Celine Dion, Daniel Lanois, a vocal and instrumental ensemble specialising in the renaissance and baroque periods and fun at the Belfast Children's Festival in today's reviews.
Celine Dion,
Croke Park
IF DIABETES was an airborne disease, then Il Divo risked infecting some 40,000 unsuspecting punters last Friday night. They're Westlife with the benefits of a swish finishing school: a sphincter-tightening, pile-inducing foursome whose motto is, evidently: why bother with a single note when an arpeggio will do? With enough chiselled cheekbones to trump anything on Mount Rushmore, they peddled more smarm than charm with their operatic pop plasticine.
In contrast, Celine Dion hit the stage with an unexpectedly sexed up show and a lot more momentum and chutzpah than her support act. Her pink sequined mini and vertiginous heels hinted at the Vegas-like atmosphere that was in store for the 60,000 punters who'd re-mortgaged to be there.
Although these days she comes over more like Shania Twain (with enough nasal effects to propel her into the upper tier of the Hogan stand) than the French Canadian ingénue who won the Eurovision in Dublin in 1988, Dion's stagecraft was an enviable mix of graceful moves, homey familiarity, and at times, unexpectedly masculine gestures.
All the boxes were ticked as she strode through a never-ending stream of greatest hits, with some spectacular costume changes en route. From I Am Your Ladyto I Am Your Angel, she wowed her rapt audience with every quivering lip and note delivered with the confidence of one who has rehearsed them into infinity.
A few welcome covers shifted the gear upwards. All By Myselfallowed her to mine the depths and scale the heights of that exceptional voice. Man's Worldwas delivered with a Shirley Bassey-like feline purr, and We Will Rock Youwas a cap-doffing tribute to one of her personal heroes, the equally melodramatic Freddie Mercury.
Dion doesn't come cheap but her stage show, replete with elastagirl dance routines, gave the audience what it expected, with amps turned right up to 11. All that permatanned emotion cracked though, when she tackled what she confided was "a very personal song" - My Love- and proceeded to go into mascara-running overdrive.
A shiny, happy cover of River Deep, Mountain Highwas equally implausible, but when you can close with a titanic clincher like My Heart Will Go On, who cares what veneers you're wearing?
SIOBHÁN LONG
Snail and the Whale
Belfast Children's Festival
"THE SEA is deep and the world is wide. How I long to sail!" said the tiny snail. Tiny the snail may be but it doesn't prevent her from hitching a lift from a massive whale and visiting exotic lands all over the world.
Julia Donaldson's sweetly simple story of friendship and courage, beautifully illustrated by Axel Scheffler, so captured the imagination of little Jamie McEneaney that his dad Paul, artistic director of Cahoots NI, had the idea of bringing it to new life. It has been no mean feat to acquire permission for a stage adaptation, but then Cahoots has a pretty impressive track record to draw on.
The audience is transported to a world of wacky characters and hypnotic sirens, of sea shanties and magic and wonder.
Christina Nelson is the gloriously named and costumed Madame Escargot, Hugh Brown is her dim-witted but devoted sidekick Bird, while Maryke Del Castillo is bright of face and lithe of limb as her sparky granddaughter Tiny Snail. Within Steve Bamford's gorgeous set and to the strains of Ursula Burns's catchy live music, we encounter all manner of strange creatures from the deep, vividly conjured through illusion and black light animation.
Strangely, in such a rich visual feast, we never actually catch a glimpse of the snail perched on the whale's tail, but the silence and gasps of wonder from the tiny audience members is proof positive that, when you know the story as well as they do, you'll fill in the gaps for yourself.
Touring to Banbridge, Enniskillen, Cavan and Spark Children's Arts Festival, Leicester.
JANE COYLE
Daniel Lanois
IFI, Dublin
"I JUST got hooked on doing cool stuff with sound." This is how Canadian "super producer" Daniel Lanois, who has worked with Bob Dylan, U2, Ron Sexsmith and Peter Gabriel, to name just a few, explains a lifelong passion to music. At an intimate - but jammed - setting at the IFI cinema in Dublin over the weekend, Lanois performed with drummer Brian Blade, who flew in from Berlin for the event.
Lanois and Blade, who have been working together for years, are fascinating to watch. There is an easy, seamless flow between Lanois, dressed in a leather jacket, tight trousers and a black cap, and the skinny, bespectacled Blade. "I like the groove Brian plays with this," Lanois says, as he starts up The Maker, which has been covered by Emmylou Harris and Dave Matthews, amongst others.
Playing a song inspired by "sad native Americans who lost their soul to the bottle", Lanois describes how he used to play guitar at the Six Nations Indian reserve in Canada, near where he grew up. Lanois also performed a lovely folk song, Jolie Louise, in a mixture of French and English, and finished up with a fantastic track on pedal steel, his "church in a suitcase".
After the performance, Lanois took a seat beside U2's Adam Clayton for the screening of Here Is What Is. This documentary takes you right into the creative process: Lanois's love for "performance mixing"; how he "maximises the potential" of musicians; the ways he thumbs, then finger-picks the guitar. All the detail of the recording studio - Lanois's "temple" - are at the heart of this film, with everything from up-close shots of wires, mics and his fluffy white rugs to the knobbly hands of Canadian pianist Garth Hudson and Lanois's guitar-bashed fingertips.
It all comes together as a rather long and rambling mish-mash of studio moments, with pyschedelic images, some surreal conversations with Brian Eno in Morocco, an uncanny visit to Billy Bob Thornton and bizarre dance scenes by Argentinian performer Carolina Cerisola.
Overall, however, the evening proved to be a rare treat, offering fascinating insight into Lanois's remarkable devotion to music and sonic experimentation.
SORCHA HAMILTON
Armonico Consort: The Marriage of Figaro
Mahony Hall, The Helix, Dublin
MICHAEL DUNGAN
THE ARMONICO Consort is a British vocal and instrumental ensemble formed in 2001 chiefly to perform music from the renaissance and baroque periods. Under its ambitious founder and artistic director Christopher Monks, the consort has expanded quickly, embarking on a substantial and well-funded schools programme in 2005.
Fours years on from adding opera to its activities in 2004, the Armonico Consort has already made its second visit to Dublin, this time with its own production of Mozart's jolly The Marriage of Figaro.
Unlike some economically careful opera companies, the AC is not ostensibly "shoe-string". Sarah Chew's 1950s-era staging and costumes, though minimal, have a look of quality.
And while the small period orchestra dresses formally, the programme notes are stapled photocopies - all the information you need without expense wasted on gloss.
Nor are there superstars in the cast. The standard of singing and acting in this performance, however, was uniformly high and engaging.
Particularly notable was the scene-stealing Count, sung by Thomas Eaglen, who underlined his character's nastier, predatory traits with a smiling and handsome, almost sociopathic, demeanour reminiscent of Hollywood villain Billy Zane in Dead Calmand Titanic. It was difficult to forgive him at the end.
The trouser role of Cherubino was taken well enough by Swedish mezzo Lina Markeby who then shone, as she had in the title role of Wexford's La Tragédie de Carmen, in her Act II aria.
The Figaro of Ashley Bremner and the Susannah of Emma Jayakumar were winning and warm, and it was good to see the opera's least sympathetic role, that of the Countess, taken by a young singer, Katie Bird.
Unfortunately, much of what seemed to be a pretty snappy English translation was lost due to balance problems arising from having the orchestra on stage.
SORCHA HAMILTON
