Reviewed today: Trans-Euro Expressat The Mill Theatre, Dublin, Parallel Horizons/Under the Roofat the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire and Herbie Hancockat The Tripod in Dublin.
Trans-Euro Express
The Mill Theatre, Dublin
SARA KEATING
GARY DUGGAN'S new play, Trans-Euro Express, is an inter-rail odyssey of drinking, sex and self-discovery. It follows the fortunes of depressive, bitter Ballard (Charlie Bonner), who, now in his late 30s, has yet to fulfil any of his creative ambitions. The premise of the trip is the awakening of his creativity, but over the course of a week in Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague, Ballard is forced to confront his many failures in love and life. Propped up by the blissfully happy hippy Fleur (Aenne Barr), his younger, more successful, musician friend Gram (Steve Gunn), and the wilfully eccentric actor Anna (Mary Murray), Ballard is brought to the edge of despair and back again in this study of a middle-aged man's adolescent crisis.
Blending together monologue, multimedia and live action sequences, Duggan's dramatic skill is best showcased by dialogue, where the writing is dynamic and laced with black humour.
Duggan presents the miserable Ballard as empathetic rather than intolerable, and although towards the end of the play he begins to really test the audience's patience, it is the break with sympathy that allows for the transformation scene.
If the resolution is somewhat improbable, at least Ballard has stopped whining.
Alan Kinsella's stylish production treats the run-of-the-mill rite of passage story with contemporary edge, and Sabine Dargent's set presents a series of blank canvases which, through Barry Dignam and Claire Davey's projections, evoke an art gallery setting, the various train stations that the travellers pass through, the music video content being recorded along the way, as well as various sites of debauchery. Ivan Birthistle's and Vincent Doherty's sound design creates a playfully urgent pace for the journey and sustains the atmosphere, even when one more drunken incident becomes one too many.
In its concern with unfulfilled ambition, a stuck masculine identity, and the use of stimulants as an aide to self-fulfilment, Trans-Euro Express is familiar material. However, Duggan's play is never less than entertaining, and its inventive staging by Pageant Wagon ensures that its pedestrian concerns remain always engaging. The journey won't change your life, like it does Ballard's, but as an escape from your own frustrations it is a welcome diversion.
Finishes today, then runs in The New Theatre, Dublin, from Nov 17th-22nd
Parallel Horizons/ Under the Roof
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
CHRISTINE MADDEN
IN WORKING together with NOW Dance Company from Korea, Dance Theatre of Ireland has found an excellent complement to their own colourful and agile technique. Both Parallel Horizons (choreographed by Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick) and Under the Roof (choreographed by In-Young Sohn) mirror each other in the kind of style we have come to anticipate and appreciate in DTI: bright colours, verve, harmony and light.
An additional dimension, the on-stage presence of four musicians - two Irish, two Korean - brought particular energy to the piece with a hybrid soundscape. The dancers used the music, moving with its moods and rhythms, rather than work alongside, oblivious to the aural backdrop, which further added to the sense of harmony and grace that emanated from these pieces.
The Korean influence on Connor and Yurick evinced itself in the eastern flavour of Parallel Horizons: for example, the gentle opening scene in which dancers, huddled in individual pools of light, struck fluid poses almost reminiscent of pictographs. An episode of strong, urban movement showed dancers poised with strength, then collapsing with a flick, a sweep of their bodies. The company, like so often with DTI, appeared like a swarm of particularly agile sprites, working in harmony even when creating an illusion of chaos, dampening towards the end to stillness and peace.
Rings of light became rectangular in Sohn's Under the Roof. Blocks of light framing dancers echoed the props - plastic squares on sticks - which dancers gradually built into larger elements until they became long arches. The dance often had a trance-like, Butoh quality to it, but more often became a display of contrasts, with dancers juxtaposing speed with stillness. Another metaphor for contrast came with the use of language in the piece, which unfortunately felt rather jarring - and detracted from the power of the dance - even though, with dancers from both companies and countries, the difficulty of communication must have been a primary feature of the rehearsal process. Nevertheless, the cacophony equally resolved itself into stillness to complete an attractive double bill in grace.
Continues until Saturday in the Pavilion, then goes on Irish tour
Herbie Hancock
The Tripod, Dublin
RAY COMISKEY
HERBIE HANCOCK'S third visit to Dublin - the others saw him at the Olympia and the National Concert Hall - arrived in what has been an astonishingly Grammy-laden, award-winning year for him. And the band he brought, with Terence Blanchard (trumpet), Gregoire Maret (harmonica), Lionel Loueke (guitar), James Genus (bass) and Kendrick Scott (drums), may be the finest he's performed with here. The repertoire, drawn from his Head Hunters fusion days and from the more overtly jazz side of his work, as might be expected, was largely something old, a tint of something new and, stretching a point, the barest suggestion of something faintly blue. And the tone, rhythmically upfront and grooving, was set from the start.
This was Actual Proof, a Head Hunters piece, in which the extraordinary rapport between Hancock, at the piano and keyboard, and Kendrick Scott, was immediately apparent. It seemed difficult for Maret, following this relentless sonic maelstrom, to establish a presence, but he did.
Hancock turned to even earlier in his career with Speak Like A Child (segued into Wayne Shortyer's V), which permitted him to develop more orchestral colour, mainly in his use of electronics in an unaccompanied introduction. It also allowed Loueke his first solo, mostly built around a found motif, with Hancock encouraging him to explore it.
But the bulk of the material of the concert was either based around line and rhythm or modal in character. It meant harmonic considerations were either minimal or non-existent and line and rhythm could interact freely.
And in this sextet Hancock had the talent to make the most of the opportunities presented by this approach. Blanchard, used sparingly at first, came increasingly to the fore to make the sort of impact his talent commands, while Maret must be one of the finest on his instrument in jazz, even if the music didn't stretch him fully.
Loueke, from Benin, brought his African cultural background to his solo spot and fruitfully complicated the sextet's rhythmic drive, while Genus achieved a strikingly full sound from the electric bass. Scott was a force of nature and Hancock the guiding spirit of this tight, grooving collection of disparately gifted musicians.
It was an enjoyable concert, the kind of music that is meant to be consumed live and best experienced that way. This was in-the-moment-stuff, not emotion recollected in tranquillity.
