Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events

The Exit Wound
Triskel Arts Centre
Cork

Mary Leland

In his new play Exit Wound Meridian's Johnny Hanrahan displays once again his narrative flair. His writing talent expresses itself in a rich fusion of imagery and metaphor, beautifully rendered in this case by Michael Loughnan.

As Hugh, Loughnan's weighted voice carries the characterisation of Irish emigrants, all "dreaming a bad dream of themselves" in the America of the 1960s from which he has now returned. As he talks, prompted by a granddaughter at the other end of a long, narrow table decorated by a cake carrying a miniature Statue of Liberty, three elderly and silent waifs circumnavigate Triskel's main auditorium possibly as an evocation of those who did not return, or even of those who did not leave.

With the revelation that Hugh left because he found his wife betraying him with his brother who was a priest, the power of the narrative is deflated; the exaggeration is unconvincing and does not reward the audience for the increasing discomfort imposed by backless seating.

A susurration of movement as people sitting along the length of the table straighten their backs, slump again, stretch necks or rotate shoulders may be intended; in a production of this kind, how do we know?

The audience is then led to another "space" in which we have to wear blindfolds so as to better appreciate the aural sequences which are fashioned around a commentary on the visit of John FitzGerald Kennedy to Cork.

At least there are chairs, but the question arises irresistibly: not why do we have to listen to this masked and in darkness but why do we have to listen to it at all? All the same, the audience seems to be united in a spirit of good-humoured stoicism as we move to the third "space", but here we dissolve into a crowd of seat-searchers, most end up sitting on the floor. The whole composition wavers; we are an audience no longer.

Although Elizabeth Moynihan works very well through the third of the sequences which constitute the presentation, many people cannot see her expression or what she opens, looks at, draws or fondles.

This is a failure of simple theatre-craft for which Hanrahan as director as well as writer is responsible.

If this character, again reminiscing on a long and doleful slice of family history punctuated by the assassination of President Kennedy, matters at all, isn't there some rule or other that says, basically, and I apologise for pointing this out, that the audience should be able to see her?

Of course it's fun and even important to break the rules, extend the boundaries and melt the barriers and all that, but the ever-narrowing line between experiment and self-indulgence has been crossed - by miles - in this offering.

Runs to Dec 2nd

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble
St Anne's Church,
Dawson Street
Dublin

Ray Comiskey

The visit of Christian Wallumrød's quartet, presented by Note Productions as part of a short Irish tour, brought in one of the most distinctive bands on the current Norwegian music scene for an interesting and occasionally absorbing concert.

Whether or not the group's music can insinuate itself into even so genre-bending a genre as jazz is a moot point. If labels are required, the sounds produced by this ensemble seem to derive more from classical music and Norwegian folk than anything else, and though there is improvisation, a prime characteristic of jazz, that is also present in both folk and classical music.

Not that this is likely to bother Wallumrød, the leader and pianist and harmonium player, who wrote most of the pieces used, or any of the his

colleagues - Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Nils Okland (violin/Hardanger fiddle/viola d'amore) and Per OddvarJohansen (drums). This is a group which has been together for years, ploughing this particular furrow with unsparing commitment.

And it shows. There is a superb balance and blend within the quartet, particularly in the way Henriksen's unique trumpet sound is accommodated in an ensemble that also offers the distinctive colours that Okland brings to it. And, with so many of the pieces performed rubato, the sheer restraint and discipline maintained while handling this were hugely impressive.

Essentially, the music offers emotional, rather than technical, complexity.

Much of it circled round some simple, recurring motifs, hardly surprising since Sarabande Nouvelle, Edith, Small Picture No 3 and No 2 and Memor all came from the band's ECM debut, Sofienberg Variations. Nine further pieces were drawn from its second ECM CD, A Year from Easter, with three new pieces, Folkeseisse, Textur 1 and a feature for Okland, Straum, which he wrote, to complete the concert.

It's an austere music in which compositional demands loom large and improvisation, while present, takes second place to the overall ensemble sound. But in its bleakness there were some striking moments of great beauty, even charm. If ultimately there were not enough such moments to satisfy personally, this must be put down to differences of temperament.

Survivors
Cork Arts Theatre

Mary Leland

Admiration for its gifted and gallant cast can't compensate for what seems like an absence of direction for the Skylight Productions presentation of Survivors, Declan Hassett's new play. Perhaps Michael Twomey thought the piece, which burdens a small west Cork farming family with a series of disasters from death on the Titanic to a wife-beating husband; from the murder of Michael Collins to a cliff-top incident, would run on the steam of its overheated plot.

Certainly it's true that the players fit into their roles as if into familiar overcoats in winter, but in this case the overcoats are either too big or too small, too homespun or too brazenly manufactured.

Thus the zips, short skirts and stiletto heels of rural Ireland in 1922, the scatter-gun approach to authenticity, characters

who roar at one another even when they're only passing the sugar, the unedited extravagances of the plot itself, the long speeches which some actors deliver like arias and others like catalogues (there's a lot of explaining to be done), the unstockinged legs of hirsute young men pretending to be little boys: this is a production screeching for directorial attention.

Twomey at least has selected an accomplished cast: Lorraine Manley, Anne Dorgan and Kevin O'Meara are committed to a script in which banality is illuminated by acute phrases and balanced rhythms, while Ronnie O'Shaughnessy, here a cross between Mother Courage and Lady Windermere, is as poised and elegant as no west Cork grandmother living in a thatched cabin has any right to be.

So Hassett too is lucky in that all these people honour his work, despite the additional challenges of a new theatre where lack of soundproofing allows industrial steel-cutting to permeate the opening scene and where the lighting is the kind that has to go up before it can go down.

Runs to Dec 2nd