Reviews

A look at the world of the arts through the eyes of Irish Timesjournalists.

Fireworks

Bewley's Café Theatre

Laura and Daniel's relationship is in trouble, but Daniel doesn't want to have this conversation again. There are a few reasons for his reluctance.

Partly it's because he has no easy answers for Laura's questions; partly it's because, after four years together, the spark between them has waned; mainly, though, it's because he is trying to blow up a safe.

The wittiest idea in Iseult Golden's new play Fireworks is to sneak the circular arguments and soul-searching realisations of a troubled relationship into the giddy excitement of a heist narrative.

If the theme might be considered a largely female concern, and the plot is sort of a guy thing, it doesn't bode well for the sexes that here they prove rather incompatible.

"I don't seem to know you at all anymore," complains Dorothy Cotter's otherwise feisty Laura. Well, John Cronin's Daniel is wearing a balaclava.

Perhaps Laura and Daniel are too much on top of each other. That certainly seems to be an issue with the clattering comic business in Alan King's staging in Bewley's Café Theatre, a space so confined that any physical endeavour seems like a circus crammed into a broom cupboard.

In another curious conceit, Golden has even set the whole play in Bewley's itself, which is apparently the sole property of Laura's father. That nod towards site-specific performance brings mildly-distracting consequences - is Laura actually the progeny of Ickendel Ltd? Does the company keep its takings in a safe beneath a tablecloth? But perhaps we shouldn't get hung up on specifics.

Unlike Laura. Slinking into the picture dressed in a cat suit (men do heists, women do capers) Laura initially seems like the ideal girlfriend. But then comes the poorly-timed needling: "Last year we were still having two-way conversations." Christ, woman, he's handling live explosives!

The problem is that Daniel (John Cronin) seems like an idealised boyfriend, and we come to understand him better than we do Laura. Thus we fathom Daniel's taciturnity, or his thoughtless birthday gifts, in a way that we never fully appreciate Laura's self-absorption. Worst of all, his reasons for doing this heist are, in a roundabout way, all for her. Laura's reasons for doing the caper are, in a more direct way, all for her too. At least they have that in common.

While Golden shows us a couple slowly attempting to reignite their fireworks though mutual understanding and reconciliation, here we see the benefits of a short fuse. - Peter Crawley

The Maids,

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Who, or what, are the maids in Jean Genet's most famous play actually serving? Is it their pampered mistress and her capricious whims, their own impulses toward violent uprising, or a far more forceful desire to become someone else?

And what, or who, is Loose Canon's austere and meticulously-considered new production of The Maidsserving? The political and sexual context of a subversive classic, the radical impulses of an experimental theatre company, or a faithful interpretation of an author's original intentions?

The answer is probably all of the above. On a stage stripped almost completely bare, Madame's boudoir is surrounded by stand-alone lights and covered in plastic. Wayne Jordan's design and Sarah Jane Shiel's exposed lights could be from a film set or a crime scene - an appropriate response to a play based on a real murder, but which is ultimately about the nature of performance.

If director Jason Byrne's intention is to expose the artifice of his stage, exerting clinical scrutiny on how identity is manufactured and manipulated, so his casting emphasises the nature of role-play. This is why we get manservants in the costumes of maids, with Karl Quinn as a deliriously camp Claire and Phil Kingston as a passive-aggressive Solange, spitting invective in a singsong lilt.

Whatever Genet's thoughts on the matter, The Maidswill always be open to homosexual readings. That, however, is all in its subtext. Like The Importance of Being Earnestor Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, that decision to render the subtext overtly actually limits our interpretations. As a cerebral exercise, then, there is much to admire in this production's dramaturgy, but there is little here to shock, enliven or engage.

Genet wrote that he wanted to "establish a kind of unrest" in the audience - which is exactly what Karl Burke's queasy sound design does - but Byrne is not obviously in thrall to the author. The words are in no way sacrosanct, often delivered in a distracted mutter or an absent stupor. This works best when Kingston runs roughshod over Solange's attempts to transform herself into a tragic hero(ine), her mock-glorious words rehearsed half-heartedly, like an actor running lines.

