In a Dublin theatre festival programme jammed with fresh perspectives and inventive productions, Safe House (★★★★★), a new collaboration between writer-director Enda Walsh and composer Anna Mullarkey, is a dazzling achievement. In the form of a song cycle, with one live performer on stage, the experience is one of sensory envelopment through film imagery, orchestral composition, rippling sound design and Kate Gilmore’s stunning performance. Following his opera trilogy with composer Donnacha Dennehy and his Lazarus musical with David Bowie, Walsh continues to explore original ways of bringing text and music together, working with his frequent collaborators, lighting designer Adam Silverman and videographer Jack Phelan.
Melding elements of torch songs, wispy folk and synthpop, Gilmore takes us into the mind of Grace, a young woman who grew up in the west of Ireland in the 1980s and early 90s. Filmed scenes projected on the wall of an abandoned handball alley reveal her past in fragmentary memories. In Katie Davenport’s playful design, images recur of small, safe spaces to crawl into. Episodes from a childhood overshadowed by alcoholism; miserable children’s parties, followed by small-town teenage isolation; escape to the city and attempts to numb out trauma – all are shown as fleeting impressions, underscored by Mullarkey’s velvety layers of electronica, strings and vocal ensemble. In this beautifully realised, multifaceted work, we watch Grace finding her own way to create a life, either by making peace with her broken past, or by turning her back on it.
