Irish Times writers give their verdicts.
Chang Hen Ge
Cork Opera House
By Mary Leland
The compelling quality of performance and production in the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre's presentation of Chang Hen Ge (Elegy of Eternal Regrets) overcome the difficulties of language and the complexities and apparent contradictions of the plot. In Cork as a collaboration between the China/Ireland Cultural Exchange and Cork 2005 the three-act play is an adaptation of a novel by Wang Anyi and tells in somewhat romanticised terms the story of a naive but very beautiful young woman as she lives through the last 50 years of her country's history.
That's a lot of history and there's a slight Margaret Mitchell-type sweep of lost love and tragic heroism to the saga built around this aspirant Miss Shanghai. In a way, her failure to win a beauty pageant (she is deliberately placed third) is a metaphor for her subsequent career, during which she often comes close to fulfilment but never quite finds the right man at the right time, and even a legacy of gold bars has to be hidden until it is fatally too late. The nuances underlying all this can't be translated properly by the subtitles, so there are aspects of the story which director Su Leci cannot convey despite the simple and elegant set (the costuming too is convincing) by Liu Yuansheng and evocative lighting by Han Guankun. These make the changing context coherent for foreign audiences, although the thematic contrasts of Dong Weijie's music suggest further subtleties.
As the set is built for travelling, a little masking would have avoided the visibility of important entrances before they are actually made, but this is the only quibble with a play in which a distinguished cast, led by Zhang Lu as the almost-heroine and by Zhu Yin as a lively, curious neighbour (the game of mahjong is a delightful piece of theatre), offer a sophisticated example of modern Chinese drama.
The Magnetic Fields
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
By Kevin Courtney
It's Hallowe'en night, and we find ourselves in a very scary place indeed - locked inside Stephin Merritt's closet. It's dark in there, but every now and then a shard of sardonic humour shines through, though it's delivered with such hangdog fatalism that you're not sure whether to smile or shed a tear. Gay only describes Merritt's sexuality - his demeanour is morose as he slouches in his stool, cloth cap on his head, and strums his ukulele like a world-weary George Formby.
With him are his long-standing cohorts in The Magnetic Fields: Claudia Gonson on piano, vocals and keeping the show rolling along; cellist Sam Davol; and guitarist/banjo player John Woo. The New Yorkers are touring Europe with their new album, simply titled i (each track's title begins with the letter "I"), and they've fetched up in the Olympia on All Souls Night, before a modest crowd of devotees, to sing about "vampires, zombies and bad boyfriends". Trick or treat? Sometimes it's hard to tell.
Like The Divine Comedy without the pomp, ceremony or, indeed, any reason to celebrate, The Magnetic Fields play songs that sound like they took a wrong turn near Tin Pan Alley - and were promptly mugged. I Die, I Don't Really Love You Any More and I Thought You Were My Boyfriend are forlorn little snapshots of love seen through a permanently jaundiced "I". I Don't Believe in the Sun, Chicken With its Head Cut Off and Come Back from San Francisco, from the excellent 69 Love Songs album, are vaudevillian tragi-comedies with some fine lyrical turns.
To celebrate the re-release by Domino Records of the band's back catalogue, Merritt and co dig up some gems from past albums Get Lost, Holiday and The Charm Of the Highway Strip. Smoke and Mirrors, Strange Powers, All the Umbrellas in London and Born on a Train still have the power to extract a wry grin and a knowing sigh.
As they near their finale, Merritt and Gonson go off-Broadway with a tipsy Reno Dakota, a bizarre Papa Was A Rodeo and the kitschy soap operetta, Yeah! Oh Yeah!.
Sporcl, RTÉ NSO/Pesek
NCH, Dublin
By Michael Dervan
Dvorák - Scherzo capriccioso, Violin Concerto, Symphony No 6
The symphony we now know as Dvorák's Sixth was originally published as his First in 1882, simply because it was the first of the composer's symphonies to have made it into print. The work was written for Hans Richter and the Vienna Philharmonic, but anti-Czech intrigue within the orchestra successfully kept the work from being scheduled in Vienna and the première was eventually given by the Prague Philharmonic.
The symphony, an outgoing work written in the flush of the composer's first international successes with the Moravian Duets and Slavonic Dances, confidently pays its respects to the models of Beethoven and Brahms while still being thoroughly imbued with an individual Czech character. The Scherzo is famous in this regard, marking the first introduction of the cross-rhythms of the Czech dance, the furiant, into a symphony.
The performance by the RTÉ NSO was remarkable for the tonal transformations wrought in the orchestra's playing by the Prague-born Libor Pesek. Pesek, who turned 70 last year, is best known in this part of the world for the decade he spent as principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, from 1987 to 1997.
At the performance, it sounded as if he was simply being that bit more demanding of the players than most of his colleagues, tightening the focus of individual lines, grading the balances of colour more finely, and insisting that both the atmospheric geniality in the music as well as its occasional blood-rushing excitability be secured through music-making that was accurate in detail.
The freshness of impact he achieved made it easy to recapture the astonishment felt by 19th-century listeners who imagined the work to have been Dvorák's first attempt at a symphony.
Pesek was every bit as persuasive in the Scherzo capriccioso, a work that's rather longer and more complex in mood than either it's title or its often gorgeous colouring might suggest. And Pavel Sporcl, wearing a trademark bandanna, was a lithe and ardent advocate in the Violin Concerto.
