Irish Timeswriters review Roy, A Footballer's Tale at Half Moon Theatre, Cork; James Galway at Moll Mahony Hall, The Helix, Dublin; Cat Power at Tripod, Dublin RTÉ NSO/Markson at NCH, Dublin
Roy, A Footballer's Tale at Half Moon Theatre, Cork
In Roy, A Footballer's Tale, writer Alec McAllister offers his first play as a confessional monologue on the known life of soccer-player Roy Keane. Myles Horgan in the title role flattens his vowel-sounds to the almost sinister level of the uninflected accent to achieve authenticity, and his pared-down features also contribute to the impact of austere intensity, an integrity either despised or admired by those who love or hate the footballer, of whom there seem to be equal millions.
Childhood in Mayfield, early games with Rockmount, the move to Nottingham Forest and then to Manchester United, marriage, injuries and then service for his own country are all assembled as a familiar story line.
Except, perhaps, for the fact that as a recreational outing in Saipan, the Irish World Cup team were taken to a cliff from which 5,000 Japanese soldiers had jumped to their death rather than surrender. Another playwright might have given this some sardonic relevance to Keane's own commitment to getting things right), but here it merely adds to the mismanagement inflicted on the players. Although it might be possible to accuse McAllister of opportunism in his choice of subject, he has a lively style and Horgan delivers the material, liberally punctuated with conversational obscenities, with increasing command. But sympathy is no substitute for insight; the jokes in fact depend on Keane's own supposed lack of introspection as his career stumbles from playing field to national, and international, controversy. Directed by Jim Nolan and restaged for this touring production by Michael Scott, this City Theatre Dublin production is clearly under-rehearsed, far too static and its one-dimensional impression is not helped by Danny O'Dwyer's video inserts (complete with pause and insert instructions) dimly projected on a wrinkled screen. More immediately problematical however is the fact that McAllister is dealing with living history here. Keane has moved on, Sunderland is in the headlines and not just because of a rapprochement which almost rivals that of Stormont; a playwright either has to keep in step with events or else be more selective in his choices. Runs until May 19th Mary Leland
James Galway at Moll Mahony Hall, The Helix, Dublin
James Galway will turn 70 in less than three years' time, in December 2009. But there was nothing in his playing at The Helix on Thursday that most players half or even a third of his age wouldn't be proud of. And he's still a lot more than star musician. The wise-cracking ebullience of his stage manner marks him out as one of the most natural entertainers in the world of classical music.
He's a bit of a fibber, to be honest. I'm sure every last man, woman and child in the audience correctly read the pantomimish references to Windows 1776 and the wooden fax machine in his introduction to the fantastically ornate, two-flute arrangement of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca he and his wife Jeanne played as an encore.
But his hotel story for the first movement of Poulenc's Flute Sonata, and the mention of a "beautiful girl" who may have inspired its second movement are rather misleading. Poulenc's lover at the time of composition in 1957 was a young infantryman, and the composer joked that the sonata was "proof of the French army's generosity" towards "an old maestro's morale".
Never mind. It's the flute-playing that matters, and the familiar deftness, sweetness and ease are still there. The first half was all French, the Poulenc followed by some Debussy arrangements, and a sonata by Gaubert, an impressionistically sugary-sounding piece, written in a style that suggested its composer was besotted with Grieg and Fauré.
After the interval the playing was all about showmanship, Doppler's Rigoletto Fantasy for two flutes and piano providing a wedding-cake elaborateness of decoration in the only two-flute piece of the main programme. Hamilton Harty's In Ireland was delivered with theatrical flair, and the note-crammed confections of Briccialdi (Carnival of Venice) and Borne Carmen Fantasy) were as colourfully dazzling as the brightest and brashest of costume jewellery.
The over-the-top Mozart arrangement showed a welcome self-awareness of its musical extravagance that the earlier pieces had lacked. The pianist Phillip Moll was at all times an able and tactful partner. Michael Dervan
Cat Power at Tripod, Dublin
The last time this reviewer saw Cat Power, she was a mess. She shuffled around the stage, slurring her words and eked out four songs in more than an hour. It was as uncomfortable and horrible to watch as it was to listen to.
Here, though, she is a new woman, with a polished, subtle outfit that is always in control. Lithe and, frankly, luscious, she prowls around the stage, leaning down low to find a note or three. She pulls them up by the roots, and flings them to the heavens, like a woman pulling new song from a freshly ploughed field. She's anxious on stage, flitting between musicians, urging and coaxing songs out with her smooth-as-gravel tones.
And what a band to be cajoling tracks out of. The Dirty Delta Blues Band could not be more aptly named. Jim White's drumming is fluid and nonchalant; he swings his arms about, reaching up high to smack down on the snare with precise softness, for all the world like a percussive preacher trying to convert the crowd. If his shapes sound familiar, it's because when he's not driving Power's backline, he pays the rent by playing with the explosive Dirty Three. Bassist Erik Paparozzi is there every step of the way, pushing on country growls that Judah Bauer (from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) builds sweet, flighty, aggressive guitar licks around.
Power has always been one for a good cover version. She strips classics such as (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and New York, New York of their timing and hooks, gnawing them back to the bone, until all that's left is the lyrics and a few meaty scraps of melody. The results are powerful stuff.
But where is the vocal? On record, Cat Power has a beautiful oak-aged timbre, all smoke, soul and velvet. Here, though, it's barely discernable.
She may have one of the most distinct vocals in modern music, but it's never pushed beyond the throat. A fabulous group, then, without the vocal to quite match it, but utterly endearing all the same. Laurence Mackin
Tuite, RTÉ NSO/Markson at NCH, Dublin
• Beethoven- Prometheus Overture. Piano Concerto No 1.
• Mahler- Adagio from Symphony No 10.
• Schubert- Unfinished Symphony.
For his Mahler symphony cycle with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Gerhard Markson has chosen to end with the Eighth Symphony, the so-called Symphony of a Thousand, which requires so many performers the NCH cannot accommodate it.
The Eighth will be heard at the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght on Saturday, May 26th. Mahler's Tenth Symphony, left incomplete at the composer's death, featured in last Friday's programme at the NCH, when Markson provocatively placed its opening Adagio before Schubert's Unfinished and played the two musical torsos as a single piece, asking the listeners to hold their applause until the very end.
The conductor's approach to the Mahler was squarish and rather chilling.
He treated the music as the antithesis of culmination or fulfilment, the work of a composer who was probing, often through disorienting sidesteps, into a future of musical uncertainty. Where might Mahler have been going, Markson seemed to ask, only to answer that we do not know. Schubert's Unfinished was treated as an almost relieved return to terra firma.
Dublin pianist Peter Tuite, made an auspicious subscription series debut in Beethoven's First Concerto. There was something a little old-mannish in his playing, and I don't mean this in any negative sense.
He played as if from the elevated perspective of long experience.
His manner was soft-spoken, and his control of tone-colour and inflection was such that he often seemed to be caressing the sound out of the instrument. The abiding spirit of the music-making was of a gentle bonhomie which Tuite snapped out of only a couple of times, not least during the first movement cadenza.
Markson, who had opened the concert with a rather burly account of Beethoven's Prometheus Overture, successfully scaled down the orchestra's sound to match the intimacy of Tuite's playing in the concerto. Michael Dervan
