Reviews of Neil Youngin Dublin, Excess Baggagein Limerick and Tetyana Vlasyukin Dublin
Neil Young
The 02, Dublin
When Neil Young topped the chart with Heart of Goldall those years ago, our hero speedily abandoned the mellow and the mild and headed to a more dangerous place. Famously, Young said that when he found himself in the middle of the road – he headed straight for the ditch.
The 35-year journey has been not without its bumps and bruises but Young’s taste for re-invention, his willingness to experiment with different styles and genres means he is one of the few old troubadours who is still relevant.
These days, Neil Young enjoys a revered iconic status as the Godfather of grunge; the man who has inspired a thousand garage bands and the acceptable face of that much maligned species, the 1970s singer songwriter.
On Sunday night, they came to pay homage. Young did not disappoint with a blistering set that erased the memory of that lacklustre gig on a cold evening at Malahide Castle last summer. On a sultry evening, there was the sense that the new 02 was coming of age as a rock venue par excellence with great acoustics and a seething atmosphere. Only one complaint; did someone forget to turn on the air conditioning?
There was also the sense that Young, having just released his long awaited 10-disc, multi-media archive, was happy to journey through his past. The set was big on old favourites, including a vibrant Cinnamon Girlfrom Everybody Knows This is Nowhereand two from Harvest. Words, driven by Ben Keith's gorgeous pedal steel and Young's trademark chunky guitar, was a real highlight. A creepy, atmospheric version of Down by the Rivercaptivated the audience.
As ever, Young was polite and courteous to his fans, thanking them for being here, saying how great it was to be back in the green island. But a mischievous Young also delights in toying with his audience, forcing them out of their comfort zone and rolling out some less familiar material, just when an old favourite like Don't Let it Bring You Downhas built up the momentum.
There were other peculiarities. For reasons which were never explained, a painter worked away on his canvass during the entire show. And there were several Spinal Tapmoments with Young playing the Rock God.
But nothing can detract from the quality of the songs and the playing. Harvest Moon, with Young's wife Pegi on soaring backing vocals, was especially memorable. Rocking in the Free Worldwas pure theatre as Young and the band shut down the song on several occasions before cranking it back to life and reprising the chorus one more time.
Young encored with John Lennon's A Day in the Life, a curious choice given the richness and depth of his own back catalogue. But, typically, Young has brought a new ragged glory to a great old song.
When he left the stage after two hours on Father’s Day, the dad rockers and their offspring were on their feet dreaming – like this reviewer – that Young might some day play the 02 with his old companions Crosby, Stills and Nash. (CSN play Cork’s Marquee next Monday).
But this was more than enough to be getting on with. This gig was a potent reminder of the power and majesty of a defining figure in rock music. Long may he run.
Now, where did I put the €150-plus for the Neil Young Archives Volume One. SEÁN FLYNN
Excess Baggage
34 Cecil Street, Limerick
Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bathends up in Stansted Airport in Mary Coll's reworking of the most famous of The Canterbury Tales. Situating Chaucer's Alys in a contemporary context, Coll finds room to re-invigorate age-old questions of female identity: the compromises of self-hood necessitated by marriage and child-rearing.
The airport setting allows Coll to play with structure and contemporary content, as well as sceneography. Darragh Bradshaw’s design is yellow-and-blue functional, creating a visual cue for the unnamed airline-bashing that the characters partake in without libelling anyone.
Kevin Smith’s lighting design has that same tired yellow glow.
Meanwhile, the side-stage presence of two life-sized puppets, dolled-up like shop mannequins, provides a visual distraction too, though as a rule air-stewards tend to be invisible – at least they are certainly never around when you need them to be.
In Coll's reworking, Alice – as the Wife of Bathbecomes – is a thoroughly modern heroine, frankly divulging her history to a stranger in the airport departure lounge. Pouring over celebrity weddings in OK! magazine, she somehow manages to thaw the icy reception of business woman Ruth (Gene Rooney), whose frosty front is a facade to protect herself from the judgment of her imposing neighbour. Monica Spencer makes for a charming, guileless, and incongruously glamorous Alice.
However, despite the counsel she dispenses with sandwiches and eclairs, it is she who really has the excess baggage. She may know a lot about diamonds, and a hell of a lot about marriage, but as this is her confessional, her tale, so it is also her quiet tragedy. Director Joan Sheehy allows this more serious study of a woman’s floundering sense of self-worth to underscore all the ribald humour of the play, and the chilling final lines resonate, as Alice is left on stage, struggling with her shopping, alone.
Ultimately, the Chaucerian origins of Coll’s slight, amusing play are take-it-or-leave it, but there is much to enjoy on a more literal level: a good old whinge about the state of airports these days, and a few laughs about a woman’s lot in this world. Runs until Sat. SARA KEATING
Tetyana Vlasyuk (piano)
NCH John Field Room, Dublin
Rameau– Les Tourbillons. Les Cyclopes. La Poule. Schubert– Sonata in A minor D784. Bartók– Suite Op 14. Liszt– Ballade No 2.
Dublin Master Classes presented this lunchtime piano recital by Kiev-born Tetyana Vlasyuk, who has recently been furthering her studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Her programme combined intrigue with discernment: Rameau’s harpsichord works are heard on the piano far less frequently than those of the vastly more prolific Bach and Scarlatti, while two items by the Hungarians Liszt and Bartók remain freshly representative of their composers.
It’s hard, however, to make a case for the posthumously published Sonata D784 by Schubert – who, in the opening movement particularly, seems to have been in too great a hurry to develop the texture much beyond mere chords and tremolos.
With a restricted dynamic spectrum, and passing over some potentially startling Schubertian key-changes, Vlasyuk conceded the performer’s chief tactical advantage over this flimsy music: the element of surprise.
Still, the frequent tracts of dotted rhythm maintained a gratifying snappiness, and the stormy finale – by far the best movement of this uneven sonata – was a bracing sequence of flurried cascades.
Excepting La Poule(the hen), whose blatant onomatopoeia never sounds more authentic than in Respighi's orchestration, mystery surrounds the titling of some of Rameau's 50-odd keyboard pieces.
Vlasyuk was thus hardly to be blamed if her reading of Les Tourbillonssuggested something more courtly than tornados. Her impression of Les Cyclopes, however, was one of bristling impetuosity.
Gloominess predominated in her thoroughly prepared and impressively controlled account of Liszt’s moody Ballade No 2, where anxious hues extended from the squally outbursts even to the soft cushions of proto-Debussian harmony.
It was thus the earthier accents of Bartók's Suite Op 14 that found Vlasyuk in her element. In music that might have packed more punch, the assurance of measured clarity was, in its own way, compelling. ANDREW JOHNSTONE
