Today's reviews look at the RTÉ Concert Orchestra 60th Anniversary, Ensemble ICCand One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
RTÉ Concert Orchestra 60th Anniversary
National Concert Hall, Dublin
THE RTÉ Concert Orchestra really knows how to throw a party. From the moment that conductor laureate Proinnsias Ó Duinn launched his brass at Shostakovich's rousing Festive Overture, there was a feeling of something special in the air.
Next came New Zealander Will Martin, a light baritone of a mere 24 years with as lovely a voice as a man can have. He sang The Last Rose of Summerand Going Home, bringing the house down. An orchestral piece by Ron Goodwin was followed by a Welsh soprano, Natasha Marsh, who sang an aria from Puccini, and other numbers.
A strings-only version of Sondheim's Send in the Clownswas mood-making, and Gary Williams came on to offer superior pop songs Sinatra-style. A rousing The Sorcerer's Apprenticeended the first half.
After the interval, a lively piece by Belfast-born AJ Potter topped up the mood again, charging the atmosphere for Gary Williams to return in swinging mood with numbers by Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn and Cole Porter.
The cinema provided the orchestra with a feast of colour from Pirates of the Caribbean, and the extraordinary Will Martin conquered all again with two songs from his album New World, and joined Natasha Marsh in a spellbinding duet in The Prayer, a song nominated for an Academy Award. Natasha then sang a final set of three numbers, all entrancing.
The song My Waynow tends to generate a certain resistance - overdone - but Gary Williams's treatment of his final number was exceptional.
Then the orchestra cut loose with Riverdance, plus an encore medley, to end a splendid evening, monitored by Ronan Collins as an affable presenter.
An evening suffused with the magic of music, then; and what a party. GERRY COLGAN
Ensemble ICC
Unitarian Church,
St Stephen's Green, Dublin
Francis Heery - Arclight.
Amanda Feery - On Shuffle.
Brian Bolger - Extract Track.
Laura Kitty - The Lost Shore.
Simon O'Connor - Babóg.
Dónal Adams - Tiles and Tesselations.
Scott McLaughlin - Lorenz.
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly - Ekstase III.
ENSEMBLE ICC, the performing arm of the Irish Composers' Collective (formerly the Young Composers' Collective), made its debut at the Unitarian Church in Dublin on Thursday.
The mixed line-up of players included Cora Venus Lunny (viola), Kate Ellis (cello), Daniel Bodwell (double bass and percussion), Karl Rooney (saxophones and clarinet) and Roger Moffat (percussion).
The programme was a sequence of premieres by members of the ICC, and although this debut concert showed that the ensemble has some settling to do in terms of internal instrumental balance and tidiness of ensemble, the group's progress will be watched with great interest.
The collective's members don't present themselves as sharing any particular musical aesthetic. Francis Heery's Arclightblended the influences of minimalism and spectralism in a piece that unfolded as a periodically interrupted drone.
Amanda Feery's On Shuffleaimed for a choppier rhythmic incisiveness, with something of the whiff of a Crash Ensemble gig about it.
Brian Bolger's Extract Tracknarrowed its resources down to viola and cello in long stretches of double-stops, alternating sections of straight playing and tremolo.
The Lost Shoreby Laura Kitty used the full ensemble with two wordless sopranos (unnamed on the programme sheet) for a Tolkien-inspired piece with a slow, meandering drift.
Simon O'Connor's Babóg, for the three strings, was the quietest and also among the most effective of the pieces, slightly Satiesque in its simplicity, but also well-gauged for the instruments.
If there was a characteristic shared between most of the evening's composers (apart from training under Donnacha Dennehy), it was a peculiar indifference to the niceties of instrumental technique. The effectiveness of O'Connor's piece in this regard made it stand out.
Scott McLaughlin's game-derived Lorenzcreated a kind of slow grinding of pitches - the game seems to be a matter for the composer and players rather than the listener.
Dónal Adams's Tiles and Tesselationsand Benedict Schlepper-Connolly's Ekstase IIIwere two works that offered hints of outside influence, through moments of Kevin Volans-like giddiness in the Adams, and altogether more mysterious moments in the stillness of the Connolly, where the references were like flavours you can recognise but not actually name.
Schlepper-Connolly's combination of voice (again, wordless) and three strings (Lunny singing as well as playing) was highly evocative. MICHAEL DERVAN
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Town Hall, Galway
KEN KESEY'S One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nesthasn't aged very well, in part because it's been imitated so often. Since the novel appeared in 1962, we've seen countless films and novels set in institutions for the mentally ill, who are usually shown to be considerably more sane than the people who care for them.
We've also encountered far too many stories that culminate in moments of redemption that are channelled through the figure of a mysterious American "Other" - usually an African-American male, but here a Native American.
Kesey's villain, Nurse Ratched, also seems more problematic now. Her patients speak uneasily of being mentally "castrated" by her, which leads the anti-hero McMurphy to encourage them to find their "balls" by rebelling against her. Most of their troubles thus seem to arise from their sexuality-virginity in one case, and suppressed homosexuality in another. You don't need to be Freud to be uneasy with Kesey's unsubtle presentation of Ratched as the mother of this dysfunctional family.
This Keegan Theatre production of Dale Wasserman's stage adaptation never quite manages to overcome these problems. But it does successfully deal with the biggest challenge involved in staging this play: it makes us forget about Jack Nicholson's performance in the 1975 film adaptation version of the novel. Mark A Rhea's characterisation of McMurphy is much more subdued and subtle than Nicholson's, and for that reason it seems much more credible. This reduces the story's manic energy somewhat, but it also boosts its emotional impact.
Most of the other performances are equally good, although there is a tendency towards melodramatic gestures, cliched blocking and declamatory line delivery during some of the play's more intense moments. The actors also occasionally seem self-conscious in their movement around the stage.
Direction by Susan Marie Rhea is similarly mixed. She deals well with some of the play's lively set pieces, which are expertly timed and well choreographed. But too often, the production spells things out for the audience, with music and lighting in particular being used to emphasise the overwhelmingly obvious.
Touring to Dún Laoghaire, Kilkenny, Roscommon, Longford, Thurles and Cork. PATRICK LONERGAN
