Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events
Sleeping Beauty
Liberty Hall Theatre, Dublin
Bernice Harrison
There really is nothing like a panto dame. A great one makes you laugh so hard there are tears in your eyes, appeals to all ages, cracks out any number of corny gags, all in high heels and an alarming amount of rouge - and Joe Conlan is it.
This year for the Lyons Tea Liberty Hall Panto - fast becoming a seasonal, very Dublin institution - Conlan's comic creation Buffy is Dame Buffy Poppins, mouthy nanny to Princess Ellicia.
This sweet creation (played beautifully by Sinead Mulvey) is destined to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and sleep until kissed by a Prince (a comic George McMahon).
Scriptwriter Karl Broderick has taken the classic Sleeping Beauty tale and reworked it, removing some of the more disturbing aspects in story - Beauty doesn't sleep for 100 years, she's only out for a few minutes, and the forest isn't a creepy nightmare-inducing place, it's where Beauty and Nanny Poppins live in their cosy cottage.
And that's what this production is all about: pure, unadulterated fun - the louder, the more colourful the better.
There's panto comedy in every part of the script. Beauty's parents are dim, vain Queen Victoria and her short gormless husband, King David of Beckinham - Damian Douglas does a very funny bumbling king and, when he gets a chance to sing, he's marvellous.
There is a baddie, of course. Hazel O'Connor - parents in the audience will remember her pop star days - is Queen Nastina and she plays it with great force and wicked glee, like a cross, middle-aged punk. She has two sidekicks, Jealousy (Kevin Hynes) and Envy (Gavin Quigley) who aren't in the least bit scary and who are given several routines to show their talents for physical comedy.
The script, direction (Karl Harpur) and the choreography (Tracey Martin) knit together seamlessly, most notably in some of the set pieces - including Buffy's highkicking tour de force Coco's in Tallaght (sung to the air of Barry Manilow's Copacabana) and the cartoonish chase through the forest.
Martin doesn't have a big stage to work with but she uses every inch of it with her troupe of dancers.
Alan Hughes reprises his character of Sammy Sausages, keeping the show zipping along and engaging the audience every time he comes on stage.
Hughes and Conlan are a slick comedy double act and they are the heart of this production. If you don't come out of this panto with a great big cheesy grin on your face, check your pulse.
Until January 28th
Collins, Contempo Quartet
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Michael Dungan
Mozart - Concertos for Piano and String Quartet in A, K 414 and in C, K 415
This concert rounded off not only a highly successful first term back for the Sunday at Noon series after a gap of nearly two years, but also the series's official involvement in the Mozart 2006 celebrations.
Hence the all-Mozart programme, featuring two of the first three piano concertos that he wrote upon triumphantly escaping to Vienna from Salzburg.
Describing the three as a happy middle road between too easy and too difficult, Mozart said that passages intended for connoisseur listeners "are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why . . ."
Luckily this quotation was not included in the printed programme, so we listeners could enjoy the music without fretting over whether or not we knew why. And it was an easy concert to enjoy.
Finghin Collins brought both the most extroverted panache of his concerto style and the sensitivity of his chamber style to these works for which Mozart intended either orchestral or - as here - string quartet accompaniment. This happy balance which he found with regard to his own delivery matched that between piano and the Contempo Quartet who together achieved an ideal dynamic level, nicely suited to the Gallery's small scale.
The five players seemed to think as one, postponing as long as possible the inclination to allow the build-up to peak, not releasing - for example in the quick first movement of K 414 - until a wonderful circling of the fifths near the end. That's when you first realised that they'd been holding off and became glad that they had.
Enthusiastic applause from the full house led to a repeat of the final Allegro of K 415 - a fitting close to concert, series and Mozart 2006.
