Patrick Lonergan reviews Outlying Islands at the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick, Gerry Colgan saw The Best of Obraztsov at Pavilion in Dún Laoghaire and Michael Dervan IBO/Huggett at the National Gallery in Dublin
Outlying Islands
Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick
Island Theatre has experienced a difficult time lately, with funding-cuts, personnel changes and a mixed response to recent productions. Faced with such instability, many companies would react with conservatism, producing work guaranteed to bring in an audience - an Irish classic or a light-hearted comedy, for example. It's to the immense credit of Island that it has instead opted to take risks, presenting a challenging play by Scottish writer David Grieg.
Set in 1939, Outlying Islands opens with the arrival of two English scientists (Sam Corry and Colin O'Donoghue) to Gruinard, a tiny Scottish island. Their task is to catalogue and study the island's birds, a job from which they become increasingly distracted by Gruinard's sole inhabitants, Kirk (Gerard Murphy) and his niece (Ailsa Courtney).
As in Brian Friel's Translations, in which an apparently innocent map-making expedition is a prelude to military action, Grieg reveals how the study of living things can be used by people interested only in death. As the Englishmen soon learn, they are cataloguing wildlife because the British ministry for war wants to establish exactly how many creatures they can kill when they use Gruinard to test biological weapons.
This gives rise to a political dilemma, which is complicated further by the characters' reactions to the isolation of their environment. As the action develops, each of them begins to challenge the boundaries between natural instinct and social convention - with surprising consequences.
Grieg's Pyrenees has recently been produced in Dublin, but his work remains largely unknown in Ireland. Outlying Islands reveals again why we should be interested in him: when so many of his contemporaries use shock tactics and cheap tricks, Grieg's writing is refreshingly original and intelligent.
The quality of his script has inspired an equally original production.
Director Karl Wallace and designer Diego Pitarch have transformed the Belltable, tearing out the stage and seating to make the whole auditorium seem as remote and bleak as Gruinard itself, and allowing audience and actors to share the performance space. This results in four extraordinarily brave performances, and a production that is as intimate as it is engrossing.
Runs until September 23rd
Patrick Lonergan
The Best of Obraztsov
Pavilion, Dún Laoghaire
The Obraztsov Theatre in Moscow is the largest centre of puppetry in the world, named after the Russian master who established it as an art form in the Soviet Union. He died in 1992 at the age of 90, and it is a real coup for the Irish International Puppet Festival to have brought his company, still flourishing of course, to Dublin.
Their show here takes the form of a concert, introduced by a portly and very funny MC, who announces and comments on the acts in a benevolent bonhomie spiked with sotto voce effusions of omigod, bravo and disgraceful; a man with a mind and status of his own. An early number features a bosomy prima donna with a comic coloratura, whose ascent to the higher notes would shame a steam whistle. She has a weedy but vaguely defiant pianist in support.
For lighter relief, she is followed by a pair of natty tap-dancers who clearly keep their puppeteers busy. Then a burly baritone tackles the Figaro song from Rossini's opera, and a baby in a pram is wheeled on to do prodigy stuff on the piano.
Dancers get their share of the action, including a ludicrously dramatic pair of tango exponents, a risqué belly-dancer and a quartet of Japanese geishas who shed clothes like autumn leaves.
There is much more of this kind of inspired semi-lunacy, including a farcical Habanera from Bizet. As a finale, the company presents a nice one, the puppeteers emerging from their hiding place - all six of them - to reprise the tango in full view. It is a revelation of the craft and artistry invested in each number, a collective and representative encore. This is a special evening in the theatre.
Ends today
Gerry Colgan
IBO/Huggett
National Gallery, Dublin
Myslivecek - Quintet in C Op 2 No 3
Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364
Mozart - Symphony No 29
The Irish Baroque Orchestra has been on the up since it re-shaped itself out of Christ Church Baroque and abandoned its bondage to Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral.
Mark Duley is now the sole artistic director. Violinist Monica Huggett is the musical director. The IBO is putting core players on contract, and has, in the process, created a new chamber group, the Irish Baroque Orchestra Soloists, again with Huggett as its leader.
The orchestra's first CD, of works by the Bach family on the RTÉ Lyric FM label, was launched by the Minister for Arts, John O'Donoghue, on Thursday. And that evening the orchestra made a landmark foray into the music of the classical period, with a programme of Myslivecek and Mozart at the National Gallery.
The IBO took a leaf out of the Irish Chamber Orchestra's book by opening with a string quintet and presenting it with multiple players to each part. The orchestra's playing in Josef Myslivecek's Quintet in C from the 1760s was so light and deft, however, that the effect of chamber music was not actually lost. And the piece, though not particularly memorable, had some pre-echoes of Mozart (ie possibly actual influences) that made it well worth an airing.
Huggett herself and the orchestra's principal viola-player, Alfonso Leal del Ojo, were the soloists in a highly energised account of the Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, K364.
This was a performance of violent contrasts, with contributions from Huggett which were jaggedly aggressive, frequently putting a strain on her intonation, and in parts of the slow movement sounding downright ugly.
But the vitality of purpose was at all times engaging, and the laid-back manner and rich tone of the viola created a partnership of unusual extremes.
A greater sense of balance, and a welcome feeling of finesse and restraint prevailed in the closing performance of the Symphony in A, K201, a work at once so agreeable and yet so emotionally many-faceted it remains a matter of wonder that it was written by a composer not yet out of his teens.
Michael Dervan
