Reviewed: Cruel and Tender, Demidenko, RTÉ NSO/Agrest, The Lemonheadsand Days of Wine and Roses
Cruel and TenderProject, Dublin
Does this sound familiar? There is a brutal conflict overseas and as the acrid smoke begins to clear, a war on terror has been unmasked as an opportunistic invasion. As a whole city is laid to waste, its liberators turn rapacious, their baser motives are exposed, and political careers are reduced to tatters. This is a breaking news report. This is an ancient tragedy. This is a story you've probably heard before.
Martin Crimp's 2004 adaptation of Sophocles's 437-432 BC play, The Trachiniae, first staged when the misadventure in Iraq was barely a year old, belongs to that curious strain of classical-political theatre that holds there is no contemporary event which has not been anticipated by antiquity.
The neat symmetry of Crimp's parallels are certainly admirable. In The Trachiniae, Deineira, a much neglected military wife, learns that her army general husband is waging war for venal reasons and, in her jealousy, brings about his accidental undoing and her own tragic end.
Cruel and Tender is much the same but with fewer togas and more mobile phones. If Annabelle Comyn's wearisome Hatch Theatre production recognises the urgency in Crimp's rapid reaction, it demonstrates an almost perverse attempt to then distance us from the subject. As the general's wife, Amelia (only the name has been changed), Andrea Irvine leads the cast in a uniformly stilted method of delivery - a vocal elevation that most classic revivals try to avoid - in which every line is invested with leaden significance. Indeed, the first line - "There are women who believe that all men are rapists" - gives you some idea of the gender and power themes that have been faithfully inherited from Sophocles.
But what are we to make of Caitriona Ní Mhurchu, India Whisker and Judith Roddy, who strut around Amelia in identical black dresses, high-heels and severe hairdos? How seriously can we engage in gender politics when the chorus is clearly modelled on the Robert Palmer girls? Then again, does the production even want to be taken seriously, or has irreversible catastrophe moved it too from shock and awe to numb despondency? This may be why Robert O'Mahoney, Irish theatre's go-to guy for seriously crazy generals, will not roar any life back into proceedings, while Yvonne Wandera, as his spoil of war, steals the show just by eating a piece of toast on a sofa.
That inertia speaks volumes about the production and, perhaps, our present moment: it looks at the headlines, looks at history, and finds there is nothing more to say. Runs until May 19 - Peter Crawley
Demidenko, RTÉ NSO/AgrestNCH, Dublin
Grieg - Lyric Suite. Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No 4. Aulis Sallinen - Shadows. Sibelius - Symphony No 6
Sibelius once said: "I don't really mind how you play it, as long as it's full of heart." He was referring to his famously demanding and complex Seventh Symphony. Coming from a composer whose fastidious attention to compositional detail and integrity was legendary, this is thought-provoking.
That came to mind during this concert because, in the same composer's interpretatively demanding Sixth Symphony, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's playing was full of heart. Such playing tends to be associated with sincerity and quantity of emotion, and more with effort and impact than with ease. So it was remarkable that this performance was so good with no obvious striving or obvious dictation by the conductor. Pacing during and between movements, balance, shaping of detail and players listening and responding to one another - all that just seemed to happen.
Under the baton of Mikhail Agrest, the heart of the music seemed to dwell in rhythm. He's no time-beater; and he conveys a sense of metre that moves in long spans and allows musical events to find their right place and time. Detail could be very muscular, and that was a definite asset in the vivid and engaging orchestral prelude, Shadows by Sibelius's fellow Finn, Aulis Sallinen.
All that was in the second half, which was programmed as a striking contrast to the first. There, Grieg's Lyric Suite made an excellent prelude to Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 4, in which the soloist was Nikolai Demidenko.
