Irish Times writers review a selection of the latest events.
Irish Chamber Orchestra/Ernst Kovacic, National Concert Hall, Dublin
The Austrian violinist Ernst Kovacic played the part of a 19th-century dance-band leader for this Viennese evening on Saturday.
In so doing he re-created the personalities of Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss (the elder), friendly rivals as composers and bandleaders in the city's insatiable market for waltzes and other dance music from the 1820s all the way to the first World War. The music is mostly lightweight, nostalgic and laced with an affluent charm that was well matched by Kovacic in his congenial spoken introductions.
His clean, buoyant playing made the items for violin solo and strings the evening's highlights. Among these were pieces by the Vienna-born violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler, including Liebesleid, from his Old Viennese Dances, full of nostalgic longing, and the Kleiner Wiener Marsch, all wit and oompah.
The Irish Chamber Orchestra, too, was at its best when accompanying Kovacic. But when he conducted - in Schmeichelkätzen, for example, Strauss's playful homage to the cat's art of leg-rubbing persuasion - the first violins' customary solidarity eluded them.
It was a strange concert. Kovacic's first remark was to commiserate with the audience because they could only listen and not dance. Or eat, drink or chat, he might have continued, so strongly is this music associated with convivial occasions.
It's niche-market stuff, and at that the programme dwelt rather long on the fringe of the niche by including curiosities
such as an anonymous waltz from the Swedish fiddle choir tradition and a set of affectionate pastiche pieces - with the intriguing title Möbelmusik-Klassisch, or Furniture Music: Classical - by the contemporary Viennese composer Kurt Schwertsik.
The familiar worked best, and the small audience gave a warm ovation for the concluding item, Johann Strauss the younger's waltz extracts from his operetta Rosen Aus Dem Süden. Michael Dungan
The Laramie Project, Helix Space, Dublin
A 21-year-old student in the small Wyoming city of Laramie was savagely beaten and left to die in 1998. His attackers, two young men of his own age, were primarily motivated by the fact that he was gay. He died after some time on a life-support machine.
A theatre group led by Moisés Kaufman formed the Tectonic Theatre Project, made a number of trips to Laramie in the period following the murder and conducted a large number of interviews with the town's people. They talked to policemen, academics, clergymen, businessmen, a bar owner and many others. They then constructed the theatrical faction now presented by the enterprising AboutFACE Theatre Company.
We gradually absorb the communal guilt of a city that was regarded as a good place to live. How did such evil spring from so unlikely a source?
We hear repeatedly the protestation that, although people did not approve of the gay lifestyle, they accepted it. But did they? Somewhere beneath the placid surface prejudice festered, and the questions asked in this play are for all of us. Would it really be acceptable were gay couples to walk the streets showing open signs of their mutual affection, as heterosexual couples routinely do? Is our tolerance proof against bad times, drink, envy, innate hostility towards the different?
There is a non-judgmental current running through this play, directed as much towards the killers as their victim, bringing with it the hope of redemption.
The cast of eight, each of whom plays numerous roles, are clearly committed and involved in the story, but they wisely steer clear of excessive emotion. They provide a kaleidoscope of snapshots, precise in detail and certainly not devoid of feeling, but not a search for catharsis.
The play, and director Paul Brennan, choose a better path.
Anna Olson, Hope Brown, Cillian O'Donnachadra, Noni Stapleton, Charlie Kranz, Tara McKeever, Paul Nugent and Catherine Farrell rise to this significant theatrical occasion with distinction. Gerry Colgan
Transfers to the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, today, running until May 29th
Micky Donnelly, Vangard Gallery, Cork
The basis of Micky Donnelly's work was for many years informed and shaped by political and social unrest in Northern Ireland. His imagery was as staunch and as uncompromising as the divided communities therein, using iconic symbols loaded with meaning and significance.
Some of the most memorable images Donnelly employed were the republican lily and the Orange Order's bowler hat. These were painted with such boldness that they were in spirit closer to sculptural work than to paintings.
Progressively, over the past 10 years or so, the presence of these images has dissipated, becoming veiled both physically and conceptually. The essential development over that time has seen the move away from representation of three-dimensional form, as the images are expressed in a linear fashion, built using subtle layers of colour and tone.
The impression now is that Donnelly's work is more attuned to the sensibilities of pattern and decoration, developing a visual awareness of the complexities and dialogue between shape and background - a view consolidated further by the unity of the colour range, which consists of brown, green, celadon and large areas of white. Buried and floating in these colours and textures, the flower shapes remain, but these are skeletal in presence, ghosts of their former incarnations.
It is a natural conclusion that Donnelly's imagery has dissolved in tandem with the situation in the North, moving away from the angst and confrontational nature of the situation.
If correct, we see how these paintings record what is left behind when hearts and minds change, and the iconography of memory, desires and beliefs that are burned in to the subconscious surface and alter our view of the world around. Mark Ewart
Runs until Saturday
