Perhaps the only thing I enjoy more than a pun is when it’s made by a talking animal. Needless to say, I had a ball at Chicken … a chicken-ball? However, an important disclaimer should be made in the show’s description: don’t come if you don’t enjoy puns because they are laid on thick.
Mostly, the show is hilarious, and Eva O’Connor’s performance is so good I actually forgot she wasn’t a chicken for parts of it. One-woman shows can notoriously feel rather… intense. But O’Connor breezes through the voices of various characters and even does a techno chicken dance, which is insane and brilliant.
“Was this play really about chicken liberation? Was it about animal cruelty? Was it about something else entirely?”
The only part of the show that faltered was its revolutionary messaging. The theme of addiction was trivialised which led me to believe that we should take the show at face value. The chicken gimmick is not a metaphor, it’s just really funny. That’s completely fine with me! However, I grew confused in the last third of the show when the chicken revolution became a main theme. Was this play really about chicken liberation? Was it about animal cruelty? Was it about something else entirely? I’m not sure.
I found it interesting that Eva O’Connor, who identifies as a woman, plays a male chicken. The discussion about sex and sexuality is dealt with in a glib way, with raised eyebrows and many innuendos. She skillfully delivers her lines with complete genuineness, it sounds like a misinformed man speaking through her in chicken form. Yet she also manages to make fun of her character at the same time. She’s mocking both chicken’s sexual inaptitude but also men’s willful ignorance of women’s sexual pleasure. It almost felt like a theoretical pun.
Eva O’Connor crosses gender and species lines in order to scare us, confuse us, make us laugh and ultimately give us a great time. It’s easy to see why it sold out at both the Edinburgh and Dublin Fringes.
