Irish Times writers review The Salvage Shop in Waterford, Stephen Petronio Dance Company at the Belfast Festival, McNamara, Dunne at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
The Salvage Shop
Garter Lane Theatre, Waterford
Mary Leland
It might be argued that this production of The Salvage Shop keeps on missing its own point to emphasise the human confusion of memory, intention and loyalty which is the essence of Jim Nolan's writing here. And it might be argued that this is the point - this important play is about the very faults from which it suffers itself. Designer Dermot Quinn's solid, layered set - which would be helped by more suggestive or at least subtle lighting - becomes an arena in which small-town father and son work through a muddled relationship, the son aiming for a resolution made urgent by news of the father's terminal illness.
Battling to emulate the old man's once-indomitable spirit through a misconceived campaign, the son becomes more and more like his father, although neither of them notices this dramatically important and convincing development. The emphasis instead is on reclamation, redemption, salvage.
Directing his own work may not be the best thing for Nolan to do; no one could blame him for being in love with his own words, for as they are assembled here and treasured by the cast, the lines are often compelling and memorable.
But they need the edge of something like danger, something more cutting than the bitterness which is offered as motivation, they need an organic pace to drive the play and catch its high moments, of which there are quite a few (although not for the female roles).
At the same time actors must love Jim Nolan; as the father Sylvie, the ousted bandmaster still enmeshed in band-room politics, Frank Grimes has some terrific opportunities and seizes every one of them, playing with a physical and verbal confidence just on the right side of dominating the play.
As the son, Jon Kenny has a more difficult task. His character is burdened with the emotional weight of the piece which, like the shop itself, is untidy but not shabby, while Donall Farmer, tackling a part which grows as the action moves on, offers exactly the right note of anxious affiliations.
Nolan's attempts to heighten this family drama through an obsession with opera is thrilling but doesn't quite hit the mark, especially as the bandmaster and his son always seem to be conducting orchestras. And some space should have been sacrificed to reduce the effect of a large man dying in a small bed.
Still, the cracks in this production are like Leonard Cohen's - cracks which let the light in; it is a thoughtful, provocative piece, and leaving the smartly refurbished Garter Lane, it is impossible not to have fallen, like Sylvie himself, "in love with imperfection".
To Nov 11
Belfast Festival: Stephen Petronio Dance Company
Stranmillis College Theatre
Jane Coyle
Stephen Petronio began dancing in 1974 and was the first male dancer in the famous Trisha Brown Company. In 1984, he founded his own company, building up a network of collaborators - composers, visual artists, musicians, fashion designers - all of them provocative, gifted individuals, whose collective inspiration has forged the hallmark of the company's dance style.
His current trio of works begins with the relentless punk/ballet fusion Lareigne, created in 1995. Although beautifully danced, its abstract content may not be to everyone's taste. Their tattered chiffon costumes swirling like the wings of fallen angels, the sinewy male and female dancers stamp a spiky yet silky mark onto the pounding electronic score, which kicks off with the Stranglers' No More Heroes.
Then come two stunning works created around Petronio's latest muse, the louche genius that is Rufus Wainwright. In Bud Suite, seductive melodies and lyrics from the Want Two album work in perfect harmony with Petronio's dance exploration of love and friendship among and across the sexes. The anarchic fashion vision of Tara Subkoff is an equally vital element in her witty half-and-half costumes - a city suit or crisp white blouse revealing a slash of racy scarlet underwear, suggestive of altogether different activities.
Finally comes Bloom, a great anthem to the natural world. The dancers, encased in Rachel Roy's gracefully draped and embellished costumes, fly out across a vast backdrop, sheenily lit by another long-time collaborator Ken Tabachnick. Wainwright's original multi-tracked score incorporates the words of Lux Aeterna and the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, while the sweet voices of the Ulster Youth Choir move from stage to upper circle, enveloping the auditorium in a heady hymn of praise. The capacity audience could only look on in awe.
McNamara, Dunne
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Michael Dungan
Settings of Heine by Schumann, Clara Schumann, Jan Müller-Wieland
The poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) attained an almost 21st-century kind of celebrity status within his lifetime. He was denounced in his native Germany as a subversive; he was famous equally for both a warm charm and an abrupt aloofness; and he became - via his admiration for Napoleon - a committed Francophile. Composers who have set his poems include Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Wolf.
2006 marks the 150th anniversary of Heine's death, prompting Limerick-born tenor Paul McNamara to devote this recital to settings of his verse, mainly by Schumann. Poet and composer got along famously during an afternoon together, their only meeting, after which Heine never responded to any of Schumann's attempts to contact him.
The programme included the three-song Tragödie, telling a tale of elopement which clearly resonated with Schumann, whose betrothal to Clara Wieck was blocked by her father. The third song presents the haunting image of a tree growing on the spot where the fugitive lovers died, with two new lovers sitting beneath it as they "weep without knowing why".
Here the sentiment is straightforward and undiluted, as also in Der arme Peter (Poor Peter), another three-part setting in which Peter looks on as his beloved marries someone else. Schumann's setting is waltz-like for the nuptials in the first song, agitated for Peter's torment in the second, and sombre for the third in which Peter reckons that only the grave can provide solace.
But Heine often adds a bitter, unexpected twist as he does in Der Dichter (The Poet). After the first two stanzas deny poetry's ability to capture the beloved's beauty, the fourth then castigates her for her malice and "false pious looks". This, one of three non-Schumann songs, was a graphic, almost programmatic setting from 1997 by Jan Müller-Wieland, strongly contrasting sweetness and spite while in between presenting a thunderous portrayal of the vampires and monsters who inhabit the third stanza.
This song provided the widest scope for McNamara who, throughout his interesting selection, ranged ably and easily between tender and emphatic, intimate and extrovert, soft and loud. His mostly subtle dramatics nicely animated the narrative. Pianist Gráinne Dunne was both sensitive in partnership and unabashed in Schumann's characteristic preludes and postludes, thereby ensuring an apt equality between voice and piano.
