Dublin Theatre Festival 2026: Zinc (Helene Ott review)

Zinc, by Dead Centre & Théâtre De Liege. Image Alexandre Fytrakis

*****

“Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam/A country without a language is a country without a soul.”famous Irish revolutionary Pádraig Pearse once famously wrote. When we arrive in this world language becomes the architecture of our imagination and history; the bricks we use to build and the bricks we throw. But it’s world making and world breaking, since the imposition of new language to erase a former has long been the weapon of conquerors. Language can encode and erode reality and identity. But what does it mean to lose one and gain another? To scarcely know your own history before it threatens to become lost in translation? The Belgium historian David Van Reybrouck recognised this tension in the story of Emil Rixen, who migrated from Germany to Neutral-Moresnet in 1907 at the age of 4. A region of ambivalent history and ambivalent language.

Old Europe knew many micro states, but neutral-Moresnet was its most microscopic, comprising only 3,4 square kilometres. As the lucky location of Europe's most productive zinc mine, the Netherlands and Prussia could simply not agree on who should own it and so it became a multinational non-state within the states. A refuge for conscientious objectors and thus a melting pot of German, French, Dutch and Esperanto - a new proto universal and politically neutral language to bring nations together (sound familiar?). War ended that supranational experiment. Versailles gave the territory to Belgium; after a German annexation in 1940, it became permanently part of the Belgian municipality of Kelmis. As ever, neutrality bent towards power. Emil’s life happened amidst these quarrels. A man who hardly crossed a border, yet the borders crossed him.

In co-production with the Belgian Théâtre de Liège, and Dead Centre’s adaptation Zinc brings his multifaceted narrative to life. But then this is not solely the story of Neutral-Moreset and the ore it put on the global map. In fact, the play is very much its own steaming, incessant entity. Directors Ben Kidd and Bush Moukarzel rise to the challenge of addressing historical silences and outcries by transforming Van Reybrouck’s essay into a narrative that interweaves Emil Rixen’s story with its five plurilingual and multinational actors. Interpreting Emil as a series of fragmented identities, the makeup of which are in perpetual flux. Something unable to capture through one uncompromising language. Thereby subsequently problematising the trajectory from European colonisation war to the contemporary global penetration of English as a lingua nullius - a “neutral” language hegemonizing the other 23 official languages of the European Union and beyond. But the language spoken to us is not necessarily the language that speaks for us. Throughout Zinc’s cohesive narrative we thus delve in and out of French, Luxembourgish, Korean, German, Flemish, Irish, Farsi and Esperanto.

Cathy Min Jung establishes this whiplash of translation when she introduces herself as Emil Rixen in French. Translated on the lily white screen around her. The stage that will later be furnished equally pure and glassy. Conveying all from the desolate unmarkedness of a canvas to cosmic end time. Brilliantly brought to life by set and costume designer Nina Wetzel and Sébastien Dupouey’s video design. As Emil Rixen’s identity fractures, Min Jung laments a personal alienation within language and the memories explicitly tied to Korean. How language and appearance encode otherness. This rings true for Julie Mughunda, who yearns for intimacy through words but cannot reach it. The Luxembourger Fábio Godinho, on the other hand, has no trouble with multilingual proficiency, but mourns his consequent untetheredness. Mila Moinzadeh, who immigrated from Iran to Germany in early childhood, grieves their rare use of Farsi. Their theatrical career too dominated by German. Timmy Creed refuses to grieve Gaeilge just yet and concede to English; he asks bluntly, what is neutrality really? Is it English, once the language of the coloniser, now the language of the market? Is it Ireland’s symbolic solidarity with the underdog amidst Irish parts in Russian weapons and IDF warfare jets refuelling at Shannon? The conclusion is left to the audience.

Emil is carried amongst the cast like a shared soul but quietly he becomes most alive when the actors are playing themselves in the erosion and pursuit of selfhood and belonging. Through language, beyond gender or nation. Many storytellers shoulder the burden of ambivalent representation. Compelled to conform to conventional narrative practices and the local language ecology, the consequence is often flattened, essentialising work that shies away from necessary slipperiness. But Zinc is no such case. It’s destabilising. It breaks its own narrative, its own fluency, yet manages to convey a specific sense of itself that eludes my exact interpretation. Times over I tried to explain to friends what moved me so and couldn’t find the words. Maybe that is the point after all.

There are certain plays that impress on first viewing but which start to dwindle, slowly but gradually, once you leave the theatre. But then there are those, vanishingly rare, that you

know will doubtlessly stay engraved. Plays like Zinc.

Zinc, directed by Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd, adapted from David Van Reybrouck’s

historical essay “Zink”, presented by Dead Centre & Théâtre de Liege ran at O’Reilly

Theatre as part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2026 until October 4.

For more information visit Dublin Theatre Festival 2026