Monday: Watch Out for the Right! – National Stadium – Tiger Dublin Fringe Review

Dates Sep 18 – 20 @ 19:30 – Tickets €16 / €14 conc.
Duration 55 mins – Venue: National Stadium Ringside Bar

We hear a blaring pop song as the two fighters emerge from the darkness and make their way to the ring. They are an unusual couple of sparring partners, one male and one female. They quickly get ready, limbering up, fixing their gloves and gum shields. The bell rings and the two fighters leave their corner. They tap gloves and the fight begins.

This new production is part of the EUROPOLY section of the Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival. This performance takes the form of a monologue read by the ring announcer, while the two boxers fight at the centre of the ring. There are twelve rounds in their bout, and the boxers vary the performance in each round, altering their intensity, their attire and even the sport. The spoken text is in Portuguese with English surtitles.

The National Stadium is a new venue for most theatre goers in Dublin. The location is perfect for this play about boxing and adds an air of authenticity to proceedings. The performance takes place in the ringside bar, which has a boxing ring in the centre of the space. The production takes place in the round with seats on all four sides of the ring. While this was an interesting concept, there was the difficulty of making the fighters and the surtitles visible at the same time, which meant the audience was looking away from the action to read the text.

The boxers Cláudia and Jaime do not hold back and the battle gets more intense as the rounds go on. The text spoken over the performance asks a number of rhetorical questions, moving from boxing to protest and war, with a variety of other ideas in-between. The Rumble in the Jungle between champion George Foreman and challenger Muhammad Ali is constantly referenced. This text is quite repetitive and overall the visual spectacle more than wins the bout!