Irish Times writers review OSC/Spratt at St Ann's Church, Dublin, and Jesus: The Guantánamo Years at the Project Cube in Dublin.
OSC/Spratt
St Ann's Church, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Mozart - Horn Concerto no 3. Bassoon Concerto. Flute Concerto in D. Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K297b.
The Orchestra of St Cecilia's summer series of Mozart's concertos for wind instruments is a good idea stymied by uneven delivery. At least that's how it was for this opening programme at St Ann's Church.
In this special Mozart year, the OSC is offering a concentrated survey of attractive repertoire that no other Irish orchestra has thought to examine in detail. But the orchestral playing under Geoffrey Spratt fell between two stools. On the one hand it simply wasn't either accurate enough or consistent enough in intonation and ensemble. and on the other it didn't show either the drive or the energy that might have helped compensate for this.
The programme order did, however, guarantee that the evening's music-making built to an effective climax. This was not just a matter of the Sinfonia Concertante for four wind instruments being placed last, but also had to do with the individual soloists in the first half.
Lesley Bishop was too often uncertain-sounding and pedestrian in the Horn Concerto in E flat, K447. Michael Jones brought smoother lines and easier delivery to the Bassoon Concerto. And he was trumped by Edward Beckett, who brought an impressive, unforced elegance to the Flute Concerto in D.
But the Sinfonia Concertante has a variety of texture and colour that the Flute Concerto simply cannot rival, and it was the combination of four wind players (Matthew Manning, oboe, and John Finucane, clarinet, with Jones and a more confident-sounding Bishop) that made for the evening's richest experience.
Series continues on Tues, July 11, 01-6778571
Jesus: The Guantánamo Years
Project Cube, Dublin
Peter Crawley
How provocative can a religious comedy be when it must employ its own protester? In fact, the lone placard outside Project that reads "Down with this sort of thing!" seems more nostalgic than ironic; pining the gentle send-up of Fr Ted rather than realising that this country used to ban blasphemous comedy.
On stage, a long-haired, bearded young man, wearing sandals and an incongruous orange jumpsuit, sits on a stool and tells us his story. You may remember him. Emerging from the shadow of his Father, frequently given to sermons and never slow to voice his philosophies or prophesies, he is, of course, Abie Philbin Bowman, who now trades, incidentally, as the single-monikered Abie.
In his self-written, self-directed and self-performed show, Abie, in a modest bit of casting, plays Jesus. En route to revive his comedy career and to sue The Life of Brian for royalties, the re-resurrected Christ - "We prefer the term 'mortally challenged'" - is detained by US Immigration. Deciding that a young Palestinian whose previous mission involved "dying as a religious martyr" must be an "enemy combatant", they immediately ship him to Guantánamo.
This - in an age where plays and cartoons can incite religious riots - should be topical and explosive material. But Abie's comedy is closer to the wry, argumentative stance of the university debater than character-based stand-up. Witty, clever, deeply self-aware and endlessly referential (Monty Python, Bill Hicks and The Daily Show might be his holy trinity), Abie has a surfeit of ideas at the expense of a show.
This wouldn't be a problem if Abie came on as himself, riffing along a religious-political theme, but the character, the plot, and a couple of awkward lighting changes suggest theatrical aspirations with which he doesn't seem comfortable. So, after a few choice observations, the Guantánamo story is simply abandoned with a miraculous escape, while an unrelated musical pastiche backs out of political satire entirely. Blessed are the meek, I suppose.
Abie's best joke - that the eloquence of Jesus has been replaced with the nervous, jabbering energy of a D4 intellectual - and his most trenchant suggestion - that in a politically, religiously intolerant world, Christ is no longer capable of forgiving his persecutors - don't quite seem worth the hindering complications of adopting the character. I yearned for the inflammatory fun of an unrepentant provocateur; someone who, as Monty Python might have put it, was not the Messiah, but a very naughty boy.
Until July 8
