BWW Reviews: Midsummer Magic Dashed at FRIARS WALK

In the hills high above Cork City, cloistered on the edge of a cornfield, a Dominican retreat centre becomes the site for recounting the tale of two Irish friars who left for Jerusalem in 1323. With encouragement by an 'Intersections' funding award from the local university, a group of artists have come together to portray the pilgrimage. The sun beams heavily onto the stone façade, with leafs spiraling down as we enter. It has all the signs of a spiritual experience.

We're handed paper boats made from The Journal of Symon Semeonis of Ireland to the Holy Land, an influential manuscript that will be referenced again. A wooden cross stands in the centre of a courtyard where hooded figures float, allowing us to explore the adjoining chambers. In one room, notebooks are suspended in the air in Deirdre Dwyer's divine design, which imaginatively manipulates theological iconography throughout.

Two men arrive at the main gate: the fore-mentioned Symon (Mark D'Aughton) and his travelling companion Hugo The Illuminator (Nicholas Kavanagh), two Franciscan friars announcing their plans to travel to Jerusalem. "Prepare your boats to sail across the Irish sea!". "Wait!" interjects a young performer, reading from the source material. "It says here 'wild' Irish sea". It's a degree of self-reflexivity that's unfortunate.

D'Aughton and Kavanagh are robust performers but their role here is mostly as ushers to guide us through the site. Rather, it's director Chrissy Poulter who tries to drive the action, trusting a treasured copy of Symon's journal to do the telling. While she reads from the text with evocative and gentle airs, it's not enough to be heard throughout the space, especially over Mark Wilkins's prayerful music, his instruments carrying allusions to the East.

Really, it's the monastic atmosphere of the site that intrigues, and Dwyer's gorgeous design: projecting ancient illustrations onto walls; fashioning a washroom where water rains from on high into silver buckets. We're told of a holy order in the desert that doesn't dare to enter their temple without bathing first. As the actors submerge themselves in the practice, it's a serene and rare moment where the event feels less instructive and more like a discovery.

The performance shows the transforming landscape on the pilgrimage, even spelling out the dangers (literally, in sand), but it doesn't approach the transformed lives of the friars themselves. It's surprisingly uneventful when one pilgrim seems to have died on the journey, while another continues on. When the survivor picks up a pebble, Poulter references the tradition of taking a personal object from your homeland and placing it at the foot of a cross. It's frustrating that Friars Walk is a stone's throw away from some Midsummer magic.

Friars Walk runs until 21 June at the Ennismore Meditation Centre, as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival. For tickets and information, see corkmidsummer.com.

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