Disco Pigs

Aoise Meaney, Séamus McLean Ross in Disco Pigs,. Image, Marcin Lewandowski

***

When it first premiered in 1996, Enda Walsh’s undisputed classic Disco Pigs was informed by the cultural zeitgeist of the time. Today, dated references remind us of when Ireland began to find cultural confidence through a refusal of what was in favour of what we might become. Walsh’s coming-of-age tale of two darkly twisted seventeen-year-olds discovering desires beyond the friend zone drenched in coded language and visceral, violent immediacy. Its troubled tale of star-crossed teenagers, fatal discos and blue sea beaches capturing the subversive spirit and confusion of the times. Action propelled by a youth-fuelled, two-finger attitude echoing the British In-Yer-Face theatre of the period.

Celebrating Disco Pigs' thirtieth anniversary, The Everyman Theatre, Cork, places the writer at the director’s helm for a celebratory revival, a position not unfamiliar to the award-winning Walsh. The result a wild, energised, relentless production with two crowning performances. Even so, if its themes have aged well beyond their historic specificity, Walsh’s loud interpretation struggles to make itself heard. The whole feeling far less dangerous than it used to.

Aoise Meaney, Séamus McLean Ross in Disco Pigs,. Image, Marcin Lewandowski

Whether the stunted curtain raise was an intentional tease or a technical hitch, it proves prophetic in distancing the audience. Behind it, Séamus McLean Ross and Aoise Meaney, as Walsh’s legendary Pig and Runt, compete in a physical whirlwind glimpsed in energised flurries benath the rim of the curtain. Enacting being born on the same day, one minute apart, before bursting into the world as next-door neighbours destined to be desperately bonded. Yet it’s not just the womb-like curtain that distances (it eventually rises, but the connection is never truly recovered); vocal delivery also alienates.

Set in Pork City, no prizes for guessing where, vocal and accent coach Irene O’Mara comes up short, with blow-ins McLean Ross and Meaney’s Corkonian accents getting lost to a Jamaican patois. Runt and Pig’s unique, signature language compounding the issue. Some might claim it’s the ferocity of the speech that matters, with language secondary and intended to alienate. But, like A Clockwork Orange, Pig and Runt’s lingua franca needs to be heard to be engaged with. Poor apprehension leading to intermittent comprehension as a thin-sounding, rhythmically flat, rushed pace sees some words land, sometimes whole sentences, before drowning in a sea of sound. Like watching a foreign-language movie without the subtitles and trying to fill in the meaning. Stuttered glimpses making a hard job even harder.

Séamus McLean Ross in Disco Pigs,. Image, Marcin Lewandowski

Against this, Walsh cranks up the volume, the temperature, the energy and the pace. Composer and sound designer Rob Moloney’s stunning score electrifying when not overpowering McLean Ross and Meaney. Katie Davenport’s floating-walled set exuding all the charm of an asylum cell, with the intentional final curtain signifying what the text demands but the action never quite articulates. Sarah Jane Shiels’ lighting, yet again, smartly evocative and deeply atmospheric. The whole looking and sounding like an late 90’s music video.

Yet if Runt whistles God Save the Queen, Walsh’s punk stylings are more Sum 41 than Sex Pistols. Loud, brash, more bark than bite, Disco Pigs snarls occasionally, especially during a smartly split karaoke scene and the duo’s mirror scene at the disco. Or during Runt’s tender fantasy of belonging, being liked and being romanced. McLean Ross and Meaney deserving every accolade for two hugely invested performances. McLean Ross's Pig might not be physically imposing, yet his violent unpredictability and lost-soul inability to find a place in the world are intensely realised. Meaney, making her professional stage debut, is downright phenomenal as the conflicted Runt. Showing the suppleness of a dancer, the energy of a tornado and the expressive range of the wildly insane, Meaney’s Runt is beautifully articulated. Disco Pigs the first step on what should be a hugely impressive career. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

Aoise Meaney, Séamus McLean Ross in Disco Pigs,. Image, Marcin Lewandowski

If the hope was to create a visceral experience through music, lights and loud performances, the experience never quite materialises. Disco Pigs might still be mad, bad and dangerous to know, but what once felt genuinely threatening feels here like it’s throwing shapes. More style, less swagger; all high-energy and low-intensity, lacking its dirty, sexy, subversive edge despite obvious sexual overtones. Walsh evoking the same sexual and dangerous resonace as the stories your parents told about when they were wild long ago and far away. Intensity more memory than immediacy, asking what a fresh, younger perspective might have unleashed?

There’s undeniable power here, and you desperately want McLean Ross and Meaney to win. And they do. But Disco Pigs delivers too little return for such intensely passionate investment. Walsh’s small tale, full of furious sound, strutting its voilently simulated hour and a half upon the stage, signifying powerfully, but poorly, much less than it had to say. Yet if it's simmering fire doesn't always flame, two burning performances from McLean Ross and Meaney generate serious, soul searing heat.

Disco Pigs, written and directed by Enda Walsh, runs at The Everyman Theatre, Cork, until November 14.

For more infortaion visit  The Everyman Theatre