the DJ distorts their voices.
As the introductory voice-over morphs the festival's primary sponsor - "Tiger Beer!" - via modulation from ransom demanding depths to hilariously protracted squeaks, the two female performers begin to tell stories about previous relationships and true love, and they're usually accompanied by a kaleidoscopic assortment of images as eyes, nipples and vaginas melt into and away from each other. Other times we're greeted to short films, such as the ghost story involving a card playing old man (that goes nowhere), or the fake advertisement for Porno Pops (a cereal that is also... porn?).
The heavy handed feminist slant gets pretty grating after a while - "Fuck going to a party and not getting raped for once!" - but props must go to the show's creators for coming up with something that isn't as profound as it thinks it is, but stylistically is about as cutting edge as modern theatre can get.
Nudity, visual art instillations, live music, interpretative dance, impromptu transvestitism... it's like a compilation mix of what you should expect from the Fringe at large!
Lurky! Lurky! runs at the Samuel Beckett Theatre from Friday 12th - Sunday 14th September as part of Tiger Dublin Fringe
