Irish Times writers review, Saturday Night Fever, the Kaiser Chiefs, Minesotan trio Low and two plays written by Pip Upton
Saturday Night Fever, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
For Tony Manero, life on the mean streets of Brooklyn is dreary and sometimes perilous. But the 19-year-old meets its challenges the best way he knows how: he makes quick, upward thrusts with his crotch and pretends to hoist invisible ropes.
Based on the 1977 movie with a delirious Bee Gees soundtrack, which itself was based on a 1976 magazine article, which itself was based on nothing at all, the ridiculously entertaining stage musical version of Saturday Night Fever exists as pure fantasy. Never mind its fretful attempts to grasp at plot threads - a dance competition, a love triangle, a disillusioned priest, a gang rumble - Saturday Night Fever is really as sparkling and dizzy as a glitterball.
When it sticks to the dance sequences in the neon-saturated 2001 Odyssey club, the show is almost radiant with kitsch. The choreography of director Arlene Phillips incorporates the poise of ballet, the squats and leaps of Cossack and the little slaps of Morris dancing: it's disco stew.
As Tony, Sean Mulligan unleashes his inner Travolta (but Mulligan is a better dancer). He has the primping, preening narcissism of the teenager down pat: legs apart, one hand on his hip, the other thrusting into the sky; the little teapot with an erection. Well, you can tell by the way he uses his walk that Tony is a woman's man.
Yet he remains as chaste as his white suit. And for all his gang's pretty-boy pelvic thrusts, it's the women here who are sexual aggressors - a point nicely understood by Rebecca Dent's much-spurned Annette.
This touring production feels similarly demure, however. Nimble set pieces come and go, never letting the disco beat drop, but the details - there's no illuminating floor, and the backdrops are painted on - seem threadbare. Phillips is at a loss when the energy of the disco fizzles out, leaving each lead character rooted to the spot, trying to emote their way out of a Bee Gees number. Besides, if there's one thing you learn from the guilty pleasure of this disco inferno, and the unflagging moves of its beautiful company, it's to never stop dancing. - Peter Crawley
Until May 20
Kaiser Chiefs, Dublin Castle
What better way to end this year's Heineken Green Energy festival than with a robust singalong, courtesy of the nutty boys from Leeds and their inane-but-insanely-catchy repertoire of modern Britpop ditties? OK, maybe I can think of a few, but since I've already washed my hair this week, I may as well mosey down and join in the Kaiser karaoke.
The Kaiser Chiefs have caught on quicker than Crazy Frog and, barely a year after their debut album Employment, their tunes are embedded in the pop psyche. They're also ridiculously easy to sing along to, since their hooks are comprised of variations on an "oh-oh-oh-oh" theme. As singer Ricky Wilson says: "You don't even have to know the words".
While we brush up on the lyrics to Na Na Na Na Naa, ex-Blur guitarist Graham Coxon warms up the crowd with some spitfire punk-pop tunes from his solo catalogue. Dressed in a stripy red Dennis the Menace jumper and sporting his trademark specs, Coxon chops out the riffs, his shy demeanour seeming somewhat at odds with the bolshie attitude of such songs as Freaking Out, Spectacular and - his current single and best tune yet - You & I.
The sultans of singalong stroll on and launch into Every Day I Love You Less and Less, and the crowd bounces into action. Wilson and his bandmates - guitarist Andrew White, bassist Simon Rix, drummer Nick Hodgson and keyboard player Nick Baines - sing songs about getting your head kicked in on a Saturday night, but they'd hardly challenge Billy Bragg in the socially aware stakes, although who cares about the message when the medium is as infectious as Modern Way, Born to Be a Dancer and I Predict a Riot?
As darkness falls, the strobe-heavy light show kicks in, compensating somewhat for the lack of musical and lyrical depth, and Wilson appears Bono-like in the middle of the crowd, perhaps an attempt to compensate for his complete lack of rockstar persona. For an encore, the Chiefs unveil the second new song of the night, which, to the relief of the crowd, has plenty of "oh-oh-oh" bits. By the time they finish Oh My God, we really do know all the words. - Kevin Courtney
Adolf, Civic Theatre Studio, Tallaght
Pip Utton's one-man play had a substantial success at the Edinburgh Fringe eight years ago, and it is not hard to see why it endures. Hitler was one of the most charismatic nutcases in recent history, and his foam-flecked tirades against the Jews are preserved in his own book Mein Kampf. There is a grisly fascination about the man.
