You haven’t lived, it turns out, until you’ve seen a blazing-hot pole dance accompanied by a mournful Irish fiddle. Or perhaps a B-boy headspinning to the song of a button accordion. In fact there are a lot of things you didn’t know you needed in this show, Wake, by the Dublin-based theatre company Thisispopbaby, which joyfully explodes expectations of the traditional Irish wake, but captures some of the culture’s soul alongside the high camp and shiny Lycra.
The ingredients are mind-bogglingly myriad: cabaret, character comedy and Irish stepdance, trad folk music and 80s, 90s, 00s bangers, aerial circus skills and audience participation. It’s also an invitation to imagine life’s seismic moments as a catalyst for reinvention, spurred by the coming together of bodies and hearts in the same room.
Having a blast … Wake at Peacock theatre. Photograph: Ruth Medjber
