Irish Times writers review a selection of events from the world of arts.
The Gimmick. Town Hall Theatre, Galway
Irish Arts festivals often feature large numbers of one-man or one-woman shows from abroad, usually performed by their authors. Unlike their Irish equivalent - the dreaded monologue play - such productions tend to be both more theatrical and more dynamic: the actors often play multiple roles, focusing the audience's attention on performance rather than plot; and their authors draw on stand-up comedy, performance art, and movement as much as the dramatic tradition. The Gimmick, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith, is an excellent example of this genre's strengths - and of some of its weaknesses too.
It presents a simple morality tale about the upbringing of Alexis, a gifted young black woman, in 1960s Harlem. The characters in her story are familiar: the drunken mother, the first love who betrays her, the prostitute who attempts to corrupt her, and the kindly librarian who introduces her to books and the possibility of a better life. The plot follows a similarly well-worn path: Alexis struggles against the odds (including the inevitable sexual assault) to define herself on her own terms.
This seems entirely unoriginal, but it's given credibility by the astonishing emotional integrity of Orlandersmith's performance, not only as Alexis, but in the play's five other roles too. Alexis is in an environment which defines her in order to limit her: as a woman, as black, as overweight. It's through her discovery of the writings of James Baldwin, who left Harlem in order to celebrate it through literature, that Alexis begins to imagine the possibility of her own voice being allowed expression.
The landscape explored by this play is therefore both emotional and physical: Orlandersmith vividly describes Harlem's streets and inhabitants, but we also form a detailed understanding of her character's responses to universal dilemmas.
This performance is enhanced by measured direction from Thomas Conway and excellent lighting by Nick Smith, who imaginatively uses spotlighting, colour, and blackout to emphasise Orlandersmith's treatment of race and the construction of women as sexual objects. The genre and plot may be over-familiar - but the theatricality of The Gimmick makes it an angry yet humorous play, brilliantly performed. - Patrick Lonergan
Runs until tomorrow
Starlight Express. Point Theatre
As a child drifts into sleep, he enters a dream-world in which train-people compete in a speed championship of the world.
The main competitors are the defending champion, Greaseball, an incredible hunk; Electra, a new star, all colour and flashing lights; and young Rusty, true to the steam engine.
What follows is an engaging fantasy in which Andrew Lloyd Webber's music switches between melody and rock, with Richard Stilgoe's lyrics a perfect fit. As the National Engines assemble for the race, we meet the Diesel supporters, the Electric gang and the Steam survivors, all uniting in the song Rolling Stock - the lyricist doesn't miss a trick - with the entire cast on roller skates throughout.
The leaders must have a partner in tow, and four delectable carriages - a Smoker, Observation Car etc - are recruited as race mates. Rusty's beloved but confused Pearl, after singing the plaintive Make Up My Heart, chooses to team up with Electra. Then we're off on the first heat, for which 3D glasses are supplied so that the audience may have racers and a variety of objects hurtling at them; an effective gimmick.
The action is studded with groups of performers combining in imaginative numbers, with old-timer Poppa leading the fray - for that's what it is - with his smoky Blues song. Rusty finally wins and gets the girl, and the entire company delivers a prolonged rocker in There's a Light at the End of the Tunnel. Production values are extraordinarily good, with skate-based choreography, stunning lighting effects, colourful costumes and a phenomenal expenditure of energy by a terrific cast.
As Damon Runyon once said, the race is not always to the swift or the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet. This one is a winner. - Gerry Colgan
Runs until Aug 19th
NCC/Putnins. National Gallery, Dublin
Darzins - Lied der Mignon. Die Kinder Zions.
Martins Vilums - Le temps scintilla. Maija Einfelde - Due rose.
Peteris Vasks - Three Poems by Czeslaw Milosz
Thursday's programme in the National Chamber Choir's Eros and Thanatos series was devoted to music by Latvian composers, and given under Kaspars Putnins, one of the conductors of the Latvian Radio Choir.
