Irish Times reviewers were at The Millies in Belfast, Songs from the Homeland in Dublin, the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast and Kim Hooke at IMMA.
The Millies
Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast
Gemma Jones is a thoroughly modern 11-year-old. She loves football, skateboarding, trainers, pizza and MacDonalds; she hates school, homework, teachers and history. In Gemma's world, adults are people who set out to make life sooo unfair. All except her granny, who simply sets out to embarrass her. Granny is a stetson-touting, all-American ole gal, who lives out her fanatical love for country and western music and is the unlikely conduit for Gemma's trip into family history.
Nicola McCartney's play for Replay is aimed at taking children and adults down a similar path of discovery, back to Victorian times in Belfast, when 10-year-old girls and boys were sent to work in the linen mills, doing heavy, physical tasks, with limited time off for basic schooling.
Director Richard Croxford injects his traditional brand of energy, humour and clarity into this bouncy production, carried confidently and appealingly by Bronagh Taggart's sparky Gemma. Christina Nelson is a splendidly caricatured granny and teacher, Maria Connolly, the earnest, whey-faced Victorian girl who comes to Gemma's aid on her unexpected time trip and a youthful Tommy Wallace does sterling work as a collection of elderly wizened men and spotty lads.
Replay's production values are as strong as ever, with a great split-century set by Terry Loane, crisp choreography by Rachel O'Riordan and catchy music by Debra Salem. But, even given the target audience age, the story could be grittier, more focused and less didactic in tone. As it stands, it feels as though it is trying to cover too many corners and that the core theme of life in the black, satanic mills, which brought such prosperity to Belfast, has been accorded second place to Gemma's eventful journey there and back.
Runs until March 15th and then at Lisburn (19th March), Armagh (1st and 2nd April) and Letterkenny (April 9th and 10th)
Jane Coyle
Songs From The Homeland
Bewley's Café Theatre
Maria Tecce is best known as a jazz singer, but is also a versatile actress, musician and cabaret performer. Her latest show is a compilation of songs which celebrate the stories and music of those who sought a new life across the Atlantic, by an artiste from Boston who has travelled the same road in reverse. Go, as she herself says, figure.
The intimate atmosphere of Bewley's is well suited to the creation of the appropriate mood for a show of this kind. Nostalgia should loom large, and it does, from the early On the Shores of Amerikay to the evergreen Cutting the Corn in Creeslough Today, taking in a variety of songs, many previously unknown to me and worth their inclusion here. Most of them are sung in a relaxed, melodious style, backed by Tom Harte (guitar) and Steve Larkin (fiddle).
Tecce plays piano and guitar herself, and also walks the plank of singing sans musical accompaniment with confidence. Her versions of Wade in the Water, Children, and 500 Miles from Home, fall pleasantly on the ear, a tribute to her acting assurance as much as to voice control. She is also at home with the material generally, in no way adversely affected by a mid-Atlantic accent that, indeed, lends credibility to her status as an interpreter with a foot in both camps.
A couple of songs did seem misplaced here. Sweet Georgia Brown, despite its location in a prohibition speakeasy, surely has nothing to do with emigration. And I'll Be Seeing You, with its memories of Sinatra and Crosby, is a relic of the pop-romance of the 1940s.
But these are not unduly intrusive, and are well delivered. This 90-minute excursion into a past era of song and story merits attention and attendance.
Gerry Colgan
• Runs to March 17th; book at 086-8784001
Ulster Orchestra / Raymond Leppard
Ulster Hall, Belfast
Symphony No 1 Classical - Prokofiev. Oboe Concerto Strauss Symphony No 2 - Brahms
It's almost exactly 50 years since Prokofiev died - famously, on the same evening as Stalin - and the Ulster Orchestra is marking the occasion with two of his best-known pieces. First, Sitkovetsky gave us the Lieutenant Kijé Suite, and now it is the turn of the Classical Symphony.
One could regret that the opportunity was not taken to give us some music which is less well known but also approachable and which does not demand excessive orchestral resources.
The Classical is certainly approachable enough, but that is not to say it is easy to play, and in the first movement intonation was not always perfect in some of the more stratospheric string writing. But slightly slower tempi than usual allowed Raymond Leppard to point the work's fine detail and bring out its charm and good humour. Careful balance was also an asset in the Brahms symphony, restrained brass allowing mellow string tone to bloom. The first two movements were particularly persuasive.
The neo-classicism of Strauss's late oboe concerto makes it an obvious companion piece for the Prokofiev, but this elusive piece is even harder to bring off. There were some warm sounds from the orchestra in the slow middle movement, but in the faster outer movements one missed the careful dovetailing of orchestra and soloist (the fine-toned Gordon Hunt) which is needed to do justice to Strauss's subtle but characteristically florid part-writing.
Dermot Gault
Kim, Hooke, ICO/Sirbu
IMMA, Dublin
Canon - Pachelbel. O'Carolan Suite - Kelly. A Fire was in My Head - Deane. Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 35 - Shostakovich. The Four Seasons - Vivaldi
The O'Carolan Suite in Baroque Style by TC Kelly, Raymond Deane's A Fire was in My Head and Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 are among the works to be taken to South Korea and China in the ICO's tour this month. China will also hear Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
Devotees of Irish ethnic music will not be served by the programme because O'Carolan's tunes are closer to European Baroque than to the traditional music of the Irish harpers and Deane's brief evocation of Wandering Aengus is in the international style. Not even Shostakovich's Piano Concerto supports the idea of nationalism in music, so the ICO's four firmly puts the emphasis on Chamber and not on Irish.
The soloist in the Shostakovich was Hae Jung Kim, originally of Seoul, and the important trumpet part was played by Shaun Hooke from Leicestershire. The dialogue between piano and trumpet was extremely vivacious even though the piano wins all the arguments and the strings were an appreciative audience and a far from silent one.
From Shostakovich's neo-baroque to Vivaldi's genuine article is not as far as one might think, if one ignores the pastoral pictorialism of the Four Seasons. Mariane Sirbu was the violin soloist as well as director of the ensemble and she kept the attention on the music. She did not exaggerate the difficulties of her part but made it seem a natural efflorescence of the body of strings, particularly poignant when the accompaniment was pared down to harpsichord, played by David Adams, and a few string players.
Douglas Sealy
