Reviews

Irish Times writers review Heavenly Bodies in the Peacock Theatre, the Corrs in the Point and the West Cork Chamber Music Festival

West Cork Chamber Music Festival

Michael Dervan

A full programme of Boccherini, even for a midday concert, is an unlikely prospect. But that is exactly what Monday's Coffee Concert at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival brought from the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet with visiting cellist, Sonia Wieder-Atherton.

The programming experiment proved to be a delightful one. Boccherini was himself a cellist, and has left a large body of string quintets featuring two cellos. The music is highly sensual, and Boccherini's fascination with string textures, combined with his strong streak of self-indulgence, leads occasionally to an almost minimalist patterning, in which he goes over, again and again, an idea which has particularly taken his fancy.

The two-cello quintets are also remarkable for his readiness to exploit the first cello as soprano, alto or tenor as well as bass, and his thumbprint fondness for ecstatic duetting takes on a special aura through the precarious high flights he demands of his own instrument.

Monday's programme offered three works (the Quintets in F minor, G348, in B minor G350, and C, G310), with Wieder-Atherton confidently taking on the high-wire demands in an area of 18th-century repertoire for which the Vanbrughs have already shown especial sympathy.

The Callino Quartet's afternoon programme offered works from the last three decades of the 20th century, Henri Dutilleux's elaborately intricate Ainsi la nuit of 1976, György Kurtág's Webern-permeated Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky of 1989, and Franghis Ali-Zadeh's Mugam Sajahy of 1993, exotic even in its plainest moments, and making atmospheric use of a quartet split on and off the stage, as it brings a flavour of Azerbaijan to the Western concert platform. It also on this occasion brought out the very best in the playing of the Callinos.

The innocuous title of Shostakovich's Op. 62, Six Romances on Verses of W. Raleigh, R. Burns, and W. Shakespeare, does nothing to convey the bleakness and blackness of the music. Fyodor Kuznetsov and his pianist, Yuri Serov, allowed the dark matter to blaze forth, no matter how apparently innocent the patterning in which Shostakovich garbed it.

The Vilnius Quartet offered a sauvely-touching account of the three surviving movements of Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis's C minor Quartet (the finale is lost), sounding very much the music of a young composer, grappling with 19th-century issues in early 20th-century Lithuania (he wrote it in 1901) before he would very rapidly move on to more contemporary concerns.

Joanna MacGregor blasted her way in a roughly-accented, over-pedalled hurry through Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, but an essential musical focus was lost in the turbulent dispersal of so much high energy.

Beethoven playing of a more subdued cast was offered by the Altenberg Trio in an altogether more far-reaching account of the Archduke Trio.

Raising your voice, banging the table, forcing your argument, the Altenberg's playing clearly suggested, is no competition for soft-spoken honesty and truth - at least in the world of music.

Heavenly Bodies

Peacock Theatre

Belinda McKeon

That the Peacock production of Stewart Parker's stage biography of the 19th-century Irish melodramatist Dion Boucicault comprises far more than an interesting footnote to the blockbuster run, upstairs on the Abbey's main stage, of Boucicault's 1874 play The Shaughraun - and that the relationship may actually be the other way around - takes just moments to become apparent.

As we first meet him, Declan Conlon's Boucicault is wreathed in shawls, bent over with age, drolly instructing a group of young actors in the art of theatrical histrionics; a scene which sets the tone for a stylish, deliciously self-ironising production. But Boucicault's preoccupation with exit lines and darkened theatres foreshadows the dread of his own death - a moment summoned with chilling exactitude by Paul Keogan's lighting, and punctuated with lively impertinence by the appearance of Owen Roe, resplendent in velveteen leprechaun chic, as Johnny Patterson, Boucicault's professional nemesis, who has come to take him on a final jaunt through the peaks and valleys of his astonishing career.

This structure of retrospection serves Stewart Parker well, allowing him to explore the vicissitudes of Boucicault's personal life - a lost father, an abandoned wife, countless affairs, and a strained relationship with his Irish identity - both on its own terms and through the realisation of scenes from his many works.

Greater hindsight still fuels the direction of the author's niece, Lynne Parker; with characteristic intuition, she sees the points at which Parker is struggling to understand his own life, his own chequered career, as much as that of Boucicault, and sounds the echoes of Parker's own tragedy - he died at 47, his legacy largely unacknowledged. In this she is aided by Keogan's masterful lighting, by the enchanted opulence of Monica Frawley's design and Helénè Montague's music; and though there are moments, particularly after the interval, when the high comedic energy needed for sustenance seems to veer in conflicting directions, the pairing of Conlon and Roe, something of a dream ticket in any play, is rendered unmissable by the savage wit of their interaction. The darker moods of both characters, meanwhile, are conveyed with equal skill.

Still, in a production rich with irony, it is a cruel twist that Parker's quest to rekindle the reputation of her uncle is overtaken, ultimately, by the fascinating figure of his subject, for it is Boucicault's story, Boucicault's ambition, and Boucicault's guilt which hits home. Parker himself, perhaps, is a play yet to be written.

Runs until July 31st

The Corrs

The Point

Kevin Courtney

Whatever happened to The Nolan Sisters? And where are The Corrs these days? Actually, Ireland's most successful siblings since the Nolans are here in Dublin's Point Theatre, playing the first of two sold-out shows, and the crowd is definitely in the mood for (Irish) dancing and romancing. Andrea, Sharon, Caroline and Jim have a new album, Borrowed Heaven, and they'd like us to lend an ear to it. It's The Corrs' first studio album in four years, and it's already a smash in several countries, going to Number 2 in the UK and pole position at home. Yes, The Corrs are back in business, and it looks like they're doing the business all over again.

In case you're worried that they might have gone all edgy and post-hardcore, in keeping with the heavy rock zeitgeist, you can rest easy. Listening to new songs Hideaway and Summer Sunshine, it's clear that Dundalk's talented family is sticking to the same tried and trusted formula that has made The Corrs' brand almost as recognisable as Riverdance.

There are the catchy, upbeat pop songs which practically spit out the polish and sheen. There are the songs of longing and desire, which Andrea sings with such drama and pleading, you'd think the fella was fierce cruel to be leavin' the poor girl heartbroken up there on the stage. And there are the diddley-eye interludes, when the band suddenly morphs into Moving Hearts, getting the crowd jigged up whenever things start to get a little too twee and middle-of-the-road.

There's little musical evolution in evidence, although Angel sounds like something Avril Lavigne might essay. Andrea's voice is as commanding and confident as ever; you wish, however, she'd stop skipping around the stage on her tippy-toes, like Snow White searching for Prince Charming at the school panto. During their cover of Fleetwood Mac's Dreams, she does a twirl that cringingly reminds you of Stevie Nicks in full flight with the fairies. Fiddle player Sharon, in contrast, stands tall in her sexy black boots, while Caroline (playing a reduced percussion role because she's expecting her second baby) is solid and businesslike.

Although Runaway, Only When I Sleep, What Can I Do and So Young are hardly stone-cold classics (they're more like tepid classics) they feel more authentic than the cover versions, which include the Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday, Ryan Adams's When The Stars Go Blue and Jimmy McCarthy's No Frontiers (the latter sung by Sharon and Caroline).

The Corrs are best when they do their own thing, even if their thing is watered-down, slicked-up and sprinkled with a dash of Celtic mist. Now, what did happen to the Nolans?