Reviews

A look at what is happening in the world of the arts.

Earagail Arts Festival: Little John Nee

An Grianán Theatre

Morality play, stand-up comedy and rock-and-roll legend rolled into one, this latest addition to the Little John Nee repertoire tells the story of one man's brave attempts to follow his dreams, epitomised by, of all places, Limavady.

It's an unlikely castle in the air, and our equally unlikely hero strikes a brave blow for freedom, defying the local gombeen owner of half of Bunnion, the one-horse town that has become his home.

Abandoning his career as ukelele-player-in-chief in a range of local hell-holes, from bingo hall to Saturday night boozer, he takes to the road or, in this case, disused railway line, instrument in hand and dreams intact. Limavady, here he comes.

Life, as the song says, is what happens while you're busy making plans, and so too with our anonymous hero. What happens along the way is, of course, the stuff of dreams. Dreams and poetry, the poetry of chance encounters, everyday life and riotous fantasies. In our everyman/hero's case both the chance encounters themselves, and the rhymes and rhythms Nee used to capture them, are whacky in the extreme. Whacky, but somehow credible as well, and certainly very entertaining.

Peppered with blues imagery - the inevitable railway track, the quest for home/Nirvana/Nashville, and of course, Johnny Cash - our brave hero strides bravely forth along the disused sleepers. Little John Nee does for the craggy rocks of the north-west what Dylan Thomas did for the lush valleys of Wales. Except, of course, for his irreverence and distinctly post-modern sense of disjuncture: "I spent a fortnight with the Dali Lama/On a beach in Kincasslagh/Listening to Jimmy Hendrix" or "Like a faery queen/In gaberdine".

Nee's apprenticeship as a street entertainer on Grafton Street stands him in good stead, and the performance hinges on his unrivalled comic ability and his chameleon-like capacity to transmogrify from hapless hero to a range of other characters with minimal props and utter conviction.

His command of gesture, voice, pace, pitch, accent and dramatic pause is second to none, his singing lusty and the idiom very much his own.

Although the central musical interlude may have flagged somewhat, the score, composed by Laura Sheeran, doubling as brassy femme fatale, provides a coherent soundscape. Premiered, appropriately enough for an artist who so convincingly articulates the innocent fantasies of an Ireland now almost extinct, in the Parochial Hall, Dungloe, Limavady, is this new work specially commissioned by the Earagail Arts Festival. Good to see a prophet recognised in his own country.

Continues at Tullyarvan Mill, Buncrana tonight

Mary Phelan