Irish Times reviewers on a selection of events around the country.
Olga
Project, Dublin
Fintan O'Toole
A century ago, Nordic plays in translation were at the cutting edge of English-language theatre. Ibsen, Strindberg and Bjornstjerne Bjornson were big names, and Irish writers as diverse as Shaw and Joyce were hugely influenced by them. The Finnish National Theatre, which was formally established two years before the Abbey, was an important exemplar for the Irish revival. Yet things have changed so much in the intervening years that Rough Magic's decision to stage a contemporary Finnish play, Laura Ruohonen's Olga, is genuinely bold.
As a further blow against insularity, Lynne Parker has decided to go against the trend of commissioning Irish dramatists to create nationalised versions of continental European works. Instead she emphasises the foreignness of Ruohonen's text by returning to the version commissioned by the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh from the Scottish playwright Linda McLean. This version, which Parker herself directed in its original production, in 2001, is in a salty Scots dialect, fizzing with demotic energy but markedly removed from the softer rhythms of Irish speech.
The courage is admirable, and Parker's complete comfort with the text results in a superbly staged, designed and acted production that is amiable and enjoyable. The text itself remains problematic, however, and as it is filtered through the double prism of Finland and Scotland, it is hard to know exactly where the problem lies.
The difficulty for an Irish audience is in judging just how stylised the language is supposed to be. This is not an abstract question.
If the text is essentially poetic, it doesn't matter all that much that the plot is at best romanticised and at worst sentimental. But if we're being asked to take it as an exercise in realism, it matters rather a lot. Usually, the signals that tell us how to take a play come in the use of language. But when the language is as distanced as it is here, the signals get garbled.
By any standards of realism, at least those drawn from Irish reality, Ruohonen's plot is fantastical. In Ireland, when vicious knife-wielding young men break into old ladies' homes, they brutalise their victims. In Finland, apparently, they discuss the meaning of life, fall into platonic love and embark on a joint search for a sense of purpose across the generations. We know that Fergal McElherron's brilliantly menacing young thief Rundis hates women because we see him sadistically abuse his girlfriend Ella (Fiona Condon). Yet when he finds that Rosaleen Linehan's imperious but defenceless Olga has no money to steal, he not only engages in a Shavian argument about time and history but also takes her off birdwatching.
It is hugely to the credit of McElherron and Linehan that the detail of their interaction is in general compelling. They work wonderfully together, drawing on all the poignancy and humour of their shared loneliness to fuel a constant forward drive that Parker keeps on the rails with great assurance. But because the text does so little to give any credible foundation to the relationship, they always seem to be hurtling, however gracefully, over very thin ice.
McLean's rugged Scots does provide a veneer of realism. But to Irish ears it is also a somewhat blunt instrument. To an Edinburgh audience, the apparent class difference between Olga and Rundis may well be echoed in their speech. But to a Dublin audience, it's all Scots. And it's not entirely clear in any case that a rugged demotic is in fact the right note for a play that is never going to convince as realism. On the face of it, a more abstract, rhetorical language would seem to fit more easily with a largely fantastical, almost dream-like plot.
This feeling that the play works better with a more absurd, or certainly more metaphorical, approach is picked up on in Blaithin Sheeran and Paul Keogan's splendid non-figurative designs and in Parker's clever shifts between a literal and a non-literal use of space. Whether this is closer to the spirit of Ruohonen's original play, only those fluent in Scots and Finnish can say. The rest of us will have to be content with a consummate production of an uncertain play.
Runs until November 29th
Jonah
Spraoi Studios, Waterford
Gerry Colgan
Spraoi, founded 10 years ago, is noted for its street theatre and spectacle, seen annually at festivals throughout the country. With Jonah, it has turned its special skills to the creation of an indoor play based on a true story of whalers from New England almost 200 years ago.
It was conceived and designed by Spraoi's artistic directors, Mike Leahy and Dermot Quinn. It is hardly surprising, then, that the emphasis is on visual and physical aspects rather than, say, characterisation and dialogue.
The story certainly has a strong, dramatic base, including a whale hunt, bonds of friendship and presumed cannibalism. But there is little scope for the seven actors to deploy vocal or interpretative skills, although they faithfully deliver what is required of them by Liam Meagher, the director.
If the story is slight, however, its treatment is mightily substantial.
Four large sail-shaped, transparent screens dominate the stage. The sailors are seen inside ships, standing on quays, moving around as their natural selves or as shadow figures projected within and onto the screens, almost floating entities with three-dimensional force. Aboard ship, the captain writes his log by candlelight as the steersman guides the wheel and sailors man the rigging.
This atmospheric ambience has taken hold by the time "thar she blows" is heard, and the crew rush to glean their bloody harvest.
They have cause to celebrate, but one fateful night the beast returns to visit disaster on them. Just three survive initially, and only two reach home.
This is a short play, of just 50 minutes, a distillation of a three-year gestation and rehearsal period. It is packed with good things, felicitous images and creative effects to beguile the eye, and a sensitive time-shift of key moments in the story to generate some tension, albeit at the expense of signalling the dramatic core. But this is a show that leaves one disinclined to nit-pick.
Runs until November 15th
As A Matter Of Fact
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
Michael Seaver
It is ironic that a polemic against our hurried lifestyle would bombard us with rapidly flickering projections as a means to seduce and impress. As A Matter Of Fact continues the questioning by the choreographers Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick of urban over rural, synthetic over natural and mind over body. Although working with physicality, the living, breathing and sensing body is short- changed in this production at the expense of impressive but superficial visuals. These tensions seem at the heart of their creative psyche: although they affirm the body through movement, their work has been drawn towards using technology in ways that seem to contradict that affirmation.
About halfway through this work the projections fade away and, as Dara O'Brien's pulsing guitar riffs lilt and sway, two solos and two duets are given an uncluttered space. The movement is slower and more considered, but it is also dramatically the weakest moment. An earlier quartet for four white-clad women in front of vivid green images of a forest felt stronger, with the movement initiating from the torso and their arms uninvolved. Although all of the dancers were new to the choreographers' style, they performed with an impressively understated commitment.
The video of Tenteki, a Swiss creative team, left the deepest mark, seamlessly integrating moving typography and more abstract shapes. At the climax a dancing sextet gets swamped with projections of rapidly moving stripes of colour, but the body is never reaffirmed in the final dance, which ends clumsily. Few could be unaffected by the subject of the dance. The choreographers' sincerity is evident, but although you willed this piece to break the mould and carry the message further, it still bore the imprint of past choreography.
