Review

Siobhan Long reviews the Frank Harte Festival at the Teachers' Club, Parnell Square in Dublin

Vladimir Nabakov or Annie Proulx couldn't have conjured worlds more jagged, or words more serrated, than those that peppered the air at the Teachers' Club on Saturday night. Tales of canine cojones (or lack thereof), low flying scimitars, questionable threesomes and the delights of a buttery spud were just a few of the unmissable topics addressed with forensic attention to detail at the first Frank Harte Festival.

This wasn't so much a night of song as an epic of storytelling through music. Cork's impish Four Star Trio set the cages rattling from the get-go, with a suite of tunes that doffed their collective cap to Sliabh Luachra's late, lamented accordion hero, Johnny O'Leary. The trio's Con "Fada" Ó Drisceoil took leave of his own accordion for just long enough to regale his audience with a meandering tale of a dog doomed forever to wander the streets, devoid of his "conjugal gear".

Barry Gleeson had little difficulty following this gelding tale. He launched into The Herring with a gusto that was ably repaid by his audience, some of whom were well acquainted with its bawdy word-play, while the rest were on first-name terms before the first chorus had drawn its last breath.

Rosie Stewart leant a gorgeous throatiness to The Errant Apprentice, relishing its linguistic jousting, while Róisín Elsafty's voice traced a fascinating route through Coinnleach Ghlas An Fromhair that bore all the hallmarks of Connemara sean nós singing, while embedding traces of Arabic phrasing within. Éamon Brophy was the Caruso of the night, his sinuous voice embracing a tale from Eoghan Rua Ó Suilleabháin. John Kennedy, Luke Cheevers and Jerry O'Reilly all lent colour and sprite to what was a glorious festival debut.

One suspects that Frank would have enjoyed the wicked subversiveness of it all.