A look at what is happening in the arts by Irish Times journalists
84 Charing Cross Road
Andrew's Lane Theatre, Dublin
The tale of a spirited little commercial enterprise battling against straitened circumstances, but trading on warm camaraderie, limited product, a canny eye for the market, and a whole lot of heart, 84 Charing Cross Roadis to be the final production at the main theatre in Andrew's Lane.
You may notice the faintest glimmer of similarity between the plucky little London bookshop immortalised by Helene Hanff's steady patronage from overseas, and the plucky little commercial Dublin theatre that soldiered on for the best part of 20 years until it was sadly forced to bite the bullet and sell its premises for a mere €9.25 million. Only those seriously expecting an unflinching slab of gritty realism as the theatre's swansong would resent it one last hurrah of unchecked sentimentality and nostalgia. James Roose-Evans's stage adaptation of Hanff's epistolary novel offers precisely that, presenting an uncomplicated illustration of a love affair with the printed word and international capitalism, in which letters, books, and lavish gifts shuttle back and forth between Hanff (Karen Ardiff) in New York and the London-bound stoic wage-slave Frank Doel (Simon Coury), from 1949 to 1970.
Ardiff, who performs her commandeering yet flirtatious bibliophile with winning chutzpah and a nicotine huskiness, must signal a ravenous hunger for antiquarian literature. But, tellingly, Roose-Evans's play can't communicate the intellectual nourishment of reading, instead presenting their acquisition as a simply sensuous experience. "I never knew literature could be such a joy to touch," she purrs.
Coury, nicely reserved as her slowly warming correspondent, is surrounded by a gaggle of Dickensian creations, their post-war, ration-starved hardship played with bright-eyed, bushy-tailed gusto by Carrie Crowley, Katharine Fullam, Ian Blackmore and Jonathan Delaney-Tynan. There is one unintentionally nasty moment, when a displeased Ardiff suddenly threatens to downgrade the foodstuffs she munificently sends, and the shop's "inmates" scuttle around like terror-stricken galley slaves. Later, drunk on de Tocqueville, Ardiff mock-chides Britain's colonial history, but who is the imperialist in this situation?
Sensitive to the fact that Hanff's rigorously detailed pay packets and Doel's meticulously acquired holdings may sound, at times, like the correspondence between an accounts ledger and a library catalogue, Terry Byrne directs this real story with an unreal glow of escapism; while personal and historical details ebb and flow, the lights, by Kevin Smith, are never allowed to rise above sepia.
Handsomely performed, designed and directed to stir up rosy sentiments for a time before Amazon.com, it cannot completely keep the mildew of mawkishness away. But, as the sniffles of the faithful drift around the auditorium for one last time, one suspects it has not been asked to.
Runs until July
Peter Crawley
Duff, IBO/Huggett
National Gallery, Dublin
Boccherini - Symphony in D minor Op 12 No 4 (La Casa del Diavolo). Saint-Georges - Sinfonia Concertante for two violins. Haydn - Farewell Symphony
The repertoire of the classical era has become a new focus for the Irish Baroque Orchestra. The orchestra's tour, which ended at the National Gallery offered one of the best-loved of classical symphonies (Haydn's Farewell), the best-known symphony by a composer from the sidelines (Boccherini's Symphony La casa del diavolo), and a rarity by a man who's been dubbed "the black Mozart" (a Sinfonia Concertante for two violins by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges).
The Shaw Room of the National Gallery is an almost perfect setting for Haydn's Farewell Symphony, which interrupts the rapid finale with slow music and the progressive depletion of the orchestra as musicians depart the stage, leaving only two violins together at the end. At its first performance the composer was sending a message to his patron that his musicians had tired of a protracted sojourn in the country, and wanted to return to their families in Vienna. The Shaw Room's curved double staircase provided the best exit route I've seen in this work.
The performance, directed from the violin by Monica Huggett, was sparky and passionate, even to the point of allowing the horns sometime blot out the violins in their enthusiasm.
Saint-Georgesseems to have been successful at everything he turned his hand to, playing the violin, composing, running an orchestra. His Sinfonia Concertante, Op. 13, is one of those works which is much easier for its listeners than for its soloists - here Huggett and Claire Duff - whose acrobatics include some impressively wide leaps. The music itself is more pretty than profound.
Boccherini's Casa del diavolo Symphony is famous for its finale, which goes to town on a famous passage from Gluck, which serves as the descent into hell in the ballet. Don Juan and the Dance of the Furies in Orphee. The IBO's performance was vivid and stirring.
Michael Dervan
Concorde
National Gallery, Dublin
It's possible to augment something's perceived value by giving it a heavy price tag. For example, a €90 ticket can endow a concert with an aura of unmissable worth.
The opposite way is to make something free of charge. This seems to say, "We are so confident in our product that we want you to try it because we believe you'll like it." It was a great idea for contemporary music ensemble Concordeto take this approach and present an afternoon of mini-concerts in different spaces around the National Gallery. People of all ages drifted in and out, staying if they liked what they heard, or leaving if a piece wasn't their cup of tea. There was a sense of gallery-visitors engaging with an art form which perhaps they weren't expecting to encounter when they set out to look at paintings.
These strike me as near-perfect conditions for bringing together new music and a sometimes reluctant or fearful public. Perhaps free booklets or CDs would have helped steer people towards attending concerts in the future.
In all, various combinations of six musicians gave five 30-minute recitals (of which I sampled two and a bit) comprising 16 works, most of them Irish, and among them several first performances.
Sometimes there was an accidental synergy between sound and vision, as in the gentle transience of Rhona Clarke's 2006 Improvisations for Alto Flute, strikingly matched by the languid clouds of the surrounding landscapes in the Beit Wing.
Elaine Agnew's 2003 Snowhole needed no visual corroboration. Her evocative setting for voice and cello of Michael Longley's poem nicely captured the tender image of a bed as a vast, white snowscape.
In the sampling I heard there were perhaps too many slow, ruminative pieces in succession. While anything really loud or abrasive might have been out of place in the gallery, it would have been no harm to provide a greater leavening of livelier works like Vladimir Zubitsky's 1974 Carpathian Suite, with solo accordionist Dermot Dunne delivering its pulsing Ukrainian folk rhythms and flying passagework in a thrilling display of virtuosity.
Michael Dungan
