Keeping Abreast @ Assembly George Square Studios

Review by Leonie Walters | 01 Sep 2014

City Theatre Dublin would like you to fondle your breasts. Go on, put your hands on them. Not having breasts is no excuse. Now have a squeeze. Found something? Go see a doctor.

This should save you seeing Keeping Abreast: a one-hour long infomercial about breast cancer performed by four actors on bar stools, reading from cards. Assembly’s George Square Studios are university lecture theatres, and the venue is oddly appropriate for the format of the show which, essentially, is a lecture that doesn’t require you to take notes.

The stories that are read out are testimonies from people who have or have survived the disease. They are well performed and have the advantage of containing the humour and pathos of real life. It’s the intermittent jokes about breast exams and mammaries' pet names which make the show achingly hackneyed. The piece finishes with the assignment to love, live, and do other nice things that begin with the letter L, but it is when the performers reach for each other's hands to join in a chant that one begins to feel they may be taking the Mickey.

Raising awareness of a disease to encourage early diagnosis is an admirable goal, and theatre is one possible avenue for this goal. As a piece of theatre, however, Keeping Abreast feels underdeveloped.

City Theatre Dublin: Keeping Abreast, Assembly George Square Studios, run ended http://www.sfx.ie