With this devised piece, presented as part of the Belfast festival at Queen's, Tinderbox Theatre Company sets out to probe one of contemporary society's most troubling phenomena - the mass displacement of human populations. But what the company actually thinks about the issue never becomes clear. This collaborative venture hasn't found the means to translate rehearsal-room discoveries into effective onstage theatrical communication.
The thick programme includes an excellent essay about displacement in a Northern Irish context, charting the movements of Catholics and Protestants, and the recent influx of Chinese, Indian and Pakistani populations into the region. Printed testimonies attest to the hardships endured by local people forced out of their homes during the Troubles, but such specificity is sorely lacking from Owen McCafferty's poetic text. He alludes to displacements ranging from second world war internment camps and conflicts in Bosnia and the Middle East to the current war in Afghanistan, but without clarifying the larger points he is trying to make.
McCafferty's words are only one element in director Simon Magill's attempt at a multi-layered theatre experience involving music, sound, gesture, text and design. Conor Mitchell's piano score is lovely, but overly dominates and dictates the action, often forcing the performers to shout their lines. The grace of some of the movement passages, in which performers pirouette with suitcases, jars with earnestly delivered testimonies about gang rapes, patricide and sectarian violence, and sarcastic voiceovers commenting cynically on mass violence. The tone is all over the place.
Tinderbox's Convictions project last year brilliantly exploited the history and atmosphere of its setting - Belfast's infamous Crumlin Road Courthouse - in an investigation of issues of justice in Northern Ireland. But this found site, which formerly housed the Exchange and Assembly Rooms, feels tenuously linked to the company's chosen themes.
Even so, the space has been beautifully transformed into a playing area. The production values are excellent, and the skilled five-person cast struggle to provide the human connection that the production lacks as a whole. A final caveat, though, is the racial homogeneity: a production that purports to discuss global population movements undermines itself when performed by an all-white cast.
Until November 17. Box office: 02890 665577.
