The costuming and make-up featured in the production is excellently realised, and though the story told is something of a relentless onslaught, there are many amusing moments.
What starts off as a marvellously observed performance of fowl behaviour, grows to become a complex story concerning the desires of a young rooster, with ambitions to make good in Hollywood. This is absurdist material, originally emerging from playwrights such as Eugène Ionesco and Harold Pinter, in the decade after WW2. The absurd, or surrealist elements of Chicken, are confronting, existentialist, nightmarish and often very funny. Intellectually it is definitely an intriguing play, though I found the relentless pitch of the performance alienating to some degree.
I think it is likely to be completely deliberate on the part of O’Connor, to basically keep the presentation uncompromisingly aggressive, after the initial introduction of the creature that inhabits the play. Absurdist theatre often bombards the audience with uncomfortable elements. The lighting is harsh, the story is terrible, but very amusing.
Indeed, it is in these contradictions of what is (and isn’t) comfortable, where meaning emerges. It may be a play about birthright and injustice, which is my favoured opinion. There is much in it about gender and toxic, destructive behaviours, as well as standing up for perceptions of justice, in a corrupt world. It certainly isn’t a simple piece of humorous quirky theatre, so I imagine some people will love it and some, not so much. The chicken remains an unswervingly driven character (bravo).
If nothing else at all, it’s a quirky piece about the inhumane, and the nature of existence, with some witty badinage, of course it inevitably is much more than that.
For such intellectual fricassee, five freshly laid stars.
Chicken is on at The Yurt at The Courtyard of Curiosities at the Migration Museum during Adelaide Fringe until 9 March. Get tickets here.
