Arts Reviews

In his essay 'Nero, Chekhov's Cognac and a Knocker', Seamus Heaney wrote about the difficulties of criticism in the face of what he called the literature of witness.

He Left Quietly

The Helix, DCU

Citing his own experiences as an academic teaching the poetry of Wilfrid Owen, he illustrated the dilemma of the critic in the face of the sheer reality of Owen's experiences in the first World War. As a teacher, he was compelled to point out Owen's artistic flaws. "Yet there was obviously an immense disparity between the nit-picking criticism I was conducting on the poem and the heavy price, in terms of emotional and physical suffering, the poet paid in order to bring it into being." The same kind of question surrounds He Left Quietly, which is playing until the end of this week at the splendid new Helix performance complex on the campus of Dublin City University. It is, as it happens, an artful and sophisticated performance.

But the immense disparity between the suffering to which it bears witness and the privileged position of the critic is such as to render criticism merely impertinent.

Here, the sense of witness is literal. He Left Quietly is based on the life of Duma Kumalo. It is performed, along with two actors, by Duma Kumalo. We cannot, in other words, separate the dancer from the dance, the experience from the representation.

Duma Kumalo was sentenced to death in 1984 on a false charge of taking part in the murder of a town councillor in Sharpeville, in what was then apartheid South Africa. Along with five other men, he formed the Sharpeville Six - a group analogous to the Birmingham Six, except that they were sentenced to hang.

Kumalo is, in a sense, a ghost, a revenant from the world of the dead. In March 1988, he was measured for his coffin, and for the noose. His last meal of a whole chicken was brought to his cell. He had his final meeting with his heart-broken father. And then, a matter of hours before his execution, he was reprieved as a result of international pressure and, after another four years, finally released.

Kumalo's story is not unique to South Africa. The "common purpose" laws under which he was convicted were also used in Northern Ireland, most notoriously in the horrific case of the corporals lynched in west Belfast. The racist politics of Death Row under apartheid are still played out every day in the US.

But He Left Quietly cannot be a universal metaphor. Kumalo's own presence as narrator and actor takes the piece far beyond the familiar realms of artistic imagery. It is inescapably real. The only other piece I've seen that has this same quality is George Seremba's extraordinary re-enactment of his own torture and attempted murder by the Uganda secret police, Come Good Rain.

Kumalo's story is told very differently from Seremba's electrifyingly direct performance, however. The writer and director Yael Farber has given it the deliberation and distance of a ritual. With Lebohang Elephant enacting Kumalo's narrative with mime, movement and laconic utterance, and Yana Sakelaris re-creating Farber's own involvement as a white South African of Jewish extraction, the piece successfully converts raw reality into a cooler, more abstract, performance.

This might be jarring were it not for the nature of Duma Kumalo's own extraordinary presence. He is calm, almost stoical, speaking and moving as if he really is a ghost, looking at his own life from the far side of death. Through this presence and the increasingly eloquent suppleness of Farber's beautifully-judged production, the piece becomes almost literally haunting. -Fintan O'Toole

Picture of Dorian Gray

Everyman Palace Cork

As a novel, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray seems to belong to that peculiar genre of horror typified, perhaps, by Henry James with The Turn of the Screw or The Monkey's Paw: well-bred, in other words, but with intense dramatic closure. As presented in this enthralling co-production by Boomerang Theatre of Cork and Shade Interactive of Amsterdam John Osborne's adaptation of the Wilde classic keeps the breeding but abandons the tension; the play becomes a series of intense conversations on art, life, genius and morality and the responsibilities of each to each. What is missing, in a presentation which has many other elements, is the current of vice which drives the novel like a sustained electrical charge. Although Henry Wotton's languid epigrams are given as precisely as a geometrical exercise by Miceál McBrian, the undertone of amorality, of lethargic corruption, is too faint to support the purpose of the play or its denouement. And yet that purpose seems to have been very well understood by director Trish Edelstein and Shade Interactive's team of video artists led by Ruud Lanfermeijer.

There will be many arguments about the wisdom of giving Dorian Gray his own mini-camera (excusable perhaps as a commentary on the reflective nature of the plot) and about the use of exaggerated close-ups - although again these have a defensible function - but most of the video component is knitted into the live action as if extending it beyond its possible limits.

The stage and its players are projected in real time but in tiers or panels on the screen, sometimes acting almost as a bridge between the steep ramped set by Katrin Unlauft. The scenes of interiors melt into dream sequences which expand the visual and textual references beyond page, stage and house. This scenario is given further resonance by the distant, discordant but organic scoring of Sound composer Marcel Wierckx. Sometimes, however, the medium is not the message, and all this interaction would be no more than a diversion were it not for the honest performances of Brian Dunphy as Basil Hallward and Tom Power as Dorian Gray who, with McBrian, sustain the integrity of the story . - Mary Leland

Runs at the Everyman Palace until Dec 4th, tel: 021 4501673

Franzita Whelan (soprano), Deirdre Cooling-Nolan (contralto), John Elwes (tenor), Nigel Williams (bass), Carlow Choral Society, OSC/Barry Douglas

National Concert Hall

Symphonies 8 & 9 (Choral).........Beethoven

Orchestra of St Cecilia's series of all Beethoven's symphonies, with Barry Douglas conducting, ended at the National Concert Hall last Monday. With the "Choral" Symphony as the closing work, expectations were high; and they were not disappointed, even though this was an uneven concert.

The performance of Symphony No 8 was never short of character, and the OSC was consistently responsive to Barry Douglas's urgent conducting. Driven not so much by phrasing as by strong accentuation and immediate rhythmic energy, the playing was in line with the work of historical-style conductors such as Roger Norrington; and like them, it created an impression of objectivity, that the music was speaking for itself. However, the drive was too unrelenting; and with an orchestra of this size and experience it should have been possible to achieve more delicate nuances in balance and colour.

The comparison with parts of the "Choral" Symphony was revealing. The opening movement had a spaciousness and a balance between line and accent which got much deeper into the music than any part of the preceding work. And despite some careless details of balance, the slow movement was beautifully done, and featured some excellent wind playing.

In the finale, the Carlow Choral Society did well with one of the toughest pieces in the standard repertoire. The control and power of the soprano lines was astonishing. The characterful voices of Franzita Whelan (soprano), Deirdre Cooling-Nolan (contralto), John Elwes (tenor) and Nigel Williams (bass) sounded just right for this music. And Barry Douglas's direction seemed to come into its own, through a supercharged tension which could linger when itneeded to, yet which created an energy touching the transcendent qualities of this extraordinary music. -

Martin Adams