Diversity Training
Lir Academy★★☆☆☆
The idea for Neil Green’s Diversity Training has legs, but its execution is undercooked and uncomfortable for long stretches.
Green presents and performs one of a series of stand-up sets centred around PowerPoint presentations on diversity and inclusion. The show should be a straightforward satire of corporatised equality, but the slides, and many of the jokes, are slapdash and rudimentary.
It speaks to the futility of the PowerPoints, in fact, that the strongest set of the three is not aided by imagery, but made more enjoyable by the comedian, Felix O’Connor, struggling to navigate the technology as it fails him. There is, at least, something redeeming about the off-kilter style and dysfunction of the slides in lieu of anything artificially generated.
O’Connor follows Ciara Izzie, who is likable and witty, but whose routine meanders. Green’s own set, the centrepiece of the show, stays on topic but lacks strong punchlines. The most interesting moments are the audience interactions which, by fault or design, constitute spectacles of discomfort.
An Argentinian man is forced to guess obscure racist terms used in South Africa. A marine scientist is asked when he last stole an idea from a woman. Asked if any of her family members fought in a war, a Finglas native reveals that her great-grandparents came from Poland and Germany respectively. A former bartender recalls serving Bertie Ahern a pint of Bass.
All the while Green gives examples of racism, but without any overarching point, which grows a little confusing. One of the biggest laughs of the night greets news that an audience member only moved to Ireland five weeks ago. It is not a particularly funny revelation, but it cuts the tension in the room just by virtue of being patently novel.
Had the show’s concept leant more deliberately into confronting attendees with the limits of their own empathy for marginalised groups, it could have made for more interesting theatre. As it is, the disquiet just comes from a fear of the wrong thing being said, most likely by Green himself.
Runs at Lir Academy, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, until September 13th