Reviewed today are Fili (Strings) and the Circus Ronaldo at Town Park, Letterkenny and Anna Livia Opera Fringe Festival, John Field Room
Fili (Strings) and the Circus Ronaldo
Town Park, Letterkenny
The centrepiece of this year's Earagail Festival, the Irish première of Belgian outfit Circus Ronaldo, landed in Donegal as a result of years of dedicated cajoling on the part of the dedicated Earagail team; their efforts were more than worth it.
Ronaldo offer an experience at once utterly contemporary - an animal free circus, one that depends instead on the theatrical skills of its talented ensemble - yet deeply rooted in tradition, utilising elements of commedia dell'arte and a family tradition that stretches back some six generations.
Fili (Strings) is, at heart, a spirited deconstruction of every circus cliché imaginable, using procession, slapstick, acrobatic derring-do and moments of occasional melodramatic beauty to create an entertainment that verges, at times, on the Felliniesque.
Indeed, it takes a lot of skill (and split-second timing) to make sheer, unbridled chaos so utterly effortless and very, very funny, but the extended Ronaldo family - under master of ceremonies David Ronaldo - rise to the occasion with considerable panache. Case in point, the extended finale: a chaotic attempt to present a marionette opera that slowly but surely transforms into an extended tour-du-farce worthy of the Brothers Marx, climaxing in an unlikely (and somewhat worrying) pyrotechnic display, courtesy of a flaming cast member.
To say that this was a performance adored by both adults and children doesn't even begin to convey Circus Ronaldo's particular brand of theatrical wonder; let's hope they can be convinced to make a return visit to these shores as soon as imaginably possible.
The Earagail festival runs until July 20th. www.donegalculture.com/welcome.htm
Derek O'Connor
Anna Livia Opera Fringe Festival
John Field Room
Il segretto di Susanna Wolf - Ferrari
Smoking is what it's all about. The heroine in Wolf-Ferrari's 1909 comic opera Il segreto di Susanna enjoys a cigarette when her non-smoking husband isn't around. He, noticing the smell, suspects she has a lover.
When all is eventually revealed, he is so relieved that he gladly joins her in a cosy connubial puff.
This production was given in English, with piano backing provided by the accomplished Deborah Kelleher. John McKeown directed an adept and funny staging that made good use of the venue's double-stairway and the curtailed acting space below it.
He was well served by his cast of three: Sean McNally, who gave a disciplined miming performance as the inscrutable mute servant, and singers Margaret Collins and Gerry Noonan as Susanna and her husband Gil.
Both singers are seasoned music-theatre performers, and their interplay with each other and the servant was smoothly negotiated. Neither of them has a particularly large voice; but they blended well, even though the soprano's tone was rather more rounded than the baritone's tightly-focused one. The text was articulated with perfect clarity, but the recitatives lacked sparkle. They were too deliberate.
What was needed was Italianate off-the-lips spitting-out of words, and I know that these singers could have delivered this. Otherwise, it was a highly enjoyable lunchtime entertainment. And the large audience loved it.
John Allen
