Review: HYPER

In the aptly named Nightingale Club, best friends Saoirse (Fiona Larmon) and Connall (Christopher O'Shaughnessy) are about to play their first gig since Saoirse began transitioning. Inspired by the trans artists who pioneered hyperpop (a fantastical, self-referential branch of electronic pop), Saoirse's written new songs and brought along vocal modulators to pitch-shift her voice into alternate realities. 

This gutsy almost-gig-theatre is complicated by the presence of writer Ois O'Donoghue, who speaks to the audience, via modulator, from behind a gauze. She plays a disembodied version of Saoirse – at least until both O'Donoghue and Larmon are reunited to floods of tears from an emotional audience. But HYPER doesn't ask for tears. Instead, it clumsily but powerfully questions the role of trauma porn in trans stories by demanding that the audience read the lines of a transphobic confrontation. "Empathy!" chorus the cast, ridiculing the idea that trans people should reenact bigotry for the eyes, and benefit, of others. In doing so, HYPER makes cis, straight assumptions about its audience (which tonight get a loud laugh) but the point is made: HYPER is a show about the power of voice, and the freedom to speak in a voice that feels like your own.