The play begins in the Berlin bunker where Hitler killed himself in 1945. There he addresses all present, urging them to restart the Nazi movement wherever they can. To help them, he reveals the secrets of the success that brought him to the role of Führer. Tell people what they want to hear. Sign treaties, and break them when it is opportune. The end does justify the means.
And his cause has been to get the best for his people; what can be wrong with that? It was essential to eradicate the parasitical Jews, ethnic minorities and sexual perverts. Without them, Germany would be a green and pleasant land.
That latter phrase describes an idyllic England, too, and the actor, now himself, fits a second arrow to his bow. He begins with humour and moves to irony, ribbing the empire and all that, and then to the plain man's uncomplicated nationalism. The latter just wants his lifestyle to be preserved, his job to be safe, his children to be protected. But there are all these low-life immigrants stinking up the place, and maybe it's time to reclaim the country.
Mr Utton is playing a solo role as Francis Bacon, painter, at lunchtime at Bewley's; certainly an impressive double. - Gerry Colgan
Runs to May 13; then tours
Low, Temple Bar Music Centre
When Minnesotan trio Low, masters of so-called "slowcore" rock, released The Great Destroyer last year, they surprised fans and critics with their new sound - a faster, heavier, more conventional brand of indie rock than on previous albums such as Trust or Things We Lost in the Fire. This performance, however, clearly demonstrated that the transformation was a trick of the studio. In performance, songs such as Monkey and Silver Rider reverted to the characteristic Low sound: quiet, slowly percussive, beat driven, layered with vocal harmonies. The songs, unsurprisingly, are compelling in either style.
Last year's tour was cancelled after leader Alan Sparhawk suffered a nervous breakdown, but the band appeared to be thoroughly enjoying themselves during this performance. Drummer (and Sparhawk's wife) Mimi Parker stood centre stage as she gradually knocked out her languorous rhythms while adding haunting vocals on songs such as Sunflower.
New bassist Matt Livingston was an unassuming presence on stage right, building the foundations for the trademark epic crescendos. Sparhawk even proved he can rock out White Stripes-style on Canada, but the band prefer to explore their own rich palette of mournful beats.
There is something elemental about Low's sound. Charges of monotony are understandable, but miss the point. Low are monotonous in the same way the Philip Glass or Gavin Bryars are monotonous, which is not at all once you become absorbed in it. During songs, the crowd was silent and virtually motionless, save for the slightest swaying, as if the music itself was a gentle breeze, but roared their appreciation after every number. With Low's sound in full flow, there is a lot to appreciate. - Davin O'Dwyer
Bacon, Bewley's Café Theatre
This new lunchtime show, written and performed by Pip Utton, is a penetrating probe into the life of Francis Bacon, the Irish-born painter who achieved notoriety and fame in the 20th century. His canvases are satirical, horrifying and hallucinatory, and worth countless millions today, not long after his death in 1992. This play sets out to give the background against which his turbulent life was played out.
As depicted here, he passionately believes that, for an artist, excess in everything is essential, that not enough must always displace too much. For him, living is a futile journey from cradle to grave.
Only sensation - of food, drink, sex and suffering - can give it meaning. He chooses an existence of masochism and perversion, in which his only real passion is painting, a medium that embraces his nihilism and distorted psyche.
We are told of his boyhood, on an Irish farm where his father trains racehorses to lose, and punishes his son brutally for gay tendencies.
Eventually the young man is shipped off to an uncle in Berlin, where his sexual education is further warped. Paris is next, and then London, through which he moves like an open razor, wounded and wounding, in the private clubs he frequents. There are pitiful accounts of occasional bouts of gay love, always lost or sacrificed, but mostly his sex drive is consumed in transient encounters.
All of this and much more found its way into his work, and it is fascinating to listen to his views on art, artists, critics and public opinion. Mr Utton's portrayal is always absorbing and at times hypnotic, unsparing of subject and audience. - Gerry Colgan
Runs to May 13
