Underneath

From award-winning and internationally acclaimed Irish theatre company Fishamble: The New Play Company, comes this extravagant one-man show. In Underneath, an ash-covered figure talks to the audience from beyond the grave, reliving their experiences and recounting them to us in a mixture of haunting and often comical ways.

A unique production that provides an ethereal experience.

It’s a strange and somewhat uneven play, where moments of horror and melancholy are immediately dispersed with jovial anecdotes, personal communication and jokes with the audience.

There are moments of gravitas. The show uses physical theatre and song, and the set design – simple but with stark contrasts of black and gold – is otherworldly. The character is painted head to toe in black paint. The effects of this are mixed in the play – sometimes it’s striking and powerful, but at times it verges on the pretentious.

But Pat Kinevane’s electric performance saves it, as does his intelligent and often manic script. This is a play about life, ultimately, communicated to us through one of the dead. It examines, in striking and varied ways, the cruelties and prejudices in life, and our societal obsession with body image and beauty. These themes from the script are extrapolated through sight and sound with the exuberant stage design and brilliant soundscape.

Bizarre and often very funny while also disturbingly honest and penetrating, Underneath is a unique production that provides an ethereal experience.