Reviews

Irish Times writers review Neil Young at Vicar Street, Dublin, Jack Fell Down at the Helix, Dublin, Lucinda Williams at the Olympia Theatre,  the Ulster Orchestra at the Ulster Hall, Belfast and  Müller-Schott Kulek at the Coach House, Dublin.

Neil Young

Vicar Street, Dublin

You're never too old to rock 'n' roll, I always say, and I'm certain that, even at 57, Neil Young is still capable of strapping on a Fender Telecaster and rocking out with the young 'uns.

Here, however, he was playing to the older, reverent fans, for whom the prospect of seeing the great man in an intimate, acoustic setting would set the heart racing. That or the €105 a pop for his three shows in Dublin.

On the first night, Young shuffled onstage, settled into his seat and chose one of five acoustic guitars that flanked his bear-like figure. Dipping his harmonica in a tumbler of liquid and shaking it off, he gave the disconcerting impression of an old man taking his false teeth out of a glass.

He twisted in his seat to get comfortable, and then the storytelling began.

Young has written a "concept" album about a fictional town named Greendale, populated with such picayune characters as Grandpa and Grandma, Jed the cop-killer, Earl the psychedelic painter, Sun the teenage environmentalist and Satan, a man in red patent shoes. For the next hour and a half, we had to simmer down and pay attention to this hippie version of Lake Wobegon Days, part morality tale, part conservationist tract, part polemic on the evils of mass media.

Young hooshed the narrative along like an old farmer slowly ploughing a field, but the story stalled on some clunky metaphors about Mother Earth, and, like the unfortunate characters in Greendale, ended up going nowhere. Taken on their own, without the exposition, the songs felt like fragments from Young's back pages and read like facile parables.

After a 15-minute interval, Young returned to the stage and, as a reward for being good, attentive children during the first half's show-and-tell, he farmed us out a few of his past hits. It was a tantalising glimpse into what this show might have been had Young not spent three-quarters of the gig hammering home his half-baked philosophy of the world and far-from-wondrous stories.

He perfomed Mother Earth (enough of the green stuff already!) from Ragged Glory on an old pipe organ and did After The Goldrush (updated to the 21st century) on a honky-tonk piano. Other past glories included Lotta Love, Pocahontas, Don't Let It Bring You Down, Old Man ("one of Grandpa's favourites"), Campaigner (updated to include George W. Bush) and War Of Man.

And then he was gone, returning to encore with Heart Of Gold and leaving us with the ironic final line: "And I'm gettin' old." Don't know about you, Neil, but I felt pretty damn old after that.

Kevin Courtney

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Jack Fell Down

Helix Space, Dublin

Team Educational Theatre Company has been touring primary schools with Michael West's play since February and will continue until June.

The production was showcased on Saturday in Dublin, after which it will be seen in professional venues in Monaghan and, again, at the Helix. Wherever the opportunity may arise to see it, it is worth taking.

The play does not stand alone, being part of an event including workshops and other stimuli for children to come to terms with their emotional lives. It is a romp in its own right, but its value goes beyond that. A central theme is an understanding of change, loss and even death, probed in a gentle way that offers no threat.

For the audience, these issues are confronted here before they have to be dealt with in reality. This is theatre as an important community service.

The deceptively simple story has four friends, two boys and two girls, seeking to alleviate boredom by inventing a game. They create two imaginary characters, Jack and Owen, and establish rules, the most important of which is that once something is said it becomes real and cannot be changed.

So Jack and Owen are sent on errands and adventures and finally arrive at a cliff. Jack falls, is killed - somebody spoke too soon - and cannot be restored to life.

The game is over, but the four inventors are faced with their personal realities. Can they just forget about Jack, now that he is dead, and what about Owen? A year is allowed to pass, and there have been changes. The situation and thinking are reviewed, new plans are formulated and an open-ended scenario remains open, just as in life.

Mark O'Brien directs his four actors (Mary Kelly, Peter Daly, Phillip McMahon and Orlagh de Bhaldraithe) with sensitivity, and they reward him with energetic, clued-in performances that entertain as they sow their creative seeds. Team has a winner here.

Continues at Garage Theatre, Monaghan, today-Thursday, and the Helix, Dublin, June 10th-12th

Gerry Colgan

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Lucinda Williams

Olympia, Dublin

Lucinda Williams is the most credible female roots, rock and blues performer. The likes of Sheryl Crow and, to a lesser extent, Shania Twain have diluted Williams's gritty blueprint for commercial ends, in turn making them far more successful than Williams will probably ever be, but it is Williams who hits the emotional bullseye every time.

