Hypertxt Festival: Thank You, Thank You Love

Written by MKA’s Tobias Manderson-Galvin, Thank You, Thank You Love is a collection of five short plays that have a chaotic and brutal energy. The vivid beauty of the language and images poke their head through as glimmers of hope amidst the chaos of reality and death. It is a reality of corporate domination, philosophical fist fights and a desperate attempt to connect; to simply make contact with one another, the universe and truth.

In this way Thank You, Thank You Love is extraordinary. Yet the performance was soured by some technical issues and lack of preparation (or was it?). This manifested at times as a comic foregrounding of the process of performance. However, as the performance drew along, these pauses and line dropping became tedious and lagged the otherwise strong writing.

The strength of Manderson-Galvin’s writing is that is asks for the spectator to meet it half way. It is a work that seeks interpretation and in that way, it is complex and generous.

The performers delivered the work with energy and force, pushing through what boarded on complete uncontrollable chaos. A feeling in the room that the show could have stopped entirely and permanently was palpable.

Thank You is a piece that jars the audience with its own failure – an inability to continue. As actors argue about how to finish the show, the work highlights the death of art, theatre, signification and humanity.

The set, white curtains saturated with wine stains, framed the show as a messy cross between cabaret and performance art. And indeed this performance sits between those realms. Part performance art, part theatre, part monologue and part reality, with very real frustrations and (apparently?) real stuff ups, it’s a chaos that’s alive to say the least.

Ultimately, Thank You is a strong piece dominated by brute force and an overpowering energetic drive; some beautifully profound moments and some evocative language render the show a great experience.