Irish Times reviewers on This Is Not A Life at the Project Cube, Palestrina Choir, Dublin Bach Singers, OSC/Montgomery at the NCH, Dublin and Cansei de Ser Sexy at The Village, Dublin
This Is Not A Life
Project Cube
This is not a play. Not in any conventional sense, at least. But Bedrock's latest deconstruction of the theatrical rulebook is, on balance, more intriguing than infuriating.
Huddled with the audience around a boardroom table of sleek design, the four characters in Alex Johnston's experiment exist without background, granted no context other than the performance space. Dressed for business, they speak to us directly, naturally, as though we were co-workers or conspirators.
What we are all here for is never quite clear. At times it feels like a fractious support group, where team leader Kevin Hely (all performers go by their real names) decries the erosion of values in society, while the group simmers with unspoken tensions. In Johnston's text, significance seems constantly at hand, but is never reached; any sure meaning is trampled underfoot.
At one point, for instance, Kevin's partner Catríona Ní Mhurchu introduces herself with a personal prop - an anchor - but it might as well be a red herring: the characters are already adrift, bobbing through teasingly disconnected and meandering personal stories. What does begin to seep out is an underlying tale so simple it feels like a ruse. Kevin has initiated an affair with group member Megan (convincingly performed by Megan Riordan) and crippled her friend Joe (Joe Roch, in the part he was born to play) with guilty knowledge. The affair has been uncovered and the group is falling apart. But given that the smoothly ironic Johnston contentedly skewers hand-wringing middle-class liberals - who agonise over global injustice while chewing grilled squid entrees - the emotional force of bourgeois infidelity hardly feels more genuine.
By the second act everything is different and nothing has changed. Following an al-Qaeda attack in Dublin in which Joe and Megan were mildly injured, the fourth wall is re-established and the group convenes for a particularly sozzled dinner party. Though there has been some realignment of their political compasses - Kevin swinging firmly to the right, Megan harder left - and an agreement that, now, "nobody needs a lecture on how shallow we all are," it's difficult to discern what else Johnston's point might be.
Indeed, in the orgiastic consumption of wine and grapes, the peals of giggles, giddy explosions of talcum powder, multimedia and sexual tensions, director Jimmy Fay imbues the scene with all the decadence and impending doom of Rome before the fall.
Darkly amusing, woozy and unsettling, the piece benefits hugely from the prowess of the cast, always sure-footed in a performance that offers few even surfaces. That it denies simple interpretation or the succour of structure is likely to draw charges that it's hollow to the core. But that may be Johnston's point. A life without meaning can only be represented as a nightmare of contradictions: part bacchanalia, part apocalypse.
• Runs until Nov 18
Peter Crawley
Palestrina Choir, Dublin Bach Singers, OSC/Montgomery
NCH, Dublin
Mozart - Requiem. Mass in C minor K427
Back in the dark old pre-NCH days of symphony concerts in what was then the St Francis Xavier Hall in Sherrard Street there was one conductor who could be relied on to achieve results that stood out. Proinnsías Ó Duinn took a leaf out of Leopold Stokowski's book, and rearranged the orchestra with the wind players at the front of the platform, on the right, a position which guaranteed them a degree of audibility simply unattainable from their normal position towards the back of the stage in that acoustically nightmarish venue.
Kenneth Montgomery's platform rearrangements for his current Mozart series with the Orchestra of St Cecilia hark back to much earlier models.
But part of the effectiveness of his undertaking stems from the different responses of musicians and singers finding themselves hearing sounds that are unusually balanced. Think of it as a first drive in a new car. The different vehicle dimensions and the unfamiliar rear-view mirrors create new awarenesses, which trigger different reactions and reflexes.
Montgomery here arrayed his choruses across the front of the stage, with their own conductor, Blánaid Murphy at the very front. A continuo organ (or, more correctly, a continuo synthesizer) was centrally placed among the singers. Montgomery and most of the orchestra were ranged behind the chorus, and the soloists were placed on high, at the back of the stage. Most unusually, the orchestra's three trombonists were placed as far away from the rest of the orchestra as possible - towards the front of the stage, two on the left and one on the right.
The keyword for the evening was transparency. Nobody seemed to want to hog attention at anyone else's expense. The trombones blended with creamy smoothness, the choirs (the Palestrina Choir in the Requiem, the Dublin Bach Singers in the C minor Mass) sang without strain, and with a sure sense of which vocal line was carrying the most important musical material. The main orchestral body played with a light rhythmic spring in its step, and the four soloists - soprano Sylvia O'Brien, contralto Alison Browner, tenor Robin Tritschler and bass Nigel Williams -worked with respectful collegiality.
It was quite an extraordinary sight to see two conductors waving their distinctively-styled ways on the one stage, with the centrally-placed Montgomery working as a kind of crossroads communicator, rather than the dynamic dictator that conductors are often felt to be.
Murphy, as the follower, had the harder task and, although the point of her beat was much more loosely defined than Montgomery's, overall co-ordination did not seem to suffer, and the choirs must surely have appreciated having their regular conductor to work with.
It was the performance of the Requiem which made the stronger impression, not least because of the greater security and refinement of the group of soloists. Strange as it may seem, for such a frequently-heard and much-loved work, the Requiem is a piece which often congeals in performance to become, musically speaking, a kind of heart-warming mess of potage. Under Montgomery and Murphy everything stood clear and distinct, and turned out to be all the more heart-warming for that.
Michael Dervan
Cansei de Ser Sexy, BudRising Winter
The Village, Dublin
Lovefoxxx, the tiny, impish lead singer of Brazilian rock-punk band CSS, is furiously energetic. She bounced around the stage, arms flying, shaking her head, getting down on her knees, sometimes lying down. By the second song she was stage-diving, throwing herself fearlessly into the throngs of moshing youngsters, where she was shoved around by a sea of eager hands. Later she climbed a massive pair of speakers - the bouncers eyeing her nervously - waving and singing, and was finally helped back down.
CSS, or Cansei de Ser Sexy which translates as Tired of Being Sexy (a remark they attribute to Beyoncé), began with the first track from their album CSS Suxx. The thudding, dance-type drums and single line repeated throughout was a perfect opener to this brash, uptempo gig. A mixture of goofy and cool, CSS is composed of five girls on vocals, guitars, bass and keyboard - all in baggy T-shirts and tight jeans - and one guy.
While the guitar and bass-heavy, punky-rock sound of CSS is far from groundbreaking, their lyrics (which come with a parental warning on the album) give the music a humorous edge. Tracks like Artbitch contains lines: "I aint no artist, I am an artbitch; I sell my paintings to the man I eat; I have no portfolio and I only show where there's free alcohol." Although the vocals were often lost behind the guitar and drums, the crowd sang along, at one point repeating: "I want to be your Jennifer Lopez". As Lovefoxxx jumped around, knocking against bandmates, amps and mike stands, she flirted with the crowd, spraying water and demonstrating a wacky arm dance that the audience imitated. CSS, who sing mostly in English, played one track in Portuguese and returned for a brief encore. Working up a frenzy of guitars and drums, the band brought this vibrant performance to an end, while Lovefoxxx, the frenetic heart of CSS, was last to leave the stage.
Sorcha Hamilton
