The Dublin Riot - One Year On

The Dublin Riot - One Year On. Image uncredited.  

Saturday, November 23rd, 2024. The first anniversary of the Dublin Riots. Reviewed in every Irish news and media outlet these past few weeks. An event that transcended its local impact and affected the entire country and our image globally. What makes the silence of Dublin’s two big theatres peculiar is that The Gate was right at the centre of the riot and both The Abbey and The Gate have been very vocal about representing their local, Dublin 1 communities. Yet both appear to have ignored the anniversary of the most significant social unrest in Dublin 1 in years. The question of whose stories are we telling, and who’s telling the stories, magnified by a recent interview given by the Abbey’s Executive Director Mark O’Brien in The Sunday Business Post. Talk of challenging elitism, curating real, authentic relationships with those who never thought the space was for them, about not reflecting the state back on itself but asking who do we really want to be begging the question, who is it that's doing the asking? TKB, Dublin 1’s most prominent playwright, has their new show opening in the Project next month. Which is not to speak poorly of the Project, or deflate enthusiasm for the Abbey’s delightful seasonal treat Emma. But with both The Gate and The Abbey silent in response to the riot, PR is starting to sound like a mission statement absent a vision.

In the end it was not the National Theatre but the Axis in Ballymun, O’Brien’s old stomping ground, that attempted to articulate a response. The brainchild of writer Lisa Walsh, developed by writers group I Nua, The Dublin Riot - One Year On saw ten pieces trying to make sense of the senseless. Arts Council funded, the project featured many seasoned professionals, alongside rising stars, but was essentially a work of community theatre. If professional standards didn’t rigorously apply, some pieces far surpassed them. Even so, the approximately two hour show overran by an hour for no good reason. Video footage was so dark it bordered on pointless. And while the Axis’s floor staff were both informative and friendly, a tech operator on their phone seated in the audience in the middle of a performance didn’t make for a good look. By the time the end arrived you might well have been incandescent with rage.

Not helped by some of the pieces. Efforts to seemingly justify (an uppercut against the oppressor), explain away (social media moguls from silicon valley), place the hands over the ears and pretend it was just an anomaly, that Irish people are better than that, felt hard to swallow. As was an over use of Northside working class, Southside bourgeoise cliches and an over reliance on socialist jargon. Indeed, some pieces felt more about the writers than the riot. Some never digging any deeper than the burning Luas, an image that recurred with such frequency you began to wonder had anything else happened that night?

Yet there were genuine nuggets to be had amidst the silt and soil. The satirical And the winner is… by Susan Lynch, directed by Andy Crook, saw a brilliant Anto Seery eviscerate right wing notions of nationalism for a game show in the future, the recital of The Noble Call a trace of pure genius. Mary and Billy by Brian Walsh, directed by Lesley Conroy, proved wonderfully insightful in its examination of a Loyalist and Republican married couple. Mellisa Nolan and Charlie McGuinness terrific as old lovers remembering when their exception wasn’t the rule. Buzz, written and performed by Linda Teehan revealed a stunning talent in a show where self-centred ignorance proves a kind of bliss. Bright Yellow Letters by Melissa Nolan, performed by Leanne Bickerdike and directed by Kathleen Warner Yeates, making plain that when it comes to rioting, like domestic violence, there’s no excuse can justify it. Women again at the centre of Lisa Walsh’s Fanny Riot, directed by Kathleen Warner Yeates and performed by Kelly Hickey, and Those Flames written and performed by Mai Ishikawa, directed by Eftychia Spryidaki and Ezra Moloney. The latter an exquisite body poem about a women hiding under a table, the former a pussy riot in which biography meets reflection.

If you had to give an award, top prize would have to go to Pricks by Patrick O’Sullivan, performed brilliantly by Eric O’Brien, Jed Murray, Thúy Vine O’Sullivan and O’Sullivan himself. A tale that got right to the heart of the matter with superb simplicity and a beautiful twist, sensitively directed by Andy Crook. Similarly, if you had to give an award for socially relevant theatre that attempts to portray the Northside as more than a hotbed of violence or a working class Shangri-La, though neither are ever too far away, it would have to go to The Dublin Riot - A Year On. Flawed, messy, and unforgivably long, it features several standout pieces that deserve to be developed into stand alone works. Works telling those involved that they can keep their hand-me-down hatreds. We have something far richer than your violence. And we will find a way to make ourselves heard.

The Dublin Riot - One Year On ran at The Axis Ballymun, Saturday November 23rd, 2024.