Reviews

A selection of reviews by Irish Timeswriters

The Third Policeman

The Factory Performance Space, Sligo

Sara Keating

"Ireland is a queer country", indeed, especially in the imagination of Flann O'Brien, where bicycled humans, human bicycles, armies of one-legged men and Mermen philosophers make the most familiar landmarks of the Irish literary tradition disquieting and strange.

In Jocelyn Clarke's new adaptation of The Third Policemanfor Blue Raincoat Theatre Company, O'Brien's absurdist vision of the Irish countryside is given full gothic resonance as well as light relief. From the play's opening monologue, The Man with no Name is teetering on the edge of sanity, his search for the mysterious black box that has gone missing being gradually revealed as an unfolding hallucination which darkens and gets stranger - and consequently more funny - as the play moves along with perfectly measured pace.

Jamie Vartan's striking stage design gives director Niall Henry a large open book (literally) from which he can build his layered production. Multiple entrances, exits and journeys across the stage, are fluidly choreographed with a slow expressionistic physicality, while Michael Cummins's unsettling mood-setting lights and Joe Hunt's portentous circus score lend an extra ominous edge to the actors' marionette-like movements.

Blue Raincoat's resident ensemble provide individually nuanced performances as well as a cohesive vision throughout the 90-minute drama, particularly in the scenes where they are forced to embody various levels of velocipedity.

Ciarán McCauley and John Carty are especially impressive as the passionately pedalling policemen, Pluck and MacCruiskeen, while Sandra O'Malley bravely stalks the shadows of the stage as the half-mad Man with no Name.

The Third Policeman's colourful characters and outrageous plot twists are rich with theatrical possibility, and Blue Raincoat's stylised approach fully exploits this potential. Clarke's adaptation, however, resonates beyond Blue Raincoat's entertaining production. It suggests a line of influence from Synge - the original master of gothic comedy - to O'Brien, whose dark vision of the countryside is as  funny, as tragic and as poetic as anything that Synge found in the shadow of the Wicklow glens.

• Until Sat, the Factory Performance Space, Sligo. Then, Town Hall Theatre, Galway Oct 25-29 and The Factory Performance Space, Sligo Oct 30-Nov 3

Angel Padilla Crespo (harp)

NCH John Field Room

Andrew Johnstone

There was much to enjoy in this Irish debut performance by Mexican harpist Angel Padilla Crespo. His playing combined colour and technical daring with an aristocratic presence.

The all-Hispanic music was mostly adapted from keyboard repertoire. Dances by the 16th-century masters Lucas Ruis de Ribayaz and Antonio Cabezón, and a charming Scarlatti-like sonata by Mateo Albéniz, served as reminders of the harp's venerable tradition of interchange with other instruments.

No less effective were transcriptions of piano impressions by three Spanish contemporaries of Debussy and Ravel: the Oñazez prelude by Basque folksong collector Padre José Antonio Donostia, the Danza oriental Op 37 No 2by Enrique Granados, and El viejo castillo moroby Eduardo López Chávarri.

The guitar-like textures of Isaac Albéniz's piano music are habitually reclaimed by guitarists. Yet Crespo's harp versions of four pieces took the process of instrumental imitation a stage further, offering refreshing views of the languid Granadaand febrile Asturiasfrom Suite española Op 47, and of two malagueñas from Recuerdos de viaje Op 71and España Op 165.

The programme also included Crespo's fellow Mexicans Arturo Márquez and Manuel Ponce. Written to console a pianist friend who'd lost his right arm, Ponce's wistful habañera Malgré tout ("in spite of everything") was all the more impressive as a single-handed study for harp.

All these pieces revealed Crespo's uncommon speed and agility over wide intervals, his tastefully varied tonal range, and the knack with short trills for which he's acquiring renown among harpists.

It was almost by way of relaxation, then, that he finally launched into the showy swirls and addictive rhythms of Jesús Guridi's Viejo zortzicoand Ernesto Halffter's Danza de la pastora. A delighted audience called for two encores.