A round-up of reviews from Irish Timeswriters:
The Cavalcaders
The Abbey Theatre
With its immeasurably improved sight lines, enhanced acoustics and considered response to a rather awkward structure, Robin Lefèvre has performed a handsome work of refurbishment with Billy Roche's The Cavalcaders.
Incidentally, a wonderful job has been done on the Abbey's auditorium too.
Roche's 1993 drama - part memory play, part Arthurian romance, part musical - is much like the barbershop harmonies that erupt within it. A tale of loyalty and betrayal set in a small town Wexford shoe shop, it has an inviting hum of nostalgia which conceals mechanics of almost maddening complexity.
It is Roche's formal experiment with The Cavalcaders, his onstage mingling of the past and the present, which has meant that receptions of the drama have tended to snag on an uncertain sense of perspective or in the folds of time.
As Stephen Brennan's glum Terry passes on the shop he inherited from his uncle Eamon (whose eponymous male singing group Terry has also maintained, we learn, out of a deep reservoir of guilt), a brighter past flares to life.
With three employees and, it seems, almost as many customers, the thrumming cobblers was once the sort of place where men might ogle women through a sun-streaming window, josh each other with winning wit and burst, near enough spontaneously, into song.
Music, however, creates order out of chaos and beneath the four-part camaraderie of Terry, Garrett Lombard's amusingly priapic Rory, David Ganly's melodious Ted (whose brothel creepers ought to be a clue) and John Kavanagh's brilliantly louche Josie, lurks something far more dissolute.
In a tangle of adultery, cuckoldry and always perfidious women, rarely have the schmaltzy and the sordid moved together in such close harmony.
Any play in which female characters are held so relentlessly to blame for dissonance - Terry's mother, aunt, estranged wife and various partners are all in some way tainted, the men are relatively blameless - will find it hard to dodge the charge of misogyny, even if that charge can be levelled at every romantic myth from Troy to Camelot.
The women we do meet, however, Ingrid Craigie's warm, canny Breda and the remarkable Simone Kirby as damaged ingenue Nuala, are more complicated and compelling than the men. And although there is not a bum note among the cast (Ganly's musical chops deserve special mention), Kavanagh commands most attention with a fascinatingly physical Josie, his body seeming to "melt" over the furniture.
It is not for nothing that Lefèvre, who directed Roche's original, here allows the demise of community to be his leading note. Roche has always written in the minor key, and though the last note sounded here is a harmonious echo, the rest is silence. - Peter Crawley
Kim, RTÉ NSO/Markson
NCH, Dublin
Mozart- Piano Concerto in E flat K271 (Jeunehomme)
Mahler- Symphony No 9
Way back in the planning stages, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra had to decide how to conclude their 2006-2007 Mahler cycle. With the Ninth Symphony, the last he completed? Or with the chronologically last but unfinished 10th?
In the end they chose neither, opting instead to finish up with the gargantuan Eighth, the "Symphony of a Thousand", full of optimism and exultation - and requiring such vast resources that its May 26th performance had to be relocated from the National Concert Hall to the National Basketball Arena. The nearly-completed Adagio movement from the 10th is scheduled for two weeks earlier.
By giving the Ninth Symphony here in April, the NSO have underplayed - whether inadvertently or by design - the work's customary valedictory interpretation. Customary, but not unanimously agreed. For although Mahler composed most of it in 1909 when he knew well that his time was running out, there are commentators who point to his extensive work on a tenth symphony as proof that he was by no means using the Ninth to say farewell.
Whether valedictory or not, the Ninth's 80 plus minutes are crammed with emotional content and depth, ranging from what Berg called a pervasive "premonition of death" throughout the first movement, to the bitter vulgarity of the second, through the horror and grotesquerie of the third, to the resignation and courage of the finale.
Principal conductor Gerhard Markson, as he has so often done during this cycle, drew out this interior content without milking it. If perhaps the deliberately cheap effects in the second movement needed to be less subtly presented for the point to be put across, elsewhere the music's emotional weight made a huge impact.
Markson achieved this despite being sorely let down at some key moments: by quavering horn solos and by indelicacies in the winds that broke the spell at the end of the first movement. Even the very end was weakened by lapses of refinement from the strings. It has to be said: there was never any question of such flaws in the performance of the same work given here by the Dresden Staatskapelle in January.
Markson, orchestra and soloist Daejin Kim also combined best where emotion was strongest - in the second movement - in Mozart's E flat Piano Concerto, the "Jeunehomme". Kim, who was fastidiously clean and sparkling throughout, seemed over-focused on surface in the outer movements, but relaxed into more thoughtful playing in conjunction with the orchestra in the slow Andantino. - Michael Dungan
Madeleine Peyroux
Olympia Theatre
A packed Olympia greeted Madeleine Peyroux on her first visit here last Friday night, and she repaid the compliments of her rapt audience with a spellbinding set.
Peyroux peddles a line in jazz that's as far removed from the insipid perfection of Diane Krall as Ingmar Bergman is from the Marx Brothers.
Peyroux's vocal cords pursue a song with a subtlety that suggests she's the only one privy to its inner workings. Her choice of Randy Newman's I Think It's Gonna Rain Todaybeautifully captured her subliminal inventiveness: full of pathos and a compassion that barely touched the surface of Newman's original.
