Ballyturk

See it if you want a play that will make you think and powerful performances. great set and impactful end. reminds me of becket.

Don't see it if you want a traditional play and don't like when things go unanswered

See it if you like challenging, unconventional theater. If you want to see actors put their all into very physical roles.

Don't see it if you want to sit back and be told a pleasant story. If you don't like to have to think about theater.

Also I saw this a week after I saw Disco Pigs at Irish Rep. If you're a Enda Walsh fan, it's really interesting to see them alongside each other to see the evolution of the playwright's career.

There's something about this play where nothing seems to make sense, yet everything is exactly as it should be.... Read more Read less

See it if you like theatre that isn't about logic, but viscerally and kinaesthetic response. you won't understand it but you'll feel it.

Don't see it if you like standard narrative structure and don't like experimental work brinking on near-performance art.

See it if you like off-the-wall theatre that is very active and makes you really pay attention to try and figure out what's happening.

Don't see it if you don't like Twilight Zone-esque plots. It got a little weird and confusing for sure.

See it if You're a fan of Enda Walsh, big themes, absurdist theatre, black humor and have patience for theatre that's not immediately comprehensible..

Don't see it if you need to understand everything that's going on immediately, you hate Beckett or you can't laugh and think at once...

See it if You like existential theater delivered by a skilled cast. Walsh's writing is dark and thought-provoking. Mikel Murfi is especially fantastic

Don't see it if You struggle with slow, non-narrative-driven theater. The central actors bring levity but the directing indulges in excruciating silences.

See it if You love avant-garde theatre, or don't but just go to the theatre to be moved. You will be moved and you won't understand why.

Don't see it if You have no tolerance for plays that seems pointless until half-way in. Or if you over-intellectualize and want everything to make sense.

See it if High-energy surreal physical comedy about life, love and death. Rapid fire surprises. Stunning expressionist set and music. Super creative.

Don't see it if No traditional narrative or plot. Seemingly crazy nonsense that eventually sort of fits together. Do you like an avant-garde challenge?

See it if you like theater that blasts beyond the bounds of the well-made play because the matter it wants to deal with just won't fit the form.

Don't see it if for you a play is only a play when it delivers its audience a fully coherent story about comfortably recognizable human beings.

Also Ballyturk does not present the standard play's recognizable domestic situation. In fact, never have I seen onstage so many of life's banal everyday actions performed in a way as to seem so utterly bizarre. But neither is the piece an abstract exercise in New Theater. It engages very viscerally of a lot of the most basic things humans have to grapple with, such as love, fear, aging, death, the desire to protect a loved one that is also a kind of selfishness, the power & the limits of the imagination, engagement with the world outside your abode, "family", identity & the possibility of a higher power. Ballyturk -- this kind of playmaking cannot be taught in an MFA program -- is the most exciting new script I have encountered in a while. The three actors who are the vehicles for this exploration all deliver breathtakingly powerhouse performances. (And a brief 11th hour cameo by a younger actor is powerful, lovely, unexpected & feels entirely right.)... Read more Read less

See it if 21st century post-expressionism is your thing. A very Irish meditation on small life & large death with more than a single shot of Becket...

Don't see it if thrown in. Sometimes daring can be pretentious & self-indulgent. A free-form presentation with a classic ending.