The Playboy Of The Western World in the Cork Opera House is reviewed by Mary Leland and 50 Cent at The Point, Dublin gets the once over from Jim Carroll
The Playboy Of The Western World
Cork Opera House
Mary Leland
Director John Breen presents an intelligent reading of The Playboy Of The Western World in this Yew Tree production, supported by his cast and crew almost to the point of self-sacrifice. They are all faithful, in their fashion, to the letter and the spirit of the play; there is no doubt that this is Synge's masterpiece, a thoughtful, challenging and wildly comic exposition of native morality, of credulity, of cunning, custom and superstition revealed in a village's welcome for a supposed hero.
The ferocious energy of the dialogue influences the physicality of the action: this is a bruising rendition, threatening the solidity of designer Patrick Murray's steeply raked stage, its pit-prop construction sometimes more arena than shebeen.
The big "but" waiting in the wings of these sentences is that of a sense of disappointment. The performances are vigorous yet seem only to skim the surface of possibilities. Language has something to do with it: the lines are more recitation than anything organic, with few pauses to let the luscious imagery seep through.
Emma Moohan's Pegeen, for example, is all shrew. There is no sensuality, nothing beguiling or even charming. As Christopher, Michael Hayes manages the final transformation from boy to manhood very well indeed, but here too there is no capture of the mood between these two young people that, when caught, weights the play and steers it away from pleasurable farce to memorable tragedy.
Properly this is a love story, the west of Ireland's Romeo And Juliet, dominated by two impetuous, frustrated young people in thrall to their elders and almost finding themselves in one another. Not in this version, though; instead the Widow Quinn of Nicole Rourke carries all the neediness of love, and Tim Ruddy's Shawn Keogh doesn't seem to be such a bad bargain after all.
Ends here tomorrow, then moves to SFX, Dublin, from October 6th to 11th
50 Cent
The Point, Dublin
Jim Carroll
There are several occasions tonight when Curtis Jackson seems to be more
Chippendale than menacing New York
rapper with nine bullet scars dotted on his body.
The numerous T-shirt changes, topless preening around the stage and endless casting of clothes into the crowd cause the sort of screams and pandemonium usually afforded boy bands and hen-party strippers.
Given the rate with which 50 Cent is giving away the shirt off his back, though, you do hope he has enough tops with him for the rest of the tour.
He can certainly afford such generosity with the contents of his wardrobe, having flogged some eight million copies of his Get Rich Or Die Tryin' debut album in the past six months to those who want a taste of a hard-knock life without necessarily having to live it.
All those thuggish spats and hard-core gangster shenanigans that litter the album
(and the astute marketing campaign that has sold it) have created one of this year's
biggest pop acts, and tonight's sell-out
crowd wants its piece of that action.
Between costume changes, though, 50 knuckles down to deliver the goods. The opening What Up Gangsta and P.I.M.P. zing with a dynamism and ferocious drive that energise this usually turgid arena.
He hams up a cover of Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey's I Know What You Want as if he's a rapping Robbie Williams, and Wanksta sounds as if it's the hounds of hell themselves who are slapping down the bassline.
Loud and dramatic, 50 in full-flow is a remarkable sight and sound.
Yet the wonderfully taut and telling Many Men is performed as a video and 50 spends more time delivering a sales spiel about his sneaker range than he does playing some of the new songs he claims are ready to go. It is odd hearing someone who usually wears a bullet-proof bodywarmer to work trying to sell you a pair of running shoes.
Thankfully, there are some things that don't require the hard sell, and there's no faking the reaction throughout the hall when the familiar strung-out stabs of In Da Club start up.
A track that defines what a pop anthem should be, it's 50's deposit in music's time capsule, and he knows it. He zips around the stage, bounces up and down and looks as if he's having the time of his life. More of this and we really would have had quite a show.