Exuding the slightly disreputable rock 'n' roll style we thought had disappeared with Keith Richards in the mid-1970s, she comes across as tough, compact and wary. She spent the first few numbers judging the audience, finally deciding to smile, talk and succumb.

Supported by a cracking band (Jim Christie, drums; Taras Prodaniuk, bass; the inspiring Doug Pettibone, guitars), Williams leaned heavily on songs from her superb new album, World Without Tears. Tracks such as Fruits Of My Labor, Sweet Side, Ventura, Righteously and Those Three Days were driven with an urgency that comes from a desperation to connect, the last two probably the most deliriously sleazy, filthy performances since the dirty, casual-sex days of the Rolling Stones in their prime. Earlier material, such as Changed The Locks, Blue, Still I Long For Your Kiss and Drunken Angel, were equally charged with frayed emotions and simmering neuroses.

Although occasionally strident and brittle, Williams delivered a show that fused remarkably touching lyrics with scurvy music that still itches. A place in the top-10 list at the year's end beckons.

Tony Clayton-Lea

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Ulster Orchestra,

Vladimir Spivakov

Ulster Hall, Belfast

Violin Concerto in C, Symphony No 94 - Haydn. Symphony No 9 - Shostakovich

Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony is surely the winner, against stiff competition, of the prize for being the composer's most misunderstood work. It has often been accepted, at least in the West, as a piece of light-hearted neoclassicism, but Russians have always understood its satirical content, and on this occasion the veteran conductor and violinist Vladimir Spivakov laid its barbed malice bare.

A steady but lively tempo for the first movement gave space for the ironic pointing of detail, the bleak waltz unfolded timelessly (with excellent wind playing) and the scherzo passed in a well-controlled whirl. One could not mistake the meaning of the powerful brass in the fourth movement, alternating with the pleading bassoon solo, or the dogged savagery that lurks beneath the Russian-dance finale. This was a distinguished and memorable interpretation.

Spivakov's Surprise Symphony certainly had its surprises. Not in the outer movements, where the playing was refined but where fast tempi led to detail being smoothed over, or even in the second movement, where contrasts were admittedly nicely brought out.

The element of novelty lay rather in the scherzo, which was not so much bucolic as Bruegelian. The music's peasant-dance roots have often been noted, but it was a new experience to hear it played with quite so much beer-mug-clinking relish.

Haydn's four violin concertos are fairly early works, and the first movement of the C major is a fairly standard early-classical moderato. The slow movement, however, is heavenly, and Spivakov mirrored its ideal beauty with purity of tone and style.

Dermot Gault

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Müller-Schott, Kulek

Coach House, Dublin

Sonata in C Op 102 No 1 - Beethoven. Sonata in A minor Op 105 - Schumann. Sonata for Solo Cello - George Crumb. Fünf Stücke im Volkston Op 102 - Schumann. Sonata in D minor Op 40- Shostakovich

Daniel Müller-Schott and Robert Kulek are an impressive, unusual partnership. With this German-born cellist and Latvian-American pianist, standard comments about the performance of chamber music - good blend, balance and ensemble - don't quite fit.

This recital showed them to be players of unusual individuality, with a relationship based not so much on give and take as on cut and thrust.

In Beethoven's Sonata in C, Op 102 No 1, the tension between them was more than even this idiosyncratic music could bear. But it was the opening work, and they needed to adjust to the acoustics of a full hall.

They did so in Schumann's Sonata in A minor Op 105. Originally written for violin, it was played in Müller-Schott's own transcription and seemed to the cello born.

The allegretto movement epitomised the unusual qualities of this duo.

Müller-Schott played the song-like solo line as if it were free recitation, striking the occasional pose for emphasis and to relish a nice moment, then dashing off on a burst of eloquence, all with an astonishing command of colour and vibrato.

Kulek did his own thing, and each player was equally responsive to the other.

This combination of individuality and common identity worked impeccably in a subtle, characterful performance of Schumann's Fünf Stücke Im Volkston and in a gripping account of Shostakovich's Sonata in D minor.

It was also good to hear a rarity for solo cello, the sonata George Crumb wrote in 1955 while studying in Germany. Müller-Schott's highly coloured, flexible playing was persuasive in this genially earnest piece,' more like Hindemith on a good LSD trip than the avant-garde composer of later years.

Tour continues to Monaghan today, Lisburn on Thursday and Armagh on Friday

Martin Adams