The programme was built as a kind of arch. The two pieces by Emils Darzins (1875-1910) (Lied der Mignon and Die Kinder Zions) and the Three Poems by Czeslaw Milosz by Peteris Vasks (born 1946), Latvia's best-known living composer, shared a fondness for euphony.
Putnins secured some of the most honeyed sounds I've yet heard from these singers.
The Vasks, written for the Hilliard Ensemble, and premièred by them in 1995, obviously takes a broader view of sonic sweetness than the Darzins, and it also makes rather too great a feature of additive stuttering as a means of progressing from a starting point. But the two pieces provided a usefully contrasting frame for the evening's other music.
Le temps scintille by Martins Vilums (born 1974) makes much use of advanced vocal techniques to create onomatopoeic effects in a setting that intercuts texts by Valéry and Rilke.
The singers mimic rushing winds and sussurations, they breathe heavily and hiss. They slide, swoop, scoop and ululate, solo voices occasionally emerging with ardent vibrato.
It's just the sort of thing that used to be an avant-garde nightmare for most performers, and something of a trial for most listeners.
But the NCC have conquered this kind of territory before, and Vilums is not so much pressing at the boundaries, as reclaiming the techniques for the centre ground.
Due rose by Maija Einfelde (born 1939) was receiving its first performance. It's a setting of two Petrarch sonnets in a style of latter-day romanticism that assumes the singers can shift their voices as easily as if they were wearing the musical equivalent of seven-league boots. There were moments when the demands of the writing produced audible strain. But the effect remained strangely gripping. - Michael Dervan
Gavin Friday. Liberty Hall, Dublin
With the dizzying angles of German Expressionism, the weary decadence of Weimar, the electronic pulse of Krautrock and the grind of Gothic, Tommorrow Belongs to Me is billed as Gavin Friday's "personal tribute" to 20th-century German culture.
Touched as 20th-century German culture must feel, it may wonder what is so personal about Friday's recognition.
His new show, somewhere between a gig, a revue and a performance piece, is a triumph of design - an impressive montage of Teutonic quotation, beautifully illuminated by the dusty glow of footlights and billowing clouds of smoke.
Musically it's irreproachable, performed by a group that includes cellist Kate Ellis, guitarist Anto Drennan and bassist Cáit O'Riordan - all capable of switching from kabaret to krautrock at the drop of a synthesiser.
And Friday himself, never knowingly understated, performs his customary mix of strut and lurch, croak and croon, earnestly as one might hope.
But if there is a nagging sense that this has all been done before, no one is more aware of this than Friday.
In the sparse, descending cadence of his first number, In Germany Before the War, lurks a foreboding portrait of Germany in 1934 on the cusp of horror.
It's perfectly observed, but the observation belongs to Randy Newman.
Following with Lou Reed's Berlin and carefully referencing David Bowie's flirtations with German culture throughout, Friday openly acknowledges those who have introduced him to a new vocabulary of ideas. But it also enforces the feeling that his insights and interpretations come second-hand.
In essence, then Friday works as a performing curator, exhibiting images from seminal German cinema where The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Nosferatu can flicker by in sepia hues.
Meanwhile his larynx struggles with the velvet despair of Marlene Dietrich, while he smiles or slumps for no discernible reason, the display of a man who knows something we don't. Too often our job is to spot his references and applaud his taste.
This is easiest in his excellent versions of Kraftwerk, translating chilly electronica into something more human and pungent.
But the task becomes hardest during a tiresome sequence of Gay Bynre-style audience interaction called Spin the Bottle.
Irony may provide Friday with an alibi, but the episode seems designed only to flatter Becks, his already overwhelmingly conspicuous sponsor.
Is it coincidence that Friday has a similar problem with his tribute, constantly hovering between intelligent placing and overkill? - Peter Crawley
