Dublin Theatre Festival 2025: The Maker

Dan Colley and Raymond Keane in The Maker. Image, Ste Murray

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Its target audience are unlikely to know all the details, unless an adult has already explained them. That the tall, bookish man with a funny white face and costume is an inventor named Drexel, and the smaller man with a funny white face and costume is his servant Pipe. They don’t know because no one speaks in Dan Colley’s magical The Maker. Indeed, they might decide that these are not inventors but wizards conjuring objects by magic. A little dance here, a little wiggle there, maybe a sneeze, and viola, something appears in the small dark cubbyhole between the bookshelves. In a world where ducks snort, books fly, and shredded paper becomes snow, magic appears a much more likely explanation. Colley’s love letter to theatre and theatre making being awash with magic, whilst pulling back the curtain to reveal theatre’s true wizards in Johanna O'Brien.

Adults can enjoy some smug superiority detailing the multitude of references that inform The Maker’s simplicity. Saileóg O’Halloran’s Commedia dell’arte styled costumes, Dan Forde’s silent movie sound and musical support, a relationship similar to Laurel and Hardy between Raymond Keane’s adorable Pipe and Manus Halligan's infuriated Drexel. Action built on micro movement detail admired by Buster Keaton and Charles Chaplin. The meta theatrical twist as a stage revolves revealing theatre’s unspoken heroes. All built on the barebones of character and a comic idea rather than a story. Not that its young audience appear bothered, whisked along by The Maker’s inventiveness. Asking questions, figuring it out, completely immersed. The Maker understanding that children are far smarter than they’re often thought to be. For the real maker is imagination itself, which children enter into wholeheartedly.

While the lead up to the ending proves clever, the final moments could benefit from a little more oomph. Some children unsure The Maker had ended. All given a masterclass in making theatre, and likely instilled with a love for it. An imaginative space to create worlds within worlds, stages within stages, whether in front, on, or behind the stage.

The Maker by Dan Colley, runs at The Draíocht, Blanchardstown as part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2025 until October 4.

For more information visit Dublin Theatre Festival 2025