Reviews

Irish Times critics review the latest shows

Randy Newman

Vicar Street, Dublin

A rounded, squat late-middle-aged man ambled onto the stage in Vicar Street last Friday night at about 8.30 p.m. and took up residence at the solitary grand piano. As he launched into "Mama Told Me Not To Come" it was clear that his sandpaper voice was the near side of shot, but equally it was obvious that the warm audience were in for a treat from one of the finest American songwriters of the last century.

Randy Newman makes frequent reference to being past his prime. It is a canard. He is razor-sharp, his biting quick wit peppering his song introductions. For example, as the audience warmed to the opening notes of "Marie", his moving ode to everyday love and fidelity, he cracked sardonically "this always goes down well in Catholic countries".

In a career spanning four decades he has produced so many little masterpieces that an evening in his company cannot fail to be a pleasure. And, like all great songs, they stand the test of time.

Though he has prospered in the rock era, his influences are much more eclectic, ranging from show tunes through blues; indeed anything from the last 100 years.

His themes are equally diverse - love, murder, death, modern life, politics, racism, anti-Semitism, philosophy - all boiled down to irony-rich nuggets of Jewish liberal wisdom, often hilarious, sometimes moving and always thought-provoking.

While there were many highlights during the two-hour plus performance largely centred on the material from his most recent album, Songbook 1, a stark and brilliant rereading of old songs in a solo setting, it was not quite up to the mark of his memorable show at the same venue some years back.

His current tour had clearly taken its toll on his voice, but he and the audience persevered and their reward was a night of warm entertainment spiked with great moments such as his versions of the chilling "In Germany Before the War", the bitter "Dixie Flyer" and the humorous observations of "The World Isn't Fair" (sample: "If Marx was living today, he'd be rolling around in his grave").

Joe Breen

Words of Advice for Young People

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Like Gerald Murphy's Take Me Away which opened last week, the second new play staged by Rough Magic this month also takes the form of a family gathering. Although the settings are different - Ioanna Anderson's is rural and the characters are middle class - both playwrights' concerns are with family dynamics, with emotional and psychological states; the broader political and social contexts may be inferred but are not under the spotlight.

In Words of Advice For Young People two sisters are brought together when the remains of their father are recovered, five years after he went missing. Nora (Gina Moxley) half-heartedly runs a B&B in the family home, which is still dominated by memorabilia of their father, a celebrated children's author who never recovered from his wife's death. Decisions about funeral arrangements force Nora, Clara (Cathy White), their old friend Rob (Andrew Bennett) and Nora's estranged husband Danny (Darragh Kelly) to confront questions about death, the rituals that surround it - and their need for them.

The sisters' happy childhood with their loving parents has left them unmoored in adulthood, vaguely dissatisfied and unprepared for disappointment. Clever, self-conscious and articulate, these are people in their late thirties who seem lost - as, at times, does the play.

Ioanna Anderson's facility for dialogue is seductive, and under Philip Howard's direction the performances, especially those of Andrew Bennett and Gina Moxley, are engagingly assured. But amid the banter and squabbling, the easy potshots at American tourists and the torrent of sardonic comments on religion and marriage, the focus begins to slip.

A formally risky sub-plot involving the bereaved local undertaker (Frank Laverty) and his wife's ghost is awkward, but it brings the theme of grieving and loss back into view.

The last scene has the emotional impact that this ambitious, elusive play was striving towards all along.

Runs in repertory for five weeks with Take Me Away by Gerald Murphy.

Helen Meany

Terrafolk

O'Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College

Repertoires that encompass everything from Klezmer to Gypsy, Slovenian, Irish and the occasional Scandinavian tunes (not to mention the odd detour in homage to Jimmy Page) bespeak of two possibilities: an unnerving eclecticism or an attention deficit disorder with a musical twist. Slovenian quartet Terrafolk come swathed in garlands: last year's BBC World Music Award coupled with their success at the Edinburgh Fringe and last year's Dublin Fringe Festival hint at a quartet very much on the up - weighed down by all the perils that The Next Big Thing brings with it.

Their violinist and leading jester, Bojan Cvetreznik, sports a coif that would be the envy of any 70's refugee with a penchant for the bouffant/candyfloss look. Precociously talented and inordinately agile (using every body part to play his fiddle, from knees to skull), he tackled Balkan waltzes, Irish airs and Slovenian polkas with nonchalant ease.

Guitarist Danijel Cerne and double bassist Jozko Secnik engaged in a rhythmic calculus that betrayed roots that stretched effortlessly from jazz to folk, with a nod in the direction of Neil from The Young Ones along the way. But it was Bostjan Gombach, clarinettist and whistle player who lent a certain gravitas to the foursome, anchoring them with his controlled, disciplined arrangements. (He was even bold enough to tackle a forbidding version of "Oró Sé Do Bheatha Bhaile" with considerable authority, even if his Irish went west mid-song).

Terrafolk's sense of humour is a key defining force in their music. From the get go, they were hell bent on entertaining with a capital 'E'. At times it certainly tweaked the laugh lines, but their unstinting, slapstick efforts were ultimately wearing, and distracted from their unquestionable musical talents. Two hours later the overwhelming impact was one of having been treated to a display of attention-deficit disordered music that craved our attention, and in the process, forgot where it left its heart.

Siobhan Long

Mairtín O'Connor, Cathal Hayden and Mícheál Ó Domhnaill

Holiday Inn, Pearse Street

Like bears to a honey pot, they swarmed with the enthusiasm of a constituency too long neglected. The Holiday Inn on Pearse Street is set to become one of the unlikeliest and most hospitable venues in the city. Forget the chi-chi fou fou pretensions of the established houses who take not only their punters, but their performers for granted: there's a hot spot in the kindling in the inner city and it's drawing punters in healthy numbers.

Peter Browne, Oisín McAuley and Shane McGowan offered a prelude to the headliners, shadowing them in instrumentation (accordion, fiddle and guitar), and betimes, in style and chutzpah. Browne treats his accordion like the renaissance instrument that it always had the potential to be, swing shifting through an uncommonly eclectic cycle of styles from a brace of strathspeys with Donegal roots, to unnervingly magnificent cap-doffs to Chick Corea and George Gershwin. Oisín McAuley is an ideal foil, delicately stealing air pockets from between Browne's pleats, and McGowan's guitar occasionally mirrored their intricacies.

The grand masters loped on stage as if it was alien territory, but it didn't take long for them to assert their authority. This is a trio who've been stealthily forging a collective identity, their fluency and ease with one another bearing testament to time well-spent in rehearsal. O'Connor's extraordinary relationship with his beloved accordion raised pulses from the off, capturing the spirit and high spirits of a set that included The Reconciliation, The Plough And The Stars and The Green Mountain. Cathal Hayden's fiddle style ebbed perfectly alongside the box, his penchant for note-bending and stretching a perfect antidote to O'Connor's disciplined reading of the tunes.

Micheál Ó Domhnaill's guitar, ever-modest and unassuming, tip-toed in at all the right junctures, rightly judging pressure points where fiddle and box sufficed. That voice still bears the marks of his Donegal roots, gently foraging for the historical detail, as well as the lyric, and sharing both with his audience generously.

Siobhan Long