Reviews

A selection of review by Irish Times writers.

As You Like It
The Helix, Dublin
Fintan O'Toole

In Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, James Tyrone claims that "Shakespeare was an Irish Catholic . . . The proof is in his plays." Absurd as Tyrone's belief evidently was, it was less bizarre than it would later become. The Irish contribution to the heroic classic acting tradition to which Tyrone belonged was immense. And in the 1950s, when the play was written, Anew McMaster was still touring to every village in Ireland and Shakespeare was still woven into the texture of Irish culture.

Somehow, though, the Bard gradually retreated from the Shannon to the Avon. Whether because of some new inferiority complex or because of a developing obsession with Ireland and Irishness, we ended up with fewer and fewer productions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. This has been a significant impoverishment.

Andy Hinds's initiative in establishing Classic Stage Ireland (CSI) at the Helix is therefore an important act. All the more so because Hinds has set out on two parallel tracks. CSI intends to stage regular productions of classical plays. But, just as importantly, it also recognises that this work demands specialist skills that have to be built over time. The company's second production, As You Like It, runs on both of these tracks. As well as being a production for its own sake, it is also a work-in-progress, bringing together a younger and less experienced cast which is developing and testing the necessary skills.

The result is somewhat paradoxical. A young cast usually means energy, high spirits, naivety and a touch of anarchy. But the serious commitment to development gives this production almost the opposite feel.

There is a sense of discipline and deliberation, the feeling of a cast that has lost its raw naivety and not yet attained the free-range exuberance that can come with confident mastery. Here, even the madcap scenes, the larking about and camping-up that are called for by the play's games of cross-dressing and gentle satire on pastoral conventions, have an air of self-conscious control. This makes for an often impressive and always enjoyable piece of work that is never as sexy or as hysterically funny as it might be.

The air of deliberation is not entirely misplaced, however. As You Like It is certainly on the sunnier side of Shakespeare's street but it is no mere zany spree. Embedded within it is the nearest Shakespeare comes to a direct political protest, with a reflection on free speech intertwined with references to the murder of Christopher Marlowe. The melancholy Jaques counterbalances the playful spirit. And the carefree absurdities of the plot, with its disguises, miraculous transformations and divine interventions, are underpinned by tyranny, betrayal and broken families. The clarity of purpose that Hinds brings to

bear on the text and the clarity of expression he draws from his cast help to elucidate these shifting moods.

The staging is as lucid as it is ludic. Hinds and the very clever designer Anne-Marie Woods imagine the play's odd constellation of France, England and an imaginary Arcadia as a mixture of 1950s Ireland, Tudor England and richly anachronistic fantasy-land. The stage is dominated by a huge open-sided truck, whose interior and exterior spaces are exploited by Hinds, and by choreographer Sarah Jane Scaife, with fertile invention.

The back of the truck serves, amongst other things, as a stage-within-a-stage, perfectly expressing the self-conscious artifice of the text. If anything, though, the possibilities for playing on images and resonances are over-exploited, making for a rather excessive three-hour show that would gain much by losing a few scenes.

The most impressive aspect of the work, though, is the speaking of the lines. Hinds's technical work on verse-speaking and voice-projection is obvious in itself but what's particularly striking is the progress towards the larger aim of creating a distinctively Irish Shakespearean voice.

As Orlando, Stephen Kelly manages to be at once immediately recognisable and convincingly romantic. Best of all, Emma Colohan as Rosalind, who carries so much of the verbal burden, achieves a supple precision of delivery without sacrificing either intelligibility or poetry.

Runs until February 26th

Winter
Project Cube
Belinda McKeon

Although it is little known in this country, and in the English-speaking world in general, across Europe and parts of Asia the work of the Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse enjoys a popularity that is almost staggering - at any one time, apparently, some 50 of his many plays are in full production across the globe.

Rachel West, in association with Project, gives this two-hander from 2000 its première staging in English, but the discomfiting weakness with which her production sets out warns that merely to be first on the scene is never enough. The tension laced between Fosse's unnamed man and woman, as they meet by a park bench in circumstances which manage to be at once bizarre and mundane, succeeds only fleetingly in the crucial first acts, so that the love between Gary Murphy's floundering businessman and Anne O'Neill's coarse and vulnerable woman can never quite climb to conviction, despite the strength gathered by both performers as their affair gains pace.

An awkwardness which seems at odds with that intended by Fosse comes between the actors, and finds its way, also, into their relationship with the audience. Despite the impressive fluidity and warmth with which Murphy and O'Neill inhabit the spare words, the stark repetitions of Fosse's script (here in Vincent Woods's new version of the official English translation), the fact that their situation is artificial can never quite be forgotten.

The problem is not primarily one of language; though prone to jar, particularly at moments where O'Neill's character addresses Murphy's most directly, Woods's colloquial imagining of their world comes easily alive for the most part. Monica Frawley's set, meanwhile, is an apt blend of simplicity and consideration. The problem is that the dynamic created by Fosse - the true strangeness of these characters' relationship, the deep, unspoken private worlds from which they both come - is too briefly glimpsed, too casually sketched in this production.

As a result, the idiosyncratic world of the imagination to which it should point for audiences new to Fosse's work remains just beyond reach.

Runs until February 19th

Turandot
National Concert Hall
John Allen

Lyric Opera's production of Puccini's unfinished masterpiece, a daunting task for any company, was only partially successful. Jean Glennon was almost a very good Turandot. She portrayed Gozzi's frigid beauty to perfection and put enough steel into her warm lyric soprano to freeze the blood of any aspiring suitor.

But she lacked the vocal overdrive this role needs at climaxes and she didn't dominate the mighty ensemble of the riddle scene. Nor did her unknown prince, Mariolin Xu. His modest tenor, a relatively light one to begin with, withdrew even further into the throat whenever his music took him above the stave; and the voice simply disappeared in ensemble passages.

Sandra Oman, as the slave-girl Liu, sang her two arias with poised serenity and consistently sweet tone; and she more than held her own in the Act 3 confrontation with the merciless princess. Julian Close's strong vocal presence as the blind King Timor made one wish this bass role had more in it for the singer.

There was a nimble-footed and vocally well-balanced trio of ministers from baritone Riccardo Simonetti and tenors Huw Rhys Evans and Philip Salmon.

Bass Eugene Armstrong launched the evening as an authoritative Herald and tenor Eugene O'Hagen was a remarkably hale old Emperor Altoum. The chorus, a hugely important element in this opera, lacked the tonal roundness heard in recent Lyric productions. The women were reasonably impressive, if a tad shrill at the top; but the uncovered singing of the mere handful of men gave little pleasure.

Director Vivian Coates uses thelimited facilities imaginatively and created some telling stage pictures with the help of Derek O'Neill's attractive lighting.

Conductor Sergio La Stella drove the action along at a brisk pace and, some sloppy chorus work near the beginning apart, maintained a good liaison between stage and pit.