Last Beauty Spotat Cork Arts Theatre is reviewed by Mary Lelandand Pagliacciat Bewleys Café Theatre, Dublin is reviewed by John Allen
Last Beauty Spot
Cork Arts Theatre
Everything in Last Beauty Spot, Ger Bourke's new play, is pastiche, an imitation - and an impoverished one at that - of the actual. In fact Bourke, even in this crisp production from Corcadorca, comes close at times to implications of derivation, but far from being unintentional, the evidence of the play suggests that this is deliberate.
One can't be sure; Bourke does not invite the obvious, and his writing here is both skilfull and sinuous, something almost of a lark as he presents four unpleasant people without offering any amelioration to prompt sympathy or even tolerance.
Yet this little group is composed of pitiful personalities enabled by an unconsciousness of their own moral penury. They gather at the hamburger booth playfully called the Last Supper, located where a scenic bridge seduces suicides; their income, which is always imaginatively inflated, depends on the sight-seers and thrill-seekers who follow each death.
Emotionally bankrupt, they live by intimation, their information uncomprehended, their experiences misinterpreted, their ideas third-hand at best.
They will try anything: their combined attempt at a suicide note to enhance the attraction of the latest death is one of the funniest episodes in a play in which the humour is otherwise subtle, even sad.
The temptation is to describe their lives as tragic, but despite the convinced and convincing performances of Donagh Deeney, Joan Sheehy, Anthony Morris and especially of Jamie Beamish in the most difficult role (because it is the least mature), tragedy is too big a word.
Bourke doesn't attempt it anyway, except again, perhaps, by implication, through a sense of uncertainty and suspicion.
Director Pat Kiernan doesn't force anything unnecessarily to the surface as we watch these terrible but familiar people wade through a wasteland of their own making. Kiernan matches Bourke in his preference to make the offering so that we take what we can from the view.
...
Runs until March 22
Pagliacci
Bewleys Café Theatre, Dublin
Verismo opera is an extrovert lyric theatre form that doesn't translate easily into intimate cabaret-style performance. Voices large enough to ride an opera house orchestra would sound grotesque, yet the singers must have sufficient amplitude and incisiveness to comply with the composer's vocal and theatrical requirements.
Furthermore, with no conductor at the helm, the singers carry the responsibility of looking after themselves in matters of line and phrasing.
Wonderland Productions' piano-accompanied lunchtime presentation of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci at Bewley's Café Theatre is only partly successful musically.
Director Alice Coghlan, who also provides the English translation, stages the drama adroitly in a ridiculously minuscule performing space. But the singing leaves a lot to be desired.
With one notable exception, all of the vocalists sing at full stretch, with no sense of anything in reserve; and they are not helped by the venue's dry acoustic, which adds a hard edge to the voices in loud passages.
In the central role of Canio, tenor Ralph Strehle has the vocal weight and range to convey the anger of the deceived husband, but he loses out on the sympathy vote by a shortage of both expressiveness and expansiveness.
For these qualities you have to turn to Rhys Jenkins, a warm-toned baritone whose firm control of line and dynamics enhances a splendid delivery of the famous prologue and almost negates the viciousness of the clown Tonio.
On Monday, the adulterous Nedda was sung by stand-in Emer Barry, a young soprano who has all the notes in her range but, understandably in the circumstances, appeared rather ill at ease.
Opposite her, as her lover Silvio, baritone Simon Morgan sang ardently if a tad loudly. The secondary role of Beppe calls for more mellifluence, especially in his serenade, than Wojciech Smarkala's hard-edged tenor provides.
...
Runs until March 29
