A two of us against the world attitude pervades the world of Pig and Runt, the seventeen year old inseparable couple in Enda Walsh’s play Disco Pigs.
The play starts with their mothers in simultaneous labour and exaggerated detail about hospital trolleys racing through wards, pushing, screaming and heads emerging. Through this chaos the infants eventually lock eyes on each other and so starts their journey through life together, closer than brother and sister. They grow up in the rough part of Cork, Ireland, sharing birthdays, nicknames, a secret language and outlook.
Celebrating their seventeenth birthdays together, they callously ignore family, and head out seeking music, alcohol, violence and a good time. The play focuses on this big night in their lives and we discover they basically an obnoxious, self focused couple who are happy in their own world and have a disregard and disdain for just about everyone else. However, events on this night of celebration slightly alter this dynamic and give cause for some reflection by Pig and Runt. The play asks if they will they spiral into self-destructive decline or is redemption and growth possible for either character.
Jeff Hampson as Pig or Darren, as his mother would call him, and Courtney Powell as Runt or Sinéad, as her mother would call her, are the only actors in this short drama. Their performances are energetic, strident and skillful.
Director Andrew Langcake has used a simple and sparse set which focuses the drama on Enda Walsh’s script. Accolades go to dialect consultant Nick Curnow and Bokkie Robertson’s lighting and technical work.
DISCO PIGS is playing as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival and is running at the PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, 107 Railway Parade, Erskineville until 24th September.