Pushing the envelope

The Last Post

The Mart, Rathmines

***

A gentle paean to the postal service, which mingles performance, documentary material and art installation, this debut production from Just The Lads has a modest desire to push the envelope. Its promenade methods have a certain correspondence with WillFredd Theatre's recent Farm, and here the quirky analogue methods becomes an unhurried way to deliver a simple message.

It’s hardly news that letter writing has been stamped out by digital alternatives, but the focus here is on how the social aspect of communication – and the encounters that make a community - has also been eroded.

We encounter a small stack of personalities, young and energetic, who sort us into different routes through the space: from playful letter processing, through recorded anecdotes from real posties, a frankly creepy encounter with a sweet old lady and a Christmas flurry of activity. Working without a director, the company allows various ideas to become scattered (if the institution is haemorrhaging staff, it seems ill-considered to address us as new recruits) but it gets by on brio, nostalgia and the poignant awareness that the fate of post may be sealed.

Until Sept 14