Irish Times writers review Promises, Promises at the Project Cube and Annie at the Cork Opera House.

Promises, Promises

Project Cube, Dublin

By Michael Seaver

It has been only about seven months since these three choreographers came together under the banner of Trigger, and with the three new pieces in Promises, Promises, along with two more produced during the Fringe Festival, a clear pattern of development is emerging in their work. Julie Locket seems tied to the dualities found in the duet form to express her ideas on co-existence and dislocation. From the anonymous bodies in her 2002 work Tank, she has, just one year but two works later, arrived at a point where clear characterisation and a sense of place are paramount in her choreography. In Emmanuelle, Charles, the Bird and the Volcano, she emerges from her dressing room wearing a blue dress and voluminous underskirt, balancing on Michael McCabe's shoulder. Both are furtive and glance anxiously around the space and, as their bodies separate, reveal a long yellow ribbon that ties their bodies together. Nothing is as it seems, to them or to us, as moods shift from tenderness to playfulness, punctuated by subtle, shaded changes in Aedin Cosgrove's lighting.

In her solo Home Disco, Rebecca Walters danced recurring motifs, not so much for the audience, but while we happened to be there. Within her own sensory environment she let movement ripple through limbs and torso, sometimes facing the back wall and at other times gazing straight past us, but in spite of Double Adaptor's restless music, she never quite created a clear context, as she has in previous works.

Issues of duality emerged in The Anima and Animus by Mairead Vaughan through dancers Lucy Dundon, Jen Fleenor, Megan Kennedy and Lisa McLoughlin, who all managed to embody the right blend of nonchalance and theatricality that was the crux of this work. Oppositional movement within the body revealed Vaughan's experience of Kathak, but it is the metrical discipline of the Indian dance form that enables her to craft seductive contrapuntal quartets that I could have watched all night. This clear grasp of form, a growing vocabulary of movement and her willingness to avoid the obvious, has been a revelation since Trigger in April.

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Annie

Cork Opera House

By Mary Leland

The Chris Moreno presentation of Annie is directed with enthusiasm by Chris Colby and played against settings by Alan Miller Bunford and it all runs along smoothly on its own steam. Even so, there are times when the show seems tired (it opened on Broadway in 1977), although its Depression-era context is dutifully evoked.

Part of the problem may be the amplification, which is set at pantomime pitch, and as a result denies any attempt (not that there is any attempt) at subtlety or characterisation. Everything and everyone are just as they seem, broadly portrayed and loudly offered with the only touch of intrinsic pathos being Sandy the dog.

But at least this means no time is wasted on finer points of interpretation.

Instead, Annie's career from orphanage to mansion is a blunt progression interrupted by song and dance - the dance element, designed by choreographer David Kort, being particularly well performed by the ensemble cast despite a few frenetic episodes.

The story by Thomas Meehan is based on the famous comic strip, and the songs, composed by Charles Strouse to the lyrics of Martin Charnin, are absolute belters which, here, are absolutely belted.

The show is full of energy and physical and musical commitment, with the band under Steve Power keeping the rhythmic pressure on both cast and audience.

Lucy Barker's Annie sings brightly and there are a few performances of striking quality: James Gavin as the radio announcer Bert Healy, Amanda Sim as Lily, Mark Wynter, especially when singing, as Oliver Warbucks. And then there are the orphans. In this case (led by the alternative Annie of Faye Spittlehouse) they are supplied by Donna's Dance Studio in Cork and they out-sing, out-dance and out-play everyone else on stage.

Distinguished by its commitment and over-all professional finish, Annie is enormous and unmediated fun.

Runs at the Opera House until Saturday, booking on 021-4270022.