Oona Doherty: Specky Clark review – distressed orphan out-dances the abbatoir’s raw reality

Here we are successful an abattoir with a talking pig carcass. You see, Oona Doherty puts worlds connected signifier you won’t spot elsewhere. Best known for her superb ode to moving people Belfast, Hard to beryllium Soft, Doherty’s latest portion returns to her location municipality successful a communicative inspired by past generations, including her great-great-grandfather (the archetypal Specky Clark), wherever biography and fabrication merge with messy edges. Specky (played by petite Faith Prendergast, dwarfed by the gangly dancers successful big roles) arrives successful Belfast from Glasgow aged 10. Doherty herself moved from London to Belfast astatine the aforesaid property – you tin ever question whose communicative this truly is.

The amusement is rooted successful realism but rapidly moves to the magical benignant and past full-blown fantasy. “Let maine archer ya a story,” says the narrator, conjuring backstories and idiosyncratic myths. Set astatine Samhain, the Gaelic festival marking the commencement of winter, it’s a liminal clip erstwhile the obstruction betwixt the surviving and dormant becomes permeable. Even the anachronistic soundtrack – a David Holmes tune thrown into what we presume is an earlier property – destabilises the consciousness of solidity.

Distress erupting outwards … Faith Prendergast arsenic Specky Clark. Photograph: Luca Truffarelli

When orphaned Specky is enactment to enactment successful the abattoir, the pig he’s been told to termination stands up and gives him a hug. This is the show’s astir arresting, affecting scene. It’s the comfortableness Specky needs, but astatine the aforesaid the infinitesimal his bosom hardens. It’s comedic too, which is important to Doherty’s code (even if that’s occasionally overegged).

The amusement gives america earthy reality, and the flight from that. Specky dances with the consciousness of losing (then finding) yourself. Dance is catharsis; it’s the portal retired of here. For each that Doherty leans towards theatricality, she has an astonishing mode with axenic movement, whether Specky’s interior distress erupting outward successful full-body shakes, oregon the full formed moving arsenic if Doherty has torn pages from a creation encyclopedia astatine random: an Irish creation limb flung high, a people reel, a manic floss, a hip-hop move.

This is bold, original, distinctive work. But the driving melodramatic idea, Specky’s grief for his mother, is underplayed (despite dramaturgical input from playwright Enda Walsh). It doesn’t burrow heavy enough. We anticipation for a large redemptive arc that doesn’t come. Which is realism, for sure.