Following its run at Edinburgh Fringe and Dublin Theatre Festival, Karen Cogan’s solo show DRIP FEED arrives at Soho Theatre in London. Taking the audiences through the past and present of the city of Cork, heartbreak and obsessions, loneliness and longings, Cogan proves to be both a fantastic writer and a performer.Brenda is in love. She is also hungover. Unapologetic. And gay. And this is 90s Ireland, where being gay is everything but easy. Constantly questioned and pestered about her sexuality Brenda finds herself out of control. The booze, the late night dancing and love for Olivia is what’s keeping her alive but as time goes by Brenda grows more and more fearful of becoming trapped or as she puts it herself “part of the furniture”.
There is a lot to admire in Karen Cogan’s writing; at times poetic, full of dark Irish humour and beautiful rhythm, DRIP FEED is one of those stories that will leave you enchanted by its language and ability to paint vivid pictures. As a performer Cogan possesses a lot of natural talent for comedy, her jokes and timing keeping the audience engaged and intrigued. If you see this show, I promise you will never look at Bono the same way.
Shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award, DRIP FEED is a piece of writing that will make you want to follow the future works of Karen Cogan and I’d encourage you to do so. However I feel that this particular production does not realise the full potential of the script as Oonagh Murphy’s direction lacks in terms of strong choices that could allow for the story to be fully lifted from the pages. The piece would benefit from establishing a sense of pace and developing a way of portraying the multi-layered nature of Cogan’s writing. Anna Reid’s set design seems like a missed opportunity for creating something physical or abstract that could mirror the messiness of Brenda’s life. Nevertheless I’m looking forward to seeing what Karen Cogan does next!
Pinter Two consists of two, relatively early one-act comedies by the man himself and is the second in a series of seven collections of Pinter’s shorter works being produced at the Harold Pinter Theatre over the next few months. The season appears to have had theatre and TV names queuing up to participate and is curated, and mostly directed, by Jamie Lloyd, who probably deserves some sort of medal.