It seemed that conductor and soloist had decided to overwhelm this concerto's uneven quality through energy and conviction in shaping and delivery. It worked, thanks partly to tight coordination between soloist and orchestra, but above all to Demidenko's extraordinary power and virtuosity, and a range of timbre perfectly attuned to the orchestra. Astonishing pianism. - Martin Adams
The LemonheadsThe Ambassador, Dublin
Evan Dando is a real-life Dorian Gray. Like his fellow rock survivor Dave Navarro, all the years of alcoholism and substance abuse seem to leave nary a trace on his rock-star good looks. At least Keith Richards has always looked like he's living a less-than-healthy existence. To see Dando march onto the Ambassador stage, however, is to be transported back to the early 1990s when It's a Shame About Ray and Come On Feel The Lemonheads provided the sunny, bubblegum pop antidote to the prevailing grunge soundtrack. He still looks exactly as handsome, except this time Dando appears to be clean and sober, a rare event in the good old days.
Instead of burning out, as Dando's behaviour at the time suggested they would, The Lemonheads just faded away, officially splitting in 1997, a few years after anyone really cared. A Dando solo album appeared in 2004 but it was only with the announcement that The Lemonheads were returning that people started to take notice again.
Not that it's exactly a reunion in any sense - The Lemonheads line-up was always a revolving door of musical talent - more that Dando has decided to use the name for his recordings again. For last year's warmly received comeback album, simply titled The Lemonheads, he recruited Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez, the rhythm section of Descendents. For this tour, though, he's backed up by bassist Vess Ruhtenberg and drummer Devon Ashley from The Pieces. It's The Lemonheads then, but not as we've ever known them.
This performance is a jaunty, nostalgic event, though it's often pointed out that Dando's songs sounded nostalgic even back in 1992.
Wearing a faded Rod Stewart T-shirt, Dando gets off to a false start on a Nashville-style opener, and it isn't the only occasion songs are interrupted by mistimed musicianship. Dando can still be highly strung - a recent US performance ended with a frustrated Dando departing the stage early - but here technical problems are all part of the easy-going, shambolic charm. The new songs, punkier and more muscular, sit well with the old classics, but it's when he launches into a long solo acoustic set that his strengths are most obvious - Into Your Arms and My Drug Buddy, in particular, demonstrate why he will always have devoted fans. A powerful reminder, overall, that sometimes it's nice to just remember. - Davin O'Dwyer
Days of Wine and RosesLyric Theatre, Belfast
Donal and Mona are two young people with a spring in their step, hope in their hearts and one-way tickets out of Belfast. It's the start of the "swingin' Sixties" and the trendy, gold-paved city of London is the only place to be. They meet for the first time at the airport: he a cocky bookie's clerk, with a well-filled hip flask in his back pocket; she a prim, teetotal civil servant, nursing secret dreams of doing something wild with her life. They engage in stilted conversation. She reluctantly accepts her first drink from him and gives him a kiss in return. And in those two tiny moments, their shared fate is sealed.
Owen McCafferty declares that he always knew he would one day write his own story of JP Miller's famous film and it is clearly one which he, like many other Belfast people, knows all too well. The writing, at once muscular and delicate, takes on a cinematic sweep, encompassing a whole cast of unseen characters, such as the mighty Arkle, who incidentally impact upon the increasingly inward-looking, claustrophobic, drink-sodden lives of these two impressionable young people.
Director Roy Heayberd gives Fergal McElherron and Gemma Mae Halligan just the right combination of freedom and restraint with which to forge unfalteringly real performances out of two massively demanding roles. In the process, the audience finds itself sucked into their rapidly closing world, hoping against hope that McCafferty's skilfully crafted glints of bright optimism will surface through the encroaching darkness. Against Sabine Dargent's bare, shabby set and Conleth White's sometimes cruel lighting, McElherron's upbeat Donal rampages through a repeating circle of self-pretence and occasional self-awareness. But the real tragedy lies in Halligan's sweetly believable Mona, on whose face is eventually written the hopelessly sad tale of so many Irish people in London, whose dreams ended up drowned forever at the bottom of a bottle.
Minus an interval, the hour- and-three-quarters duration flies and few will leave the theatre without feeling they have played their part in this emotionally draining evening. Runs until May 26 - Jane Coyle
