Irreverent good fun battles it out with narrative incoherence in the Performance Corporation's new comedy about the infamous biblical septet, presented as part of the ESB Dublin fringe festival. Jo Mangan directs a fearless and talented cast of nine with enormous energy and invention, and the production has many inspired flashes. But the problem is the script, by Mangan and Tom Swift. It is over-laboured and under-articulated, making it almost impossible to follow the story, and the many (conflicting) satirical targets cancel each other out.
We start with the devil, an Elvis lookalike, languishing in heaven; a little more underlining would have helped make clear that all that follows is a flashback recalling the shenanigans that landed him there. He summons the Sins (in human form), berates them for having lost their potency and orders them to descend on Garadice, a small town of Truman Show-esque contentment. That the inhabitants of Garadice mostly speak in American accents, and that what follows is a revue of seven television-show formats, each starring one of the Sins, seems to indicate that the production is a critique of the global dominance of American culture. A very funny send-up of a cooking show, featuring a hilariously spaced-out Neil Watkins as a bulimic midwest beauty queen, extends this impression. But what are the ballroom-dancing contest and parody of a British costume drama all about?
This becomes a little clearer halfway through the show with the arrival of Leviticus, a borscht-belt comic in a yarmulke who reveals that these skits are role-playing exercises undertaken in an attempt to force the devil to intervene on the side of the righteous. But why would Sins have such a goody-goody agenda? And why do Mangan and Swift have this agenda triumph, only to insert a last-minute reversal? With rough-and-ready production values and an infectious carnival spirit, The Seven Deadly Sins could be model fringe material, once the authors figure out what they are trying to say.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 00 353 1 677 8511.
