Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent events
Marc Copland
Triskel Arts Centre, Cork
Marc Copland produced a solo piano concert of sublime quality in the Cork Midsummer Festival. Organised by the Triskel in collaboration with Note Productions, it was one of two major contributions to the festival by the venue, the second being the visit of Chico Pinheiro’s group arranged in collaboration with The Improvised Music Company.
Copland's unique sense of harmony was immediately evident in a slow, rubato, oblique opening, lightly seasoned with harmonic surprise, which was eventually revealed as On Green Dolphin Street. Yet, for all his ability to move freely through the piece's harmonies and reshape them, the audience was never quite left without a foothold on what he was doing.
As a solo pianist, particularly when he plays his own compositions, he often develops a performance from little motifs, using them as structural elements and to move the performance into fresh areas of colour and texture.
Given a well of inspiration that never seemed to run dry, he frequently used this to stunning effect during the concert.
It yielded a highlight in an as-yet-untitled piece from a forthcoming solo CD. Working from a repeated left-hand figure, he developed fresh lines and chords above it, all the whole allowing the basic figure to resurface in new colours, referencing it in a stunning example of his gift for reconciling surprise with inevitability.
Although he always makes superb use of motivic devices, the results also embrace a variety of moods, heard here in a haunting The Bell Tolls, a perky Night Whispersand a seriously playful Round She Goes. In a sense they are a means whereby he brings together the yin and yang of intellect and emotion into the realm of beauty and poetry.
But his encore, Haunted Heart, was a seldom played but richly-rewarding standard into which he simply poured his enormous gifts to produce a performance of spellbinding loveliness. It was a beauty ultimately beyond analysis or explanation – like his gift. RAY COMISKEY
Extremities
Mill Theatre, Dundrum
William Mastrosimone’s unpleasant 1982 play Extremities begins with an act of casual violence; the swatting of a wasp on a warm summer’s morning. Of course in the theatre, every action has a consequence, so when the balmy opening moments – played deliberately slowly by director Sophie Motley – descend into brutality, it is no great surprise.In fact, an intruder and an attempted rape proves a gentle beginning to an evening that is really just one long torture scene, as ammonia and domestic tools and an ingenious variety of household paraphernalia – including a bicycle – are put to the service of the assaulted victim’s rage.
On a broad thematic level, Mastrosimone is interested in exploring the relationship between victim and aggressor; how the victim repeats the patterns of abuse. And he also asks us to consider to what extent revenge is justified; to what extent might violence be met with violence. More specifically, however, he is interested in revealing the pathology of sexual offence and its attendant status in the criminal justice system.
This is a lot to pack into a two-act play, especially one in which the extremity of physical violence is a constant distraction for the audience. In fact, the onstage violence, convincingly choreographed by Chris Nugent, works against the psychological elements in the drama. Instead of invoking an emotional understanding of character, character is reduced to action, or, worse – when Marjorie’s two flatmates arrive home – to psycho-social preaching stereotypes. Bush Moukarzel, as the archly manipulative Raul, and Katie Kirby, as the traumatised Marjorie, find as much emotional truth as they can between the bouts of screaming and squirming, but Kelly Gough and Lisa Knight, as housemates Terry and Pat, have little more to do than act out the opposing sides of Mastrosimone’s unconvincing argument.
However, Alyson Cummins’ set impressively finds metaphorical depth in the action. The subtly tilted Laura-Ashley living room is destabilised by exposed underfloor insulation and an imposing imploded fireplace, which gapes black and ugly like an open wound. On a literal level, it works well as Raul’s prison, but it also represents the amoral vacuum into which the whole domestic world is gradually being sucked. The heightened three-dimensionality, however, makes the characters seem even more cartoonish.
Ultimately, it is not that the issues that Extremitiesraises do not resonate more than 20 years later – the social and legal prejudice against the rape victim remains – nor is it that the onstage violence is merely repellent; it is that Mastrosimone's play is just not credible. Terry, the actual rape victim in the play, would agree. SARA KEATING
Ends tonight
