A selection of events reviewed by Irish Timeswriters
The Gentlemen’s Tea-Drinking Society
Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast
“howcanquantumgravityhelpexplaintheoriginoftheuniverse?” Thus reads the graffiti on the gable end of a terraced house along Belfast’s Ormeau Embankment, providing the unlikely inspiration for Richard Dormer’s new play for Ransom Productions.
Since his early days with Ulster Youth Theatre, there has never been the slightest doubt that Dormer is an exceptionally gifted actor. Now he has come of age as an equally accomplished writer. It takes a combination of madness, creative daring and artistic confidence even to imagine that the subject of quantum mechanics might form the basis of a full-length black comedy. But Dormer and director Rachel O’Riordan have gone for broke in bringing a slowly forming idea to fruition in this fresh, fast and extremely furious play, of which Dormer’s coruscating performance forms the centrepiece.
The Gentlemen's Tea-Drinking Societywas formed by seven male undergraduates 20 years previously. Now, only four remain, travelling from far and wide to don ridiculous hats and read their constitution around a stainless steel teapot. Three of them are physicists –Frank (Matthew Flynn), a suave, successful writer of coffee table science books; podgy, put-upon Larry (David Ireland), whose genius is blurred by the effects of alcoholism, religion and a nervous breakdown; and manic, paranoid Brian (Dormer), who is, literally, having the day from hell.
The fourth, wheelchair-bound Simon (Howard Teale), is a complete science dunce, a useful device when it comes to explaining the hugely complex workings of the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest high energy particle accelerator, which has taken over Brian’s life and sanity. Under O’Riordan’s tightly controlled direction, the expletive-strewn dialogue ricochets around at breakneck speed, propelled by David Holmes’s richly textured soundtrack.
The comically intellectual ping-pong builds to a terrible climax, exploding into an exchange of cruel truths and the real or imagined arrival of Brian’s predicted Armageddon. The final moments may be a tad drawn-out and repetitive, but this is an easy fix, a mere quibble at the end of a breathless and breathtaking evening.
Runs until Feb 14, then tours to Newry, Limerick, Tralee, Derry, Monaghan, Armagh, Coleraine, Downpatrick, Lisburn and Tron Theatre, Glasgow JANE COYLE
Williams, Rao, Blumina
Hugh Lane Gallery
Brahms– Violin Sonata in G Op. 78; Cello Sonata in E minor Op. 38; Violin Sonata in A Op. 100
This was the first of two concerts presenting the complete violin sonatas and cello sonatas by Brahms. The concluding concert is next Sunday, also at the Hugh Lane Gallery where admission, as usual, is free (12 noon).
As happened so famously with his first symphony, Brahms put off for years – he was 47 – the completion and presentation of a first violin sonata, the most frequent of chamber music pairings. Once again it seems to have been because he felt the ghost of Beethoven at his shoulder. The result is that it was as a fully mature composer that he penned his three masterly violin sonatas, and also the second of his two cello sonatas. The first cello sonata – played here – is a much earlier work composed when he was still in his 20s.
There was an elephant in the room at this concert, namely the decision to perform with the piano lid fully open. It created a sound too big for the space, the piano sometimes masking the violin or cello which then fought back and simply escalated the overall volume. Intimacy was lost, and the impact of climaxes was reduced because the start of the build-up was often already so strong.
There was still, however, plenty of fine playing. The husband-and-wife duo of violinist Gillian Williams and cellist Arun Rao took turns to partner pianist Elisaveta Blumina in performances that were sure-footed and driven by a suitably romantic emotional energy. Blumina – in works that Brahms specifically called sonatas for pianoand violin or cello – handled her equal role with poise, though sometimes her tone tended more towards a hard brightness where perhaps a softer texture might have worked better.
Williams brought out enough warmth in the Op. 100 Sonata – possibly Brahms's only instrumental work that borrows from songs he wrote – to hint at the likely love-story sub-text. Rao delivered a monumental finish with the slow, inexorable crescendo of the E minor Cello Sonata's fugal finale. M ICHAEL DUNGAN
