Dublin Fringe Festival 2025: Lessons On Revolution

Lessons On Revolution. Image, Jack Sain

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1968. Three thousand students occupy the London School of Economics in the most significant act of protest in a generation. In the same period student protests are taking place in France. Many inspired by college campuses in America protesting the Vietnam war. Begging the question, what did activism and protest achieve? In the case of LSE, very little it would appear as efforts to oust the principal, Walter Adams, because of links with big oil and the oppressive regimes in apartheid era Rhodesia fell flat on their face. Indeed, not only was he kept, he was knighted shortly afterwards. Meanwhile one of the key protesters committed suicide and many were expelled. The point being? It's never quite clear. In Lessons On Revolution a charismatic gay couple, Samuel Rees and Gabriele Uboldi make several points yet never quite make their case. Drawing countless dots, they fail to satisfactorily join them.

The welcome is warm, the ginger nut biscuits tasty, the Miwadi watered to within an inch of its life. The space could be LSE in 1968, the flat of the two performers, the space we’re currently in, or a student room in a university. Using acetates and an overhead projector the audience are treated to a lengthy history TED talk on student protest in the late 1960s. Things unravelling as familial homophobia, Sicilian grandparents with Communist leanings, Bauhaus archives and reaching for the future impinge on the historical narrative. Generating less a sense of protesting horrors so much as whistling in the dark hoping the monsters will go away. Clutching the unfounded belief that we have to believe things could get better, even as the evidence presented is completely to the contrary. Sure, you can protest, but history isn't really on your side. Rather, Lessons On Revolution suggests you’re most likely doomed to failure.

What carries Lessons On Revolution is the sincerity and warmth of its two charismatic lecturers. They admit they're not performers and they certainly like the sound of their own voice. Which, in a production lacking sufficient theatrical inventiveness, tends to drone towards the end. What their aim is, like much in Lessons On Revolution, is pretty unclear. Hinted, nudged at, nodded towards, when you look closer it's hard to see what of substance there is apart from crumbs of personal interest. A post-show tag on about the genocide in Gaza highlights how we really needed a show that spoke meaningfully to now. About how protests in the US, Hungary, and throughout the world might be our only defence against encroaching fascism, racism, homophobia and bigotry. Lessons On Revolution, even though it's feel good heart is in the right place, has its head all over the place. We need articulate, robust political theatre. It’s not enough anymore, such shapeless, wishful thinking over Miwadi and biscuits. Not in such troubling times.

Lessons On Revolution, presented by Undone Theatre and Carmen Collective, runs as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2025 at The Digital Hub until September 14.

For more information visit Dublin Fringe Festival 2025