Gerry Colgan was in the Watergate Theatre to review The Book of Evidence, while Michael Dervan was in Limerick to hear Wagner's Götterdämmerung.
The Book of Evidence, Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny
John Banville's novel is associated in the public mind with the case of Malcolm MacArthur, the quasi-aristocratic murderer of the early 1980s. But it is a great deal more than a fictionalised version of a horrific reality, as Alan Gilsenan's new adaptation clearly demonstrates.
The curtain goes up to reveal the dapper figure of Freddy Montgomery, about to deliver the monologue-story of his doomed life. He speaks with the accent and aplomb of the socially superior, but he is a lost soul, a man who has stared into the abyss all his life until his deepest fears finally engulf him.
Freddy's tale begins at the point where he has an indifferent American wife, a baby son and no money. On holidays abroad, he borrows in shady circumstances, and finds himself in trouble with violent criminals. He comes home to plunder more of his putative inheritance from his widowed mother, but she has disposed of the family assets to meet her own needs.
He decides to steal a painting from wealthy friends, and is caught by a maid in the attempt. Reacting with rage at the humiliating situation in which fate has landed him, he kills her with a hammer. Incompetent as always, he is easily caught, and sentenced to life in prison.
The play operates at two levels. There is the hypnotic story of the murder, with the overpowering sense of a nightmare that refuses to end. More importantly, there is the continuous commentary of Freddy, his sense that he cannot share the feelings of, for instance, the crowds at his trial. For him, his crime was simply an inevitable consequence of events outside his control.
Declan Conlon's performance is a tour de force. The monologue is not an easy form of theatre, and this one works largely due to his riveting creation-in-depth of Freddy the alien, filling Joe Vanek's imaginative set with telling images. Alan Gilsenan directs and, while I found the selection of offstage music eclectic to the point of puzzlement and the lighting occasionally erratic, his actor comes through to deliver a compelling play. - Gerry Colgan
NYO/Alexander Anissimov, University Concert Hall, Limerick
Götterdämmerung Wagner
Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), the fourth and final night of Wagner's Ring, is the longest and in many ways the most demanding opera of the cycle - the National Youth Orchestra's concert performance at the University Concert Hall, Limerick, on Saturday, admittedly with 90 minutes of interval, ran from 6 p.m. to 12.30 a.m.
This probably explains some of the young players' shakiness on the home straight. Yet, in spite of the various problems (including the slow warm-up, which has been a feature each night), there was no doubting the feeling that the players' grasp of Wagner's style has firmed over the four nights of the project, and that their responsiveness to conductor Alexander Anissimov has become freer.
Certainly, one of the major developments over the cycle has been the shift in balance between voices and instruments, and Götterdämmerung produced instances of wide-open mouths and straining muscles producing sounds that were rendered virtually inaudible by the mass of orchestral tone.
In the circumstances, the listeners' enforced scrutiny of the orchestral playing wasn't really to the music's advantage.
The greatest burden, of course, fell on the Brünnhilde, Janice Baird, who encompassed the extraordinary vocal and emotional range the role demands with noble dignity. Alan Woodrow's Siegfried, her lover and unwitting betrayer whose downfall she facilitates and then accepts as her own, kept to the path of wide-eyed heroic innocence, save for his brief, dark-browed impersonation of Gunther.
Rolf Haunstein's avariciously scheming Alberich was sharp in expression, with Daniel Lewis Williams a heavily oppressed Hagen, and Tomasz Konieczy's Gunther a mesmerised foil to the machinations of ring-retrieval. Anne Marie Gibbons, light of voice in the context of Wagner, was the equally put-upon Gutrune.
Leandra Overmann stood out again with her effortless delivery, authoritatively dark and full, as the First Norn (her partners Deirdre Cooling Nolan and Franzita Whelan weren't quite as impressive), and, in spite of some low-register weakness, Colette McGahon's Waltraute showed gumption.
McGahon and Whelan reappeared with Emer McGilloway as the Rhinemaidens, whose warnings to Siegfried ultimately bear fruit as they reclaim their treasure while Wagner sets Valhalla ablaze in a clamour of orchestral fire. And the audience responded, as throughout the week, with a Wagnerian fire of its own, which suggests that this remarkable and visionary project, the most unlikely of undertakings for a youth orchestra, has probably whetted an Irish appetite for more of the same.
Friday and Saturday saw a two-day conference on "Wagner and Wagnerism," with an international array of speakers, including the composer's great-granddaughter, Nike Wagner. It was probably in the introductory speech by the UL's chancellor, Miriam Hederman O'Brien, that the truest words were spoken. She attributed the quotation to her Italian-born music teacher: "You can never un-hear Wagner." - Michael Dervan
