Disquiet on the western front

THE ARTS:The success of this year's Galway Arts Festival, on a much more constrained budget, is an emblem of all that is encouraging in the arts and all that is deeply unfair, says PETER CRAWLEY

IT IS HARD to imagine that the speech could have been better made, at a more important time or to a more appropriate crowd. Even as Garry Hynes anticipated the opening of a tremendous new production of Tom Murphy's The Gigli Concert, itself a dazzling display of oratory, her words were as stirring: extemporary, incisive, succinct. The end of the first week of this year's Galway Arts Festival, with Druid unveiling its handsomely refurbished theatre, was a celebration. But with the implications of the McCarthy report heavy in the air – such as the possible dismantling of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and the abolition of Culture Ireland and the Irish Film Board – Hynes used the occasion to make a broader impact.

“That such things can be said with a straight face is because people like me don’t speak up loud enough and long enough,” she said, adding that “the next years will be harder than we can remember”.

Speaking to an audience that included Pat Moylan, chairwoman of the Arts Council, and Culture Ireland CEO, Eugene Downes, Hynes turned what might have been an occasion for back-slapping into a necessary reminder that survival also means raising a fist.

This year's performance programme was already helplessly infused by such concerns. A catalogue of struggle and conflict, loss and regret, with some room for merriment and consolation, the theatre reminded us that art rarely facilitates escapism. Even the title of Australia's lyrically physical Circa show spoke volumes: Furioso.

Some of that indignation was there in Palace of the End, a triptych of imagined monologues built around the Iraq war and placed in the mouths of real figures by Canadian writer Judith Thompson. Royal Exchange Theatre's production wore both its heart and politics on its sleeve, and while documentary theatre may have found its limits in recent years, here Thompson's imagination seemed more restrictive, her research never probing deeper than familiar journalistic reports using emotive conjecture to fill in the blanks of David Kelly's last thoughts, or the cowing confessional of an Iraqi woman raped by Saddam's guards in front of her children. With the demonised Bush and Blair now gone, it seemed unclear what the audience was asked to do with either hysteria or rage.

One of the reasons that A Midsummer Night's Dream, a sumptuous yet sparing production from Edward Hall's all-male Propeller company, proved so successful is that it provided a refuge of delight and fantasy. That largely comes down to an emphasis. The play's social structures and gender politics contain a rich seam of darkness below the surface if you know where to scratch. But while Hall's production allowed various shivers of sound and unsettled fairyland with a gaunt, sallow-eyed Titania, and all reports suggest that a companion production of The Merchant of Venicesupplied a darker counter-balance, his Dreamproduction erred on the side of larks.

Women need not apply to join this fine ensemble, for reasons that remain unconvincing both politically and aesthetically, but few would find room to question the revival of the boy-player agenda amid so much laughter.

Two years ago the reliably adventurous and provocative Galway Youth Theatre (GYT) staged Neil LaBute's Autobahn, which concluded with an uncurling sense of horror at a paedophilic encounter. Last year, it staged Enda Walsh's Chatroom, a depiction of cyber bullying which comes within a hair's breadth of a dreadful conclusion, together with LaBute's Somegirl(s),performed in a hotel room, which also contains an improper relationship between an adult and a minor. This year it staged Dennis Kelly's bullying drama, DNA, and Fiona Evans' Scarborough(performed in a hotel room) which details an improper relationship between a 15-year-old and his teacher. If that sounds vaguely familiar, GYT alumnus Andrew Flynn also directed David Harrower's Blackbirdfor the new company Decadent, in which a paedophile and his victim are reunited several years later. It now seems as though the fault line between youth and adulthood cannot be investigated without routinely jabbing a finger at a culture's exposed nerve.

The verve the cast gave to DNA, an acrid comedy directed by Niall Cleary, was entertaining and admirable, but there was something reassuring about the discrepancy between earnest performers and a horrified playwright. Kelly's Lord of the Fliesconceit imagined teenagers as genetically predisposed towards nihilism. Our performers may have squared off with their audience in an intimidating opening tableau, but however provocative GYT become, there's a sly indication that it's just a pose.

Pignut Productions, tucked into an overheated pagoda tent in the foyer of the Town Hall Theatre, was not inclined to make any such concessions to the ruse of Flea Circus. Pitching the personalities of its performers to a prefabricated flea circus kit, the show asked younger spectators to watch closely as tiny parasites, invisible to the naked eye, mounted the trapeze or performed high dives, while their handlers wittily characterised the archetypal strongfleas or a fleafatale. The grown-ups laughed while children strained hard to see the insects: boy, have they got some growing up to do.

Much as we hate to admit it, who we are is not constant, but a more fraught negotiation between our age and our time. "Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for 30 years ago," laughs Fergus Cronin in a surprisingly, immensely moving production of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape,directed by Art O'Briain. Our impression of Krapp is generally of a gaunt, crotchety figure, created by Patrick Magee and sustained by Jack McGowran, Edward Petherbridge and John Hurt as a thin streak of misery, or a ringer for the playwright.

Cronin’s presence is bigger, more corpulent, and he softens the character accordingly. Brisk in his shuffles, expressive in his pleasures and haunted in his loss, this Krapp brings affecting results. The severity of the character is confined to the strong sharp-voiced recordings of yesteryear, while the figure onstage reaps the consequences of past actions. “Perhaps my best years are gone,” says the tape. “When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now.” The line is often quoted approvingly, out of context, for the succour of sentimentality.

But here, endlessly replayed, there is no doubt about its more chilling irony. Cronin ended his performance by heaving a short sigh so desolate it stopped us in his tracks.

It’s unclear if the Galway Arts Festival felt that its thunder had been stolen by the Volvo Ocean Race Galway stopover, a two-week festival of entertainment and performance, but it must have felt like preparing a well-considered banquet only to discover your guests have arrived directly from the chipper.

Attendance for most events was more than respectable, but nerves at the box office were strained and the publicity machine rarely climbed down from overdrive. Even Macnas had to dig deep into its fuel reserves, pulling out all the stops to deliver a parade comparable to previous years on a much more constrained budget. It’s success, and the success of the Galway Arts Festival this year, is an emblem of all that is encouraging in the arts and all that is deeply unfair. When this historically underfunded part of society is disproportionately penalised in straitened times, it finds a way to survive. The message from Galway is that it shouldn’t have to.