AFTER at Dublin Fringe Festival

Rún Reviewer
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

“I don’t know what’s happening” Kip Johnson blasts out. “Neither do I” I whisper back. I look around at my fellow audience members for some sort of help and I see confirmation of other confused faces, a woman a few seats behind me packs up and leaves whilst the man beside me has drifted off to sleep.

Liv O’Donoghues post-apocalyptic show AFTER which premiered this week at Project Arts Centre as part of this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival has been two years in the making. Working with Filmmaker José Miguel Jiménez and performers Clara Simpson and Kip Johnson it features a mix of pre-recorded film segments, live stream film, physicality, a smoke machine, strobe lighting and a dinosaur blow up. The end of the world is near and we see the fallout of this through the eyes of Kip and Clara. We watch in documentary style their relationship change and evolve under the bizarre circumstances and what the stages or process of coming to grips with the end of days might look like.

“A forewarning for how you would cope and what you would do. To see what it really looks and feels like to know the end is nigh.” (Dublin Fringe Festival Programme)

Eugeia Genunchi has done an awesome job of the set, the pre-recorded scenes are shot beautifully by Miguel Jiménez and the live streaming blows my mind. It all started so well and I was drawn in by the performers on stage commentating on the footage whilst O’Donoghue hopped across stage interjecting with light humour asking Miguel for a second shot of her piece to camera. It felt real and honest, fast-paced and exciting and then somewhere along the lines I got lost. Let’s throw in an impromptu bit of disco dancing, a bit of rocking back and forth on the floor, some strange plastic bag with water, a smoke machine, fake blood… It was too much, too complicated and too confusing. I stopped believing Kip and Clara. Their descent into madness just didn’t seem truthful anymore. The honest and raw performance they started with disintegrated before my very eyes and when Kip approached the audience telling us the end was near. I really did want it to end then and there.

I left feeling deflated. The performers are top class, the names of theatre-makers working behind the scenes on this show would make your eyes water at the talent but AFTER for me was too much style over substance. A dancer friend rang me after the show in a fit of rage “Some fucking dance show that was.” she ranted, but I had to argue that although O’Donoghue might be known to many for her background in dance she never cited that AFTER would be dance based at all. In fact she openly spoke to Rachel Donnelly of Totally Dublin about the piece stating “I think the idea of genre in art these days has become… there’s no sense to it anymore really. I don’t know anyone who isn’t working collaboratively. I feel like the genre of dance hasn’t really applied to me for a long time and it just doesn’t really make sense in the way I work with the people in the room.”

So what comes AFTER this? I might not have liked it, maybe you will. I might go so far as to call it a FAIL but what that really means is a First Attempt In Learning. O’Donoghue had a bold idea, it was brave and adventurous and that’s what the Dublin Fringe Festival is all about. It might not have worked for me but I look forward to seeing what Liv O’Donoghue does next because despite what I think she’s still out there making and creating and inspiring the next generation of Irish theatre-makers.

Rún Reviewer

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I’ll go to the theatre and I’ll let you know what I think…