Reviews

Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhí reviews Tine Chnámh at An Taibhdhearc in Galway while Gerry Colgan reviews A Walk in the Park at Bewley's Café Theatre in Dublin

Tine Chnámh
An Taibhdhearc, Galway

With its blend of sex and cider, pagan gods and parish-pump prudes, Liam Ó Muirthile's long Rabelaisian poem, adapted for the stage by the author and reworked for this new production, is a modern day Cúirt an Mheán Oíche.

The action takes place on St John's Eve around a bonfire in a graveyard in the city of Cork, where a cast of misfits and delinquents has gathered to "celebrate for a while in the heat". Tine Chnámh is carnivalesque in the medieval sense; it offers a picture of a society letting off steam and is a macabre celebration of our shared imperfection and our right to make an unholy show of ourselves.

In this world of fantasy and folklore, authority is subverted and opposites collide. Under the glow of the bonfire, the sacred and profane become interchangeable. In Darach Mac Con Iomaire, Ó Muirthile gets a director with an imagination sympathetic enough to realise this nuanced vision.

Diarmuid de Faoite is superb as Walter Vigilans, the anally retentive moral pedant whose private torments are always simmering beneath his self-righteousness, while Morgan Cooke is convincingly camp as An Bráthair Austin, the monk who swaps his robe for a party dress. Elsewhere, Susie Lamb inhabits the mysterious Nora with a compelling sense of regret and Marc Mac Lochlainn (An Tráchtaire), Tara Breathnach (as cider-swilling sexpot Virgie) and Seán Ó Meallaigh (Crom) all deliver energetic, well-observed performances in what is a physically exacting piece for a generally excellent cast.

While the high-octane action makes for visually stunning theatre, it also means that comprehension is occasionally a problem and that the meaning of the dense, carnal imagery and playful experimentation is sometimes lost. More variation in the frenetic pace would let the verse and stories breathe a little easier. That said, the innovative lighting and sound, as well as Dara McGee's graveyard setting, all ensure that Ó Muirthile's madcap universe is fully realised.

Tine Chnámh is the latest in a run of challenging Taibhdhearc shows, a fact that makes it even more difficult to understand the decision to shunt it under the Galway Arts Festival's "umbrella events".

• Runs until July 21

Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhí

A Walk in the Park
Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin

Bewley's is currently hosting Glasgow's Òran Mór company in a surreal play by Dave Anderson, which opens with an injunction to audiences not to suspend their disbelief. If they do, we are told by a narrator, the whole thing will unravel.

Well, that's as may be, but the 50-minute play makes its own demands, in the person of the main character, played with authority by Laurie Ventry. He is elderly, close to a knowledge of death, and it is winter in the park he frequents much of the time. His days are like nights, and he is now closer to urban wildlife than to people, and is irredeemably misanthropic.

He is also an alcoholic, hooked on the kind of wine that doesn't go with dinner - it is dinner. George Bush, Tony Blair and other fat cats get the rough edge of his thoughts, often bitingly witty as when he opines that war is God's way of teaching the Americans geography. It comes through hazily that he is estranged from his family; references are made to an absent son and daughter.

But the local fauna get most of his attention, and he exchanges questions and answers with a fox, squirrels and a heron. The conversation is too fanciful at times, as when a squirrel chats in a New York Jewish idiom about its colleagues in Central Park. This may, of course, be attributed to the man's disorientated state, but it still rings oddly. All speaking parts other than the man's are taken by Danielle Stewart in a pronounced Scottish accent.

Rosie Kellagher directs this very theatrical composition with conviction.

• Runs at 1.10pm daily until Sat, Jul 23

Gerry Colgan