Reviews today include Rattledanddisappeared at the Dublin Theatre Festival and La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra at the NCH, Dublin
Dublin Theatre Festival:
Rattledanddisappeared
O'Reilly Theatre, Dublin
Peter Crawley
Someone must still be spreading lies about Josef K. The hero of Franz Kafka's disturbingly absurd novel The Trial, arrested one morning without reason then shunted helplessly through a labyrinth of anonymous oppression, has now become a bewildered star of the stage.
Rattledanddisappeared is a faithful adaptation of the book by Hungarian theatre company Katona József - faithful insofar as it too is an alternatively exhilarating and stultifying experience, augmented with an abundance of show tunes and Bob Fosse-style choreography.
Limiting the playing space to an impossibly narrow and endlessly deep corridor (designed by Levente Bagossy), the production swirls with claustrophobia, paranoia and mania. Bursting through innumerable doors, portholes or sliding panels, characters rarely do anything as humdrum as make an entrance, preferring to tap-dance into view or, better yet, nosedive into the action.
"Procedures are under way," Tamás Keresztes's Josef is instructed early on, having already lost the shirt off his back, "you will learn everything." For both hero and audience, of course, this is a barefaced lie.
Director Viktor Bodó assails his stage with cultural absurdum - the jabbering threat of Pinter, the lip-syncing songs of Dennis Potter, the non-sequiturs and visual fillips of Monty Python - but where Kafka's absurdity moved with political purpose, anticipating the erosion of the individual and the horrors of the century to follow, Bodó's production is more concerned with restless play. It holds fast to the sequences of the book but loosens its anxiety, becoming less "Kafka" and considerably more "esque".
Bodó's adaptation, written with Andás Vinnai, does not, then, represent a subversive stab at the ideological constraints of Hungary's communist past, but rather spins into a delighted anarchy where theatre itself seems to be on the brink of collapse.
"Blahblahblahblah," is a regular (faithfully translated) surtitle, clattering accidents emanate from off-stage, actors lose their place and (it is suggested) their minds, while house lights are periodically raised to interrogate the audience.
The sheer energy and bombardment of spectacle, not to mention the liberally exhibited physical and vocal talents of the 14-strong cast, is enough to sustain us for one act. But, after a 30-minute interval, Bodó appears to have exhausted his every trick. The problem with a surfeit of madcap is that we are first dizzied, then accustomed, and finally jaded.
A deliriously entertaining curtain call goes some way to letting us part on good terms, but when the shadowy powers-that-be finally emerge from all the pandemonium, commanding "all citizens have to calm down", a totalitarian nightmare has never sounded so reasonable.
• Until Saturday
La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra/Chailly
NCH, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Rossini - Thieving Magpie Overture.
Puccini - Crisantemi.
Respighi - Pines of Rome.
Stravinsky - The Firebird
There was no soloist billed for the Irish debut of the La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly at the National Concert Hall.
But the orchestra's principals played with such individuality and strength of character, that there was actually a plethora of soloists to be heard, many of them working with the attentiveness and responsiveness of chamber musicians.
Chailly is a first-class interpreter of Italian repertoire. His handling of Rossini's Thieving Magpie Overture was witty, genial and sharp, the orchestra's playing full of little touches of musical magic - a note delicately highlighted here, a delicious moment of hesitation there.
Puccini's elegiac Crisantemi was written for string quartet, and has been adopted into the repertoire of chamber orchestras. It's unusual to hear it with the full weight of a symphonic string section, but the La Scala players conveyed it with an attractive mood of nostalgic reserve that was momentarily allowed to bloom with a kind of warmth unavailable to smaller forces.
Respighi's richly pictorial Pines of Rome always brings to mind the cliches of Hollywood soundtracks. But the debt is actually the other way around. The Respighi dates from 1924, and the composer's style has since been plundered as freely as Respighi himself was wont to borrow from his predecessors.
Respighi was brought to international attention by Toscanini, and has long been the 20th-century's most-performed Italian composer of orchestral music.
Yet his symphonic poems have gradually been falling out of fashion, so Chailly's loving account, making the most of every moment - from shimmer, whisper and incantation to blaze and blast - was a timely reminder of the sheer indulgent gorgeousness of Respighi's work.
The NCH had advertised a second half that promised Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1910), but the concert actually included the full ballet, in all the opulence of its original scoring.
In spite of its intoxicating, heady exoticism and fantastical colouring, the piece is uneven, and promoters and public alike have long preferred to hear the music in the form of one of the suites the composer prepared from it.
It was a real pleasure to hear Chailly and his players glorying in its excesses without ever trespassing into the realm of virtuosity for its own sake.
