Three brides parade on stage, dragging three grooms on their trailing veils. They recite passages from RD Laing's titular psychoanalytic tract, whose convoluted linguistic structure suggests the intense emotional and psychological entanglements that underlie romantic relationships: "It hurts Jack to think that Jill thinks Jack is hurting her by him being hurt . . ."
This exhilarating devised production, directed by Liam Steel, is the most accomplished to date in CoisCeim's ongoing project to merge the aesthetics and skills of contemporary dance and theatre.
The three couples perform various scenes of dance, movement, and acting, in which individuals seek love and sex, but never really escape isolation. This latter idea is brilliantly expressed through Ferdia Murphy's set: a row of six mirrored and curtained cubicles that suggests, variously, confessional boxes, lap dancing clubs, the loneliness of singledom and, when the set is folded together in the show's final minutes to form three corridors, the hell of a broken-down affair. In a downstage area, the performers dance in interchanging couples, holding and flipping each other in the air, a simple metaphor for trust.
The performers - Muirne Bloomer, CoisCeim's artistic director David Bolger, Robert Jackson, Eddie Kay, Emma O'Kane and Diane O'Keeffe - astound in their ability to perform complex choreography while acting with complete emotional commitment. Their vivacity undercuts what could otherwise have become a bleak vision of the possibility of happy union.
· Until September 29. Box office: 00353-1 677 8511.
