Galway shows room to expand

Hubbard Street Dance and Allen Toussaint were just two highlights of a successful Galway Arts Festival, writes Deirdre Falvey

Strolling by the river in Galway in the balmy weather, it was a pleasure to see the twin peaks of the dark blue big top, erected again in the Fisheries Field for the Galway Arts Festival. A pleasure, too, for those who gathered on the banks to sit and listen to the music gratis (ironically close to the alternative, fringy Project '06 festival in the Rowing Club, itself a waterside draw).

The line-up of gigs in the big top - Bell X1, UB40, David Gray, Simple Minds, Rodrigo y Gabriela - was eclectic if for the most part predictable, and the atmosphere was great. The MCD gigs, with Budweiser and Guinness-only bars, were the priciest of the festival - from €29.50, but most at €44.50 - more expensive than the theatre shows, even the 22-strong Hubbard Street Dance troupe (€22), which travelled from Chicago and was an exhilarating hit of the festival (although tickets couldn't be had for love nor money). The benefit of State and city subsidies and sponsorship sure showed there. Rod and Gab, very hot just now, drew a huge crowd who knew the music and responded enthusiastically, even if the tent seemed ridiculously large for two acoustic guitars, heavily miked and with a thunking base beat to compensate.

Saturday's New Orleans All-Stars show on Saturday night drew a smaller crowd - a shame, because the gig was an excellent mix of boogie-woogie, blues, jazz and rock, and the line-up included a genuine living legend in 68-year-old singer, pianist and composer Allen Toussaint, who wrote Working in the Coal Mine for Lee Dorsey and many other hits, including Brickyard Blues and Get Out of My Life, Woman. Toussaint, who also collaborated with Elvis Costello on the recent album The River in Reverse, is based in New York while his house in New Orleans is being rebuilt. There was anger about the floods, and Bush's reaction to them, from other artists on the bill, including Louisiana's brilliant singer and pianist Marcia Ball. The show finished on a moving version of Randy Newman's Louisiana: "The water rose all day, the water rose all night . . . they're trying to wash us out."

The festival's two other big music venues at the Radisson also drew good crowds, but the shortcomings of the hotel ballroom for music was as evident as ever, with performers such as Lambchop having to fight the venue.

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players at the Town Hall Theatre (wrong venue - this act needs a less formal setting) was a real oddity: a rock band plus slide-show entertainment featuring nerdy singer, keyboardist and guitarist Jason Trachtenburg, with wife Tina working the slides and 12-year-old daughter Rachel on drums. After years of musical failure, the Trachtenburgs hit on a novel gimmick when Tina bought an old projector and slides at a thrift store, and Jason set them to music. As a vaudeville-style art-rock concept this sounds great, but the reality was somewhat underwhelming: glimpses into private, past lives, mostly in the 1970s, that fascinated initially but weren't served well by the awful songs that accompanied them and failed to draw out the pathos. You could file the Trachtenburgs with Tiny Tim, Jonathan Richman and other exploiters of faux naivety, though the 60 or so people who walked out on the first night didn't get it - not that there was much to get. By all accounts the following night's show was far more successful.

Mark Doherty and Mikel Murphy followed up their clown show for children last year with another, joined by Brian Quinn for The Clerk and the Clown. The story of Doherty's office clerk with 1950s-style wife, who's led astray on his morning commute by Murfi's clown, is delightful and gentle, with lots of knockabout humour and finishes with the inevitable cream pie fight. The tale is mimed and wordless, and the sounds are created by Murfi and Quinn with an assortment of drums, boxes of rice and whistles.

The GAF this year was like no other, with a piquancy and buzz added by the intermingling with Project '06.

Director Paul Fahy's first GAF was a very successful one, with the highlights including the Hubbard dance show and the excellent, greatly expanded visual arts strand - large numbers of people wound a trail through the city from one exhibition to another, with the Galway Arts Centre, for example, recording more than 700 visitors on the first Saturday alone.

Of course, there's no comparison between the very mixed, unprogrammed bag that was Project '06 - some terrific work and some patchy, less experienced productions, all of them on a shoestring and all of them enthusiastic and vibrant - and the established, high-grade, international GAF, which exist on different (but both valid) planes. But there's clearly room for an expanded GAF and a substantial fringe.