Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
How do you solve a problem like Ireland? This is the mission of Tristram Faraday (Peter Hanly), a hotshot crossword solver turned British spy in the 1940s, and his creator, Arthur Riordan, who in 2004 first concocted this effervescent and ridiculously clever musical that is now in entertaining revival at the Gaiety. But where Faraday has come to unravel cryptic emanations and strange reports from Dublin, a city apparently overrun with supercilious Brits and alcoholic Irish wits, Riordan understands the fun of the intricate and inexplicable.
“Is it smugness or insurgency/ That makes them say Emergency?” complains one British spook of Irish neutrality during the second World War, and by making the cerebral yet pun-prone Myles na gCopaleen (Darragh Kelly) and the poetically flouncy John Betjeman (Rory Nolan) representatives of their respective countries, Riordan stitches such cultural clashes into the fabric of the show. Unlikely foils, perhaps, but these improbable coincidences provides a plot, a tone and a gallery of characters. Add Erwin Schrödinger to the mix, the Austrian physicist and apparent playboy, and the opportunity for daft cultural stereotypes and Kathy Strachan’s hilariously fetching costumes multiplies.
Eight years on, the historical-political- literary-scientific-musical satire is somehow still an underpopulated genre, but Riordan’s ideas still sparkle, Bell Helicopter’s accomplished score of Weimar cabaret and Hiberno-English parlour songs pumps and slinks along datelessly, and the wit and execution of Lynne Parker’s direction keeps tickling the mind. New cast members bring fresh energy, with Stephanie McKeon’s charming Philomena O’Shea delivering studied naivety, a voice of honeyed clarity and – delivered mid-coitus – the line of the show: “Infiltrated by British intelligence/ Oxymoronic and also a sin.”
The more significant change is one of expectation. Where once Parker’s cabaret aesthetic made an ingenious virtue of economy, seeping performance into the auditorium and making up for lightly trained voices with Rory Nolan’s brio or Cathy White’s smoulder, it is now required to fill the expanse of the Gaiety’s proscenium. To this end, Alan Farquharson augments the droll surprises of his set with a supple background video design, Sinéad McKenna’s expert lights pulse around the auditorium, but another arresting spectacle – that of the musicians – is confined to the orchestra pit: a strange convention for something so contentedly unconventional.
This won’t matter to anyone who has yet to have the pleasure of Darragh Kelly’s throaty, erudite introduction as na gCopaleen (“Oh, God, can’t a man have a drink?”), ululating like a set of hungover uilleann pipes, or when you issue a forgiving groan to another pun made flesh within Riordan’s relentlessly entertaining game of words. Working through the codes of wordplay and poetic metre, Hanly’s mildly bewildered Faraday might finally, implausibly get to the bottom of everything. But the reason that Improbable Frequency is so richly worth revisiting is that Riordan and Rough Magic leave the peculiarities of Irish past and present contentedly unsolved.
Until Saturday
