Irish Times writers give their verdict.
The School For Scandal, Waterfront Hall, Belfast
By Jane Coyle
Plus ça change. . . . You know the rest. And so does the Belfast writer Martin Mooney, who has crafted a slyly glinting adaptation of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 18th-century comedy of manners for a 21st-century audience. It does not take long to recognise the usual suspects among these members of London's chattering classes - the gold digger, the gullible old man, the philanderer, the cuckolded spouse, the secret lover, the fraudster - all of them straight out of the pages of the celebrity magazines.
... In recognition that Sheridan's characters are for all time - and no time - Bruiser Theatre Company's artistic director, Lisa May, has stripped identity and setting back to the basics. Inside a bare black box five actors are clad in neutral-coloured undergarments, their heads covered with tight-fitting hairnets, their personalities indicated by a single accessory or accentuated physical attribute: a fan and large bottom for Lady Sneerwell, a bulky codpiece for Joseph Surface, a nightcap and knobbly knees for Sir Peter Teazle and so on.
May is never short of innovative ideas, and it is clear that she has a definite vision for this intensely physical production. But what the adaptation sets out to do the production falls short of delivering.
Sheridan's sharp wit, rounded characters, deliciously convoluted plot and searing observation of social mores get lost in a frantic wave of affected accents, funny faces, quick-change characterisations and cartoony caricatures.
The cast - Daniel Costello, Laura Hughes, Simon Imrie, Sharon Morwood and Sean Paul O'Rawe - work tremendously hard and create some individual gems along the way. But the fine detail of plot and relationship does not emerge except to those with a previous acquaintance with the play, and Mooney's ironic, mischievous text is not given real opportunity to shine. This is a case where less does not necessarily equal more.
Touring until May 15th to Antrim, Strabane, Downpatrick, Kilkenny, Enniskillen, Lisburn, Manorhamilton, Coleraine, Letterkenny, Derry and Armagh
Angela Hewitt, Catherine Robbin, Queen's University Belfast
By Dermot Gault
Bach - English Suite No 6 in D minor. Brahms - Five Songs. Fauré - Melodies De Venise Op 58. Chabrier - Trois Pièces Pittoresques, Bourée Fantasque. Elaine Agnew - April Awake. Hardebeck, Hughes - Folk-song arrangements
The Great Hall of Queen's University Belfast is an elegant and, apparently, well-liked venue, but its overly reverberant acoustics make it a problematical space for a solo piano, especially a piano playing Bach.
Bach's keyboard suites, with their idiomatic harpsichord writing, are problematical on the piano anyway. The quieter movements - the allemande, for example - were invested here with a genteel Chopinesque pathos, and even in the charming gavotte the superimposed dynamics got in the way of the music. A plush Victorian solemnity descended on the slow opening and on the saraband, while the overblown acoustics blurred the faster movements. Chabrier's salon pieces were less affected by the acoustic mush, perhaps because they are genuinely pianistic.
The sound was problematic too for the mezzo-soprano Catherine Robbin, Angela Hewitt's fellow Canadian, as the acoustics seemed to catch and distort certain notes. But it's a warm, rich voice. Brahms's O Kuhler Wald was gorgeously resonant, the opening turning from Wagnerian eroticism to Brahmsian nostalgia.
The heavier piano textures of Von Ewiger Liebe inevitably sounded overblown, however. Fauré's short cycle Mélodies De Venise includes some of his most attractive songs, but they lost much of their intimacy in this acoustic.
There was also plenty of Irish charm in the second half. The main interest here was April Awake, Elaine Agnew's short group of John Hewitt settings. The opening Mid-April, with its rain-drop sonorities, was particularly atmospheric. The folk-song settings by Carl Hardebeck and Herbert Hughes are disapproved of by some but made for appealing listening.
Keep, Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin
By Gerry Colgan
The work of the tyro playwright is often marked by excess, a grab for the attention with a melodramatic theme and treatment. Meghan Kennedy is a 23-year-old American fresh out of a New York school of the arts, where she was highly praised for her writing. The professional stage is a harsher judge, and her new play is unlikely to bring her any awards.
It is set in a shanty with a run-down bar attached, in which only Jack now lives. His mother committed suicide some time back, and his father has recently died in an accident. Jack has sent for his brother, Charlie, who now works in a city, and for his sister, Annie, who mysteriously lives in a desert. They arrive, and it is soon plain that they have had an incestuous relationship in the past.
A hitherto unknown aunt, Lila, has just surfaced with a packet of letters and some money from the dead mother, who left instructions that they were to be given to Jack, but only if she was satisfied that he was pure. In a preposterous upping of the ante, it transpires that the dead parents were also brother and sister and had the three children out of their incestuous mating. The play ends in an appropriately lurid manner: Jack sets the house and family on fire.
It is clear that the author can write, in the sense of a literary competence. The stage needs more: a credible story, characters we can empathise with and dialogue that rings true on the ear. Here the talk is studded with fanciful metaphors, far removed from that of real people. The cast have their moments, notably from the inarticulate Jack and his phoney brother (Duncan Lacroix and Eoin Geoghegan), with adequate contributions from Claire-Louise Bennett and Grainne Moore in poorly written roles.
Director Jessamyn Fiore gets as much out of it all as the script permits, and the set design by Paul Brady is excellent.
Runs until Saturday
