Gerry Colgan reviews A Country Song in the Crypt, Ray Comiskey heard Killer Joey in Liberty Hall, Dermot Gault was in Belfast for a performance by the Hebrides Ensemble, while Edward Power reviews Sixteen Horsepower.
A Country Song
Crypt, Dublin Castle
By Gerry Colgan
There is much that is new about A Country Song, now at the Crypt. Author Randall B. Wilson is a 42-year old American struggling to make a living from writing in Nashville. Director Alan Sharp, also an American and a drama student in Dublin, is founder of the new Storm! Theatre company. And the talented cast will present new faces to most Irish audiences.
This aggregation of novelty gives the production an energy that makes the most of the play's merits, and glides lightly over its defects. It tells the story of an extended family in all sorts of trouble. Randy is a gay designer of women's clothes, and his sister Susannah is a single mother whose 16-year-old daughter has been shot dead at high school by a disturbed boy. Both are reliant on medication.
The play opens with a phone call between the two in which Randy learns of the death of their uncle Beau, a preacher who viciously abused his dead wife and his retarded son Samson. Their mother, Chloe, and Samson have gone missing, and are sought by the police. Another brother, Scotty, is suffering from depression. This and more information is conveyed dramatically and effectively in the first half of the play, which includes a telling scene in which Susie seeks a job.
The second half comprises two more acts, both misconceived in my view. There is an improbable scene in which Scotty, as a prelude to suicide, makes a video to convey his detestation of American society. He hates its materialism, pill-popping, gun laws, obesity and much more. This is clearly the voice of the author, and it is, in terms of drama, an intrusion. Then Samson turns up, believing that he has died and is in purgatory, in a final act that lacks credibility.
Much of the play's unevenness is redeemed by the quality of the acting, and the new ground being broken. It is certainly worth seeing.
Runs until September 21st; booking at 01-6713370
Killer Joey
Liberty Hall, Dublin
By Ray Comiskey
An enthusiastic audience response greeted the opening concert of the ESB autumn Jazz series at Liberty Hall on Sunday night - and it's not hard to understand why.
The music of the Joey Baron Quartet was spacious and agreeable, reassuringly accessible and played by musicians superbly equipped for the demands of jazz.
But if, as the New Yorker critic Whitney Balliet once said, jazz is the sound of surprise, what to make of the kind of well-mannered ones produced by this group?
Basically it dealt in two modes of expression: one a slow, melodic, often graceful mood, that seemed at times almost submerged in good taste - nothing to upset the social order or cause a revolution below stairs - and the other a rocking jazz mode which allowed a groove to be developed along with a more extrovert manner.
Either way, though, to these ears it tended to dullness and, on the slower material, close to soporific at times; the opening medium-slow blues, Sundown, and a fussily arranged ballad, Little Boy, were cases in point.
Perhaps the effect was to some degree due to the contiguous sounds and styles of Steve Cardenas and Brad Shepik, the two fine guitarists that formed the quartet's front line.
Although their roles were carefully wrought and the interplay between them clear and well-adjusted, it rarely conveyed a sense of discovery - though among the exceptions to that was a lovely ballad, Contact, where there was a compelling sense of engagement and responsiveness, and on which bassist Tony Scher delivered perhaps his best solo of the night.
There is, however, no denying the quality of the musicians involved. Surprisingly, given their respective pedigrees, the more probing work usually came from Cardenas, the more conventional from Shepik, whose work on the uptempo Equal, for example, was virtually straight bop.
As for the leader, Joey Baron is a remarkable drummer, blessed with an enviable technique and control of nuance; his impeccable handling of the medium-up Latin Bit Of Water and the segue into a rocking Wide Load, with its fine groove over static harmonies and a repeated riff, were typical.
And, overall, the spacious approach to the material allowed him to demonstrate his gifts to the full.
I just wish I liked the music better.
Hebrides Ensemble
NTL Studio,
Waterfront Hall, Belfast
By Dermot Gault
The Scottish-based Hebrides Ensemble was founded in 1991 as a flexible grouping which could perform works whose requirements exceed those of normal recitals. Songs with piano are common enough, but songs with piano trio are less so, and are consequently harder to programme.
Dating from 1967, Shostakovich's Blok settings are one of his late, sparsely-textured works. Words and music are bleak and haunted, and the merest hint of warmth enters only with the final song, Music, the only one to use the full ensemble of violin, cello and piano (Alexander Janiczek, William Conway and Peter Evans respectively). The taxing vocal part makes much use of the upper register. Irene Drummond sang it with full vibrant tone. This is a warm, beautiful voice, full of expression. The BBC, who produced this concert as part of a series of free afternoon recitals, provided translations of the texts.
Lutosáwski's Grave for cello and piano is surprisingly energetic for a memorial work, but also somehow dry and hard to get hold of. It was written in memory of a Debussy scholar, and the quotations from Pélleas which frame the piece are what stays in the mind.
Accessibility is not a problem with Bartók's Contrasts for violin, piano and clarine. The playing was lively and well-balanced and the fluid instrumental writing was carefully dovetailed. In particular, the clarinet part was brilliantly played by Yann Ghiro.
Sixteen Horsepower
Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin
By Edward Power
Reeking of sin and brimstone , Sixteen Horsepower could have slithered, gibbering and wailing, from the pages of a William Faulkner novel.
Embodying the oft misapplied "southern gothic" tag, the Denver outfit fashion doom-laden swamp music that recalls Nick Cave at his apocalyptic zenith.
On stage, the po-faced quintet cranked out a terrifying din, juxtaposing feedback, growling banjoes and tumultuous percussive swells. At the heart of the melee, wild-eyed frontman David Eugene Edwards - the grandson of a Nazarene preacher - howled and gesticulated like a frontier missionary locked in ritual combat with Lucifer.
Sixteen Horsepower's set was equal to his trembling fury. A sky-scraping Sinnerman threatened to burst asunder under the weight of its angst. The juddering, bass-heavy Alone and Forsaken evoked images of corpse-strewn Civil War battle fields. Grounded in Edward's serrated accordion-playing, seismic live favourite Sac of Religion cast a chill in the listener's marrow. Encoring with the bleakly majestic Poor Mouth and the meandering, pathos-charged Horsehead Fiddle, they lifted the pitch to ground quaking ferocity.
It was an ungainly, unflaggingly humourless performance; but one nevertheless possessed of an integrity and intensity unique in contemporarily rock music.
