Raging bulls and larger-than-life guards, bumper-to-bumper theatre, a swift exit and a drag queen to beat the band - the festival is in flying form, writes Peter Crawley
'I don't know what was in the water in Galway at that time," says one contributor to a slickly produced DVD feature about the creative forces that conspired 30 years ago to shape the Galway Arts Festival, "but it was really something."
The brisk promotional documentary, with warm and witty contributions from the founding members of Druid Theatre Company, actors, musicians and comedians, was screened at the launch of the anniversary festival last Monday. For all its affectionate encomiums and some killer gags, however, it couldn't have matched the perfectly struck tone of Pat McCabe's opening address, entitled Go West Teletubby, Go West.
McCabe, the Monaghan writer who festival director Paul Fahy introduced as a great friend of the festival, never alluded to anything more poisonous in the water this time (which is really something) but his words found an admirable stance between rhapsody and wryness. His speech, that of a grateful visitor, contrasted "the fabulous Galway Arts Festival on the occasion of its 30th anniversary" with his memories - possibly embellished - of the Monaghan Arts Festival, "which, sadly after it opened . . . closed."
Those who have ever stared down the occasion of their own 30th anniversary will understand a twin impulse to both celebrate and deny the event, which may explain why the legacy of the Galway Arts Festival is handsomely celebrated in its box office on Merchant's Road with an exhibition of photos, while the programme is not obviously in thrall to the past.
The photographs may be disproportionately representative of more recent years - the fresh triumphs of DruidSynge, Macnas's more stunning spectacles, the work of Steppenwolf and Footsbarn all feature strongly - yet, like El Comediants' fire-breather spouting flames in 1985 or Paul Fahy in full drag on a Macnas float in 1995, it is striking to see so much energy frozen in a moment.
Now here's something you don't see every day: a patrolling group of nine-foot-tall life guards meeting - quite by chance - with a runaway herd of bulls. That these two street performance groups' shows - Icarus's Beach Patrol and Chrome's The Bulls - managed to resolve their differences with an interaction that was more tango than "toro", bodes well for street performance in Galway during the festival. If only the non-sanctioned and extremely capable buskers of Shop Street didn't seem quite so put out by the distractions.
FROM SUCH PUBLIC displays we move to the startling intimacy of Neil LaBute's Autobahn, impressively staged - if that's the right word - in four separate cars by Galway Youth Theatre. If the play's title suggests that LaBute is looking beyond a dark America, he is not. Indeed, one of the disorienting pleasures of Niall Cleary's taut production is to hear American patois in a Galway accent, not because it sounds awkward but rather that it never does, it's no biggie.
With a cast of 24, rotating their achievements in photorealism between three daily performances, it seems unfair to highlight any performance. But here goes. We could all learn something from the comic (not to mention psychotic) timing of Neassa Walsh and Conor Geoghegan, while Andrew Carney and Heather Nolan in the event's most unsettling performance are nervelessly unnerving.
TAYLOR MAC'S performance may not have been the only drag act in town last Tuesday, but it was the only one that this writer could attend, this writer having been asked - well told, really - not to attend another show by another performer who is none too happy with something this writer wrote about said performer last year, the professional consequences of which this writer regrets but does not fully understand, and so attended the show anyway, promptly finding himself ousted by said performer at the start of said show. Word is that said performer "will survive". So will this writer.
Anyway. Taylor Mac.
The New Yorker Taylor Mac seduces you, breaks your heart, patches it back up again and sews sequins along the scars. The show, she explains, is highbrow, in the same way that audiences who flocked to see Daniel Radcliffe perform naked in Equus on the West End were pursuing highbrow culture. Mac's own brow is next to impossible to locate, camouflaged by make-up, glitter and sequins: any attempt to find her eyes will snag on a decoy. She claims that heterosexuals will not get any of her references, which would be true if heterosexuals experienced neither pain nor amusement. Singing astonishingly quick-witted a cappella laments or strumming a ukulele over the secret pains of Lynne Cheney and Saddam Hussein as they lock eyes in an Iraqi gas chamber ("poetic licence" she trumpets mid verse), Mac knows that tragedy and comedy walk hand in hand, and, so bravely, that sometimes tragedy alone will suffice.
Galway Arts Festival runs until July 29.
