Review – Irish coffee

This play starts with a bang …literally and what follows is an explosion of senses. This is most talkative play I have ever had the luck of witnessing.

If you are like me the only thing you know about Eva Peron is ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ song, but this misleading titled play resurrects her while constantly talking about her corpse. I had to go home and read about her. But that is not the only achievement of writer Eva Halac and director Luis Gayol. They create a mixed universe of fact and fable with such strong characters that makes watching the show a complete pleasure.

The set and costumes are perfect and having in mind the stage is quite small, very clever. There are two worlds, that inhabited by the journalists Rodolfo Walsh (Fergus Foster) and Tomas Eloy Martinez (Giorgio Galassi) both real characters. They talk effervescently and tirelessly about what to do with article about where the corpse of Evita Peron is as it’s fallen into the wrong hands. That sets them to the path of the investigation that takes them to unexpected and dark places. The second world is inhabited by the Colonel and his wife. Of course those two world intersect to colossal consequences.

The 4 actors are almost constantly on stage, there are no breaks in this wordy play so the merit of keeping the energies up is that much greater. Will forgive them the sudden unnecessary escalations.

Giorgio Galassi stood out for me in particular as his Tomas Martinez is coy, charmingly deluded at times but always true. His counterpart, Fergus Foster’s Rodolfo Walsh is a perfect opposite and the chemistry is perfect.

Gary Heron is very good at showing a Colonel still clinging to his bygone career and perfectly pathetic in his drunken state.

Is a great lesson in that history has always been tempered with and that facts have always been dictated by those in power.

On at The Calder Bookshop & Theatre 

October 10th – 3rd of November

Thursdays to Sundays 7.30 pm.

Info and tickets: The Calder Bookshop & Theatre