Irish Timeswriters review The Recruiting Officerand Beauty and the Beast.
The Recruiting Officer, Abbey Theatre, Dublin
Is it too late to repatriate George Farquhar? The Derry-born playwright certainly seemed unambiguous in his desire to leave Ireland behind in 1697 (where his only significant achievement onstage had been to accidentally stab another actor), moving to England where his ability to skewer subjects as a comic writer proved more useful.
Lynne Parker's new staging of The Recruitment Officer in the Abbey preserves the period of Farquhar's satiric, bawdy and ultimately rather thin comedy of conscription, but relocates the action from small-town rural England to small-town rural Ireland in 1704. That homecoming - which seems to answer the playwright Stewart Parker's desire for a Farquhar play set in Ireland - certainly allows for some coarse comedy among the simple hicks, although few echoes of the new Protestant Ascendancy are added: the Queen's potential soldiers here are as indifferent as ever.
On Ferdia Murphy's bright and airy set, its fold-out scenery as supple and knowingly insubstantial as a pop-up book, we find a town without a hero, its plinth without a statue, in a market square where the redcoat recruitment drive is on in earnest. Or as earnest as the rakish Captain Plume (a dependably dashing Declan Conlon) and his Sergeant Kite (a nicely roguish Garrett Lombard) will allow.
At one point Kite enumerates his recruiting credentials to Peter Hanly's lovelorn Mr Worthy, which include "canting, lying, impudence, pimping", and the strategies Farquhar depicts in the rites of courtship are no loftier.
Here the seduction of women is simply another route towards the enlistment of men, the conquest of each achieved through cajolery or deception: all's unfair in love and war.
There is much enjoyable spirit in the performance of such skirmishes, nowhere more so than Miche Doherty's hilariously realised Captain Brazen, a rival recruiting officer whom he plays with a perfect balance of cunning and bluster. Kathy Keira Clarke, whose name alone can send a costume designer's imagination into overdrive (Kathy Strachan's creations prove her no exception), is Melinda, the aloof object of his and Worthy's affections. But it is Cathy Belton's Silvia, Plume's amour, who proves most fiery in a cross-dressing manoeuvre that owes more to Shakespeare than any Restoration comedy.
Sex, then, becomes the real battleground (the British war against the French, never in sharp focus to begin with, is made still more hazy by the relocation) and such gender play allows Parker to display flashes of contemporary wit.
For all that nimbleness and the fetching accompaniment of Hélène Montague's live score, the play itself still creaks along on outmoded witticisms: Farquhar is determined to stretch every bout of wordplay or comic conceit to breaking point, and, for the guts of three hours, the production seems determined to let him.
If the play's satirical thrust still cut deep, that would not be such a hindrance, but its brimming goodwill actually dulls its comic edge.
Farquhar's play, you feel, might have served us better updated rather than relocated. - Peter Crawley
Runs until January 26th
Beauty and the Beast, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
The excitement of the opening night of the annual pantomime extravaganza was dulled by a 40-minute delay this year due to pre-Christmas traffic congestion in the capital. And so, perhaps it is only fair to blame that for the somewhat lacklustre opening scenes in Beauty and the Beast.
We quickly learned how Baroness Malicia (a formidable Rebecca Smith) cast an evil spell on Prince Sebastian (Trevor Jary), turning him into the fierce but not too scary Beast (Trevor Jary). And we watched how Belle's father (Bill Murphy) had to leave home to find new sources of income, having fallen on hard times.
But it was really only when the comic duo Tricky Ricky (an energetic and enthusiastic Richie Hayes) and Francis Finicky (a more restrained but splendid, Michael Grennell) got into their stride with their practical jokes, side comments and audience interaction, that the show really got on the road.
Interspersed with excellent singing and dancing from the both adult dancers and the children from the Billie Barry Stage School, the show reached its high point at the end of act one when the set (which had a fantastic children's storybook quality to it) was technologically enhanced to create a stunning laser show in the woods, as the Beast saved Belle from an attack by wild creatures.
Act two opened with a gentler Beast (Trevor Jary was far more convincing as a gentle than an angry Beast) tending to the needs of Belle (a beautiful Polly Barrett whose stage presence only emerged in act two) as she lay sick in a castle bedroom.
The traditional storyline was played out (with a hilarious and sneaky jibe at rival shows in the Liberty Hall and Olympia from Francis and Tricky Ricky) and we were treated to a sumptuously dressed cast in the grand wedding scene.
All in all, it was a great night out, but somewhere within, this year's pantomime lacked the wow factor.
Perhaps, we needed more special effects or even a few members from a well-known boy band. Such extras would have brought more pizazz into a show that will nonetheless draw audiences night after night throughout the Christmas period.
Beauty and the Beast continues at the Gaiety Theatre until February 3rd. Tel: 01-6771717. - Sylvia Thompson
