HouseWorkCTC Studio, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork★★★★★The title says it all. HouseWork: the shifting role of women in Ireland in the 1990s, told through their rise in house music. Part documentary, part autobiography, Áine Ní Laoghaire’s one-hour, one-woman show whizzes through a period of insane social transformation.We begin with a metatheatrical framing. Dressed in a blue Adidas tracksuit, Ní Laoghaire re-creates the phone calls she made while collecting oral histories from women involved in the 1990s dance scene, Aoife Nic Canna and Sally Cinnamon among them.“Did you manage to get any funding?” one interviewee asks in a voice note. Ní Laoghaire pauses, glances around the sparse set (just speakers, decks and a coil of LED lights) and replies, “Not really.”Especially considering how little she has to work with, the play is a huge achievement. Partly that’s because the subject matter is so fascinating. Ní Laoghaire traces the unlikely journey of a genre born in the black and Latino club culture of Chicago in the 1980s, as it mutated and found a home among a new generation in an Ireland hollowed out by unemployment, with empty buildings waiting to be reclaimed.A lot of history is packed in. The decriminalisation of homosexuality, in 1993, the peace process, in 1994, the referendum to legalise divorce, in 1995, and new domestic-violence legislation, in 1996. One funny sideline concerns the smuggling of a condom machine.HouseWork, which is produced by Leigh Hussey, at times resembles a lecture, and it would be interesting enough as one. But it’s more than that. It’s a love letter and an elegy: for the 1990s, for the nightlife and for a moment when culture felt as though it was expanding without limit. Blue-soaked lighting, by Suzie Cummins, and slow-motion choreography re-create fragmentary memories of nights out, from teenage discos in Cork to sweaty evenings at the George in Dublin. These personal moments of transformation become a metaphor for the story of a nation. Money was pouring into the country, MDMA was on the market and everything seemed to be changing at once, not just the economy but also the relationship between men and women. Suddenly, it felt as though anything was possible.Ní Laoghaire brilliantly captures that sense of nostalgia for a future that never quite arrived. The concept is very Mark Fisher, and his sensibilities loom over the piece: not just his politics – much of the show, which is directed by Katie O’Halloran, is an elegy for the way the neoliberal excesses of the Celtic Tiger ultimately ravaged Ireland – but also the aesthetics of hauntology. Using textured ambient loops, electronic repetition and samples from public broadcasts – sound design is by HK Ní Shioradáin – Ní Laoghaire draws on the historicity, the recursive potential of electronic music itself.Certain lines gather meaning. The wittiest borrows from a WB Yeats poem: “I am of Ireland. Come dance with me.” Another comes from one of the women she interviews: “I still remember it. I’m still not over it.” Initially referring to a personal memory, the phrase accumulates broader meanings as it’s repeated.Conceptually, the show is rich. There’s enough material here for a bigger, slicker production. Someone, please, give Áine Ní Laoghaire more funding.HouseWork is at Triskel Arts Centre, as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, until Saturday, June 14th