The New Electric Ballroom A Red Orchid Theatre
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The New Electric Ballroom had its world premiere in 2004, when Walsh was likely working on The Walworth Farce, and the two plays echo each other. The Farce concerns an Irishman who came to London years ago, when his two sons were tots. His idea then was to work in construction, earn good money, and bring it back home to Mum and the Motherland. But awful realities overtook him and the boys, who are now not only full-grown but ingrown. Secluded in a flat on the top floor of a tenement, the three of them continually reenact a daffy, monstrous version of their own story—the family passion play.
Like the Farce boys, the Ballroom girls have a family epic that they perform over and over again. When I was in college I lived a thin wall away from a very disturbed older woman who would engage in ferocious bouts of chanting at three-hour intervals, day and night—sometimes describing herself, sometimes detailing who she’d like to see dead. Walsh’s sisters remind me a little of her, but they’ve elevated their sickness to a jazzlike art form: the epic retains its narrative pattern, its set pieces and plot points, even as it allows for improvisation.
