Just a Minute – Dublin Fringe Festival – Review
by Frank L.

Venue – Bewley’s Café Theatre
Duration – 45mins

Written and performed by Conor Murray
Directed by Emma Finegan.

The stage has five clocks on the back wall. Each has the name of a city underneath – Lisbon, Dublin, London, Reykjavik, Brighton – an eclectic mix. It also has about 15 treasury boxes stacked in three piles and off the stage is a ladder. The location is the Greenwich Meantime Museum which contains Greenwich Meantime, the Prime Meridian of the world.

An intern is about to begin his last day as an intern at the Museum. He has a performance review later that day and after a year of hard work, he hopes and expects to be made permanent. It is his ideal place to work as he always has been obsessed with the passage of time. Even as a child, he timed all sorts of everyday, mundane occurrences. His day begins unsurprisingly with an alarm clock call. He describes his journey by rail to work and names various stations. All the time he is engaging with the audience, asking questions to which he does not wait for answers. Eventually, he arrives at the Museum. His current lack of importance is emphasised by the somewhat bored receptionist who asks him his name, despite working there for the last year! Once in the Museum, he introduces various aspects of his work. Photocopying is an important one and he even manages to conjure up the process on stage.

He also has a predicament in his attempt to get his coveted job, in that he has to keep closeted his undoubted queerness. On the other hand, he finds it difficult to suppress the crush he has developed for a straight colleague and so the day begins to develop. It is another tricky problem.

Murray’s themes of time in all its complexity, internships, office life, daily routine, secret passions and ambitions make for a rich mix. He has gathered these ingredients together and created an impressive and funny text. He captures the absurdity of life and of office dynamics in particular. He delivers it perhaps slightly too fast at times so that the cleverness and underlying humour can be muted by the speed of delivery. On the other hand, his various uses of the treasury boxes and the ladder are innovative, effective and quite ingenious.

At all times Murray is in charge of his material and he has his audience engaged from the get-go. It is an accomplished performance. The programme note says “If you’re a recovering workaholic … or simply looking for a laugh – this is the show for you.” There is a great deal to admire in this piece of theatre and many a laugh to be had.

Image: Romany Gilmour