Irish Timeswriters review The School for Scandalat the Abbey, The Nutcrackerat the Helix and Santa Claus . . . What the Reindeer Sawat the Lyric Theatre in Belfast.
The School for Scandal at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin
What lessons can we take from The School for Scandal? That gossip may be malign, but empty sentiment is worse? That a capacity for fine speech does not depend on good character? Or that, more than two centuries since it was written, the idle vices of trivial society remain pretty much the same? As Mrs Candour puts it, "People will talk - there's no preventing it."
People will continue to talk, no doubt, about the Abbey's sparkling new production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's arch-comedy of manners, a delicious confection of fizzing wit, scandalous duplicity and masterful comic performances.
Aware of the gossamer appeal of Sheridan's effortlessly neat plotting and richly epigrammatic dialogue, but still anxious to claim political resonance, this production had given every assurance that Sheridan's is a play for our times. (There's no preventing it.)
Interestingly, though, director Jimmy Fay doesn't force any contemporary allusions upon the evergreen satire, deciding, perhaps, that Sheridan was subversive enough already. Instead, he entrusts its more daring reinterpretation to his design team.
And what a design. Ferdia Murphy's roofed set seals the characters into an ice-white world of surfaces, where panels may conceal and reveal details according to the pivots of the plot. As Lady Sneerwell (an almost unrecognisable Cathy Belton) assassinates characters from the sanctuary of her den, her bright lime coat, worn over a blushing pink gown, announces a sense of stylistic excess - as though Léonore McDonagh's costumes had themselves been spun from an exaggerated rumour.
Indeed, for all Sneerwell's malice, conspiring to damage an already fractious relationship between irascible, upstanding Sir Peter Teazle (Mark Lambert) and his corruptible young wife (Simone Kirby), nothing she attempts is quite as wonderfully obscene as the retina-searing lilac frock coat worn by Mark O'Regan's idle-tongued Crabtree, or the gilded cherub's wig which caps off David Pearse's acidulous dandy, Sir Benjamin Backbite.
Such emphasis on distracting exteriors is entirely appropriate: only Tom Vaughan-Lawlor's Joseph Surface - orphan, sanctimonious hypocrite, and brother to disgraced but honest libertine, Charles Surface (Rory Keenan) - wears anything as ambiguous as grey. But Vaughan-Lawlor's excellent performance, from his ostentatious bows to weaselly cadences, underscores the comic tension of this drama of deceit.
It is often suggested that our laughter makes us complicit with the moral turpitude of Sheridan's targets. But his verbal dexterity and racing comic momentum are hard to resist; so much so that one may come away from the production charmed and giddied by its surface and unwilling to peer deeper. That may not be what The School for Scandal seeks to teach us, but with such wicked, artful fun, its education is never a waste. Peter Crawley. Runs until January 27th
The Nutcracker, St Petersburg Ballet Theatre at the The Helix, Dublin
In St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's Nutcracker, the dancers looked as if they were holding back from the full-blown lifts, turns and leg extensions that make their technique so famous. How wonderful it would be to see them perform in a theatre built for dance.
Still, they offered a high-calibre interpretation based on the ETA Hoffmann story, where Clara journeys to the Land of Sweets with her Nutcracker Prince. Russian ballerina Irina Kolesnikova led the dancers with her steady performance, developing from a wide-eyed Clara into a charming Sugar Plum Fairy. The company offered a pleasing balance between dancing and acting.
A lively Act I stood out, transforming what often appears as boring pantomime into a compelling story.
Beneath the dancers' fluffy skirts and behind their measured dance steps were perfectly pointed feet, supple arabesques and articulate hand movements. Steps as basic as walking looked elegant because they were done with so much expressiveness.
In the parents' dance, the performers swooped in and out of swirling patterns, and during the party scene Asia Lukmanova as the Doll, Slava Sunegin as the Arab and Vladimir Ippolitov as the Harlequin all came to life, mixing powerful leaps and pirouettes with animated acting.
The production was divided into three parts, which rarely happens in other Nutcrackers, so when the curtain came down before the battle scene and again before Clara entered the Kingdom, it gave the ballet more of a storybook feel.
The energy faded by the beginning of Act III, with some of the divertissements happening in slower motion, most likely because of the space confinements on stage.
Conductor Aleksandr Kantorov boldly led the small orchestra throughout, though, and in the grand pas de deux, the percussion section in the makeshift pit outperformed the dancers in what otherwise would have been the biggest lifts and turns of the evening. Christie Taylor
Santa Claus . . . What the Reindeer Saw at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast
Grimes & McKee are back with a new comedy for the festive season. It's a combination which signals one certainty for the Lyric - box-office heaven.
The pair have become extremely adept at giving audiences precisely what they paid to see and, although names may have changed, the favourite set pieces are there in all their dubious glory, prompting gales of instant laughter the minute they appear and open their mouths.
It's a tough task, but Richard Clements, Michael Condron and Rachel Tucker hold their own, even when faced with a creaky, overlong script and a gallery of infinitely less interesting characters.
The central role goes to Condron as the recently sworn-in Santa, a strangulated George W Bush reincarnation, taking over the reindeer's reins from his highly-respected father.
Tucker is his glamorous, feisty wife, a cross between Cherie B and Hillary C, who, having withdrawn her marital favours for six months, must partake in some queasy scenes of unsuccessful reconciliation.
Clements plays the straight man, the Clauses' pernickety personal assistant, who takes obvious delight when also called upon to do some madcap, four-legged gambolling as the red-nosed one.
But it is in Santa's kingdom of the elves that all hell breaks loose and where director Frankie McCafferty has given the terrible twosome leave to do their worst.
They stride on and off as leather-coated US security men muttering down their sleeves, a couple of petrol heads from down the country servicing Santa's sleigh, a duo of far from stupid maintenance men, a paramilitary-style union official and, most hilariously, as the reindeer Comet and Donder - with Conor Grimes's Nureyev-like leaping surely destined for the annals of Lyric history.
Post-opening night, some judicious pruning is now needed to give shape and structure to an evening of good, old-fashioned humour, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Runs until January 13th. Jane Coyle
