Say Nothing
at Traverse Theatre (Venue 15), Edinburgh

Brendan O'Neill

I'll try to describe what I have just seen.

Two Irishmen dressed in suits standing precariously on a tiny square patch of grass, which is balanced on a suitcase in front of a wall of corrugated iron grafittoed with the words 'Decommission this.' One of the men is in fact four people (Sally, Frank, Mary and Dave) and the other man, Kevin, occasionally turns from a peace studies student into a gibbering representative of the Irish Tourist Board. When man number one becomes Frank (a loud, uncouth Belfast type), Kevin pretends to masturbate furiously behind his map of Ireland. Behind them a third man, dressed only in towel and balaclava, walks past with a can of spray paint, but rather than add further graffiti to the wall he sprays the paint into his mouth. The play ends with Kevin and SallyFrankMaryDave disappearing into a puff of smoke.

Welcome to the world of Ridiculusmus, Ireland's surreal theatrical double act, which for the second year running is taking Edinburgh by storm. Say Nothing doesn't have much of a storyline: Kevin has come to Ireland to study for a PhD in peace and conflict studies. That's about the extent of it. But the cast of striking, abrupt characters and the bizarre, repetitive dialogue turn this 'story' into a piece of mindblowing theatre.

The piece opens with Jon Hough (one half of Ridiculusmus) playing Sally, a fiftysomething Irish landlady, and David Woods (the other half of Ridiculusmus) playing Kevin. Hough as Sally is remarkable - despite wearing a suit and tie and having a short spiky haircut, he is utterly convincing as an old Irish biddy - his facial expressions, his turn of phrase, his insincerity will ring true with anyone who has hawked around Ireland's B&Bs.

Kevin tries to describe to Sally where he comes from in Britain, but Sally only understands British towns and cities by reference to some TV programme - so together they construct a map of Britain consisting of Brookside (Liverpool), Melvyn Bragg country (Cumbria), Catherine Cookson land (Yorkshire), EastEnders (London), Hollyoaks (Kevin: 'Hollyoaks? Where's that?' Sally: 'Hollyoaks'), and so on. Then suddenly, Hough turns from Sally into Frank, a screaming, spitting Belfast man, while Kevin pretends to masturbate behind his map.

If the audience was confused by this, it was even more confused when the two actors then went back to being Sally and Kevin, and re-did the whole TV map of England dialogue again - word for word. But this is the point of Ridiculusmus - to subvert the audience's expectations of theatre and to examine the everyday through the surreal and ridiculous. Say Nothing is an exploration of the reticence of life and politics in Northern Ireland (the title is taken from the famous Northern Ireland saying, 'whatever you say say nothing'), but not in the bland, patronising, message-driven way that such things are normally explored.

Instead, Hough and Woods invent a cast of characters and a series of bizarre encounters painting a picture of Northern Ireland as a mad place which makes little sense. Which might be a tad insulting to people in Northern Ireland (there have been complaints, apparently), but it is a welcome change from the depiction of Northern Ireland as a perennially depressing place populated by bitter men and defeated women.

Ridiculusmus sum themselves up as 'Attitude, Reality, Sensitivity, Edge, Focus, Listen, Open, Play' - which abbreviates as ARSE FLOP. They have been described as being 'for all those for whom The Fast Show and Vic and Bob are too tame.' This is all true, but there is more to it than that. There is something of Beckett in their attempt to not only subvert the content of the traditional stage play, but also to seek out new forms and 'ways of staging.'

Ridiculusmus themselves quote Beckett as saying: 'there will be a new form, and this form will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else.' For an understanding of how form can come from chaos, and to hoot with laughter, go to see Ridiculusmus.