Review: Chicken – Traverse Theatre

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Hildegard Ryan & Co-Writer/Performer Eva O’Connor’s Chicken is just the sort of utterly unique theatre that populates the wilds of Fringe theatre, yet rarely transitions from basement to mainstage. The distance between a good idea and good execution is often just too far. However, in the case of Chicken, the quality of execution is the secret of its success.

Set in the round, O’Connor captures the audience from the first, quiet flaps of her azure blue wings. Don the Kerry cock is a remarkable dramatic creation, Bryony Rumble‘s gleaming, feathered costume brought to strutting, pecking, preening life by O’Connor. For 60 minutes, she simply is a human-sized chicken, adopted by an Irish family, and destined for Hollywood stardom, ketamine self-destruction, and an ill-fated bid for chicken liberation.

The humour is unapologetically absurd, rich with poultry-based puns, and vignettes familiar from tabloid gossip columns, except dialled up to 11 – and featuring chickens. Think sex, drugs, and a starring role in a Chicken Run remake with Michael Fassbender, and you won’t be far off.

There are moments when Chicken slides closer to dramatic storytelling than one-person theatre, but plenty of pace and a continually escalating plot drive it to an extravagant finale. Along the way, the play will deal with issues of nature vs nurture, self-hatred, and the almost transformative power of love. Don may be absurd, but he’s also wrestling with fairly universal existential angst – just with far more ketamine and battery farm genocide.

Overall, Chicken is thoroughly entertaining, the impressiveness of O’Connor’s presentation subsidising passages where the scripted comedy proves a little thin. It will, without doubt, leave you wondering just how hard it must be to be a chicken – even if it’s only for 60 minutes.

Chicken is a Sunday’s Child Theatre production.

Featured Image: Hildegard Ryan

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For tickets and more information on Chicken, click here.

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