The Marlboro ManInternational Bar, DublinFintan O'TooleClaire Dowling's new play, The Marlboro Man, is not quite a kitchen sink drama. Instead, the focus of the action is the ironing board.
In the unglamorous married quarters of the Curragh army camp, Wanda, an ex-hairdresser and Mick, a corporal, get out of bed and, between cigarettes and muesli, iron their clothes.
This is, in other words, a relatively simple domestic drama. Much of it would not be out of place on Fair City or Coronation Street. The naturalistic illusion is broken from time to time as the two characters briefly address the audience. But overall, the piece does not pretend to any great theatrical ambitions and is content with serving up a digestible slice of life.
Within those very severe limits, though, Dowling's play has real merits. She does not try to stretch the material of a domestic two-hander further than it wants to go. With a playing time of around 40 minutes, it is possible to be content with a skilfully crafted sense of detail rather an expansive statement of the human condition.
Dowling's skill lies mostly in the delicacy with which she unpacks the relationship between Wanda and Mick. Though driven initially by a very contemporary sexual energy, it is rooted in working-class expectations of marriage. Being married, in their world, means having a child, and Wanda's inability to conceive thus threatens the whole foundation of matrimony.
We slowly realise, amid the domestic details, that Wanda and Mick are preparing to travel to Dublin for a meeting with a fertility expert, and that their nervous bickering arises from the contest of hope and fear.
We get, too, a growing sense of low-key tragedy, of their love being caught in a web of social expectations from which they are struggling to escape.
Within its own terms, this struggle is convincingly enacted in Laurence Lowry's production. Fiona O'Toole's Wanda keeps a nice balance between the unreasonable scold she has become and the lively, generous person she really is. Owen Mulhall's Mick is quietly tormented in an off-hand, undramatic and thus utterly credible way.
Both are especially impressive in the last moments of the play, when Dowling engineers a subtle shift of mood in which a gleam of hope makes their underlying relationship briefly visible.
- The Marlboro Man runs at The International Bar ,Wicklow Street, at
7.15 p.m., until February 15th.
rundown
International Bar, Dublin
Gerry Colgan
This 35-minute play by Mark O'Rowe, first produced over six years ago, before he had made his mark as a playwright, has been rewritten and updated for the enterprising Purple Heart company. It is worth its revival, both as an illustration of the author's progress and as a piece of comic writing.
It is set in a ramshackle flat where we first see Robbie, sleeping on the floor in surroundings of near-debris. He is not happy with his flaky skin, flabbiness or dim vision, attributable to a diet of toast. But a new nutritional era is about to begin, and he has made resolutions.
Meanwhile, he and his tough-guy pal Chris have an appointment to sell a stolen DVD player to a potential punter named Mack. Mack duly calls and, amid other complications, it transpires that he wants the machine as a present for his girl friend Paula - who turns out to have recently dumped Robbie. Morality rears its ugly head, and Mack is called a "f--ing Luddite" and exposed to physical violence. As for the DVD, no sale.
The ambience of seediness, and of limited intellects not afraid to contemplate large issues or words, however dimly understood, is expertly created and wholly convincing. So are the characters, feet rooted in reality and addled heads floating in video-created fiction. The dialogue is alive and sewn with a comic impulse that startles the audience into laughter.
Les Martin's Robbie is an hilarious creation, delivered with impeccable comic timing and ludicrous self-belief. Chris believes in sci-fi, friendship and birds, a mix nicely encapsulated by Dermot Byrne. Owen Mulhall, with least to do, does it very well, and the exchanges are finely tuned by director Alan King.
I liked, and wholeheardtedly endorse, the blurb's assertion that the intimate squalor of the International Bar serves as the perfect venue for the piece.
- Ends on February 15th
RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet
Tullynally Castle, Castlepollard
Martin Adams
Quartet in F Op 77 No 2.................... Haydn
little sails ............................ Deirdre McKay
Quartet in B flat Op 67.................... Brahms
The RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet's programme included two quartets which represent high points of compositional virtuosity for their composers.
Capturing the scope of Haydn's Quartet in F Op. 77 No. 2 - the last such work the composer completed - is a serious challenge, which the Vanbrughs met more persuasively in some movements than others.
The finale is marked Vivace assai, variously understood to mean moderately or very lively. It certainly was fast; but it was also too frantic to allow the movement's many subtle aspects to speak. The scherzo-style minuet was given time to breathe, and was consequently much more deft and effective. Best of all was the slow movement which marked Andante (walking), moved steadily and spoke naturally. Just perfect!
Deirdre McKay's little sails, was composed in 2001 for the Vertavo Quartet. In four short movements, and dominated by an interplay of natural harmonics between the instruments, it is a concentrated, utterly idiomatic piece. It is so direct that it seems less concerned with expression than with pure technique; but it makes no inappropriate claim to profundity.
As the composer has said, it is conceived like a series of little canvases on a gallery wall.
Afterwards, the Vanbrughs politely refused calls for an encore.
But it would have been hard to follow such a strong performance of Brahms's Quartet in B flat Op. 67.
The third movement, with its prominent viola part, was a treat, even though some quiet passages sometimes seemed over-projected for the hall's lucid acoustics.
This performance, which
understood the expressive directness of the music's complicated surface and
which revelled in its mighty, calculated contrasts, was impressive and heart-warming.
