Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: NOBODADDY

Nobodaddy by Teać Damsa. Image by Fiona Morgan.

****

Less a set so much as a convenience. Like a warehouse, or a backstage area. A figure stretched across three chairs sleeps like a fallen angel, her white wings tarnished. Looking like rejects from Reservoir Dogs, two men enter and engage in a little spit and polish. A dull tale ensues as the angel falls to the floor and both men refuse to pick her up. A bad back, a cheese sandwich, she’s got the wrong health insurance. Meanwhile, grey suited musicians sit in line near the wings looking like The Rubberbandits auditioning for the next Kneecap movie. So begins Teać Damsa’s latest production Nobodaddy, the name referencing a repulsive character by William Blake. A metaphor to speak to the horror of modern times and to hope for the future. An energised production that, well, you’ll likely like it, but you might not like-like it. And if you came for dance you probably won’t love it. It’s opening plainly foreshadowing that dance isn’t the primary art form of this interdisciplinary hybrid.

When dance finally arrives, it’s already on the back foot. Some repackaged routines playing with forms suggest ballet and line dancing. There being more variety in music than dancing. Onstage musicians, along with dancers at times, delivering a wide range of songs and styles. Ballads, bluegrass, trad and folk dominating, with folk singer, Sam Amidon, playing front and foremost most of the time. So much so Nobodaddy frequently resembles a Sam Amidon concert with choreographic support. Fine if you’re a fan, otherwise it can feel like an Amidon curated song cycle. Or a bubble chain of music videos linked by notions of death. Echoed in Doey Lüthi’s showband costumes evoking the 1970s. The murder of The Miami Show Band in 1975 and the recent passing of director Michael Keegan-Dolan’s mother underscoring Nobodaddy's jukebox of musical delights. Visually, images prove at their best when seeming to come from left field; unique and individual dance movements, leaps from a ladder to a mattress a la Amanda Coogan, endless climbing on top of a large box, or a routine giving the phrase “butter him up” a whole new meaning.

As always with Teać Damsa, dancing is the thing. An ageless, androgynous, endlessly energised Rachel Poirier once again sublime in every instance. Even as others look a little predictable in a company where the unpredictable works best. Some spectacular group work contrasts with patchy flashes that tempt and tease as often as they deliver. A superb duet between Ryan O’Neill and Jovana Zelenović, in which the distraught O’Neill screams whilst Zelenović manipulates his resistant body being a joy to behold. Reminding you of what Nobodaddy didn’t have enough of. As the end nears, following some controlled, punk chaos, a number of plaintive tunes about bargaining with death, the prodigal son, and the horror of the world precede a pleading recital from Blake's Auguries of Innocence which tries too hard to tug the emotional heart strings. As if sensing the job has been left undone and trying to overcompensate. Sending us home in a sea of bubbles. All fine and feel good, unless you were hoping for a little more substance and a little less kitsch than bubbles. Still, if less wild and more disorderly, less about dance and more about music, Nobodaddy, at its best, reminds you that Teać Damsa create moments that can take your breath away.

Nobodaddy by Teać Damsa, an An Droichead for Belfast 2024, Dublin Theatre Festival, Abbey Theatre, and Sadlers Wells co-production, runs at the O'Reilly Theatre as part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2024 until Oct 5.

For more information visit Dublin Theatre Festival 2024