A selection of reviews from the world of the arts.
P. J. Harvey
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Clad in luminous-green stilettos and a fantastic red velour dress covered in appliqué seagulls,
P. J. Harvey is putting on a show. Ever since she appeared in a leopard-skin coat in the 50Ft Queenie video, Harvey has been an increasingly theatrical performer. But at times during the first of these two sold-out gigs it's hard not to feel, reluctantly, that the theatrics are moving towards pantomime.
Although there's no doubt that the endearingly huge grin on Harvey's face between songs is genuine, some of her mannerisms when she's singing seem just a little bit too staged. She's obviously giving it her all as she struts around the stage, clapping and dancing wildly to the music, but there's sometimes a sense of someone self-consciously putting on a performance. It's cool, all right, but there's something missing.
It's not the music, which is as savagely beautiful as ever; her excellent recent album, Uh Huh Her, was a welcome return to form after two slightly disappointing releases. But on stage Harvey's at her best when she's playing the guitar - Dress, which she hammers out with ferocious glee, is the first moment of the show when the hairs go up on the back of your neck.
Harvey's three-piece band (including a guitarist who looks like he was plucked from a 1987 indie disco) are excellent, and she seems to work well with them. Even without the guitar Harvey can still casually captivate the audience: Pocket Knife and Reeling are equally electrifying, and Victory leaves me as awestruck as when she first performed it on this stage, a decade ago.
Perhaps she just needs to let her music breathe a little. Songs that good don't have to be enhanced by overly dramatic stage moves.
Anna Carey
The Flame And The Stone
Irish Writers' Centre, Dublin
Sam Dowling's new play is about W. B. Yeats and Maud Gonne McBride, the improbable lovers whose passion was, perhaps is, part of what we are as a nation. Between them they represented political attitudes from extreme republicanism to pacifist evolution, from the primacy of art to the liberation of the poor. On a personal level they were torn between the carnal and the platonic.
The Praxis Theatre Laboratory from Roscommon, whose production this is, has a well-developed theoretical basis for its work that, summarised, involves an intuitive rather than technical approach to theatre. As for previous performances, it can be said that the method works here, engaging the audience.
Their stage is the centre of a drawing room, with the audience seated on three sides and slides projected onto a screen on the fourth wall. Furnishings are just a chair and small sofa. For about two hours the duo speak of their turbulent relationship with great candour, he seeking to consummate it sexually, she insisting that it remain chaste.
As the years go by she has two children by a French politician and marries the dubious Major John McBride, by whom she has a son. Yeats also marries, and his life takes him deeper into poetry and theatre while she, against the tide of history, fights on for republican ideals. Yeats says of her here that, while everything he did was for himself, everything she did was for others.
But what is important here is not the historical accuracy of the play but the extent to which it breathes life into its characters. They come alive to speak for themselves, and it is fascinating to hear them. Jean-Paul Van Cauwelaert is magnetic as Yeats, and Maria Straw, while not having the physical presence associated with her subject, has the acting skill to create her persona truly. Between them they animate a work of unusual creativity.
Gerry Colgan
At Roscommon Arts Centre on Saturday
RTÉ Concert Orchestra/ Proinnsías Ó Duinn
NCH, Dublin
Thomas - Mignon Overture. Ravel - Ma Mère L'Oye. Fauré - Pavane. Milhaud - Suite Française
This year's Tuesday-lunchtime orchestral series ended with an all-French programme. Most of the works were of the character-piece kind - music that needs to be played with a sure sense of style. On the whole this concert did that.
It was interesting to hear the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under the direction of its conductor laureate, Proinnsías Ó Duinn. Over many years as its principal conductor, he brought what had been a studio orchestra into the mainstream of concert life, and this concert showed many of the strengths that have characterised his best work.
It was also evident, however, that the RTÉCO has benefited from the style of playing encouraged over the past 18 months or so by Ó Duinn's successor, Laurent Wagner. In this concert and the several others I have attended this season, there was a consistent homogeneity to each string section and a general impression that everyone was listening to everyone else, regardless of who was conducting.
It was rewarding to hear Ravel's suite from Ma Mère L'Oye played with such delicate colouring and shaping. Shaping was impeccable, and phrasing combined large shape with attention to detail. Here and in Fauré's Pavane nothing was rushed, and the music unfolded naturally.
Only in Milhaud's Suite Française, a collection of folksy-cum-neoclassical pieces that evoke regions of France, did restraint and poise seem to limit the music's impact, but not much.
It is good to hear the RTÉCO playing consistently at this level. It must be rewarding for the players too.
Martin Adams
