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Irish Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Dublin Dance Festival 2025: In Oona Doherty's Specky Clark, the body never lies
Specky Clark Abbey Theatre, Dublin ★★★★☆ Words can speak untruths, Oona Doherty believes, but the body never lies. That's certainly the case in Specky Clark, which the choreographer has based on the story of Edward James Doherty, her great-great-grandfather. He was sent from Glasgow to Belfast at the age of 10, after the death of his mother – an event that she depicts within seconds of the show's opening, ominous, primal drones drowning out Edwards's anguished cries of 'Mum!' When he arrives in Belfast, the overbearing Clark sisters give him new clothes and a new name, Specky Clark. They also set Specky (played by Faith Prendergast) up with a job at the local abattoir, where he faces the initiation of shooting a pig (Gerard Headley). As he hesitates, gun in hand, the pig rises up and hugs Specky – who still fires. Later that evening, Halloween night, he returns to the abattoir, where he dances alone, surrounded by the hanging carcasses. Then the pig comes back to life, and encourages Specky to find the gateway that will help other dead beings do the same, culminating in a wild dance. READ MORE Just as Halloween is a liminal space where the living and the dead can coexist, the performance constantly slips between reality and the imagined, such as how the Clark sisters were fairies and one of the abattoir workers' fathers disappeared after riding a giant pig. These accounts are introduced with the words 'Let me tell ya a story', a phrase that instantly suggests tall tales. Most of the show's dialogue is recorded – the dancers mime it – but when the pig comes back to life it speaks to Specky directly: as well as having physically comforted him, with the hug, the pig understands the boy. 'Only you know where the openings to the other world are,' it tells him. 'You just need to think, Specky. Think about the way ya feel when you're dancing.' It is through dancing that Specky finds liberation and consolation, a physical antidote to the trauma of his mother's death. Stuck between his home in Glasgow and an uncertain future in Belfast, his whole body convulses with grief as he stands alone in a foggy blackness with a suitcase in his hand. Multiple sources of inspiration emerge: the psychosis of Francie Brady from The Butcher Boy, the liberating act of dancing alone from Billy Elliot and more general myths of supernatural nights of revelry broken by the dawn. Even a reference to George Orwell's Animal Farm appears when the pig shouts 'Four legs good, two legs bad!' in a full-throated impersonation of Ian Paisley. Generations of Doherty's family have worked in abattoirs and butcher's shops. In Specky Clark, she and her formidable creative team have created a story that, just as fantastical as those about fairies and giant pigs, will be woven into her family's already rich oral history. Specky Clark is at the Abbey Theatre , as part of Dublin Dance Festival , until Saturday, May 17th
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Oona Doherty: Specky Clark review – distressed orphan out-dances the abbatoir's raw reality
Here we are in an abattoir with a talking pig carcass. You see, Oona Doherty puts worlds on stage you won't see elsewhere. Best known for her brilliant ode to working class Belfast, Hard to be Soft, Doherty's latest piece returns to her home town in a story inspired by past generations, including her great-great-grandfather (the original Specky Clark), where biography and fiction merge with messy edges. Specky (played by petite Faith Prendergast, dwarfed by the tall dancers in adult roles) arrives in Belfast from Glasgow aged 10. Doherty herself moved from London to Belfast at the same age – you can always question whose story this really is. The show is rooted in realism but quickly moves to the magical kind and then full-blown fantasy. 'Let me tell ya a story,' says the narrator, conjuring backstories and personal myths. Set at Samhain, the Gaelic festival marking the start of winter, it's a liminal time when the barrier between the living and dead becomes permeable. Even the anachronistic soundtrack – a David Holmes tune thrown into what we assume is an earlier age – destabilises the sense of solidity. When orphaned Specky is put to work in the abattoir, the pig he's been told to kill stands up and gives him a hug. This is the show's most arresting, affecting scene. It's the comfort Specky needs, but at the same the moment his heart hardens. It's comedic too, which is crucial to Doherty's tone (even if that's occasionally overegged). The show gives us raw reality, and the escape from that. Specky dances with the sense of losing (then finding) yourself. Dance is catharsis; it's the portal out of here. For all that Doherty leans towards theatricality, she has an amazing way with pure movement, whether Specky's internal distress erupting outward in full-body shakes, or the whole cast moving as if Doherty has torn pages from a dance encyclopedia at random: an Irish dance leg flung high, a folk reel, a manic floss, a hip-hop move. This is bold, original, distinctive work. But the driving dramatic idea, Specky's grief for his mother, is underplayed (despite dramaturgical input from playwright Enda Walsh). It doesn't burrow deep enough. We hope for a great redemptive arc that doesn't come. Which is realism, for sure.
