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Don CarlosProject Arts Centre, Dublin
The air hangs heavy in the court of King Philip II. It looms down in a smoky haze from high, latticed windows; the pall of 16th century oppression. Below we find Don Carlos, a sullen and watchful Rory Keenan, while Cardinal Domingo, his confessor, kneels, waits, then finally steals a glance at his wristwatch.
In that playful opening anachronism, the airless setting is punctured briefly and Rough Magic's production marks the relevance of Friedrich Schiller's political classic to our time, in a lucid new version by Mike Poulton. Sadly, for all the strengths of its considered design and committed ensemble, it does not quite realise the urgency of the play (prompting many a glance at less anachronistic wristwatches).
You could call Lynne Parker's production a costume drama, but only in the sense that Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh has stitched the play's conflict right into her designs. Carlos, whose thwarted passion for his stepmother, the queen (Kathy Kiera Clarke), and frustration with his tyrant father, King Philip II (Nick Dunning), have rendered his once-radical politics inert, is faithfully attired in swashbuckling black. But his comrade, the covert idealist Marquis of Posa (Fergal McElherron), who seeks to reawaken Carlos and spur him to revolution, arrives to the court in the kind of three-piece suit Vladimir Lenin would shrug on a few centuries later.
It is a witty concession to the anachronisms of Schiller's play, written in the 18th century, and a valiant attempt to realise the thrust of "now" in the echoes of "then". Posa is a man out of his time, championing liberty in an age of tyranny and given to sweeps of Enlightenment rhetoric. And though his foil will explain an overseas military adventure with the line, "The instrument God places in my hands is terror," Philip is more complicated than any current political dead-ringers - and Dunning's intense performance understands that the inevitable consequence of power is not necessarily corruption, but isolation.
As the ideologues of church and state, Darragh Kelly's artful Domingo and Rory Nolan's compellingly belligerent Duke of Alba shine through to the present with less refraction.
That the production's efforts hold us lightly over three hours, where it should grip tight, seems no fault of Paul O'Mahony's towering design, slyly incorporating the surrounding audience as a ghostly impression of the lives at stake.
But it comes off as a production more concerned with politics than passion, more rooted in the even exchanges between McElherron and Dunning than the emotional flares of Rory Keenan and Kathy Kiera Clarke.
The plot doesn't help. Whether it is the discovery of sensitive letters, the manipulation of information, or the clash of idealism and absolutism, the drama here rests more in word and character than in action. Inevitably, perhaps, the production moves with the slow development and occasional fizzle of political intrigue - as Denis Clohessy's occasional shivers of music underscore - than with the exhilarating gallop of a political thriller. Runs until Mar 31 Peter Crawley
William Dowdall, David AdamsHugh Lane gallery, Dublin
Roseingrave - Sonata in A minor. Ó Gallchobhair - Rosc Ceoil. Beethoven - Variations on Irish Folksongs. Groocock - Canonic Variations. Martinon - Sonatine. Hamilton Harty - In Ireland
William Dowdall (flute) and David Adams (piano) opened their recital, The Irish Connection, with a short, four-movement sonata in A minor by Thomas Roseingrave. Roseingrave, whose father was an organist in St Patrick's Cathedral, studied in Trinity College before moving to Italy in 1709 where he became good friends with Domenico Scarlatti. The sonata is relatively reserved for the period and has more of the English baroque in it than the Italian, more Purcell than Scarlatti.
Dowdall and Adams brought out the wistful tenderness of its slow movements and the zestful energy of the quick ones, which are laced with lively imitative counterpoint.
It's like so many hundreds of baroque pieces: unexceptional, uncelebrated and all but forgotten, but very attractive. In fact, the whole concert was like this, including the sets of variations on The Last Rose of Summerand Father O'Flynn, from Beethoven's nearly 180 arrangements of Irish and British folksongs. It's a rarely heard (and sometimes maligned) area of his output ideally suited to this programme.
The bounds of the title were stretched pretty thin with the inclusion of the little two-movement Sonatineby Frenchman Jean Martinon, on the grounds that he conducted the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra, including a three-month stint in 1948. And the piece is very French, the opening like Ravel in a dark mood. But if not in a concert like this one, when? Also very French, surprisingly, was Rosc Ceoilby Eamonn Ó Gallchobhair, a small but weighty piece written for his wife in the 1930s, full of Franck-like intensity.
The performance - a real pleasure in both the range of its mix and the commitment and style of the playing - also included mind-boggling but utterly charming canons by Trinity's much-loved virtual embodiment of Bach, the late Joseph Groocock. The recital closed with In Ireland by Herbert Hamilton Harty in his own reduction from the orchestral original. Only the Beethoven rivalled it for Irish accent. Michael Dungan
