“There’s a saying in Ireland: you have to be invited to a wedding, but anyone can show up to a wake.” This proverb forms the emotional and conceptual spine of WAKE, a genre-bending performance by Irish company THISISPOPBABY. Created and directed by Jennifer Jennings, Phillip McMahon & Niall Sweeney, WAKE is an invitation to joy, grief, and togetherness, an all-night party in the shape of a show, brimming with Irish trad, aerial feats, and spoken word. But while the spectacle dazzles and the performers throw their whole bodies into the work, WAKE is caught somewhere between cabaret euphoria and spiritual pedagogy, struggling to deliver a satisfying choreographic or conceptual agenda.
The show is technically impressive and entertaining. A cast of fourteen dancers showcases a sequence of vignettes with brilliant showmanship: from party-vibe dancing with multiple disco balls to melancholic folk-style chanting with string instruments, and from some underground DJ taking care of “audience interaction” (poorly designed), to a variety of aerial performances that will certainly awe you.
Yet, this journey, designed to evoke your emotions, often feels pre-cooked, manipulated for enforcing reaction rather than organically generated from within. I feel myself nudged and prodded into riding a rollercoaster, without doubt indeed an exhilarating one. However, I may also start to wonder why this rollercoaster belongs in a venue like the Peacock, rather than in some other shows called Magic Mike or Crazy Horse.
Despite the array of acts, from tap dance to aerial artistry, there’s little choreographic depth. They are more like a kaleidoscope of arranged movements, entertaining indeed, but rarely an embodied articulation of thematic thoughts, expressions, or feelings. Some moments may suggest an employment of Lecoq-inspired clowning, like the comic drunk tap dancer, but they feel underdeveloped and adrift in purpose.
It’s still okay if the show keeps itself as ultimate entertainment, but its ambition over its thematic claim makes the show extensively torturous, with long and didactic monologues interwoven, offering sermons – more like “a manual to enjoy WAKE” – to tell the audience how to understand the meaning of death, how to live in the moments, and how to ultimately enjoy their performance. These pedagogic and preachy insertions, however sincere, actually smother the show’s own potential of being genuinely and ultimately visceral and carnivalesque.
Still, one moment cuts through. A solo pole dance accompanied by folk chanting and strings becomes a rare and arresting vignette, transformed from pure spectacle display to something carefully curated with an intention of expression. Here, the dancer’s body becomes more than a demonstration of her skills. Her artistry seamlessly fuses with the music, the ambience, and the breath. Sheer physicality shakes, trembles, and crushes you. In this luminous vignette, there is something sublime, raw and profoundly moving.
But such moments don’t linger. Soon enough, we are ushered back into a cabaret of crowd-pleasers and foot-tapping singalongs. To the show’s credit, its audience on press night was one of the most passionate and enthusiastic I’ve ever witnessed, singing, dancing, and standing to swing and sway with the DJ. In this sense, WAKE absolutely achieves what it sets out to do: to bring people together in joy, in release, in celebration.
If you are into something glitter-soaked, authentically Irish and won’t be bothered by long, preachy monologues, then WAKE is the night for you. However, if you are seeking a little bit beyond – not just a high-voltage party – you may leave feeling not yet fulfilled.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
