4 April 2025
I had a huge offstage drama getting to this show with the northern line suddenly completely shutdown from Euston to Morden in south London. So, stranded in Clapham South with just 35 mins to curtain, I took 2 buses, a train and had a frantic run up the Aldwych before I took my seat – slightly breathless – just as the mournful Irish wake started.
The wake opened to the haunting strains of I Am Stretched on Your Grave by the excellent onstage band, fronted by singer Adam Matthews, a mournful sung lament with the rest of the cast dressed in formal, respectful black – the tableaux created on stage looked utterly gorgeous and the sound was stunning. Then things went a bit pear shaped…or rather Pete Tong as the theatre rocked to some Ibiza dance classics.
The Irish wake is the starting point to this rather bizarre hybrid show – a pick ‘n’ mix of ideas from La Soirée, The Choir of Man and countless other drinking/variety/ burlesque shows – from Irish company Thisispopbaby. A wake is as an ancient all-night Irish funeral rite, but the company claim that it’s much more than that, “it’s a magical act of transformation that lifts the veil between this world and the next, facilitating magnificent change”. Oh, and a great piss-up too.
So what is the actual show about? Well, it’s an anarchic, frankly bonkers piece about death set to club tunes with Irish dancing, pole dancing, incredible tap, comedy, high flying acrobatics and ring work and glitter cannons thrown into the mix. Not all of it hits the bullseye and the sudden dramatic tonal shifts are really disconcerting.
I really was so up for a good time. But did the show ultimately deliver? Sad to report only in fits and starts. When it soared as it did with stunning quite beautiful aerial work, and a ridiculous segue into 90s clubbing territory as Emer Dineen – dragged up in a nylon shellsuit and bucket hat as an aspiring clubland DJ career – created outbreaks of pure joy throughout the auditorium with the entire house on their feet hands in the air singing along, but then the show crashed back to earth.
There were several pedestrian passages, longeurs in the action and tempo that left many bemused and dare I say it bored, mostly involving the Nigerian-Irish performance poet FeliSpeaks whose monotone monologues involving fortune cookie homilies on life and death failed to hit home.
The absolute highlights of the night for me included choreographer Philip Connaughton’s hilarious boylesque tumbling turn as a drunk Mr Maggo-style gent at the wake complete with Hitler tache and a 500-watt killer smile, who sang wistfully of wanting to be seduced by a handsome man, then ended up hoofing hilariously round the stage in nothing more than a gold thong and a pair of nipple tassels on both jigging butt cheeks. He had the audience in the palm of his hand whenever he was on stage. True star quality.
Poster boy Michael Roberson, an Irish tap champion billed as “the Paul Mescal of Irish dance”, tore off his Gaelic Athletic Association sports kit and sent his fast tapping and kicking heels flying while wearing nothing more than gold pants. He later joined Philip on an hilarious joy-inducing dance to Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams Are Made of These.
Finally, world champion pole dancer Lisette Krol from Venezuela proved herself a hardcore athlete in little more than a skimpy G-string and sky-high, glittery terrifying stilettoes that she banged together like castanets. She was incredible.
But alongside these highlights, other acts including a lone break dancer body locking and spinning on his head looked horribly exposed on the Peacock stage and left me wishing I had seen this show in-the-round as in Dublin or in a Spiegeltent late night at the Edinburgh Fringe.
WAKE will run at Peacock Theatre in London until April 5, and then at Factory International’s Aviva Studios in Manchester from April 17-21.
