Grace

Grace

God Be In My Mouth

@ Theatreworks

Till 25^th March

It’s been a long time since I saw anything that James Brennan’s God Be In My Mouth have done, but the last thing was the staggering Piglet (with Lucy Guerin) out the back of his house in his garage. Piglet, as anybody who was anybody in 2001 will tell you, was spectacular for its imagery and for the site specific thang everybody was doing back then.

Grace, as the programme says, is GBIMM’s first production in a regular theatre. Gossip after the show suggests that it was meant to be on a rood top somewhere (I know another company who’s done a show on a roof top actually…) and I think it’s a shame that it fell through. I don’t think the piece is terrifically served by the theatre. It’s not sabotaged by it either, but in theatreworks Grace becomes just another experiment in surreal ritual story telling.

Brennan’s imagination is certainly not constrained by the space but it’s not really assisted by it either. The collection of bizarre orphan school children (wonder which of them went to Xavier), three giant bird people and a crazy rich old uncle who goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure the children stay together has a lot of promise but seems to have been rushed to the stage.

So, if weird for the sake of weird is your bag, then Grace may well be for you. If nothing else, Luke Mullins characterisation is totally entertaining and at least worth the price of the ticket. But maybe not the uncomfortable god damn seating in theatreworks

Danny Episode