Beyond Survival School Bus review: Take a trip to the margins

Beyond Survival School Bus

Board at Bull Alley bus stop, Dublin 8

★★★☆☆

We are living in dangerous times, if you are to believe Ranger Léann Herlihy, our guide to the end times on the Beyond Survival School Bus. Boarding the discreet vehicle on Bull Alley Street, we put our lives in their hands, as they instruct our driver, Conn, to take us out into the wilds of the Wicklow Mountains. Passing through the city into the suburbs, Herlihy serves us an academic lecture in short, digestible sections.

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The treatise covers everything from the role of queer culture in destabilising the idea of centre and periphery to prepper documentaries on National Geographic. The material is dense, however, and the point Herlihy is making is diffuse. Their message can be best summed up by an equation: capitalism = a heteronormative evil that is destroying the world. Herlihy doesn’t, as promised, give us the tools to fight that truth, but they do produce a nifty iron-on patch to prove we are a member of their tribe.

Beyond Survival School Bus next departs on Saturday, September 17th, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival