You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating) review: An eerie, claustrophobic and thought-provoking show for an audience of one

You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating)

Pembroke Cottages

★★★★☆

My seat for You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating) is atop a toilet lid in the steamy, candlelit bathroom of a Donnybrook cottage, the air scented with atomisers. I am an audience of one for this intense and interactive show from TasteInYourMouth.

Carrie (Laoise Murray, making an extremely physically demanding role look effortless) is in a bath strewn with flowers and seaweed, strikingly lit from within with LED lights. She’s wrapped in cling film. Her face is obscured behind a weird mask, her eyes replaced by cucumber slices. Is she having a beauty treatment? No spa ever looked this creepy.

Carrie speaks. There are disturbing monologues about body obsession, purging, meditation, sleeplessness, fasting and striving towards “purification”: collectively both a satire on the wellness industry and a demonstration of the negative impact of body image on young girls. Recorded voiceovers play phrases of wellness-cliche mumbo-jumbo at intervals.

My interactive role is that of the weekly volunteer visit to help Carrie back to normal life. She asks ad hoc questions. How often do I vomit? Can I light a cigarette for her? (I do.) What do I regret in my life? Can I give her a bowl of noodles? (I do.) Can she take a Polaroid of me? (No.) The bath water grows cold, Carrie’s ramblings louder.

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[ Dublin Fringe Festival reviews ]

[ The Garden of Shadows review: A magical and haunting coming together of nature, technology and art ]

The whole effect is eerie, claustrophobic and thought-provoking, assisted by the excellent set, lighting and sound (the unseen Freya Gillespie, Sophie Cassidy, Lara Gallagher.) Theatre needs an audience to exist, though, and one audience member per show seems a costly return for such a collective production effort.

Continues at site-specific location, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until Saturday, September 23rd