A selection of reviews by Irish Times critics

This Is Our Youth,Project Arts Centre

DESPITE BEING set in 1982, Kenneth Lonergan’s 1995 play provides Bedrock Productions with an opportunity to explore contemporary youth culture. The concerns of the three characters are archetypal adolescent ones; underneath their constant quest for casual sex, the next party, the next score from the local drug dealer, they are floundering, searching for a sense of identity.

The narcissistic arrogance of Dennis, the unfocused energy of Warren, the self-questioning of Jessica, become a composite of teenage crisis. Meanwhile, the social context of the Reagan years becomes a subtle commentary on Ireland’s late economic fortunes.

Jimmy Fay’s intimate traverse production places the characters in close proximity to the audience.

Paul O’Mahoney’s set forces the characters physically close to each other too, a use of space that subtly underscores the power dynamics of the play.

The sole piece of furniture in the spartan bedsit in which the play is set is a bare mattress on the floor. It is so close to the ground that when standing the characters appear too large for the room – like they have outgrown it, a clever visual foreshadowing of the central theme.

While Sarah Holland’s costume design harks back to the scribbled fabric, neon palette and big hair of the 1980s, the constant citations of contemporary pop culture ensure that neither the aesthetic of the production nor the themes seem dated.

What is most exciting about Bedrock’s production, however, is the opportunity that it gives for three young actors to make their mark with material that reflects their own lives.

So in the close confines of Project’s Cube space, Conor Madden, Charlie Murphy and Ciarán O’Brien can find real depth in roles which, in less courageous performances, might seem clichéd, cursory, cardboard cartoons.

Lonergan’s play provides no big dramatic twist. It is an understated portrait of a specific period in US history and a more abstract investigation of the moment at which teenagers are forced to take responsibility, to account for themselves, to leave adolescence behind and embrace adulthood.

For the three characters in their early 20s, it's an awesome, terrifying thing. For those observing from the sidelines, this is our youth. SARA KEATING

McSwiney, Craigie, Kelly, Lee, OLCS

RTÉ NSO/Ó Duinn NCH, Dublin

LAST FRIDAY’S concert by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra celebrated Mendelssohn’s 200th anniversary year with three of his finest orchestral works: the unjustly neglected Fair Melusine Overture, the scintillating Piano Concerto No 1 and, with the solstice just two days off, the overture and incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

From the piano’s first entrance in the concerto, there could be no mistaking the assertive presence of soloist Veronica McSwiney.

Even if her thunderbolts didn’t all strike the keys with equal precision, they struck with vigour. In the calms, all was proportion, poise, and certainty of feeling.

Although the orchestra offered somewhat pale reflections of McSwiney’s carefully sculpted melodies, there was broad agreement on tempos. The tolerable balances were due chiefly to the mettlesome solos.

Shakespeare’s play and Mendelssohn’s music can seldom be experienced fully in combination: last October’s rare production by the Storytellers Theatre Company adapted the original instrumentation to suit the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

This performance, however, included virtually the entire score in its brassy glory, with pithy smatterings of the bard’s lines setting the scene for each number.

The marriage of words and notes succeeded on many counts: florid yet intelligible contributions from sopranos Lynda Lee and Katy Kelly, bright tone and crisp diction from the women’s voices of Our Lady’s Choral Society. Despite a certain coldness among the horns, some richly involving instrumental work.

The decisive factor was the close co-operation of conductor Proinsias Ó Duinn and velvet- voiced narrator Ingrid Craigie, who between them drew the swirling fantasies of dramatist and composer into an absorbing and memorable whole. ANDREW JOHNSTONE