The Irish Timeswriters review the latest offerings from the arts world
Kings of Leon
The O2
Kings of Leon- three American southern brothers and a cousin - have, in the past six years, risen from playing strip clubs to selling out arena-sized venues.
All this in the shadow of an intriguing back story (they formed when the career of their peripatetic preacher father, Leon Followill, came to an abrupt end in a wave of drink and marital problems) that has helped the family band form a barrier against cynics and not-so-well wishers.
Kings of Leonarrived at the O2 on a career high, at least in Europe. While touring their home country appears to be little more than a campaign of hard-graft attrition, this side of the Atlantic they are heralded as being saviours of a reasonably basic but quite exciting kind of southern rock.
Across four albums, Youth and Young Manhood(2003), Aha Shake Heartbreak(2004), Because of the Times(2006) and this year's Only by the Night, they have delivered music that references the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Jason the Scorchers.
The root of their music is certifiably rustic and part CW, but the execution is definitely informed by punk rock.
The crowd, energised by their first experience of an impressive venue and the viral rumours that U2 will act as support are up for anything the band will throw at them. Unusually for a band of their stature, verbal communication skills are at a minimum, so the music has to speak volumes.
It's all in the build-up; most of the songs start throbbing gently, gradually rising to a swell that brings along the audience to some kind of collective seismic - jeez, almost orgasmic - shift.
Nowhere is this more apparent or more successful than in Sex On Fire, during which the audience as one groan under the weight of a terrific song and the sight of four guys in tight jeans.
Formulaic? A tad, but any hint of unoriginality is superseded by a crunchier-than-usual display of rock'n'roll that is nigh on impossible not to like.
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
Aladdin
Olympia, Dublin
The Olympia theatre in Dublin, like a proud old lady whose attire has seen better days, totters onwards through the hurly-burly year, parting her curtains on comedians and musicians, and offering her sticky velvet seats to punters with pints in plastic glasses.
Now though it is Christmas, and the bands and the stand-ups have been replaced by the panto.
For the festive season, The Olympia's doors open to busy little girls in party frocks and distracted boys with their fists buried in popcorn boxes, all rushing to their rickety seats to view Aladdin.
This Aladdin, whose painted sets represent a cartoonish Orient, is however firmly located in the here and now.
The gags, which it has to be said are a little thin on the ground, either concern flatulence or the recession, and include the ubiquitous Eddie Hobbs impersonation from The 98 Toll Trolls who, observing the action from one of the Olympia's decorative boxes, advise sitting under someone's seat and sucking up the fallen popcorn rather than splashing out on a box of your own (and at €4.50 a whack in the bar, they might be right).
Despite the somewhat dull script and being more reminiscent of an episode of Stars than a magic carpet ride, this is an energetic and largely engaging evening.
Susan McFadden shines as The Genie, she has a fantastic voice and loads of shiny blonde charisma, Noel V Ginnety gamely dons his pantaloons as a churlish Wishee Washee, the young Alan Kavanagh is a confident and articulate Widow Manky and David Doyle makes a merry old- school villain.
The real stars of the show, however, are the 110 young performers, who are among the 1,000 children who auditioned in the rain last summer and now, with their chopsticks in their hair and their grins on tight, make a joyous and moving chorus.
The performers are giving it their all in Aladdinand doubtless some of the young talent on stage will go on to achieve panto celebrity, but now, what the young Olympia cast lack is a big experienced panto presence at its centre to batter the comedy out of this somewhat tentative romp.
Until January 4th
HILARY FANNIN
Helen Kearns/RTÉ NSO/Colman Pearce
NCH, Dublin
Humperdinck - Hansel and Gretel Overture.
Prokofiev - Troika.
Puccini - Signore, ascolta.
Verdi - Sempre libera.
Delius - La Calinda.
Waldteufel - Skaters' Waltz. Donizetti - Regnava nel silenzio. Johann Strauss - Mein Herr Marquis. Leroy Anderson - A Christmas Festival.
This, the last concert in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's "Festive Favourites" series of lunchtime concerts, hit the mark in the areas that matter most. With a well-devised programme and performances that were reliable and often lively, it was an always-pleasant occasion.
It came as no surprise to learn that soprano Helen Kearns is making a career in musical theatre, for she has a strong and attractive stage presence, and a naturally operatic kind of dramatic intelligence.
Signore, Ascolta! from Puccini's Turandotshowed that she is well-able to sing very high and with dulcet tone. High and loud, the sound tended to become hard, but that was a minor point in a pleasing sequence of arias.
These four operatic excerpts were helped along by flexible and nicely coloured orchestral playing.
For horn players, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel Overture must be rewarding and scary. There's nowhere to hide in the quiet opening, which on this occasion was not always tidy.
However, that was a momentary blip in a shapely performance that captured this work's warm melodiousness, and made for a strong beginning to the concert.
It was followed by a rather tame account of Prokofiev's famous Troika. But that was more than compensated for by poised playing in Delius's La Calinda , and by a nicely swinging rendering of Waldteufel's Skater's Waltz.
The concert ended with Leroy Anderson's A Christmas Festival , which shows why the film composer, John Williams, has said that Anderson is "one of the great American masters of light orchestral music".
As the concert's conductor, Colman Pearce remarked, you know all the tunes. Nevertheless, this technically brilliant medley is rarely predictable and has astonishing moments.
The vivid performance was an ideal ending to what my companion described as "a satisfyingly wholesome" concert.
MARTIN ADAMS
