Irish Times writers review Sleeping Beauty at the Gaiety Theatre, Ailish Tynan, Lynda Lee, Robin Tritschier and Ian Caddy at the NCO and the Jo Allen exhibition at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork.

Sleeping Beauty, Gaiety Theatre

Prince Conor and panto veteran Alan Smyth set the tone for Sleeping Beauty and in the first five minutes had the audience belting back the full range of panto call-outs from "he's behind you" and "oh no he doesn't." He also set the high energy level that the rest of the hugely talented cast rose to and matched for the duration of what was a spirited and highly entertaining two and a half hours.

The Prince has a mission to find and protect Beauty (Mairead O'Dowd) on the day of her 18th birthday so that she doesn't prick her finger on a spindle and under the spell of the wicked pooka, sleep for a hundred years. There's a secondary plot with the prince trying to find his long-lost twin brother Kermit, played by the instantly likeable Richie Hayes.

Rebecca Smith as Griselda, the pooka, steals the show in a part that allows her to play several nasty but juicy roles, from a male spiv who lures Beauty to the spindle to the mean storm trooper barking orders and creating an army of clones sweetly played by children from the Billie Barry Stage School.

Also in the strong cast are Billie Traynor, the malaprop prone, Queen Marietta, and David O'Meara as the svengali-like Lord Chamberlain. Frank Kelly as King Jack is, in the publicity at least, the star of the show but he doesn't really have a lot to do or say and pretty much fades out from the scenes he's in.

The dialogue in the script written by Martin Higgins and director Alan Stanford is the show's weak spot and attempts to include references to the tribunals and politicians presumably for the adults in the audience fell flat and didn't add a great deal to the evening.

A very serious disappointment was the way the panto's commercial sponsors were allowed on stage. At one point two people dressed as M&Ms arrived on, King Jack barks ice-cream as one of his few words and the inevitable Cornetto turns up, as does the Eircom mouse. Is it too much to ask that children can go to a panto without someone on stage trying to sell them something?

Review by Bernice Harrison

Ailish Tynan (soprano), Lynda Lee (soprano), Robin Tritschler (tenor),  Ian Caddy (bass), Galway Baroque Singers, RTÉCO/Proinnsías Ó Duinn

Over the past 10 years the Galway Baroque Singers have regularly been invited to perform with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and conductor Proinnsías Ó Duinn.

The concert at the National Concert Hall last Saturday night showed why. Amongst all the Irish amateur choirs under 100-strong, this 90-voice group is perhaps unbeatable for its consistent combination of reliability, homogeneity of tone, and excellence of training.

The concert began well, with a performance of Ravel's orchestral work Ma mére l'oye, which was unhurried, flexible in its shaping, and beautifully coloured. The evening ended with Mozart's Mass in C minor K427.

Despite the inventiveness of this Mass, denseness and complexity give it a learned aspect which hinders immediate communication. It works best with a blend of grandeur and force.

On this occasion most of the choral singing was clean, and the control of demanding textures was excellent. The soloists - sopranos Ailish Tynan and Lynda Lee, tenor Robin Tritschler and bass Ian Caddy - were strong; and both sopranos were well-chosen, far better at handling the extreme range of those parts than most Irish singers I have heard in this work.

However, in one of those paradoxes of performance, everything was too safe to impress.

The most complete performance came in the first half; and it was truly impressive. In Vaughan Williams's Five Mystical Songs the choir was on top form, and in the last song captured the exultant vigour of George Herbert's poetry. Those virtues, and the good orchestral playing, seemed a response to Ian Caddy's mastery of the solo bass part.

Singing from memory, with impassioned tone and a subtle command of physical and musical gesture, he made music and words inseparable.
Review by Martin Adams

Jo Allen 1950-2002, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork

The death of Jo Allen last summer left an indelible mark upon the arts scene in Cork, as many had come to know and respect her as an influential and forthright figure. Not only was she a practising artist, lecturer, tutor and writer, she was also an enthusiastic promoter of people and ideas, someone whose opinions were sought out by students and peers alike.

As an artist, Jo Allen was recognised for her dedicated study of the human form, with male and female nude studies her stock-in-trade. And it was her commitment to this subject matter, which did much to raise its profile amongst local artists. It was not though just her skill as a painter that lent gravity to the traditional genre, it was also the fact that a weight of intellectual rigour informed her critical debate and dialogue and caused many to re-appraise figure painting as a still-valid mode of contemporary expression.

Her painting style was vigorous and energetic, with rapid brush strokes moving so quickly that the eye must have surely struggled to keep up. Similarly her use of colour was heightened and exaggerated with crimson and yellow ochre sitting practically unmodified on the surface of one canvas, but none the less giving a convincing representation of skin tone.

Jo Allen captured the character of her subjects conveying their passion, hope and lust for life. Through this she went beyond the academic conventions of figure painting, seeking out her unique and far-from-obvious interpretations. As such, these bodies are imbued with the human elements of emotion and desire and it is through these that the spirit of Jo Allen lives on.

 Runs until 13th Dec.
Review by Mark Ewart