Theatre of football dreams

Fair Balls T’yis: A Football Opera

Samuel Beckett Theatre

***

One sort of audience comes face to face with another in this clever, lively production from Belgian company Het Kip, which features more than 40 Dublin fans giving an impressionistic recreation of the match-day atmosphere on Hill 16, one of the great communal events in Dublin life.

The few dozen performers give us a slice of the multigenerational, multiethnic congregation that will gather for All-Ireland Sunday, singing songs, performing a haka, and reacting as one to the drama on the pitch. Occasionally, the action freezes and a character gets a moment of individual expression, emphasising the constituent parts that make up the collective.

Previous, localised variations were staged in Ghent, Prague and the Netherlands, evidence of the universality of sporting fandom. But it ends with that rueful anthem of the unbowed Irish sports crowd, The Fields of Athenry – like many of us, Fair Balls T'yis seems to fancy Mayo for Sam this year.

Ends Sept 15

Davin O'Dwyer