REVIEWS

The Irish Timeslooks at the arts

Puckoon

Market Place Theatre, Armagh

WHEN DIRECTOR Zoe Seaton and musical maestro Paul Boyd get together, something a little crazy often results. On this occasion, their collaboration includes Vincent Higgins, whose writing credits are fast catching up with his acting achievements.

Their collective gaze has fallen enthusiastically on the madcap genius of Spike Milligan, comedian, writer, musician, playwright, poet and Goon. His best-selling novel Puckoon has already been adapted into a film; now Seaton, Boyd and Higgins have turned it into a fast-moving, Pythonesque piece of theatre.

In the spirit of Milligan’s off-the-wall satirical genius and beady observations of the human condition, they have brought to life the grotesquely comic populace of Puckoon, a rural village that has fallen foul of the 1924 Boundary Commission’s creation of a new frontier between Britain and the Irish Free State.

In the role of writer, Boyd spearheads proceedings, scripting the whimsical wanderings of old Dan Milligan (Jack Quinn) along the Border on a rickety bicycle.

The problem for the people of Puckoon is that, late on a Friday evening in the pub, their little patch of Ireland was divided, when the dreaded commissioners’ pencil was pushed and shoved down the centre of the village.

Now the erection of Border posts and barbed wire means even funerals cannot be held without passports being produced, a situation that deteriorates from farce to slapstick to total chaos.

The six actors switch roles and costumes at dizzying speed and with relish for the task. Milligan’s vision is an acquired taste and it is difficult to judge to what extent the audience gets more than the general gist and broad humour of this oddball entertainment.

Tours nationwide

JANE COYLE

Vogler String Quartet

St Patrick’s Church, Dalkey

Haydn – Quartet in G minor Op 74 No 3 (Rider). Schulhoff – Quartet No 1. Beethoven – Quartet in E minor Op 59 No 2.

THE VOGLER String Quartet’s concert on Tuesday was a musical sandwich with an exceptionally interesting filling.

Ervin Schulhoff (1894-1942) fell foul of the Nazis and died of tuberculosis in a concentration camp in 1942. Musically, he seems to have adopted new styles with the fervour of a fashionista. He flirted with Dadaism, jazz and the Second Viennese School’s methods.

His first string quartet of 1924 includes passages of a rough-hewn, Bartókian folksiness, straightforward tunes rendered eerie through otherworldly accompaniments and moments of rambunctious rhythmic celebration. The Voglers played it with perfect poise, yielding appropriately to its occasional crudities, but also finding sophisticated sonorities that were utterly beguiling, especially in the protracted decay of the very end.

MICHAEL DERVAN