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With theatre for an audience of one, a whirlwind set of Kevin Barry stories and sparky songs, the Irish festival is in fine formAdapting to Covid-19 restrictions with ingenuity, Galway international arts festival has embraced hybrid forms of performance: live in theatres, streamed, filmed, recorded for headsets or available for a single audience member to encounter alone. In the case of Attic Projects’ arresting Volcano (★★★★☆), presented in four 45-minute parts, viewers have the intense experience of solo viewing in an individual booth, combined with glimpses of other audience members through glass screens. It can also be watched online in four episodes, like a television mini-series.Cameras and screens are integral to this ambitious multimedia performance by dance-theatre artists Luke Murphy and Will Thompson, who play X and Y, cooped up in a dingy sitting room with no obvious exit. Think Sartre, Beckett or Enda Walsh, with more choreography. Memories of their lives prior to this mysterious co-dependency are played out in superbly inventive movement sequences – from tender duets to manic raves – triggered by a radio signal that becomes increasingly distorted. For a work created during lockdown, this is unexpectedly exhilarating: its sci-fi premise of a time-capsule sent into space being sufficiently expansive to encompass Covid-inspired questions of what is really of value in life, what is worth saving – and what remains when habitual bonds have loosened. Continue reading...