Belfast company At Large Theatre’s new production is good fun at times but it’s unclear - I think even to the actors - who it’s for and why they are performing it.
The play supposedly ‘questions the obstacles we as artists put in our way to achieving Les Impossibles’, whatever we take the significance of the French title to be. It is uncertain, however, whether the play is in fact a celebration or a mockery of the acting profession. Following the plight of Actors 1 and 2 – the other characters are helpfully called Actors 3 and 4, a first nod in a Brechtian direction – as they write and perform a play about two actors who try to pursue their dream of becoming professional actors, the play within a play, often within another play, scenario that ensues is sometimes well done, but too often forced and muddled.
The actors who in turn play Actors 1 and 2, Anarosa de Eizaguirre Butler and Shane Robinson, are convincing enough in their multiple layers of character and always full of energy, even with an audience of just two. Butler’s duologue with herself as both Actor 1’s character (are you following?) and the New York acting coach at her first audition is really excellent. The pair’s improvised dance audition is equally entertaining, if not quite so clever.
It is deliberately shambolic moments such as this, and the amusingly unprofessional film set scene at the start of the play, that make me question the play’s intentions. The ‘artists’ that writer and director Gráinne Curistan wants us to focus on are, presumably, the ‘Actors’ but it is their somewhat delusional and untalented characters who will be remembered.
Curistan’s idea, based on her own doubts before starting an acting course in New York, is an interesting one and the approach is not necessarily flawed. But she is trying to do too much. What is intended to be surreal insight into the mind of the actor comes across as an unoriginal yet nonetheless engaging and well-connected series of scenes.
