Creators: Rosebuds Theatre Company
Creative Director: Lorna Costello
Reviewer: Laura Marriott
‘Home is not always where it is supposed to be’.
All Washed Up has opened for its debut at Dublin’s The New Theatre. The staging has been fully utilised. A bed sits on one side, a table and chest of drawers opposite. At the back a book case and basic kitchen set. This is where the barriers between rooms and people have fallen down and are all ‘washed up’ together in this small room. We learn early on that Alice, played by Romana Testasecca, likes to paint in her free time like her mother did. This art is not for the world though, only for herself. Once a piece of art, something beautiful, has been created, should it be preserved, or put aside to be held onto as a pure happy memory?
As the play begins it soon becomes clear that Alice and Fionn, played by Jamie Sykes, share the small flat and the bed. With her rather explosive entrance Kate, played by Karen Killeen, goes from judging the slightly unusual set up to becoming a part of it. Fionn offered her a place to stay because she was lost with nowhere else to go. This seems to be the case for all three of them. The promotional material includes this quote: “anyway, I only ended up here because I’d lost myself. Lost my context. I woke up one day and realised it was missing. Or hell, maybe I got rid of it myself. Flushed it down the toilet in a mad frenzy”. The trio use each other to hide from the rest of the world, each running away in some manner from either a memory or a person.
This is Rosebuds Theatre Company’s first production, having been recently founded by the three actors. They work well together and successfully show the closeness and claustrophobia that can be held between three people. Similarly they bounce off each other, playing games and bursting into childhood before the secrets and differences between them crack through the surface; suggesting that their lives together in this cocoon cannot be permanent. Over the course of an hour the audience see the three come together like a jigsaw before splintering apart, ready to face the world alone.
This is a very strong and commanding debut from Rosebuds Theatre Company that illustrates the best of the city’s new writing.
Runs until 5 November 5 | Image: contributed.
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