GALWAY ARTS FESTIVAL:THERE WAS a bit of ducking and diving and nimble footwork needed for this year's festival parade by Macnas. So, to start. Down to Spanish Arch, the start of the route this time, 10pm Sunday: another late night parade, writes DEIRDRE FALVEY
A bit of griping about its late Sunday night timing, which excluded some young and old, and weekend visitors to the festival. But still, night-time is magic, the Macnas parade a tradition. Not quite dark yet but a bit of a gathering of west of Ireland twilight gloom.
The crowds swarmed over the bridge, in the plaza area, all over the streets; you could hardly budge. Then the creatures began to emerge from the Spanish Arch: a giant Orfeo, eponymous star of the evening, with a metal frame, lit from within, and odds and sods of fabric and basket and all building the bulk. Swiftly followed by a series of wheeled giant metal filigree baskets, these too all found objects and tat, and each containing a single musician in grotesque evening dress. And that was it. But surely not? Best scoot, duck and dive to catch the parade later in the route, how about the Salmon Weir Bridge? And for those who didn't know to, or weren't able to, duck and dive, the parade was over in the blink of an eye.
The parade, created by Macnas's new artistic director Noeline Kavanagh, this year followed a different route, and started as a small core, which seemed to collect other bits of the parade along the way (with Orfeo, what they called a "junkyard mechanic" waking up dreamers and beasts at intervals), all coming together for the second half, and culminating at the cathedral carpark for a finale (and another scoot through the crowds to get there).
This parade was a step in a different direction, eschewing fey whimsy and humour of past Macnas parades, and instead stressing a darker, paganistic aesthetic. So there were giant mythological creatures, white and glowing with a light from within - a hare leaping, a shaggy-pile horse with four human feet holders making him "walk" while reciting Yeats' The Circus Animals' Desertion. There were grotesque cabaret performers, ballet dancers, fishes, sailors and floozies, black crows on stilts, a unicyclist juggling fire, an enormous boat constructed from bits of scrap wood and encasing drummers playing found objects turned percussion instruments.
That pagan style was most striking in the finale, where an ethereal choir sang and the players and assorted beasts had a wild, demented dance as the pace quickened; fireworks were released, suffusing into red glows, Orfeo continuing to glint and glimmer, creating a scene like the end of the film The Wicker Man, another famous pagan image.
This year's parade was exhilarating, stylish, exciting and true-ish to a general sense of Orpheus and the underworld. It was shorter, certainly (money's tight - it has its effects), and especially so for those at the start, for whom it was all over in three minutes. And while it's refreshing to take a different route, the charm of picking up bits of the parade along the way was somewhat lost because knowledge of this format and the finale seemed not to be known to some of the many thousands who came out to line the streets, who didn't see large sections of the parade or the finale. And that was a bit of a pity, as it was one of the darkest and most impressive Macnas parades in years.
ON ONE OF THOSEodd evenings that's both sunny and "soft", Druid celebrated the refurbishment of the medieval building on Chapel Lane that has been its home since 1979. Constrained by the space and the age of the building, the architect Tom de Paor and the theatre managed to re-make the space as a workable and multi-function facility with a lovely vibe. Just a couple of days beforehand the foyer area, with dramatically sloped concrete floor and exposed stone walls, had been full of tools and wood - it can double up as a set workshop - but on Saturday just under 100 guests visited for the opening of The Gigli Concert, Tom Murphy's incredible play (see review, right). What they got was an evening of celebration, incendiary speeches, and powerful drama.
Director Garry Hynes quoted a line in the play from character JPW King, where he says "it's pretty bad out there". That sums up how I feel, said Hynes, whose fiery speech - "the arts matter. They are an important part of Irish civil society" - followed Arts Council chairwoman Pat Moylan's own strong call for defence of the arts, following proposals to axe Culture Ireland and the Irish Film Board, and to question the need for a department of arts.
"We are the creative minds of the country, we have to shout out," said Moylan. It was not just a matter of the economic impact of the arts, she said, "they are part of what we are, our very heart and soul, and if you take that away it will break our spirit". They were cheered and clapped by an admittedly partisan audience that was somewhat reeling from the An Bord Snip Nua suggestions. That audience included former minister Michael D Higgins, film-maker Lelia Doolan, Culture Ireland's Eugene Downes, playwrights Tom Murphy and Martin McDonagh - and they were there to celebrate too.
