The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World in the Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast and a Gala Opening Concert in the Mahony Hall, Helix Centre, DCUare reviewed
Gala Opening Concert Mahony Hall, Helix Centre, DCU
Michael Dervan
It was the President of Ireland, Mrs McAleese, who formally opened the new Helix Centre at Dublin City University on Wednesday night. She was aided in her task by two presidents of DCU (the current incumbent, Ferdinand von Prondzynski, plus his predecessor, Daniel O'Hare), an old-time radio star, Gay Byrne, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Proinnsías Ó Duinn, the National Chamber Choir under Colin Mawby, and a host of other musicians, from Finghin Collins to The Voice Squad.
The main, 1,260-seat Mahony Hall (named after major benefactor, Tim Mahony) has an agreeable spaciousness and warmth of ambience. And, even more importantly, it seems to carry sound with a full-bodied impact that's rich in bass frequencies yet does so with a dynamic responsiveness that captures detail of light and shade.
On Wednesday, the single most impressive item was Shostakovich's Festive Overture, delivered by the RTÉCO with a depth and fullness which thoroughly belied the numbers on the stage. Yes, the violins were sometimes too light for the weight of the brass, but, then, such sonorously weighty brass playing is not something the RTÉCO strings have been accustomed to having to deal with. I don't think that in all the years I've been listening to them I've ever heard this orchestra play a work of this type with such communicative relish, or with such a successful blend of delicacy and high spirits. And I've no doubt the responsive acoustic helped them greatly with the achievement.
The concert, which opened with a specially commissioned, retro-styled Fanfare by Colin Mawby for organ, brass and percussion, offered a strange mish-mash of a programme. The Fanfare had to make do with an electronic instrument, as the hall has as yet no pipe organ of its own.
The first half was broadly classical, the second concentrated on Irish arrangements, creating an effect rather like opening a stadium with a first half of soccer and a second half of Gaelic football.
The National Chamber Choir under Colin Mawby sounded quite at sea in Brahms's Four Quartets, Op 92, where the lumpily intrusive piano accompaniment of Fergal Caulfield didn't help. But they were in top form, sweet and sure, in the arrangements they offered after the interval.
Finghin Collins was given just two movements of Mozart's Piano Concerto in F, K459, to play, and seemed to take a while to settle down. He sounded altogether more impressive in the high-spirited Finale than in the preceding Allegretto.
Fionnuala Hunt and Zoë Conway were the busy violin soloists in Bill Whelan's Inishlacken, the traditionally-oriented Conway managing, as she did when I heard the duo play this pastorally-minimalistic piece before, to come away with greater honours.
It has to remain something of an irony, however, that this new hall, which is clearly designed to accommodate the broad spectrum of the classical repertoire, is going to get its first thorough-going test in its core function not from an Irish orchestra, but from the Russian State Philharmonic under Valery Polyansky, who play a popular, all-Tchaikovsky programme there next Monday.
The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World
Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast
Jane Coyle
Plunged into the total darkness of a blacked-out auditorium and the solitary depths of one's own imagination, there is no other choice but to receive the horrifying story of Julia Pastrana through a series of vivid word-pictures and almost unbearably terrible mental images. Julia's is the beautiful, heart-rending story of a young Mexican girl, of exquisite figure, voice and spirit, doomed to go through life with one of the most hideous facial disfigurements in history. She is sold by her poverty-stricken parents to a travelling "carnival" or freak show owned by the appalling Mr Lent, a grasping sexually deviant pervert, who sees in Julia the ticket to untold wealth.
Under the perfectly-controlled, stunningly creative influence of the Zygo company and its inventive, fearless director, Andrea Brooks, the audience's attention is pulled this way and that, through a disorientating soundscape, into which even the smells of Julia's mental and physical incarceration are allowed to seep.
This is physical theatre at its most accomplished and most daring, with the actors moving around in the pitch darkness with dizzying accuracy and silence, all but for the swish of a taffeta skirt, the rattle of a chain, the clicking of heels. There are moments when one senses a human presence only a hair's breadth away, yet there is no clue given as to who the character is or what he or she will do or say next.
Writer Shaun Predergast was, apparently, waiting for the opportunity to tell this sad but strangely uplifting story. A season of theatre in the dark in 1998 provided the ideal platform and the play was an instant hit. In this stunning revival, Zygo have pushed the barriers back yet another degree, stepping outside their own familiar space, to tour the UK, working the strange magic of Julia Pastrana's exotic world on new, unexplored stages in the audience's own territory.
Deeply challenging, suggesting images that only the imagination would dare to present, this unforgettable hour is a real feather in the cap of the Old Museum.
