There was an excited buzz around this extraordinary work by Michael Keegan-Dolan and Teaċ Daṁsa (in collaboration with musicians Cormac Begley and s t a r g a z e) when it first appeared at Sadler’s Wells in 2019, leading to nominations for both an Olivier and two National Dance Awards. Unfortunately, I missed it at the first time of asking and so this was an important catch-up.
I was initially struck by some elements of staging similarity between MÁM and Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof: both concern an unspecified event taking place in some kind of community centre like a village hall; both have the performers lined up in chairs against the backdrop and, at some point, they split and face off against each other combatively from the sides of the stage; and both involve a significant element of breaching the fourth wall, either in confrontational staring or, here, in offering crisps to some fortunate audience members.
Those coincidences aside, MÁM is a strangely unique work, collaboratively conceived and developed in a community centre on the Dingle peninsula in the Gaelic speaking region of West Kerry. It is unsurprisingly a slice of Irish culture as fat as the thick end of a Shillelagh and - it has to be said - just as knotty!
Although it is fruitless to waste time wondering what the “event” is, it was – for me, at least – a regular temptation during the show’s unbroken 90 minutes (interrupting the flow with an interval would have been inappropriate artistically, although calming the nerves with a drink would have been welcome). The opening tableau featured a young girl (Ellie Poirier Ní Dhobhailen, the daughter of Keegan-Dolan and his wife, Rachel Poirier who also performed memorably in the show) lying on a table dressed in a long white dress. Her apparently lifeless body suggested a wake although the clothing pointed towards a first Holy Communion, an idea emphasised when she rose and started to procure crisps and a fizzy drink from secret compartments.
To confuse matters more the only other person on stage as the curtain rose (with the house lights still up) was a concertina player wearing a ram’s head mask, suggestive of a pagan element, a concept that was heightened by the dozen seated dancers also wearing masks when they first appeared. The ram’s head was worn by the musician, Cormack Begley who lives on the other side of a mám from Keegan-Dolan (one of three translations of mám being a mountain pass). Begley’s music is fundamental to creating the surreal and rustic atmosphere of MÁM and he was later joined onstage by the Berlin-based musical collective, s t a r g a z e.
There are three reveals during the performance as successive backdrop curtains slide diagonally from their tracks into a heap at the side: the first exposed the masked dancers, smartly dressed for the “event”; the second, the band; and the third (towards the finale) a large wind machine and a haze of smoke with young Ellie in the eye of the storm (one imagined gale-force winds sweeping inland from the Atlantic).
The multi-national group of dancers and musicians are satisfyingly conjoined in an intermingled and holistic performance and the choreography is at times shatteringly energetic, with ensemble numbers danced in pinpoint harmony. Each performer delivers an episodic cameo in which their singularity is showcased against the crowd although some of solos spread out into the ensemble. One male dancer (nauseatingly) smoked a cigarette while eating crisps and later ran around the stage embracing all his colleagues except one guy who poignantly expected a kiss but was continually ignored! Keegan-Dolan has a strong feel for injecting such moments of comedy at appropriate intervals to contrast with darkness and mystery.
I have never been to a cèilidh in the west of Ireland but MÁM feels as if it contains elements of the best and worst of such social gatherings where the locals have an intimate knowledge of each other’s affairs. Both Sabine Dargent’s set designs and Hyemi Shin’s costumes support Begley’s music in establishing just the right atmosphere. And, by the way, this is captured superbly in Pat Collins’ The Dance, an intimate and innovative documentary that illuminates the creative development of MÁM, which can be seen for free on the Sadler’s Wells website.
There are sections I didn’t like, not least the tendency for performers to scream (often at the audience and mostly in moments of surprise as if Keegan-Dolan was warning viewers not to drift off) and there were some sequences that did drift too long. But, MÁM is a performance that demands attention through an extraordinary chain of surreal events. Whether a wake or a party, it’s certainly a wild one!