Moylan could only imagine, she said, what it must have been like, for "three talented twentysomethings" - Druid founder members Hynes, Marie Mullen and Mick Lally were all there - "getting their own home and turning it into a place they'll always have".
1979, the year of the pope's visit, when women couldn't get mortgages, were different times, she said, and since then "this beautifully restored theatre has seen tears and rows and hard work under its roof, but also creativity and the joy of discovery". Hynes thanked Donagh McDonagh, who gifted the building to the company on its 21st birthday, as well as the Department of Arts, Galway City Council, the Arts Council, project manager Declan Gibbons and architects Tom de Paor and Alice Casey, for "keeping faithful to the spirit of the building and to Druid", and she recalled the days of buckets on the roof, leaks and draughts in the rehearsal room. And she thanked the writer, "without whom none of this would happen" and her delight at Druid "renewing its acquaintance with Tom Murphy".
ELSEWHERE IN THE FESTIVAL, Flea Circus was a perfectly formed small show, with an audience of about 15 squeezed at regular intervals through the day into a gazebo ("mini-top") in the foyer of the Town Hall Theatre. Pignut Productions, in association with Electric Bridget (the wee Galway company whose Waiting for Elvisat last year's festival was a funny and moving delight) in the shape of three humans, Eileen Gibbons, Helen Gregg and Jay Ryan and their troupe of performing fleas, too small for the human eye to see, recreated the Victorian entertainment in a delightful 25-minute show.
That they were too small for the human eye to see, ahem, didn't prevent the audience, especially the younger ones, seeing their feats of derring-do, as fleas performed trapeze and high wire acts, were shot out of a miniature cannon and retired at intervals to have a cup of tea. A lovely tribute to the power of the imagination, and, indeed, the spirit of performance and showmanship, or showfleaship.
IT WAS A SORTof homecoming for composer/singer/songwriter Julie Feeney, playing in the Galway Arts Festival in her home county, and teaming up with Galway's resident ensemble Contempo for a memorable concert, pillars notwithstanding, in St Nicholas's church. She first approached the stage from behind the seats, singing, focusing the audience from the start on her voice. An engaging and natural performer, Feeney co-ordinated proceedings wearing fancy red shoes, often bent forward in concentration or sitting low on speakers. And the combination of instruments and voice (including a couple of backing singers and pianist, a trumpet player, and Feeney herself on harmonium and recorder) was inspiring, involving and uplifting.
MUSIC FROM THE PENGUINCafé Orchestra, a sort of recreation or homage to the late Simon Jeffes's English ensemble Penguin Café Orchestra, was led by his son Arthur Jeffes from the piano.
They crammed the stage of the Radisson with a huge array of instruments, the music not easy to categorise but a mix of classical, folk and rock. Violin, viola, cello, double bass, percussion, three ukuleles, piano, harmonium, and two tin whistles at once, playing a gorgeous mix of tunes.
The performance style was restrained, with spare intros announcing the title of the next tune, and in response the audience, too, was restrained and yet this English reserve seemed to grow on the crowd, who livened up for a concert of music that leaves you feeling happy.
NIALL STANAGE'S TALK MADEthe hair on the back of your neck stand up. Or rather, the clips of Obama's oratory continue to have that effect - he used them to illustrate his engaging chat based on his book Redemption Song about his experience as the only Irish journalist on Obama's campaign jet, and exploring the links between the hope of his campaign to the reality of his presidency, a subject which struck a chord and generated great questions from the audience.
WITH THE GALWAY ARTSFestival past the half-way mark, this week sees music in the newly-erected Big Top (David Gray, Bon Iver, Femi Kuti) and the festival's international theatrical highlights, Propellor's two Shakespeares, and the Australian company Circa's physical theatre/circus show. And catch coverage of all of it on Gaftv, the festival's web-based TV station, at http://www.galwayartsfestival.com/gaftv. Galway Arts Festival continues till next Sunday.
