Today's reviews include Oedipus Loves You at the Smock Alley Theatre, Morgan and Dullea at the Hugh Lane and National Galleries, Dublin and Micah P Hinson at Whelans, Dublin
Oedipus Loves You
Smock Alley Theatre
Sara Keating
Oedipus Loves You is not a reinterpretation of a classic Greek drama for contemporary times. It is a deconstruction of Greek drama's central tenets for a modern audience. Engaging with both an original source (Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy) and its legacy (Freudian psychology), Pan Pan's production is densely inter-textual, wickedly funny and wonderfully theatrical in the most post-modern of ways.
The House of Laius in Oedipus Loves You is a claustrophobic three-roomed bungalow, cluttered with all the condiments and accessories of modern life. The central playing area is the house's patio, which is alternately used as the family's leisure area, a therapist's clinic, and the stage from which the mythic characters can take the microphone and admit their deepest desires.
These desires are, of course, to escape from their pre-determined destinies; to escape the traumatic familial fate ordained by the Gods.
In Oedipus Loves You, however, it is the director, Gavin Quinn, who is God: manipulating the actors via headsets, manipulating the audience's interpretations by projecting pieces of a fragmentary text on a screen, and drawing our attention to the forces that control the characters' actions by moving miniature replicas of the stage-world around casually, like toys. Ned Dennehy, Gina Moxely, Ruth Negga, Karl Sheils and Dylan Tighe multi-task as Quinn's toys and his playmates, performing their roles as the damned of Sophocles' play, the (un)willing patients of Freudian psychoanalysis, and the facilitators of Gordon Is A Mime's original score, which they perform live with gusto.
However, underlying all the tongue-in-cheek theatricality is a solid engagement with the legacy of the Oedipus myth both on contemporary culture and 20th-century theatre. In the real world, it has bestowed the buzz words of value judgments, visualisation, role-play and therapy as coping mechanisms for the collective moral crisis of modern life. In the dramatic world, meanwhile, it has given us the family drama, which has compulsively re-enacted a neurotic cycle of domestic dysfunction throughout the ages.
Just as it is impossible to escape the psycho-dynamics that have determined the place of the individual within contemporary society, so the characters of Oedipus Loves You inevitably find themselves unable to escape the frame of familial dysfunction. However, Pan Pan have made it clear that the act of theatre can break both boundaries, even if it is only temporarily.
• Until Oct 21
Morgan, Dullea
Hugh Lane and National Galleries, Dublin
Michael Dungan
Two things stood out from this three-hour sampling of contemporary music for violin and piano. The first was the consistently refined playing and persuasive championing of the repertoire by violinist Darragh Morgan and pianist Mary Dullea.
The second was how their programme showed that the historic balance between the two instruments remains in flux. It's a relationship that spans a wide spectrum, from Mozart's early sonatas for keyboard with optional violin accompaniment, to the violin-centred sonatas of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the more equal-voiced works in between.
There was, for instance, a striking resonance with the early Mozart format in The Anatomy of Light, a response by composer Christopher Fox to the early 20th-century abstract style of American painter Morgan Russell. While you couldn't describe the violin part as optional, it was clear how the piano's mostly whispered, Debussy-tinged harmonies and delicate clusters were at the heart of the music, with the violin picking out detail and colour. It was the work's Irish premiere.
Another Irish premiere saw the balance tipped the other way in Michael Finnissy's 2003 Seterjentens Fridag (The Milkmaid's Day Off). Here the strong flavour of Norway's traditional Hardanger-fiddle music was diluted but always centre-stage in Morgan's polished performance.
There was a similar balance in Deirdre McKay's 2001 Secundum, an affectionate variation on music by Hamilton Harty in honour of the Belfast Music Society's 80th birthday.
With the violin's sweet melodic fragments over deep changing chords on the piano, McKay achieves the warm "after" feel which she believes is implied by the title.
Another traditional feature of the violin-piano combination that appeared alive and well here was the creation of a trio effect by the wide spacing of the hands in the piano. This occurred amidst the funky syncopation and snapping "Bartók" pizzicato of Geoff Hannan's 1999 Creeping Science, and in the jovial, energetic minimalism of Eric Sweeney's 1991 Duo.
There was more minimalism in John Adams's 1995 Road Movies, three contrasting five-minute movements alluding in turn to a familiar road, an empty desert landscape, and "a big perpetual machine called 40% Swing". Here Mary Dullea's rippling, repeating arpeggios were smooth as silk, an occasional note singled out for emphasis or a new bottom note sounding, once again, like the arrival of a third instrument.
Four pieces employed more advanced techniques than the rest, among them, ironically, the oldest work of the afternoon. These included John McLachlan's 2004 Ghost Machine, a playful representation of philosophy's dichotomy between mind and body enacted respectively by violin and piano, and Karen Power's Old fashioned chocolate fondue fountain (no date given), which, although hard to reckon by its title, was similar to the McLachlan in its judicious plucking and strumming of the piano's strings to complement the colours of the violin.
But the two masterworks in this style (which probably should not have been programmed consecutively) were George Crumb's Four Nocturnes from 1964 and Morton Feldman's 1977 Spring of Chosroes. Here the intuitive partnership of Morgan and Dullea resulted in an utterly gripping sound-world of breathtaking delicacy and serenity descended from Bartók's night music.
Heineken Green Synergy Festival:
Micah P Hinson
Whelans, Dublin
Sorcha Hamilton
Micah P Hinson speaks in a slow, Southern drawl. "I come from a little bastard town called Abilene, Texas," he tells the audience. Wearing a baseball cap and baggy jeans, 25-year-old Hinson doesn't look like the wise, somewhat regretful man of his songs.
While it's no secret he has lived the wild life - drugs, jail, you name it - Hinson is surprisingly fresh-faced, energetic and unassuming.
Opening with Seems Almost Impossible, Hinson mixes just the right amount of country with hushed vocals, lonesome slide guitar and the odd burst of distortion. His voice is strong and gravely, both tender and angsty.
Sometimes he croons into the microphone with soothing words: "Close your eyes, there's no worries now." Mournful, unhurried lullabies such as Drift off to Sleep from the new album Micah P Hinson and the Opera Circuit, have striking moments of beauty and sadness.
But it's not all sombre stuff. As the banjo starts up and the drums kick in, Hinson warns: "This will bring out the hillbilly in me." Uptempo, folksy tunes such as Diggin' a Grave have an electric edginess, both solemn and humorous. Hinson's self-loathing often comes out in spurts and blasts, he half-sings, half-yells lines such as: "I'm running out of patience."
And while the crowd whoops and cheers, the band works up a mesh of drums, unruly harmonica and livid guitar-playing.
As he pauses to knock back a painkiller with his beer, Hinson explains how he suffers from chronic back pain - it all goes back to a night of whiskies in commemoration of the Scottish poet Robbie Burns, and a friend slapping him slightly too hard on his back.
While the recurring backache has probably found its way into his songs, there is a forlorn tone running throughout Hinson's music. "I haven't always been the best of people," he tells the crowd. Hinson has certainly travelled a rough road, giving him every right to sing these moody, powerful and brilliantly sincere lyrics.
