Robert Tanitch reviews Disco Pigs at Trafalgar Studios 2, London SW1
In 1997 the then thirty-year-old Enda Walsh won the George Devine Award and the Stewart Park Award for Disco Pigs and his success launched his theatrical career.
John Haidar’s revival of Disco Pigs celebrates the play’s 20th birthday. The play is a two-hander and lasts just 75 minutes without interval. The murky, smoky Trafalgar studio is the perfect intimate venue for it.
Colin Campbell and Evanna Lynch in Disco Pigs
It was Garry Hynes, artistic director of Druid Theatre Company, who paid Walsh a high compliment when she said: “He has an instinctive, visceral understanding of how theatre works.”
Two dysfunctional Irish teenagers celebrate their 17th birthday. They are the best of friends and have been inseparable since they were born on the same day in the same hospital.
The play literally opens with their birth. Their nicknames are Pig and Runt. They like thieving, boozing, fighting and creating their own fantasy world. It is the boy’s sexual awakening and jealousy which threatens their relationship.
Enda Walsh’s script is written in a mixture of Cork vernacular and his own invented language, a sophisticated baby talk. A great amount of what they said went way over my head.
One keen theatregoer, a regular visitor to all the foreign companies at the Barbican, thought there ought to have been a translation in sur-titles
The last time I remember having this sort of verbal difficulty was way back when I read Anthony Burgess’s The Clockwork Orange.
Haidar’s production is a showcase for the two young actors: Evanna Lynch and Colin Campbell
Campbell is particularly impressive vocally, facially and physically. He throws himself into the role and literally so whe
n he is having a great and exhausting time on the disco dance floor, his limbs flying all over the place.
His swaggering yet vulnerable performance is an excellent calling-card and should lead to bigger things when casting agents come looking for new talent.
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