Theatre review: Everything I Do, Summerhall

Everything I Do, Summerhall – Demonstration Room * * *

Performing not so much gig theatre as a live concept album, Zoe ní Riordáin of Irish theatre and music company One Two, One Two was an award-winner at last year’s Dublin Fringe. The album, she says, was written in her shed following what one can only guess was a bad break-up.

Ní Riordáin has a beautiful, haunting voice and an intense style of delivery. She kneels at the mic in her white cosmonaut-style suit, bounces on the large trampoline which fills most of the stage and crashes her electric guitar. Later, the trampoline is hoisted up to vertical so it looks like a giant moon.

But, however heartfelt the performance, the lyrics appear to have come straight from the box marked ‘break-up song’: “There’s a fire inside me and it burns for you,” she sings. “Your love changed my life for the better.”

Brief spoken sections evoke childhood memories and start a discussion with the audience on the subject of love, but they don’t yield anything close to a narrative.

Stylishly designed and passionately performed, Everything I Do was clearly adored by some in the audience, but left others of us strangely unmoved.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

Until 25 August

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Theatre review: Everything I Do, Summerhall – Demonstration Room