So, if you’ve been following us on Twitter (@pastiebap1) then you may have seen a few strange tweets last night at around 8pm. Rough Magic Theatre Company have taken Jezebel – a play written by Irish playwright Mark Cantan – on tour, and we were invited to their performance at The MAC to tweet live from the show as it happened, and that is exactly what we did. All set up in a little area at the back of the theatre so that the light pollution from our phones wouldn’t interfere with the show we tweeted to our heart’s content, trying not to give the entire story away! You can check out our Tweet along on Storify here.
Jezebel sees Alan (played by Peter Daly) and Robin (played by Margaret McAuliffe) meet and fall in love. Yet, after 8 months of the relationship, they must confront their dwindling sex life. All seems lost, until Alan comes up with an ingenious idea to spice things up – each of them can ask the other for anything they like in the bedroom (or the living room, kitchen… you get the picture) and they’ll take it in turns making each other’s fantasies come true. This seems to work wonders, for a little while at least. After exhausting pretty much all avenues to spice up their sex life, Robin accidentally asks for a threesome, and everything becomes a lot more complicated once they meet the artsy, ditzy, free spirited Jezebel (played by Valerie O’Connor).
That’s all I can really tell you about the story, I was genuinely shocked by the twists and turns and I wouldn’t want to spoil them for you, so you’ll just have to go and see it for yourself! From the moment that the lights go up, we are greeted with a modern looking set, a wooden floor, a sofa, a dining room table and four stools placed at the four corners of the stage. With such a sparse set and only three actors, the acting must be top quality to pull off a production like this that has so little to hide behind, and it certainly was. The play is a comedy, a farce and the actors never seem to miss a beat, weaving in and out of each scene seamlessly they had me hooked. McAuliffe is undoubtedly the star of the show, she steals the stage as the open minded, go-getting Robin and you can’t take your eyes off her. The humour is extremely Irish, not quite black humour, but there are definitely a lot of laughs about things which aren’t usually acknowledged, like the opening scene where we meet Robin and Alan and they alternate back and forth presenting reasons why they’ve broken up with people in the past:
Originally directed by José Miguel Jimenez, with the revival directed by Lynne Parker, Jezebel is a joyous masterpiece of comedy theatre. It’s very modern, very funny and the use of mime was particularly refreshing, alongside sound and lighting which really make this play come life. I would definitely recommend getting tickets to see this whenever it comes to a theatre near you as it’s the most enjoyable farce that I’ve seen in a while.
