Truth and holy water at Fringe
It can’t promise the third secret of Fatima… but bizarre truths abound at this year’s Fringe
AHoly Show, the up-coming one-woman comedy at the Dublin Fringe Festival, slots into the fact-is-stranger than fiction category. It’s based loosely on a real-life incident that had all the quirky nuttiness of a Fringe farce. The show features the versatile Janet Moran in her debut as writer/director.
In May 1981, an Aer Lingus plane on a routine flight from Dublin to London with 103 passengers and crew on board, was hijacked by 55-year-old Australian Lawrence Downey, then living in Dublin. He came from the toilet, having drenched himself in water, saying it was petrol, and threatened to set fire to himself if the pilot didn’t obey his orders. His mission was to force the Vatican to release the third secret of Fatima, given by Our Lady to the three children who witnessed the apparitions in 1917. But his immediate goal was to divert the plane to Tehran where he intended to deliver a new constitution to the Iranian people.
The pilot explained that he’d have to re-fuel for such a long journey and landed in Le Touquet near Paris. After negotiations lasting eight hours, security forces took over the plane and Downey was arrested with nobody injured. His only weapon was a bottle of water.
It emerged that he had once been a Trappist monk, expelled from the order for being unstable and unsuitable. He had also apparently been a sailor, a mercenary soldier, a boxer, a tour guide in Fatima, had set up a language school of sorts in Ireland, and was wanted in Australia for real-estate fraud of $70,000.
Downey was eventually tried, sentenced to five years in prison, released after 16 months and went back to Australia. He said he had come to Ireland because he thought the country was oppressed but later complained that the Irish people ridiculed him and reduced him to poverty – ‘All because I loved them.’
The production promises music, praying, an appearance by Our Lady, sex (maybe) and a miracle. (Peacock Theatre, Sept 8-15).
Another Fringe event based on truth is that performed by Anna Sheils-McNamee about her blind dad (Project Arts, September 1822). My Dad’s Blind examines misplaced pity and is an irreverent look at what happens when a parent loses his sight and his daughter loses her mind. The story is about sight loss, family dysfunction and all the embarrassing, awkward and ridiculous ways they try to get by in a sighted world with a blind dad and a guide dog that’s just had a stroke.
Project Arts: Preview, Sept 18 (6.15pm), Sept 19-22 (8.45pm), Sept 22 – (1pm).
The Fringe has its usual range of oddities, in-your-face physicality along with shows that are impossible to categorise or define. Femme Bizarre in Caged, claim they are not just fierce but FEROCIOUS, a full-on force to be reckoned with, and promise to put themselves through the wringer with aerial stunts, explosive vocals and spoken word, and high-octane voguing (whatever that is). (Smock Alley, Sept 12-16).
Samira Elagoz in Cock Cock… Who’s There aims to take us along a personal research project across three continents and attempts to relate to men after being raped, showcasing gender relations in all their brutal and wonderful ambivalence, and reinventing an autonomous expression of sexuality. A prizewinner of the Prix Jardin d’Europe 2017. (Project Arts Centre, Sept 14-15). A new play by Billy Roche comes to Smock Alley this week (Mon-Sat), after a short run in Wexford in June. The Diary Of Maynard Perdu, a comic/tragic linguistic adventure based on the novella of the same name, is set in the burlesque world of Spiegeltent. The main character wearing the mask of Maynard Perdu (played by Peter McCamley) becomes a dandy, a poet, a lover, a showman and a ringmaster but behind the gaiety lurks a character searching for the gift of love and family.
‘The production promises an appearance by Our Lady, sex (maybe)... and a miracle’