Her Athens, Georgia roots were less tangible than her father's New Orleans ones, (described by her, with heart-stoppingly dry candour as "a bastard"): her delivery as languid as a sweltering afternoon on the bayou, her curvaceous, elongated vowels as complex and impenetrable as the richest seams mined by Dr John. Peyroux trades in delicate reinvention, not slavish imitation. Her take on Dylan's (Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Nightswooped and soared on air currents altogether removed from the insistent original, and Leonard Cohen's Dance Me To The End Of Lovewas even more sensual than laughing Lennie's take on it, as fine a tribute to the man's insouciance as any.
Peyroux knows the value of silence as much as of highly-arranged sound, and she exploited both with equal success, backed by a drum-tight quartet on keyboards, guitar, double bass and percussion.
Her keyboardist and double bassist were particularly adept at navigating a path between jazz, blues and country, relishing the Nina Simone-like word play of All I Need Is A Little Bitand burrowing beneath the surface simplicity of Everybody's Talking. - Siobhán Long
Ballet Ireland
Die Fledermaus
National Concert Hall
It is hard to believe the same artistic staff presented Ballet Ireland's Die FledermausSaturday night as presented the dreary production of Christmas Carollast autumn.
Die Fledermausoffered the kind of swiftly moving plot and structured choreography normally crafted by artistic directors working with resources such as a full-time school and company.
The fact that artistic director Günther Falusy and guest choreography Morgann Runacre-Temple were able to create this with a largely new cast who have trained elsewhere suggests something may be going on at Ballet Ireland behind the scenes. It was a surprising improvement on the company's previous dances.
This three-act ballet, based on Johann Strauss's comic operetta, began with each character introducing themselves. As the spotlight shone on one after another, we quickly met each personality - from the proper Gabriel von Eisenstein, to his racy wife Rosalinde, her maid, a doctor, the prince and Die Fledermaus. (Ryoko Yagyu was ever-present as the ballet's mischievous titular character, which translates as bat in German.)
The convoluted plot found Rosalinde flirting with an old flame Alfred, and nearly getting caught by her husband, her maid and the prison governor. At times the closely strung together steps in Act I distracted from the overall story, but Jacqueline Clark cemented the plot as a sensual Rosalinde, who changed from risque seductress to a prim and proper woman with the toss of her silky black robe.
In Act II the dancing gained momentum as individual dance variations offered the kind of clear and precise choreography that previous Ballet Ireland productions have missed. Ryoko Yagyu succeeded as a demure, polished flower girl and Jonathan Moscoso filled the stage as the jockey.
When the larger groups joined in, such as Kumiko Nakamura leading six other dancers in a light-hearted line dance, the ballet gained cohesion because the characters' steps and interpretations were believable.
It may have taken this long to see structured choreography by Ballet Ireland, but now that it is here, may the ghosts from productions such as Christmas Carolbe things of the past. - Christie Taylor
Scott Matthews
The Village, Dublin
There is a familiar feel to singer-songwriter Scott Matthews's latest album, Passing Stranger: Nick Drake and John Martyn jump inevitably to mind, and he even has a dose of the peculiar and beguiling folkiness of Robert Plant. A technically gifted player, Matthews's picking is precise and artful, his chording full-bodied, and he ventures into some bluesy slide guitar that shunts through the verses like a train through midnight stations.
Here, rather than kick off at a lively pace, he chooses to spend most of the first half of the set playing delicately picked numbers. Live, his voice has a warmth and resonance not readily apparent on the record, but he doesn't enunciate the vocals as well as he can, and the mumbling in between songs is all but indecipherable. Taut, subtly picked songs are all well and good, but when several are played back to back (unless the crowd is very familiar with the work, or they were in the bedsit when the song initially took shape), it isn't long before the tracks start to lose their dynamic and individuality.
As the gig wears on, Matthews settles into the rhythm, relaxes a bit more, and banters with the crowd. In fairness, he couldn't have asked for a better audience: they applaud each song enthusiastically and the moment he picks a note, the army of shush-monkeys makes sure everyone is paying attention. You can't help wondering if the crowd was a little more unkind, and Matthews had to work a bit harder, that the performance would be that much better; he would be pushed to be a bit more aggressive with his attack, playing and vocal range. There are glimmers of this on the record, and it would be great to have that reproduced live.
A percussionist, playing box and cymbal, adds some much needed weight to proceedings, but alone he can't fill the gap that a band would no doubt revel in. Songs such as Passing Strangerand Dream Songare pleasant, but far short of their enthralling potential, given a full backing band and a bit of grunt. The pair have just come off the back of a tour with a full band, but it's a pity they couldn't have persuaded a few more musicians to get on the ferry to Dublin. When Matthews goes off on a slide-playing tangent, the flash of spontaneity sparks the crowd off, but without more musicians to develop the riff, the side road ends abruptly enough.
This was an understated, elegant performance, and there is little doubt that as Matthews gets a few more concerts under his belt, and gains some confidence, his stage presence will improve in leaps and bounds. Let's hope he brings the band along for the ride next time. - Laurence Mackin
