Making a Show of MyselfSmock Alley, Dublin★★★★☆All you need to make theatre, as director Peter Brook put it, is an empty space. Mary Kate O Flanagan has taken that principle to heart in this one-woman show, which is performed on a bare stage at the Smock Alley Theatre. There are no props, costume changes, music or even a chair. O Flanagan just moves gently around the centre of the stage and tells six loosely connected stories from her life.It’s an approach underlain by national tradition. Since a voice is often all our ancestors had, storytelling and song became, she notes, our primary cultural inheritance. In that spirit, though Making a Show of Myself includes excursions to England, Germany and France, O Flanagan’s creative soul remains rooted in an unspecified part of rural Ireland. That physical isolation leads her, in the first story, to explore internet dating after being dumped by an unfaithful boyfriend. A promising flirtation becomes more complicated once O Flanagan starts to ponder why her putative partner has not included any photos on his profile. Some sleuthing by her best friend then helps to defuse a mild moral dilemma. The dominant tone is one of amused relief, but the story also highlights the claustrophobia of Irish life.O Flanagan then recounts her first proper job in London, where her eagerness to please and good-natured naivety help her to negotiate an intimidating workplace, culminating in a cheerful comic set piece at the Savoy Hotel. The show acquires more poignant resonance as O Flanagan recalls how her grandmother became friendly with a German POW after shielding him from a hostile crowd in wartime England. Linguistic barriers also prove a rich source of dictionary-themed humour. And the story concludes with a remarkable reunion (of a kind) decades later when O Flanagan is visiting Germany with her parents and sisters.A similar spirit of compassion infuses the fourth story, which begins with O Flanagan volunteering to help migrants held in a camp in Calais. The misery of a life lived in limbo is sensitively evoked as she becomes determined to bring a South Sudanese boy to Ireland.The focus then shifts back to O Flanagan’s family as she and her five sisters negotiate a sexist funeral tradition following their father’s death. A final story about losing her voice supplies a fitting coda to a show that hinges on the simple power of speech. Some of O Flanagan’s material is cloyingly woozy. We can readily appreciate the value of storytelling without being told it is a “religion” and a form of “magic”. So many honeyed words could use a dash of vinegar. Under Will O’Connell’s direction, her performance nonetheless remains consistently absorbing over the course of 75 minutes. Central to that achievement is the chatty intensity of O Flanagan’s delivery. We have the sense of listening to her extemporise over a cup of tea. But each word and each sentence are carefully woven together, and she never misses a beat. This is not magic. It is meticulously honed technique. Making a Show of Myself is at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, August 1st