Reviews

Irish Times writers review a selection of events

Piano Duo Antithesis at the NCH John Field Room, Dublin

The advance publicity for Monday's concert at the John Field Room, even on the NCH's own website at the time of the concert, suggested an evening of music for two pianos. In the event, the programme by the Greek Piano Duo Antithesis (Petros Moschos and Dimitris Karydis), promoted by Dublin Master Classes with sponsorship from the Embassy of Greece, was entirely of piano duets.

The first half was given over to a sonata by Mozart (in B flat, K358) and a set of Waltzes (Op. 39) by Brahms. The duo's handling of Mozart was clean but uneventful, of Brahms cleaner again and clearer in colouring, but still rather under-characterised.

Poulenc's cheeky Sonata of 1918, altogether more demanding of quick contrasts, sparked the players into sharper responses. And Welsh composer Rhian Samuel's blue-note-rich Gaslight Square II, premiered by them last year, also kept them on their toes. The succession of dances which ended the evening - pairs from Barber, Greek composer Skalkottas and Dvorak - showed the players in the best light of all. In spite of the almost pedestrian gentility of their Mozart, this duo plays with a one-mindedness rare in four-hand combinations. And the dances flexed and sprung in performances that seemed effortlessly appealing. Michael Dervan

Dowdall, Adams at John Field Room, NCH, Dublin

Mozart - Flute Sonata in F K13. Arvo Pärt - Für Alina; Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka. Louis Andriessen - Sonata. Donnacha Dennehy - fAt. Karg-Elert - Symphonic Canzona. Reinecke - Undine Sonata.

There was a nicely jumbled mix of styles and periods in Tuesday's concert by flautist William Dowdall and pianist David Adams. You had the impression that what the players enjoyed - over and above any other consideration - was what determined what they played.

The obvious enjoyment on the platform had an infectious effect (even with an already partisan audience, with the flute community well represented), starting with the airy, elegant simplicity of the little Mozart sonata, composed when he was eight years old.

There followed at once a leap of two centuries to music written within the past 30 years but hugely varied in character. Adams created a calm, glass-like delicacy with mid-1970s piano pieces by Arvo Pärt who at the time had started to develop his post-serial appetite for the simple appreciation of individual sounds.

Donnacha Dennehy was on hand to introduce his fAt for flute and tape, originally commissioned by Dowdall in 2000 but now with a new ending. The composer described it as a fast-paced "roadrunner" of a piece, and so it sounded, Dowdall demonstrating an easy technical assurance throughout six minutes of rapidly shifting textures: flute embedded within computer generated sounds, or else in dialogue with them, flute in contrapuntal conversation with flute on tape, and so on.

The duo joined up to play the 17-year-old Louis Andriessen's 1957 Sonata with its contemporary jazz colouring and hints of Bartók and Ravel in the quick, rhythmically lively outer movements.

Both here and in the two 19th-century pieces after the interval, the partnership between flute and piano was always intelligently judged.

To the fore was Dowdall's consistent blending of warmth and brightness, while Adams kept his dynamics in proportion to the flute.

As in the Mozart, the well-matched sensitivity of their phrasing drew out the expressive and narrative qualities of Reinecke's Schumannesque, programmatic Undine Sonata and the sheer, rhapsodic romanticism of Karg-Elert's Symphonic Canzona, a rarely- performed 10-minute gem. Michael Dungan

Blue/Orange at the Peacock, Dublin

Joe Penhall's intellectually exhilarating and emotionally engaging Blue/Orange is a play about power and authority, schizophrenia and race, politics and institutions, Idi Amin and citrus fruits. Of course, it's not quite that straightforward.

Set in a London psychiatric hospital, it is essentially a power play where two white doctors engage in increasingly brutal (but almost always professional) discussions while deciding whether a black patient "on the border between neurotic and psychotic" should be committed or discharged.

Blue/Orange, at a simple reading, may be a play about race and racism, but Annabelle Comyn's attentive production never lets things become simply black/white.

Even Bruce, for instance, a sympathetic young registrar hovering over a diagnosis of schizophrenia, may be a caring idealist or a shrewd careerist - the bright professional exterior of Christopher Staines's performance makes it hard to decide.

His superior, Robert, is the consultant psychiatrist determined to discharge the patient. And George Costigan's nicely slippery turn captures his condescension and dubious relativism: "Right now," he tells his underling, "my semantics are better than yours."

