Review: THEATRE FOR ONE, Barbican

The best of Irish playwriting lands at the Barbican in an exciting project. An audience of one blindly steps into a booth for a play they don’t get to choose. Six five-minute one-act shows penned by Enda Walsh, Marina Carr, Mark O’Rowe, Joy Nesbitt, Louise O’Neill and Katie Holly are on rotation performed by one actor for one spectator in a truly unique experience.

Theatre for One is without equal. It transcends naturalism and breaks every barrier between artist and patron, uniting the two sides of the fourth wall. Locked inside a soundproof cubicle, it’s impossible not to be suddenly aware of every movement – yours as a viewer and theirs as the performer. As the actor fixes their gaze on yours, the distance breaches and the intensity of the situation is instantly magnified. When the door slides open, we become their confessors, confidantes, friends, or random bystander who’s lending an ear.

You could be on the receiving end of the beautiful lyricism of the oneiric Cave by Walsh or the sorrowful, descriptive, and profoundly touching elegiac Cygnum Canticum by Carr. You could be the accessory to the bleak comedy of a controlled nervous breakdown in Holly’s Ambition or the witness to the precise social commentary that's present in Nesbitt’s Dear Rosa. You could be having a pretend glass of wine while a woman recounts her epiphany in O’Rowe’s The Spur or you could listen to the dressing room confessional from a tipsy mum-of-the-bride in O’Neill’s The Wedding.

The tone and genre change with each play, as do the actors. Julie Kelleher directs Seán McGinley in a hair-raising portrayal of an older man who mourns the loss of his mother (Cygnum Canticum), Tommy Harris as a positively unhinged, desperate magician (Ambition), and George Hanover as the scorned single parent who’s buying a dress for her daughter’s big day (The Wedding). Eoghan Carrick gives a clear vision to Tishé Fatunbi’s identity struggles and private reflections (Dear Rosa), Derbhle Crotty’s colloquial and very personal moment of self-discovery (The Spur), and Art Campion’s otherworldly creature who’s briefly taken a humanoid form (Cave). 

Whether you see one or are lucky enough to have time to queue and watch all six, Theatre for One is a treat. Besides the incredible value of the writing, Artistic Director Christine Jones kick-starts a provocative conversation, boosted by its free-to-enjoy quality. Confining the productions to single tête-à-têtes transforms them into revelatory encounters. Without the customary distractions of an auditorium, with its rogue coughing, crinkling of paper, and subdued whispers, a visceral connection is established.

A new awareness of the self takes over, and we find ourselves almost restricting our breaths in order not to disturb the precarious balance that blooms. It’s a fascinating experiment, one that could be taken further down many philosophical avenues on the nature of theatre and the meaning of performance, if one so wishes. What happens when you remove the social element from a live performance? Does the physiology of theatre alter when you’re sitting alone with it? How does intimacy impact the relationship with a story? It’s thought-provoking work.

Theatre for One runs at the Barbican until 22 March.