The Irish Times reviews: The Cage, Waiting, Winter Pictures and Tinney, Ensemble Wien

The Cage - Cork Arts Theatre

In a brace of firsts - a play's premiere and a theatre's first public performance - the play's the thing. The Cage was written by Patrick Galvin 25 years ago at a time when the nation's imagination and media were excavating every possible resonance from the events in the North of Ireland, especially the hunger strikes and dirty protests.

Galvin chose to concentrate on a women's prison, where his intention was to examine, and celebrate, the supportive relationships which can flourish even in unlikely, possibly tragic, circumstances. Aspects of this view, humorous, compassionate and wise, have survived in a play which is, on its belated first outing, showing its age in its use of language and development of plot.

Designer Ian Queally achieves a miracle of accommodation on a shallow stage, giving it depth and coherence in a literal rendering of Her Majesty's Prisons, and the cast follow this lead in their unshadowed performances as a variety of inmates from murderers to arsonists and shop-lifters. The arrival of the superior order of prisoners (self-confessed multiple murderers) insisting to the point of death on political status upsets the balance of life inside: latent brutality is released into a professional atmosphere of indifference to everything but efficiency.

Galvin seems to have chosen not to dwell on the tensions aroused by the moral superiority implied by the political campaign, and he may not have intended his main characters to be quite such stereotypes. In outline they could be both interesting and revelatory, but they do not achieve their potential in what may be an under-rehearsed presentation directed by Dolores Mannion (who also takes a leading and over-emphatic role). - To Nov 18  - Mary Leland

Waiting The Mill Studio, Dundrum

The small theatre at the Mill currently hosts the premiere of Waiting, Jennifer Johnston's new one act play. It is a beautifully written and sensitive portrayal of a woman whose life has been a tragedy - but she doesn't know that.

We meet Eithne in a hospital waiting room, as her husband lies dying in a ward. Her father died when she was three, and she grew up helping her stoic mother to run a small shop in a Dublin suburb.

As she waits, she muses about the non-events of her growing up, without complaint. Then one day her husband-to-be walks into the shop, and chats her up; and that's all it takes. They marry and move to London, where they open another shop and live a humdrum life.

For her, contentment is rooted in a total lack of expectation. Her husband never speaks of his family, if indeed he has one, and she senses hidden depths in his past.

Now, his day's work done, he invariably heads off to the pub, comes home drunk and falls into bed. She sees an occasional film with a cousin. There are no holidays.

Then one day, one year, she arrives home early from a planned night out, and stumbles into a darkness that will haunt her ever after. But she keeps her secret to herself, holding desperately on to what is left of normality. Now, as her husband approaches his end, she rationalises her entire life, still finding no real cause for grievance. And she waits.

Mary McEvoy, directed by Caroline Fitzgerald, plays Eithne with beautiful balance, finding a kind of nobility in her acceptance of a life's oppressions. Writer and actress blend seamlessly. Runs at lunchtime to Nov 18  - Gerry Colgan

Winter Pictures The Ark, Temple Bar

It took field mice Biscuit (Ffion Wyn Bowen) and Frenzly (Dafydd Rhys Evans) a little while to draw the audience into their outdoor world, keenly influenced by the passing seasons. But, once we did, we were ourselves reminded of how the different seasons impact sharply on our own moods and activities.

Describing herself as a wise, patient mouse, Biscuit sets about gathering food for winter. Her friend, Frenzly, is more interested in hearing and telling stories and gathering sun beams, birdsong and rainbows to help him cope with the dark, cold days of winter.

The contrasting characters were nicely pitched at the four- to eight-year-old audience who can already understand how people have different ways of being and doing things. And my co-reviewers - aged four, five and eight - were very clear about whether they were Biscuit or Frenzly after the show.

Winter Pictures is a co-production between Arad Goch Theatre Company in Wales, The Ark and Glór Irish Music Centre in Ennis. And the diverse cultural and creative inputs - the actors' Welsh accents, the traditional Irish music - certainly added extra dimensions.

The live music (performed on bag pipes and tin whistle by Thomas Johnston and composed by Emer Mayock) in particular gently intensified the emotional expressions of the field mice as they shared dreams, jokes and memories. Other little touches - rice dropping into a saucepan to indicate rainfall; tiny flakes of paper to imitate snow, allowed the children to meander through the winter with the mice.

There were, however, some missed opportunities: While the actors ably took on the small shiny-eyed look and facial twitching of mice, they didn't show us much mice-like scurrying movements and escaping from danger. And, although their tent under the tree was a convincing winter home, they could have inhabited it a little more. These are small quibbles though and the overall feeling from Winter Pictures was one of enjoyment and delight. Go prepare yourselves for winter with Biscuit and Frenzly.

At the Ark Sat, Nov 11 and 18 at 1pm & 3pm, and at Glór Irish Music Centre, Ennis, on Nov 20 at noon and 7pm, and Nov 21 at 10am and noon - Sylvia Thompson

Tinney, Ensemble Wien - St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle

Performing as guests of the Irish Austrian Society, Ensemble Wien explored two contrasting strands of Vienna's musical culture. The first half was devoted to Mozart (who lived in the city before the dawn of the waltz era), and the second to Austro-Hungarian, Bohemian and Gypsy dance music.

Tying these two strands together was Joseph Lanner's Die Mozartisten, a 19th-century tribute to the 18th-century master that was included in the Vienna Philharmonic's most recent New Year's Day concert. This curiosity takes a series of Mozart extracts originally in duple time (including part of the Magic Flute overture, and Là ci darem la mano from Don Giovanni), and - by the dubious expedient of simply adding a third beat to each bar - converts them to a waltz sequence. The result certainly isn't for purists, but there is deliciously unintentional humour in this lopsided piece of hero-worship.

For some reason, the ensemble's cellist was absent from the beginning of the concert, leaving the lowest part to be taken by double bass alone in Mozart's String Quartet in D K155 and Piano Concerto K414. The unsatisfactory effects thus caused were to a large extent alleviated by the piano playing of Hugh Tinney, who took the solo part in the concerto with his distinctive blend of grace and forthrightness, and with all the seriousness of a full orchestral performance.

At full, string-quintet strength for two decidedly non-Viennese waltzes by Dvorák, the ensemble's blend and balance were much improved. Rejoined by Tinney for the riotous perpetual motions of de Falla's Ritual Fire Dance and Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody No 1, they suggested the carefree pizzazz of a crack cafe orchestra. - Andrew Johnstone