Disco Pigs

Disco Pigs begins with a SNAP out of black and there they are: Pig (Jonathan Shilling) and Runt (Antoinette Davis) either side of the stage.  They were born on the same day.  They describe their births in graphic and exuberant detail.  Just born, the babies Darren and Sinéad see each other.  They connect.  They live next door to each other.  As little kids playing with farm animals, they give each other their own special names: Pig and Runt.  They are inseparable.  As they grow together it’s all about television, drinking and fighting.  They’re tough, intimidating. 

A favourite game is for Runt to let boys in pubs and clubs pick her up - and then for Pig to barge in as the jealous boyfriend.  Violence ensues.  Funny and fun.  They create their own world and exclude all else. 

But when they hit seventeen, their birthday is a special day.  Runt is already becoming aware of a world outside their world.  And Pig begins - or realises - sexual feelings and fantasies about Runt…

Their story is told in fierce monologues and jokey banter and insults for anyone who intrudes… till things begin to change.  Change is heralded by a night trip to the seaside where Runt is even drunker on the cool fresh air and the vast ocean.  Her language becomes more lyrical.  Pig doesn’t notice, lost in violent dreams of destruction…  There’s no sentimentality here. 

Playwright Enda Walsh invented a special language for his characters Pig and Runt in this award-winning 1996 play. It’s a patois of broad Cork working class and slurred invention, dropped consonants, and aggressive cursing.  

It’s a huge achievement from Davis and Shilling, both totally focussed, to learn this language.  Director Gavin Roach has no doubt asked for this and the actors deliver the difficult dialogue with unrelenting rapid fire high energy.  Walsh’s intention, clearly, is to emphasise the special near sealed world and the exclusive bond between Pig and Runt - and also to suggest how limited and limiting that world is.  

Nevertheless, Pig and Runt speaking in their own language does renders what they say about maybe thirty or forty percent incomprehensible in this production.  But I went to the text and found that a fair proportion is just as difficult to read.  Here, comprehension is not helped by Danni E Esposito’s sound design, which is excessive and frequently overwhelms the dialogue.  This is unfortunate given, first, that the actors give powerful, focussed performances, and second, since all we have is dialogue, we are often struggling to follow just what is happening. 

But there is still power in these characters and their story. Revived in 2018, it was claimed the play is dated - no longer so explosive and surprising.  I’m not so sure.  Pig and Runt and their violence may not be so hard to find on the streets.

Gavin Roach, also the entrepreneurial producer here, is presenting a series of interesting short plays at the Meat Market during the 2022 Fringe, including Pops, Override, This Is Living and If We Got Some More Cocaine plus, elsewhere, his production of A Hundred Words for Snow.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Cameron Grant