Arts Reviews

Candide Overture - Bernstein, Hoe Down - Copland, Mercè, dilette amiche - Verdi, Un bel di vedremo - Puccini, Nightride and Sunrise - Sibelius, Ah, fors'è lui . . . Sempre libera - Verdi, L'Arlésienne (exc) - Bizet.

Woods, NSO/Page

NCH, Dublin

Conductor John Page lives in England, and attracted attention in his native Ireland via his steady-handed conducting last year in Opera Theatre Company's award-winning production of Ullman's The Emperor of Atlantis.

Here, he came across as an exact musician who knows what he wants to achieve and when to let the players get on with it. It was unusual to hear Copland's Hoe Down and Bernstein's Candide Overture done in such a precise way. Bernstein's compositional panache encourages a feeling-driven approach which, all too often, is messy with detail. Page saw this music differently - packed with an energy which comes as much from its technical flair as from its fetching ideas.

That attention to detail was too evident in Sibelius's Nightride and Sunrise, which needs a more passionate, abandoned drive in its astonishingly sustained ostinato patters. However, a consistent strength was the orchestral balance in that piece, and in a zippy account of excerpts from Bizet's L'Arlésienne.

In arias by Verdi and Puccini, soprano Bernadette Woods showed a remarkable command of timing for dramatic purposes. Not all singers can sustain the very slow tempo Puccini set for Un bel di vedremo from Madame Butterfly, but she did. It was therefore a pity that her vibrato was so intrusive, getting in the way of detail in coloratura, and blurring intonation elsewhere. In all these arias, the NSO and John Page were exemplary in their precision and in their balance with the soloist. - Martin Adams

To Be Confirmed/Elysian Juniors

Project Upstairs

The Gaiety School of Acting has commissioned two short plays as vehicles for the graduating class of 2003. Objectively, they are of quite contrasting merits, but both serve the primary purpose of allowing the young actors to show their paces.

Alex Johnston's To Be Confirmed is an imaginative and funny version of a journalist trying to interview a new rock band having a bad day in the rehearsal rooms. Two of them are late, their gear is locked away, the singer is being temperamental and they have a gig that night. The action is seen from different perspectives, each fleshing out the others, a creative approach that stretches the talents on display. They are up to it, and the eight actors provide a laugh-inducing hour of well-defined characters under stress. Patrick Sutton directs.

Next is Ken Harmon's Elysian Juniors, directed by Jimmy Fay, a supernatural fantasy set in a public park located in a former graveyard. A young woman, sitting on a bench and reading a horror story, is accosted by a sinister man. She is joined by a number of friends, all pale and sinister, and there is mysterious talk of death, a threatening crow and worse. It emerges that they have gathered there to engage in a kind of satanic ritual.

By this point the play has lost first clarity, and then credibility, a double whammy that disqualifies it from serious consideration as an independent piece of drama. But it allows its ten actors to move, speak and interact energetically, and to act as if they have total faith in the characters and situations entrusted to them. This is the basis of acting professionalism, and a serious start to their careers. - Gerry Colgan

Runs until June 21st

Callino Quartet, OSC/Brophy

NCH, Dublin

Violin Concerto in E - Bach, Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364 - Mozart, Cello Concerto in C - Haydn, Introduction and Allegro - Elgar.

Take Ireland's best young string quartet, involve each member in a concerto, and finish with a work for full strings plus solo quartet. This was a good idea worked well.

In each concerto, the qualities which have set the Callino Quartet on a path of rising esteem were self-evident. Pure music-making, without a hint of ego. And they obviously love working with people almost as much as they love music.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this concert was its natural, unforced playing - from the OSC and conductor David Brophy, as well as from the soloists. In Bach's Violin Concerto in E, Sarah Sexton played as the first among equals, which is what that piece is all about. In Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364, Ioana Petcu-Colan and Samantha Hutchins were two peas in a pod - as distinct from and similar to one another as the composer posited in the subtle patterns of the violin and viola solos. In Haydn's Cello Concerto in C, Sarah McMahon was a model of subtle flexibility within a steady pulse. And, if she seemed to reach out to the audience more than the other soloists, that too is written into the music.

In so many ways, this concert epitomised the baroque and classical concerto as chamber music. So how would the quartet and just 13 strings handle the Introduction and Allegro, which Elgar designed to display the powers of the then-new (1905) London Symphony Orchestra? It worked surprisingly well. David Brophy's steady speed for the Allegro missed this work's reckless passion, but one heard often-missed details. Everyone relished this music's technique-stretching writing and captured its gutsy panache. -Martin Adams

Love

Guys Building, Cork

Anything billed as a workshop production carries its own health warning and this is so markedly the case with the Corcadorca presentation of Love, part of the Cork Midsummer Festival, that the reviewer's only excuse is that there is at least an equality of risk. That is between the company's willingness to expose its own weaknesses, and the audience's acceptance of the site-specific endurance test implied both by the venue and the devised nature of the - what? Is it a play? Is it a discussion among the cast, selected on the basis that they have not had any professional experience? Is it a stroll around a disused printing house/warehouse/chapel whose caverns and rotting ceilings allow the actors to appear through the rafters, the walls, the partitions? They all work hard, this young and occasionally talented cast; the style is conversational as they discuss romantic or crudely-sexual encounters and they project a commonplace irony sometimes amounting to wit. Davey Dummigan's design hints at darkness reminiscent of Fred West, but this is not explored. Waiting outside the backyard entrance (only 40 people are admitted) the talk is all of that Corcadorca production of A Midsummer Night's Dream two years ago; entranced, people were willing to walk miles for hours to follow the action. Here, it is only necessary to walk musty yards for 50 minutes or so. But it's a different walk, and director Pat Kiernan must be aware that, at this level, it's also a different Corcadorca. -Mary Leland

Runs until Saturday, June 28th. Booking: 021 4272022