Specky Clark

Specky Clark by Oona Doherty. Image, Luca Truffarelli

***

If purists are apt to scratch their heads, so might many others. Is the darkly comic Specky Clark dance theatre? Oona Doherty’s tale of her great-great-grandfather arriving in Belfast serving up something of a collaborative car crash. Multidisciplinary in construction, dance proves the poor relation, appearing only in sporadic bursts, not having its big moment until the finale. Yet calling Specky Clark dance theatre doesn’t quite cut it. The whole, visually and structurally, looking more like a film of a graphic novel. Doherty having made several forays into the medium looking as if trying to replicate the effect onstage. The result a whole lot of something adding up to a whole lot of not enough that often drags its heels.

Choreographed, written & directed by Doherty in collaboration with performers Diarmuid Amstrong, Maëva Berthelot, Malick Cissé, Tom Grand Mourcel, Gerard Headley, Clay Koonar, Gennaro Lauro, Michael McEvoy, Erin O’Reilly, Faith Pendergast and Zoé Lecorgne, there’s an overriding sense of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Of a brainstorming session that never found a cohesive outcome; a democracy minus a vision. Just a flimsy narrative about an orphaned boy missing his mother who’s shipped to relatives in Belfast where he’s sent to work at an abattoir. Having killed his first pig, the beast returns Halloween night to comic effect as the veil between the living and the dead is parted so the boy can boogie on down, if only for a moment. All told through a series of chronological scenes steeped in hit and miss fantastical visuals; its piecemeal narrative delivered by way of surtitles and voice overs.

Specky Clark by Oona Doherty. Image, Luca Truffarelli

A disharmony of opposites, Specky Clark proves too funny to be serious yet too serious to be funny. Too surreal to be realism yet too realist to be surreal. The best you can say is that it’s its own unique thing, built on a proverbial kitchen sink of ideas that often culminate in cartoonish, slow motion visuals. Wren boys, devils and towering giants all surrounding the diminutive Specky, the lost boy resembling a forlorn Where’s Wally. Throughout, several sequences and devices overstay their welcome: endless slow motion, shaking, listening to talk of Halloween and fairies till you’re blue in the face all looking like filler. Dance, finally having a sustained moment, delivers a musical theatre styled big finish. A hybrid of choreographic ideas, it quickly resembles the obligatory music video moment in endless movies. In this instance a cut price Thriller, which does enough to wrap it up, but not to resolve deeper themes of bereavement, displacement and longing.

Specky Clark by Oona Doherty. Image, Luca Truffarelli

If Sabine Dargent’s clever set, John Gunning’s stunning lights and Maxime Jerry Fraisse’s evocative compositions and sound design, the latter incorporating music from contemporary Irish folk band Lankum, all conspire to delight, they also flatter to decieve. Once the eyes adjust to the directorial glare there’s not enough of real interest or intrigue. Minimising dance might be intended to highlight a repressed expressiveness given release, but it proves a pyrrhic victory given that dance is the second best thing about Specky Clark. The first being the irresistible Faith Prendergast as Specky. Prendergast owns the stage, enlivening uncharacteristically innocuous choreography with her abundant expressiveness and seductive presence. Clay Kooner and Gennaro Lauro’s also excellent as Specky’s jittery relatives. Making Specky Clark a hit and miss affair, full of big ideas and graphic novel flourishes, but ultimately falling short of Doherty’s usual brilliant standards.

Specky Clark by Oona Doherty, co-produced and presented by Dublin Dance Festival and the Abbey Theatre, runs at The Abbey Theatre until May 17.

For more information visit The Abbey Theatre or Dublin Dance Festival 2025