Reviews

‘Marriage is like the Middle East – there’s no solution!’ So says 42-year-old Shirley Bradshaw in her typical, straightforward Liverpool manner. Once she used to be Shirley Valentine, before marriage to Joe and before her two children, Brian and Millandra. Now she talks to the walls in her Liverpool semi-detached home, one among whole rows in the streets outside.

The play opens with a loud, long, resonant gunshot in complete darkness, so without warning that the chattering audience was jolted into silence. The lights rise so slowly that at first they are overpowered by the exit signs. Your eyes gradually adjust before being able to make out anything at all. Over a few minutes during the opening dialogue, three faces resolve out of the gloom: a mother and two daughters. A vicious man arrives home drunk, ready to abuse his family. There’s a confrontation, and just like that, he’s dead.

There’s no doubt – and it’s not saying anything new – that Stephen House is a superb raconteur.  With a subtle change of voice or tone, a flick of the eyes, an inclination of the head, an unsteady step or a rapid move across the bare stage he conjures up characters and places vividly.  They are the characters and places of the Dublin demi-monde – addicts, prostitutes, rent boys, dealers and drifters. 

Two people sharing their experiences of Asperger’s Syndrome through cabaret. The show was so popular in the 2018 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, they added three extra performances at The Butterfly Club after the festival finished. Originally developed for the Ballarat Cabaret Festival in 2017, Aspie Hour creators and performers Sophie Smyth and Ryan Smedley open our minds and hearts to what it’s like to live with Asperger’s Syndrome.