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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
David Jays

The Surge review – a wild and haunting wake for Sinéad O’Connor

Dancers Amy Miller and Lisa Race, one supporting the other who is arched backward with hair flowing, on a dark stage
Dancing in tongues … Amy Miller and Lisa Race in The Surge at Aviva Studios. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

‘I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into a mic now and then,” said Sinéad O’Connor. Troubles and screams both sing out in The Surge, an ode to her by American choreographer Sonya Tayeh.

The singer, who died in 2023, attracted both worship and scorn in her lifetime. The Surge is an act of devotion – 10 women sit on pews, swaying, sliding and indeed surging around them. They leap up, circle and shudder as the songs possess them – moved and inspired, they might be dancing in tongues.

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