Tingo – Smock Alley – Review by Frank L.

Written by Cian O’Ceallachain and Jessie Doyle

The programme provides a dictionary definition of Tingo “portuguese – n. the act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them, until there’s nothing left”. The idea of “borrowing” seems to connote something temporary while “nothing left” seems to define something permanent in nature. As two of the characters in the first part of the play are described as Tinderers and use the social media site of “Tinder” to make contact Tingo perhaps applies figuratively to those relationships. However no connection is made between the word “Tingo” and tinderers. Tingo remains an enigma.

The play begins with Joe lying on his bed asleep. His rowdy alarm wakes him and so begins his Monday routine of getting up in a rush, dashing to the bus, getting to work and having to enter from his keyboard a never ending number of figures from a keyboard into the all devouring system. He has two colleagues engaged in the same soulless task but their limited conversation reveals the circumscribed lives in which they all live. For instance it is a privilege to be allowed to own a dog. Joe has inner feelings that there must be something more to life than this soulless monotony. Joe begins to crack at the office and eventually explodes in a splendid scene of accelerating frenzy to enter ever more figures into the system. He escapes eventually to another world where he tries to begin to live his dreams but dreams too have their difficulties.

Joe is played throughout by Michael Mullen who is particularly convincing when he is being awkward, unsure of himself, diffident. The other eleven characters are played by four actors who interchange their roles with admirable dexterity. However to represent the monotony of everyday routine which everyone who is gainfully employed, must endure is an external activity known to many.  More difficult to represent, as by definition they are not known, are secret dreams and desires and the different worlds of escape which an individual may have. Therefore to represent on stage the world of dreams, desires and escape was always going to be a mighty challenge. While it had its moments, as Joe displays glimpses of his inner previously hidden self, the entire did not conjure up another world of wonderment either good or bad.

Cian O’Ceallachain and Jessie Doyle and their Underdog Theatre Productions (founded in 2012) are to be congratulated in attempting a new work of some considerable complexity. At times their bravery looked as if it was to be rewarded but the words of Beckett in relation to failure come to mind as they should definitely continue on the task which they have set themselves as they are not far from cracking it.