ISLEBORO Productions was set up by performing artist Kevin Kiely Jnr last year and it’s been boom-boom since with dance, theatre and film projects. With his film ‘The Cheese Box’ selected for Cannes, this Guildford-trained actor will drive to the Riviera with director Paddy Murphy and contrive to shoot a film short and a documentary en route.
‘The Prison of Oil’ is his current theatre concept at Limerick City Build, formerly Cahill May Roberts, in Bank Place. This echoing barren warehouse works well to frame a work with fierce heart.
Kiely is writer, director and producer. To play the sole character Otto in ‘The Prison of Oil’, he has cast a winning Danny Lynch (9) to polarise with mature self, John A Murphy. Murphy is better known for ability in direction but here he is a man with a strongly coiled presence. Slightly stooped, there’s a hint of wounded vainglory.
Look forward to a tense, electric hour with this prisoner from now until April 30 and again May 3-7, 8pm. We face into a grille, see the painter’s oddly pristine table, a blank series of canvas. To paint is to sully their perfection; we project wild theories and his indefensible defences instead.
“We found the story physically first, through improvising found the physical journey – by not having a script going into it,” Kiely begins. “This a high wire, high risk process. I want to be a maker of theatre, not interpreting Sean O’Casey for the rest of my life”.
“‘The Prison of Oil’ plays with a construct,” he states. “As an audience, you are looking at a canvas and easel, a table full of pigment, linseed, brushes”.
The narrative is Otto tracking his route to power and its corruption. Kevin Kiely Jnr looked into how Hitler got in… by democratic vote. Bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann became ‘the architect of the Holocaust’, a nonentity who sent millions to their death and gloated.
Props are spare but effective: a trainset, the heart-shaped palette. Sound and visuals shatter the emptiness, albeit with occasional glitch. Young Otto plays on in poignant contrast.
Tickets €10 from O’Mahony Booksellers/ €11.43 Eventbrite yield a Tiger beer in The Red Hen, Patrick Street after the show.
Review by Rose Rushe
Isleboro acknowledges the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Ray O’Halloran, Mick Dolan, Dr Mike Finneran in their support of this production.