Even Chris, a young man who believes his father is the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and that oranges are blue, can seem both mentally unstable and manipulated but then just as capable to manipulate, another participant in "playing the game".

You are unlikely to leave with much faith in consultancy, but the play is complex enough to welcome a second opinion.

Without ever leaving the confines of a consultation room, Penhall's play is dense with verbiage (at times excessively so) but by no means is it static.

As Chris, Emmanuel Ighodaro is an unceasingly frenetic - if marginalised - presence, his words and movements as skittering and idiomatic as the jazz soundtrack that splits the three scenes.

Comyn isn't able to liberate him - Ighodaro is generally confined to a chair, rarely glimpsed in anything but side profile - but her production is imbued with his restless bounce.

Paul O'Mahony's set might initially seem clinically bland, but Staines and Costigan circle it like boxers in a ring, their words attaining the speed and force of punches, punctuated with sudden jabs of wit. Even an "issue drama" can ping and zing.

Blue/Orange, like most plays worth arguing over, can frustrate the spectator with its shifting perspectives, circuitous progression and vague resolution.

Few plays, however, have teased out a mental condition with as much urgency and emotion.

This production rewards the investment you make in it: admission is voluntary, but we should all be committed. Peter Crawley

Emmanual Jal at the Spiegeltent, Cork Midsummer Festival

"I believe I survived for a reason - to tell my story and to change lives", proclaims African rap icon Emmanual Jal, before delivering a hip-hop version of Our Father, in a slight deviation from the gangsta-bling strand of lyricism favoured by his American counterparts.

Jesus may be his homeboy, but Jal has reason more than most to be grateful.

At eight, he was handed an AK-47 in his native Sudan and trained to fight. By the time he was 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars, and decided along with 400 other child soldiers to make a run for it. Three months later, racked with hunger and thirst, the child soldiers and a handful of adults were still stumbling through the Sudanese bush. Cannibalism became their only means of survival. Needless to say, Eminem had it soft.

It's these seismic experiences that inform Jal's artistic output and political validity, from performances at Live 8, to a recent American Gospel Award and a planned film by Ridley Scott. From his opening track War Child to the touching Mamma, Jal's personal reminiscences are delivered in Arabic, English, Dinka and his native Nuer, over unadorned samples and recorded backing tracks.

More interested in hugs than hoes, Jal's positive and upbeat offerings seem the very antithesis of mainstream hip-hop, yet somehow it makes sense and it's impossible not to be taken in by the optimism. A highlight was the title track from his debut album Gua (meaning peace), which fuses effortless rhythmic rap with a soulful refrain and had the crowd chanting in unison.

Live accompaniment was reduced to a sole guitarist, and if there is a criticism, it is that a bigger production incorporating percussion or brassmight have been expected, especially given the €18 entrance fee.

Admittedly, no one seemed to mind, and if the first half of the performance served to get the message across, then the finale was all about letting it hang loose. For their part, the audience responded in sways. The fact that the event took place on World Refugee Day added extra significance. Brian O'Connell

Olive Skin, Blood Mouth at the Project Upstairs, Dublin

The Gaiety School of Acting is again launching its graduating class with a commissioned play, this year by Gavin Kostick. The writer has found his source material in the tales of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and added the fruits of his own imagination to make them serve as parables and commentaries on the modern occupation of Iraq.

A motley group of soldiers and civilians find shelter in a house whose mistress and servant tell them stories. There is the man whose greed for food ends with his cannibalising himself, a metaphor for the fate of animal-like behaviour. A sculptor faces the dilemma of whether to use his art to serve or defy a tyrant. A soldier from an occupying army loves and marries a native woman, but later is consumed with lust for her sister, whom he rapes and mutilates. His wife's revenge is gruesome.

The second half tells of Paris choosing the goddess of love, and thereby launching the Trojan war that first set west against east. The savagery is compounded by a woman telling of the destruction of her six children, whom she hid for years only to have them killed by war planes. It ends with the killing of Agamemnon by his wife followed by, it seems, a prophecy of universal doom.

In this annual event the play, never designed for the commercial theatre, is less important in itself than the opportunities it gives the actors, all 16 of them, to interpret their roles. It is written in an often poetic and declamatory vein, updated with modern language and occasional expletives. The young cast, directed by Patrick Sutton, deliver it with passion and commitment; a good start to their nascent careers. Gerry Colgan