Back again with another digital fringe review!

This time, I've been watching 'Go West!' by Aimsir Theatre. It's an absurdist theatre piece set in what appears to be an apocalyptic wasteland in the United States of America. Except this wasteland isn't due to war or a biblical end of days storyline, it has come about due to drought from an overheating planet.

The show, of course, is not as on the nose about this as we only get snippets of this storyline amongst scenes of existential dread, memory, identity, and legacy.

I feared from the first scene that the play was going to be a classic Beckett knockoff. I feel bad for absurdist writers as Beckett really defined existentialism in theatrical writing, so much so that it's hard to push your voice through. However, the show unfolds further where we push away from the familiar feelings of the almighty Beckett and we get to hear Aoife Cronin's voice instead.

We go backwards and forwards in time, seeing the past full of talk about legacy and how furniture isn't built to last anymore, and then we go hurtling forward to the future where we haven't looked after our planet well enough to make it last.

I did have two small quibbles with the show:

1. I felt the script needed to fleshed out a bit more.
2. I felt the acting, the first scene in particular, was a little too caricature. I know from the rest of the play that this isn't about the skills of the actors themselves; it just felt a little too 'yeehaw' when the rest of the play didn't reflect this.

The show overall left me with a lot to think about. (I nearly never like an absurdist play when I see it. I always need time to let it rest within me before I unleash my thoughts.) Overall, I really enjoyed the show, but now that it's had some time to rest within me, I really feel that some tightening and some light development could have it coming back stronger and blowing audiences away.

⭐️⭐️⭐️