Rough is an original piece by the Dublin based theatre collective THEATREclub and fits perfectly into the Fringe Festival motif; it was first performed as part of Project Brand New at the Project Arts Centre in July 2008, the writing is young, fresh and comments on young life in Dublin.

The set for Rough was absolutely beautiful. It had a dreamlike, almost Alice in Wonderland feel, with props suspended from the gantries and a free standing ladder seemingly leading to nowhere. Adding greatly to the aesthetics of the stage were the costumes by Emma Fraser. A personal weakness of mine is the world of vintage and Fraser used garments from her own online vintage store which left me drooling in my seat. We were informed in the programme that the apparel on stage could be bought online. Online shopping and theatre? My two passions combined…!

Rough started off well. We hear the narrative of a girl getting ready for a night out with the plan to get absolutely wasted. This narrative begins to accelerate and we see that perhaps the night in question is getting a bit out of control and we realise that the nameless girl onstage is terribly unhappy and her lifestyle is tearing her apart. Grace Dyas adopts a non-traditional form of writing - the story is told in a postmodern, almost Beckettian style. There are no names, no locations, the style is fragmented, repeated, almost like a stream of consciousness. I have to admit that I don’t think this style worked for the production. True, the writing allowed us into the mind of this young girl, but I found that after the first ten minutes it became a bit repetitive and ineffective.

The influence of Sarah Kane is very strong in this piece. While I am a great admirer of Kane, I felt the constant reference to her, particularly 4.48 Psychosis, was a weakness in the play, the text echoed her work and I felt Rough lost its ability to stand on its own.

The Fringe Festival is the perfect home for Rough. The writing is new, raw. This is the ideal venue for an experimental piece like Rough and I believe that the experience gained from this festival will allow THEATREclub to grow and develop. While this play may not have been exactly my cup of tea, I do think that the concept is absorbing and the collective as a whole worked very well together.