Colin Campbell and Evanna Lynch in Disco Pigs. Photo: Alex Brenner
Disco Pigs
Trafalgar Studios
18 July 2017
4 Stars
The twentieth anniversary of Enda Walsh’s unique, hugely enjoyable and energetic play is given a high octane and loving production by Tara Finney Productions. Bonded as their mothers gave birth side by side, Sinead and Darren have renamed themselves Pig and Runt, and are desperate to escape their dull ‘Pork City’, have invented their own language and rituals and swagger round the stage and their environment. They live for nights out, the disco, the violence, they live for each other, but Runt’s wistfulness and dreams of escape are beginning to show up the cracks in their inter-dependent relationship. It culminates when they achieve entry into the best disco in town, and she catches a glimpse of a life she wants, one which doesn’t involve Pig and his violent jealousy.
Colin Campbell and Evanna Lynch in Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs. Photo: Alex Brenner
Here we have two wonderful performances. Colin Campbell is extraordinary as Pig, testosterone seeping across the stage into the auditorium, his muscular physicality and presence sometimes threatening to overshadow Evanna Lynch’s Runt, but this is the script. When Walsh gives her the space, she shines, beautifully poignant as she yearns to escape the world and rituals they have created and trapped themselves in. The physicality of both are superb, huge congratulations to Movement Director Naomi Said, the pair are in perfect symmetry and serve the text brilliantly. The sequence where he sings Be My Baby on the karaoke as she is being beaten up by a jealous girlfriend is a particular highlight, mastering beautifully the mix of comedy and pain.
Evanna Lynch and Colin Campbell in Disco Pigs. Photo: Alex Brenner
But this is not a duo performance. The lighting design by Elliot Griggs and Giles Thomas’s blistering 90’s club soundtrack dance with the actors, part rave and part play, there isn’t a wasted minute of the 75 we enjoy. Above all, there are the words. Join in with the Disco Pigs and wallow in the wordsmith of Walsh, a true genius and a worthy revival of his classic play.
Until 18 August 2017 at Trafalgar Studios
DISCO PIGS TICKETS
Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
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