Irish Timeswriters review the Wexford Festival Operain Johnstown Castle, Circus Cabaretat Club ImMortal, and Editorsat the Olympia
Wexford Festival Opera, Johnstown Castle
Weill - The Silverlake
The Wexford Festival seems to relish an extra element of unusual challenge, as if mounting an annual season of rare operas in a small town in the southeast of Ireland is not already in itself a daunting enough undertaking.
A new opera house is under construction, and, due to rescheduling, the 2007 festival, which opened on Thursday, is the third in two years, and for the second time in just over six months has involved the organisation in the preparation of a new venue. Following last year's customisation of the Dún Mhuire Theatre in Wexford town, the festival has now unveiled a new, temporary theatre ("the largest temporary covered structure ever to be erected in Ireland"), adjoining Johnstown Castle.
The first production there also broke new territory. The Silverlake is a work that falls rather uncomfortably between play and opera. It has too much music and singing to be one, too little to be the other. Georg Kaiser's play to music by Kurt Weill (if you want to look at it that way) is an allegory dripping in political and social significance for its time - the first performances took place in three German cities, Leipzig, Erfurt and Magdeburg, on the same day, February 18th, 1933, with Hitler in position to change the face of Europe.
The work treats of poverty, injustice, avarice, revenge and redemption, opening with a symbolic burial of hunger, and ending with a lake that miraculously freezes over in spring to save two reconciled enemies who think they're walking to a watery death. It's a rags-to-riches-and-back story that serves as a launching pad for caricature and diatribe.
The Silverlake presents extreme difficulties of casting, as it requires neither singers who can act nor actors who can sing, but performers who are fully adept at both. In Keith Warner's new Wexford production, individuals' actual specialisations were evident, but in a way that emphasised rather than contradicted the hybrid nature of the undertaking. The use of amplification was mostly unobtrusive.
Weill is one of those composers who was so good at near repetition of his successes that sometimes his music can seem like a pastiche of itself. In general, the music in The Silverlake is as efficient as the play is fantastical.
Warner's is the kind of production that you would call scattergun, if it weren't for the fact that so many of the shots hit their target. It is busy, physical, engaged and engaging, and Jason Southgate's designs set out to match it stroke by stroke.
The cast worked well as an ensemble, with Simon Gleeson's Severin and Nina Bernsteiner's Fennimore stealing the musical laurels, and Anita Dobson's Cruella de Vil-ish Frau von Luber looking for and getting most of the belly laughs. Timothy Redmond drove the orchestra of the Wexford Festival Opera with a firm hand.
The Silverlake is the kind of theatrical curiosity that probably doesn't have a viable future in its original form, any more than it has a rich past. But it's a curiosity that, for all its longueurs, also turned out to be enriching for its idealism. - Michael Dervan
Circus Cabaret at Club ImMortal, George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin
The tattooed performers of NoFitState troupe at Club ImMortal are clad in leather basques; they are criminals on the run, not clowns. They perform breathtaking trapeze tricks with elegant ease, but their aerial aids look more like torture devices than equipment designed to support them. The heavy red lights are the fires of hell. The shadows on the marquee's ceiling are the ghosts of sins stalking their victims. The live score is the soundtrack to salvation or damnation, you can never quite be sure.
The theme of ImMortal is the end of the world. The performers are moving through purgatory, towards heaven or hell, and with each aerial dance they are learning to let go; it is in physical and emotional freedom that we can find immortality in our existential death. This theme is not a story but an atmosphere; a dark, gritty, post-apocalyptic atmosphere that is spooky and spellbinding and full of suspense.
As a promenade-style performance, the audience is also walking through the landscape of the afterlife. Choreographed by the performers, the audience follows the troupe around the tent, watching open-mouthed as an acrobat simultaneously spins as many as 20 (yes, 20!) hula hoops around her tiny frame, using her neck, her knees, her hips and her head to spin the circular discs faster and faster. The use of live digital projection and shadow provides a sophisticated visual aesthetic against which such acrobatic tricks take place.
ImMortal is more adult in theme (and sometimes gesture) than parents of young children might be comfortable with, but 10-year-olds used to the darkness of the dungeons in a Harry Potter film will certainly be spellbound. Although two hours is a long time for tired legs to keep standing, once you don't mind being moved around along with the action, cross-legged spectators are welcome. And from the floor, the performers' aerial feats are even more breathtaking. - Sara Keating
Runs until June 24th (except Mondays)
Editors, Olympia, Dublin
Editors are a different animal to the rest of the pack of current British guitar bands. They might have the standard set-up, but there are no jangly populist guitar lines here. Instead, it's music of a darker hue, a little more crafted and tempered, with writing and lyrics that are intelligent, edgy and slightly enigmatic.
Frontman Tom Smith draws the audience's focus on stage. Flinging himself around the stage, he claws the air around him, inhabiting each track with a glorious lack of self-consciousness. His rolling, baritone voice could flatten a house; and with his rich, dark, languid English, Smith seems to intone the songs rather than sing them. This, together with his onstage theatrics, means an alternative career as a James Bond villain could be a viable option.
Editors have given themselves a fairly punishing tour schedule since releasing their first album, The Back Room, in 2005, and it shows. This band are gig-fit, without an ounce of flab in the playing. Each song has pinpoint precision in the timing and the attack. Bassist Russell Leetch rolls around the fretboard artfully and deftly, while drummer Ed Lay matches him beat for beat, building a rock-solid backline. Guitarist Chris Urbanowicz has the riffs and soaring guitar lines to match Smith's vocal and lift the whole room. The only down-point is that Smith's guitar is occasionally swallowed up by the rest of the sound. This is barely worth a mention, though; the energy on stage is tremendous and the percussive drive in each song is relentless.
Despite having only one album released and another due in the next few weeks (An End Has a Start), the crowd sing along to nearly every track. The opening bars of Munich, Blood and Bullets are met with howls, and the choruses are a spectator sport. Even the new single, Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors, is received like an old favourite. There is hardly a pause for breath. It's an aggressive, breakneck-paced pack of songs that floors the audience, leaving them breathless, exhausted and enthralled. Laurence Mackin
