“Blink and you’ll miss it” couldn’t be a more apt tag line for Lee Coffey’s latest play, Leper & Chip. Showing at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre from 27 – 29 October, you don’t have too much longer to make it to this breakneck performance about love, madness and violence on the streets of Dublin. With a runtime of 45 minutes, “blink and you’ll miss it” is quite right indeed.

As we enter the Naughton Studio, a small stage is set up – basically a tiny corridor which runs lengthways along the front of the audience. The walls are white, with flashbulb style lights at intervals across the top. As these lights pulse periodically, our two protagonists are dressed entirely in black, performing an enchanting type of dance/martial arts combination in time to high energy music. As we make our way to sit down, it’s hard not to be captivated by this unusual display.

Starring Conall Keating as the boy, Leper and Amilia Stewart as the girl, Chip, the story is as old as time; boy meets girl, boy gets beaten up, girl gets chased by a machete-wielding maniac. You know the drill…

Presented by Bitter Like A Lemon Productions, the performance begins with Leper and Chip at opposite ends of the stage, rattling along at 100mph in their thick Dublin accents. Directed by Karl Shiels, this innovative performance consists of a series of interwoven monologues and dialogues between both Leper and Chip. The writing is everything in this play; the costumes the stage design, everything else is stripped down to its bare essentials in order to let the dialogue really shine (not that it needs any help).

At first, it’s quite a struggle to keep up with, but you quickly find yourself getting into it and before you know it, these two characters have swept you along with them and you’re in a flat in Dublin wiping blood off your face, wondering where the last 45 minutes just went.

I’ve been looking forward to Leper & Chip for quite some time and it definitely didn’t disappoint. Funny, fast paced and straight to the point, this is by far one of the most enjoyable theatre experiences of 2015.

To find out more or to book tickets click here.

Leper and Chip

Laura Caldwell

Author: Laura Caldwell

Hi, I'm Laura. I'm 30 years old and have a degree in Journalism with Photo-Imaging at the University of Ulster. I have an undying love for Belfast and all that it has to offer, an undying love for sleeping, Tegan and Sara, trashy tv shows, foreign snack-foods and being irresponsible with money. I also quite like origami, reading, jazz, hip-hop, dubstep, anything acoustic and Food Network TV. I've written for The Big List, Culture NI, Chatterbox and The Echo, as well as writing for BBC Across the Line.