American Buffalo is showing at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast whileFishamble Voices features the Orchestra of St Cecilia and Brian MacKay in St Ann's Church, Dublin.
American Buffalo
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
The gods have not been with Prime Cut at the start of its 10th-anniversary season. Cast illness caused the previews of this eagerly awaited production to be postponed and the opening adjourned to a Monday. These circumstances conspired to result in a jittery first night, from which neither cast nor play emerged in the anticipated blaze of glory.
The basic ingredients are in place, however. Designer Stuart Marshall's recreation of Don Dubrow's shabby, higgledy-piggledy second-hand basement store pitches us into the underbelly of Chicago's small-time back-street wheeling and dealing. This is a dead world where the bustle of city life goes on above and beyond, unseen and unheard. It is inhabited by Lalor Roddy's jaded, chain-smoking Don, B.J. Hogg's volatile, larger-than-life Teach and Gerard Jordan's anxious-to-please but none-too-bright Bobby.
With the economy of character, conversation and physical movement that is the hallmark of his work, David Mamet reels us into a whirlpool of wearying desperation and lurking violence, where the petty ambitions of these three characters should - but does not yet - explode into a frenzy of confusion and frustration.
Once they have shuffled off the inhibitions of the imposed Chicago accents, all three will be unable to resist the delights of Mamet's wry, contorted dialogue, persuasively coaxed along by director Jackie Doyle. With its twists and turns, contradictions and silences, it is both Pinter and Beckett, with kick-ass Chicago attitude, taking on new resonance as the respective friendships of the three men come under pressure from the call of the nickel, the little Buffalo Indian-headed coin, which was lost and is found.
It is the seductive currency of their shifting relationships and the incentive for a planned night of action and profit. But what went missing on the opening night was the drama of the sudden drop, the defining moment, when a truth is told, the red mist hovering over Teach's head finds its true expression and an uneasy peace descends, from which the whole damned ritual can begin again.
With a five-week tour in prospect, there is ample time for Roddy and Hogg to find their magic touch and give Jordan the means fully to realise his inexperienced young talent.
Jane Coyle
Runs until February 2nd (bookings on 048-90669660), then tours to Monaghan, Armagh, Lisburn, Enniskillen, Coleraine, Cookstown, Letterkenny, Galway, Dun Laoghaire, Longford, Kilkenny, Cork and Limerick
Fishamble Voices, Orchestra of St Cecilia/Brian MacKay
St Ann's Church, Dublin
Cantatas 14, 97, 125Bach
Issues of performance practice were raised by Sunday afternoon's concert. It was the first event in the second year of the Orchestra of St Cecilia's series of complete Bach cantatas.
Eight of the orchestra's string players were joined by good soloists - Ailish Tynan (soprano), Alison Browner (alto), Robin Tritschler (tenor) and Philip O'Reilly (bass) - and by eight choral singers from Fishamble Voices, plus a few wind players. The conductor was Brian MacKay. This made a size of ensemble that would have been rare 40 years ago but is common today.
A high point of large-group performances of Bach on modern instruments is the series of recordings directed by Karl Richter 30 and more years ago. Richter was unimpressed by the historical-performance movement, and four years before his death, in 1981, he declared it ephemeral, a "modish phenomenon".
It has not proved ephemeral, but Richter's mention of modishness was prescient. On Sunday, the music-making of the modern-instrument Orchestra of St Cecilia showed the almost irresistible force of the historical-performance movement, but not to advantage.
In most ways this was a respectable concert. But it was neither fish nor fowl. The string-playing had the deftness and light attack of historical-performance practice, but without confidence. Sometimes stronger direction from the conductor was needed, to define articulation. More often, the vocal lines were not shaped by the text, although the sound was always pleasing.
Richter's "unhistorical" style was natural to his musicians. Sunday's musicians had the technique for the three cantatas on the programme. But on this occasion at least, the results suggested that the "semi-historical" mode of performance was not in the musicians' blood. The one striking exception was Browner, who has long, international experience in this specialist area.
Martin Adams
Series continues on Sunday, at 3.30 p.m., with David Adams (harpsichord)
