There is a sparkling electricity between things. A piping bond that permeates ourselves with the surrounding world, almost as if we were tangibly linked to everything else.
But what happens when everything else concerns the Afterlife, the Otherworld – in other words, the Other Side? What happens, then, to the connections we so dearly clung on to? This, I believe, is the inquiry of Anonn | The Other Side, a theatrical project developed by Writer and Producer, Cian Ó Náraigh, and Director, Graham Butler Breen, and performed by Elliot Nolan as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2025.
Anonn | The Other Side unravels the story of Seoirse as he himself monologues it. Moving safely within a salt circle drawn on the stage, Seoirse confesses that he’s been struggling to understand and connect with others. So, one night, he decides that he’s had enough: he hits the pub – a book in one hand, male performativity in the other – and sits down, pretending to read. Soon enough, an older man, Patrick, sits across from him and spontaneously starts talking.
The conversation flows nicely, until Patrick mentions that he’s recovering from the recent loss of his wife Megan. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Seoirse lies about being a spirit medium who can help Patrick reconnect with his dead spouse. Patrick immediately accepts and brings Seoirse to his own house to perform the service.
They make small-talk, light some candles to set the mood, but nothing relieves Seoirse from his distress – about the lie, about the fact that he has no idea what to do, about the guilt already pressing on his throat like a needle. Yet, said distress dissipates into astonishment when Patrick gasps and touches his hand: he felt it. He felt somebody was present. He successfully connected with the other side.
This sanctions a new spiritual beginning for Seoirse. Elated at the feelings he managed to stir, not to mention at his own feeling of helpfulness, he starts assisting strangers in similar circumstances. On a daily basis, in his own website, strangers ask him to evoke their loved ones from the Afterlife.
His primordial guilt, nevertheless, still shadows him, and erupts on an otherwise ordinary day, when he receives a call from an unknown number. To his own surprise, Patrick’s son speaks angrily at the other line: his dad’s not doing well, he is not taking care of his poor health and spends his time talking to “Megan”.
Seoirse decides to attend Patrick’s deathbed, to say goodbye one last time. But his visit conceals an unexpected twist. When Patrick greets him, confessing how he kept doubting his spirituality until he met Seoirse, how he’s now ready to die thanks to his gift, Seoirse cannot take it any longer. He spills out the truth. He’s not a medium, and Megan’s not any more present than she was before.
Everything was a lie; there is no Afterlife.
At this point, only silence and void pervade the room. Patrick’s chronicle has been told and lies now unbothered in the corner. There is no one else left on the stage but Seoirse and his conscience – his God – confronting him on what he has done.
Exiting the venue, a million different strains of thoughts were racing at full speed in my head, and I could not help but to marvel at how such a reaction could follow from a one-hour performance. This is the brilliance of Ó Náraigh’s writing. He entwines so many topics, and does so with such eloquent, heartfelt, and flowing prose, that the show somehow manages to escape the constraints of time – and those of consciousness. Anonn | The Other Side distracts you with its witty remarks and unusual situations. It embraces your mind with Seoirse’s, while subtly letting its deeper questions sit at the top of your stomach, hiding in plain sight. But once you’re on your way home, and it’s too late to stop their side effects, they suddenly recoalesce in the form of a spiralling existential crisis. They plead for you to reimagine, to rethink, to cross-examine your life and ask yourself: what do I make of it? Is this all there is?
The significance of our life, alongside the role that relationships play in shaping it, is one of the prime questions of this show. And this role is in no way limited to human relationships; it ties into our spirituality, as well. For when our human relationships fail, faith steps in. Seoirse’s background fits right into this picture and represents the kind of everyday experience many of us might be subject to. For starters, he’s not particularly devout. He also has no solid relationship with his parents, nor with any other relative. He’s dated around a little, but never experienced anything serious or long-lasting, anything true. This lack of emotional engagement, coming from both his everyday and his religious life, is precisely what pushes him out of his apathetic routine. He’s so desperate for answers, for something more meaningful, that he searches for them everywhere – in the pub, in his own revelation, in his unconsolable call to God. And when he notices a glimpse of an answer in Patrick, he latches on to it, and, with it, finds his calling, his own sense of purpose. It’s not money nor manipulation that chains him to his medium façade; it’s the sensation of greater goodness and transcendence he perceives when people thank him. He likes the solace he provides them with, and the looks of reverence he receives once the service is done. He’s become his own God, the one he had difficulty believing in, but so intensely wished to.
However, with great powers comes great responsibility. And the other crucial question the show posits has to do precisely with this. What, or who, are we willing to sacrifice for our own purpose? Seoirse voluntarily lies to Patrick, he falsifies his identity, and yet the underlying reason for this seems to fall far beyond his agency. He acts out of divine signs and force, looking for a connection he has constantly been denied. So, when his deeds go awry, whose fault is it? Is it his, even if his intentions were nothing but genuine? Or is it God’s, for not punishing him first, for not intervening with his omnipresent potence? For not sparing him with his overwhelming benevolence? Is faith merely a leap to take, or an escapism from our own mistakes?
This tension between human and divine intervention, between acceptance and frustration, is remarkably reflected in Nolan’s magistral portrayal of Seoirse. Throughout the piece, Nolan jokes around with a natural, poised delivery, setting the tone for what seems to be an informal conversation between friends. Nevertheless, his polished tranquillity gradually leaves ground to the suspicion that there is something unsaid, something beneath the surface that is, nevertheless, about to erupt. So, when Seoirse reveals the false nature of his spiritual skills, Nolan finally releases this tension, this vibrant weight on his shoulders – he spills it out in the room, covering every corner, every seat, above and beyond the salt circle he’s been pacing in. Nolan keeps the audience in the grip of his hands from start to finish, and skilfully exploits this to connect us to Seoirse’s web of thoughts, motivations, and feelings.
The use of the Irish language further contributes to untangle the knots at the basis of Seoirse’s character. There are three sections recited in Irish. The first, as Ó Náraigh explains, is a “fragment of a poem from the 16th century or so,…believed to have been a lament written following the death of a child”, which he then slightly adapted into a “sort of call into the void…of wanting something from the other side”. The second was written by Ó Náraigh himself, “as another ‘call into the void’, but more so offering yourself up to…some higher power”. Seoirse recites these sections whenever he appeals to God, in search of explanations, for a definite confirmation. Yet, towards the end of the show, the third “call into the void” eventually brings him to the implicit realisation that “a key part of belief [is] acceptance”, that there is no answer, no confirmation, because there is no fixed question. “You can find comfort [in] accepting that you’re always going to ask for more”, Ó Náraigh says, “and just might not get it”. Deep down, in the relics of his mother tongue, Seoirse already knows the information he naïvely expects to receive from the outside. And yet, instead of listening, he further oppresses his language and, with it, his identity. He refutes who he is in the hope of something – someone – bigger.
So, to go back to our primary question – what happens to our life, to connections, when we’re confronted with the other side?
Anonn suggests that we’re still confronted with ourselves. We come to terms with how important our bonds are for us, and the costs that we’re ready to pay to sustain them, no matter how feeble our mortal attempts at them might be. And yet, this show keeps leaving you in a state of wandering contemplation, offering a greater number of questions every time you think you have found the answer. However, it also reminds us of the strength it takes to believe in something – in the afterlife, in the divine, or in a brighter future for our fleeting life. After all, this can’t be all there is.
