Arán & Im
★★★★☆ A winning combination
Traverse: Fri 25 – Sat 26 Oct 2024
Review by Allan Wilson.
Irish writer and television documentary maker, Manchán Magan’s Arán & Im (Bread & Butter) is a fascinating piece of storytelling, slicing through Irish history, language and culture, while baking traditional Irish sourdough and churning fresh cream to create butter, live on stage. It is a winning combination.
Once Off Productions’ Arán & Im is the third example of ‘culinary theatre’ (bringing live cookery to the stage) in Edinburgh over the past three months, following Hannah Khalil’s My English Persian Kitchen at the Traverse and Sean Wai Keung’s A History of Fortune Cookies at Summerhall. However, Arán & Im pre-dates the others by several years, arriving in Edinburgh as part of a UK tour following its premier at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 2018.
Manchan Magan in Aran & Im.
Magan’s describes his performance as “not quite a play, nor a lecture, nor a demonstration, but a mixture of all three”. He moves skilfully between Irish narrative and English translation to tell of the myths of the prehistoric settlement of Ireland by Spanish adventurers, led by the druid, Amergin, who defeated the old Irish gods and sent them underground to their fairy mounds.
He explores recurring themes of transformation, illustrated by the coming together of water, flour and tiny particles of a magic ingredient, wild yeast, to create bread and connections to land and climate. As he speaks, Magan mixes the ingredients to form a loaf, which he proceeds to bake in a small electric oven.
In the best tradition of cookery demonstrations, he has a loaf that he made earlier, which he cuts up and shares with the audience. Of course, bread needs an accompaniment, so audience members share the task of turning the handle of a small churn to transform liquid cream into solid butter. The end results, both bread and butter, are excellent!
multiple meanings
There is a lot more to Arán & Im than bread and butter. Magan delves into various aspects of the Irish language, for example the number of words with multiple meanings. Language can be used to show the existence of a folk memory dating back more than 10,000 years to the floods created by the last great ice age.
He regularly engages with the Gaelic speakers in the audience, including pupils from a local Gaelic school, to reflect on words that are similar in the ancient languages of Ireland and Scotland. These discussions are enjoyed by the whole audience, though they sometimes lead off in unexpected directions, possibly contributing to the performance running 15 minutes longer than advertised.
The butter churner passed through the audience in Aran & Im.
This is theatre which is not an exact science, much like the baking of bread. Indeed, besides the usual production information, the programme includes a guide to making sourdough bread, in both Irish and English, which has helpful hints for when things don’t turn out as expected.
Producers Sadhbh Barrett Coakley and Maura O’Keeffe, and Tour Manager Rebecca Roche have worked closely with Magan to pull together an informative and very enjoyable show using Tom de Paor and Barry Rogerson’s very basic, but effective, set design with tables.
Hazel McCague’s appropriate costume design, based on a traditional white, linen shirt, leather trousers and ‘moccasin’ shoes. The design of the shoes dates back four thousand years, but was initially thought to have fallen out of use in the 1920s. As Arán & Im has toured, however, audience feedback has moved this to the 1940s, the 1960s, and the 2000s. Until, in the current tour, an audience member identified a shoemaker who was still producing them.
Magan is a thoroughly engaging performer, who packs a huge variety of content into the show, from the microscopic particles necessary for making bread to quantum physics and the vastness of our universe. He happily breaks the theatrical fourth wall, not only by engaging directly with the audience, but by inviting them to share the bread he has made at the conclusion of a very enjoyable evening.
Running time: One hour and 25 minutes (no interval)
Traverse, 10 Cambridge Street, EH1 2ED.
Fri 25 – Sat 26 Oct 2024
Evening: 8pm (Trav 2).
Tickets and details: Book here.
ENDS
