The Last Cargo Cult & From Away by Mike Daisey @ Half Moon Theatre

05 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment

by pervertedcoffee in Theatre going, Uncategorized Tags: cork midsummer festival 2010, Half Moon Theatre, mike daisey, monologue

First of all, no I haven’t fixed my laptop but I have found a decent internet access point! So I’ll be able to continue publishing. The stats for this blog tell me I have a few visitors so I now have some responsibility it seems…oh dear!

You may have noticed I have squashed these two performances together. Am I being lazy? Maybe… but seeing as the performances themselves are quite similar I wouldn’t want to reiterate the format again and I don’t think I could turn the material from both shows into stand alone blog posts so I’ll discuss them together.

Again the simple set and dramatic lighting do nothing to take from Daisey’s performance and thus do it a great justice. He uses his expressions and tones of voice to add a wondrous texture to his monologues. In one moment you’re trying to gasp some air through the eruptions of laughter and in the next his sincerity is sending scratches up and down your spine and knocks on your integrity, even your humanity. Daisey’s style is captivating. His understanding of subtle humor is delightful.

He is a debater’s dream. He has thoroughly and skillfully crafted his arguments for the greatest effect and one would do well to study his style. Clearly an astute observer, Daisey manages to sculpt cultural subtleties into greater significance and I was left gaping at how seamlessly these references brought the story and argument on together, thereby rendering you helpless to discovering how you reached that conclusion and helpless to the realisation that that conclusion must be the most natural to come by. Very clever.

The official blurb for “The Last Cargo Cult” runs thus;

Groundbreaking monologist Mike Daisey returns with the story of his journey to a remote South Pacific island whose people worship America and its cargo. This narrative is woven against a searing examination of the international financial crisis that gripped the globe at the same moment. Confronting the financial system that dominates our world, Daisey wrestles with the largest questions of what the collapse means, and what it can tell us about our deepest values. Part adventure story and part memoir, he explores each culture to unearth a human truth between the seemingly primitive and achingly modern.

It pretty much does what it says on the tin. Though, as an added bonus, Daisey expertly relays the experience of getting to grips with a new culture – especially when it doesn’t go the way you hoped. However, even this, it seems, is a clever device to convey his arguments; using himself as a contrast between capitalism seen by a believer and those more suspicious. The most startling contrast was how the natives were able to distort and abuse the relics of corporations for their own purposes while we are bound by those corporations restraints – in essence, as much as we like to believe the contrary, we are playing by their rules. It takes something special to shake our fundamental beliefs.

From Away was a ‘special edition’ monologue about Cork. Daisey again managed to take our perceptions of something innately familiar to us and change our perspective. I certainly felt the affect of such a short preparation time but was nevertheless fascinated by Daisey’s almost Holmes like observations and deductions. Of course I was good naturedly mortified to discover he had dedicate a few moments of the time to describe the Young Curators…I’m still confused as to whether we left a good impression or not but we certainly fared better than our fellow Corkonians I believe! I particularly liked his description of Cork’s late-night fashion sense and the confusion over the “Toyota dealership”. Still, it is these quirks that make us “The People’s Republic of Cork” and even thinking back on it now I’m left with perhaps a misguided sense of pride in my hometown.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of Daisey’s work and hope to see him back here in the future. He has a lot he needs to say that a lot of people need to hear.

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