Graduates of the Gaiety School of Acting get the thumbs up while industrial metal on offer in Cork is less well received.
Music: Faust
Spiegeltent, Cork Midsummer Festival
Support act Bagio set the tone here for a night of postmodern industrial punk, opening their set from the audience, donning chequered smog masks and goggles and belting out a series of riffs and drumbeats. By playing from one of the seating booths, away from the stage, they certainly succeeded in getting the audience's attention, although one suspects their attire might have achieved that regardless.
Employing a theremin and an assortment of effects pedals, as well as drums and lead guitar, this duo from Hamburg created an engaging wall of sound, part industrial, part metal. Should they decide to dispense with the over-use of a smoke machine (it didn't work for Engine Alley after all), then perhaps they are on the right track.
By the time Faust took to the stage, then, the audience was well primed for the act often considered the most radical German outfit of the early 1970s. They were, then and now, intent on ear violence and incoherent and disgruntled coherence, and where it may once have sounded stark and alarming, today it sounds clunky and lifeless.
Opening to some industrial sounds and a large chain pulled through an oil barrel, the act more closely resembled a punked-up version of the musical Stomp than a pioneering industrial outfit.
They have been outdone, perhaps, by their own success and influence. The sequence of grooves was at times interesting, especially for anyone fed on a diet of Goldfrapp and Björk, but, programmers should take note, this was not a half-ten-on-a-Saturday-night kind of act. Vocals, alternating between French, German and English, were hard to decipher and sounded like the meandering of a Tridentine priest struggling to be heard over the mutterings of his congregation.
Although, when a chainsaw was revved through the auditorium, further blurring the line between music and noise, the audience's attention was fully engaged, prompting one knowledgeable punter to observe astutely: "That's a four-stroke oil and petrol model."
Faust perform at the Electric Picnic on Aug 30
BRIAN O'CONNELL
The Muse Unbidden/God's Lap
Project, Dublin
The 2008 graduation class of the Gaiety School of Acting showed its wares in, as usual, two plays written specially for the occasion. Both are comedies, but they are very different in form and style.
Roger Gregg's The Muse Unbiddenis set in a workshop for aspirant poets, and puts seven of them under a psychological microscope. The class leader is a loser, dedicated to a kind of poetry signalled by the title, which comes spontaneously from the subconscious. He manages to strike creative sparks from his students, who come from various social backgrounds. Among these are a muscle man, a toffee-nosed university student and a married woman with problems at home.
There are also three Muses (Tragedy, Comedy and Erotic Verse) to spice things up. It is very funny while still touching recognisable nerves, and the acting is excellent.
God's Lap, by Paul O'Brien, also has a cast of 10, here New Testament apostles led by a Christ figure named George. It is a broad comedy in which the group engage in infighting, sexual innuendo and practice, and a language that the Gospels do not know. Much of this generates uninhibited laughter, but some of it is excessive for its context, which is hardly a penetrating satire, and lampoons seriously sacred beliefs. Too heavy a blow to the funny bone can hurt even the tolerant.
The cast rise professionally to the challenge of the dialogue, milking it for laughter. There is a plot of sorts, increasingly opaque until it ends in total obscurity, which really doesn't matter. The medium is the message.
In sum, this is a very entertaining evening from the Gaiety School and its graduates.
GERRY COLGAN
