Sodome, My Love

Space Upstairs, Project Arts Centre. Previews Mar 12-15; Opens Mar 16-27 8pm €15-€25 01-8819613

There was a time in Irish theatres when stylistic differences were so entrenched they could be reduced to a single joke. With the Gate devoted to dramas of European sensibility and gay aesthetics, while the Abbey was stuck in a rut of rural Irish kitchen plays, theatre in the city came down to a choice between “Sodom and Begorrah”. Those aesthetic borders have long since become more elastic, and Rough Magic’s new production, staged in association with The EmergencyRoom, shows you just how much.

The world premiere of a play by prestigious French author, Laurent Gaudé, translated by its performer, the stunning Breton-Irish actress Olwen Fouéré (left), it revives the last inhabitant of Sodom to recount the fateful history of her city. Directed by Lynne Parker, and potent with design, the monologue is evocative and brisk, its narrative ignoring the fire and brimstone of biblical punishment, for a more pointed depiction of a place of “joy and excess” under moral siege.

Finally infiltrated by what may be the zealots of a religious war, misogynist politics or a metaphor for the Aids epidemic, Gaudé’s city is invested with political purpose.

Fouéré, who has always hovered between raw sensuality and dangerous force on stage, makes for an alert interpreter. In this arc from pleasure to vengeance, she might have found a career-defining role.

Can’T See ThaT? CaTch This

The Sign of the Whale, The Baby Grand, Belfast