Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review Jim Nolan's new play Sky Road and a performance by the Bester Quartet at Dublin Castle

Sky Road, Theatre Royal, Waterford

Public duty and private ideals come head to head in Jim Nolan's new play Sky Road. Set in the aftermath of a general election, it traces the career of a newly elected minister for the environment, the idealistic Frank Conroy, who now sits amid a corrupted Cabinet for whom he feels contempt. The sacrifices wrought on his family are huge. However, they believe - no matter what - their father's high- minded hopes for a better Ireland are worth fighting for.

Although Sky Road is set in the 1980s, Ben Barnes' sturdy production abstracts the play's setting, and the Conroy's backyard is transformed into a beach of sorts, whose shifting sands echo the instability of the family's fate. Against the watery blue panelled backdrop of Dermot Quinn's stage design, the play unfolds with contemporary resonance; the post-election period recalling the questions raised by our own recent Cabinet appointments. However, such parallels are merely a timely coincidence.

As one improbable plot twist follows another, and the writing strives for astral metaphors beyond its sullied Earth-bound concerns, melodrama becomes inevitable.

The ensemble cast struggles to provide depth of feeling to Nolan's hollow play. The language of politics is built around cliche and euphemism, and Nolan fails to transform empty political rhetoric into sufficiently dramatic material. It is inevitable that Barry McGovern should come closest to convincing as Conroy: he is playing the politician of the play after all. However, Keith McErlean, Colin O'Donoghue and Charlie Bonner have no chance against Nolan's leaden dialogue, which favours exposition over emotion.

Yet Marion O'Dwyer and Judith Roddy - as the women struggling against the consequences of this essentially all-male world - have the toughest job. Not only are women the ultimate sacrifices of both the plot and the politics of Sky Road, but they are also held to blame for the fundamental forfeit of political life: the destruction of the family unit. O'Dwyer's cold, stern mother-figure - "I shield and siphon, prioritise and protect" - sows the seeds for the family's betrayal, while Judith Roddy as the desperately practical Tess is a victim of her own refusal to accept the family's incipient rot.

The questions that Sky Road raises about morality, responsibility, family and social obligations are questions that need to be continually probed in the theatre. However, just as in real life, politics does not always provide the most satisfactory answers. Sara Keating

Until Oct 20

The Bester Quartet , Coach House, Dublin Castle

Ricocheting across the rooftops of jazz, avant-garde, and minimalist classical music, the Bester Quartet (formerly the Cracow Klezmer Band) didn't so much inject new life into the klezmer tradition as reframe it within a vibrant, contemporary setting, underlining its relevance to the 21st century, yet somehow still respecting its roots as a Jewish music of worship and celebration.

Jaroslaw Bester's accordion drew the plans and his fellow travellers on violin, percussion, clarinet and double bass laid the mortar between the blocks as the quartet built a repertoire, brick on brick, until we were embedded within a world that celebrated the commonality of human experience in the particular of Bester's highly idiosyncratic musical choices.

Setting the scene by boldly opening with American contemporary composer, John Zorn's Meshakh, the Bester Quartet engaged slithery bass lines and expressive accordion in a spunky duel that lured inventive percussionist, Oleg Dyyak into the fray willingly, bolstered by Jaroslaw Tyrala's agile violin.

Bester ekes vibrato from his accordion with wit and intelligence, exploiting its broad palette to a point of orgasmic expression, particularly on his own Duel and Memento Mori, relishing the challenge of creative confrontation with violin and percussion as much as the exquisite mournfulness of requiem in equal measure.

At times, they tiptoed towards the belly-deep souterrains of fellow Polish composer, Górecki, yet at others, Bester oversaw the metamorphosis of his block-like instrument into the tiniest piccolo, etching out the higher register with elfin grace.

The Bester Quartet's music is as tightly controlled as a Victorian corset, and yet listening to them rebound between Bester's The Prayer and the Quartet's jointly composed Awaiting, resistance to their dissonant, evocative world where seagulls, aircraft and swollen tears carve universes in clear air, was impossible.

Emotionally, Bester and co invest heavily in their music that owes much to its klezmer roots, but transports the genre to another plain where it flourishes amid their inventive intercession.

Bester himself scaffolds a breathtakingly eclectic repertoire with the most elastine face-pulling to be seen this side of a circus, but ultimately this was music to live and die by.

Their closing offering, A Devilish Tale, summed it up perfectly: fairground psychosis crossed with quick-witted musical quips that sent their packed audience on their way with much to wrestle with and even more to relish. Siobhán Long

The Music Network tour of the Bester Quartet continues until Oct 23