Solange and Claire are conflicted, despising their slavery but loving their shackles. That could sum up a production which honours a play's theme while disobeying its letter. Genet might have anticipated such conflicted servitude - it's so hard to get good help these days. - Peter Crawley

Jablonski, Szymanowski Quartet

NCH

Under the artistic direction of Finghin Collins, each of the three programmes of the National Concert Hall's Summer Chamber Classics series is devoted to music associated with a particular city.

The journey began in Warsaw, with works by Chopin, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski and Krzysztof Penderecki.

A recital by Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski, or one by Poland's Szymanowski Quartet, would be an event exciting enough in itself. But for these artists to be sharing a single evening - it was like having your birthday on December 25th.

Jablonski opened with Don Juan's Serenadeby Szymanowski, conjuring jazzy Catherine-wheels of sound from its Hispanic flourishes. He followed with a fascinating sequence that dovetailed four mazurkas by Chopin (Op 6 No 2, Op 24 No 2, Op 56 No 2, and Op 17 No 4) with three by Szymanowski (Op 50 Nos 1-3).

The selection, the juxtaposition, and Jablonski's individualistic interpretation all emphasised not so much the modern composer's indebtedness to classical tradition as the romantic composer's extraordinary stylistic prescience.

Chopin's Scherzo No 1 likewise got an interesting, personal reading -- but one so internalised, so dazzling, and in its outer sections so jaw-droppingly precipitate, that the piece sometimes seemed almost a creation of Jablonski's own.

He was joined by two members of the quartet, cellist Marcin Sieniawski giving an adrenalised account of Lutoslawski's concisely organic Grave (1981), and violinist Andrej Bielow slinking equanimously about the platform in Penderecki's stark Three Miniatures(1959).

The concert culminated in a performance by all four Szymanowskis of the second of the two quartets by their patron composer. Luminous, rarefied, and engrossing, it provoked the thought that the judges of the 1927 Philadelphia Chamber Prize had a hard task to choose between this work and the winning entry, the third quartet of Bartók .- Andrew Johnstone

International Youth Wind Orchestra, Swiss Army Symphonic Wind Orchestra

Killarney

Saturday, the final day of the international conference of the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles, offered two concerts at the INEC in Killarney.

First up was the International Youth Wind Orchestra, an orchestra selected by international audition.

The first half of the concert, conducted by Glenn Price, consisted of arrangements and concentrated on high energy music. The title of Canadian John Estacio's Frenergywas created by joining the words frenetic and energy, and Joseph Schwantner's Percussion Concerto is an eclectic noise-fest popularised on disc by Evelyn Glennie, who was in Killarney to do the honours and bring the audience to its feet.

The second half was conducted by Gerhard Markson, principal conductor of the RTÉ NSO, who showed a greater sense of control, and created a much more refined palette of colour from the young players.

He was best rewarded in Resonanceby Christopher Marshall. This is a delicately playful work which encompasses moments of Ivesian clamour, and evolves into a chorale which is treated with ever more elaboration before dissolving into a whistled ending.

Ian Wilson's new Miranda, Ariel, Umbrielsounded on a first hearing to be one of those pieces where the conception ("three different types of musical material come in and out of focus at different times as the work progresses, each one developing with each appearance") simply hasn't yielded a musically- persuasive outcome. And Richard Rodney Bennett's thoroughly polished Morning Musicof 1986 also failed to light up.

The closing concert was given by the Swiss Army Symphonic Wind Orchestra. The work which stood out here was the oldest. Jan Cober conducted Florent Schmitt's Dionysiaques of 1913,an over-the-top mixture combining some of Stravinsky's Firebird evocations with passages in oddball, oompah mode. - Michael Dervan