Fintan O'Toole reviews the play Top Restaurant playing at the Helix, Dermot Gault enjoyed the various offerings of the Belfast Festival while Gerry Colgan was at the Civic Theatre to see the Long Overdue Theatre Company's performance of Romeo and Juliet.
Top Restaurant, The Helix, DCU
In ancient China, a chef working with the five flavours of traditional cuisine - sweet, sour, bitter, salty, pungent - was an established metaphor for the task of the prime minister at the imperial court. In the 1988 play Top Restaurant, which is playing briefly at the Helix in Dublin as part of the China Ireland festival, He Jiping is intent on reviving this metaphorical link between politics and food. The play depends on its audience's ability to read the events that unfold in the FuJuDe restaurant in Beijing in the decades before the revolution as an allegory of class struggle and the exercise of power. That in turn demands an ability to distinguish between subtleties that is likely to be beyond most Irish viewers and was certainly beyond this reviewer.
A sad truth of the reception of foreign-language productions is that they tend to work best when they have at least one of two elements. Exotic unfamiliarity of form can grip an audience by virtue of its strangeness. And a highly visual spectacle can break through the language barrier with its direct appeal to the senses. Top Restaurant has some of these charms but not enough. This is not the fault of the Beijing People's Art Theatre (BPAT) but it is a regrettable reality.
The BPAT was founded in 1952, partly by the great actor Ying Ruocheng, who became familiar to western audiences for his performance in Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. It came out of what was then a relatively recent development in Chinese culture, the so-called "new drama". Part of the problem, though, is that the Chinese new drama is essentially the West's old drama. As part of the westernising trends in the early 20th century, Chinese playwrights began to create work modelled on European naturalism and social realism. The BPAT is regarded as the premier exponent of the form.
It is easy, watching Top Restaurant, to understand why. The quality of the acting is superb and the performers have a grace and assurance that can be almost balletic. Gu Wei's production, with its attention to detail and clockwork motion, is an immensely impressive technical feat. The design and costumes have a lavish exactitude that few western theatres could afford. The most exotic thing about the production, indeed, is its sense of scale. In these straitened times, it is rare to see, not just a 26-strong cast, but one in which there are no spear-carriers. To see that number of highly-polished professionals moving through their paces with such rigour and command is indeed remarkable outside of a big Broadway musical. The difficulty, though, is that this kind of realistic drama with allegorical overtones is inevitably carried by verbal language.
The BPAT actors are very good at communicating the essence of their characters, but we still need to understand the undercurrents of speech. Scrolling subtitles that are often either lagging behind or running ahead of the action can never be a substitute for that essential understanding.
This is especially so given that the politics of the play, in a society where freedom of expression is so limited, are bound to be indirect. The story of Lu MengShi, the manager from a humble background - who rescues the restaurant from the indolent brothers who own it only to be crushed by their ingratitude and arrogance - could be read many ways. Is it simply a criticism of the old regime before Communism? Or does it also apply to the China of 1988, when it was written? Or of 2004? The large smattering of Chinese people in the audience laughed a lot, and much of it sounded like the laughter of recognition.
But for this Irish viewer, there was the sense of being tantalised by some intriguing force that remains unreachable behind the gauze of an unknown language. Fintan O'Toole
Various Events, Belfast Festival
The Church of the Most Holy Redeemer at Clonard Monastery in west Belfast is one of the new venues with which the Belfast Festival at Queen's is seeking to widen its geographical range.
Last year it made an apt setting for the "holy minimalism" of Arvo Pärt. The same label is sometimes applied to the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara but, despite the music's avowed spiritual content, Rautavaara's lush neo-romanticism has little in common with Pärt's hieratic austerity.
Rautavaara is Finland's senior composer, yet I can't recall previous performances of his music here. After experimenting with various styles he has settled on tonality, albeit a tonality that has experienced the Berg of Lulu and Der Wein as well as Sibelius. The rich orchestration blossomed in the generous church acoustics - only becoming overloaded in the second movement of the Seventh Symphony, subtitled Angel of Light - where for once the music becomes active rather than contemplative. The Ulster Orchestra strings produced a fine tone for Esa Heikkilä in the opening Adagio celeste, a recent work from 1997, which made a strong impression overall. The most memorable piece, also probably Rautavaara's best-known, was the Cantus Arcticus from 1972, though one can't help wondering what it would sound like without the birdsong, taped by the composer himself in the north of Finland.
At the same concert, Methodist College Girls Choir acquitted themselves well in Rautavaara's difficult Lorca Suite for unaccompanied choir. A few nights later, the Ulster Youth Choir appeared in the more reverberant acoustics of St Anne's Cathedral. Once again, there was clear expressive singing from fresh young voices, the women impressive in Poulenc's Liturgies à la Vierge noire, the men in two pieces by Mendelssohn. Soloist Gemma Prince was light and pure-toned in Vaughan Williams's Benedicite.
The boardroom of Clifton House - Belfast's oldest surviving building - made an intimate setting for Owen Willet's impressively strong alto and Richard Sweeney's subtle archlute.
Handel's emotionally complex Figli del mesto cor was the find here. The Ormeau Baths Gallery - modernist white walls in a Victorian structure - hosted the Badke Quartet, four players from the Royal Academy of Music including local musician Jonathan Byers, who gave a well-balanced Mozart K421 and a committed performance of Mendelssohn's early and very passionate A minor quartet. Noise from a bar across the road made this a less than ideal location.
Nothing could be more traditional, in a Belfast Festival context, than an Ulster Orchestra concert in the Whitla Hall at Queen's University. The boxed-in sound did nobody any favours, but Fionnuala Hunt played Bruch's Scottish Fantasia with a sweet tone, and Paul Mann conducted often gripping performances of Wagner's Flying Dutchman overture and Dvorák's New World symphony. - Dermot Gault
Romeo and Juliet, Civic Theatre, Tallaght
The Long Overdue Theatre Company is a national theatre company based in Andover with a distinctive approach. Its has a cinematic style, aimed particularly at the young, with shortened scripts, original music and realistic performances. Following a very successful tour of five countries with Macbeth, it has returned to Shakespeare, with mixed results.
This production opens with a street fight in a modern Verona, in which the Montagues and Capulets beat each other up savagely until dispersed by the law from a helicopter above. It is a gripping opening, with searchlights swirling over the combatants and the audience. With order restored, we get to know Romeo and his friends.
Fast forward to the Capulet ball, attended by a masked Romeo in pursuit of Juliet, with whom he is now in love. The rest follows the classic story. The star-crossed lovers marry secretly, but Tybalt kills Mercutio, and is killed in turn by Romeo, who is exiled to Mantua. A sort of mutual suicide sees Romeo and Juliet cold in the crypt.
This certainly gets the story across in a punchy way, but at a price. There is not a lot of credible passion or poetry here, and the acting seems well-drilled rather than inspired.
There is an excellent Romeo from Euan Manson, but Catherine Cranston's Juliet is too much the gauche teenager in voice and movement. The casting of a woman as Mercutio, more given to flounce than swagger, works poorly, and Capulet is often inaudible.
For a touring show, production values are superior, with a good set, effective lighting and fast scene changes. The show is offered to both adult and school audiences. I joined one of the latter in a packed house, and it is fair to comment that the students were attentive and enthusiastic.Gerry Colgan
Tour continues to Longford, Kilkenny, Newbridge and Cork
