A selection of reviews.
Peter Pan
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Jane Coyle
On the programme, they call it a swashbuckling panto adventure, which implies, correctly, that this year's Christmas spectacular at the Grand Opera House is neither a traditional pantomime nor a classic retelling of JM Barrie's beguiling rites-of-passage tale. At times, for all its colourful, glossy packaging, this hybrid creature feels a touch like a square peg in a round hole. The spirit and dark sub-texts of the original are definitely not up for exploration and the action rips fast and furiously through the storyline. However, when the familiar pantomime elements are introduced, the packed audience responds with great enthusiasm and volume - this is, after all, the kind of show they have paid to see.
It certainly looks great, and the deliciously-named Aston Merrygold presents a lithe, exotic Peter, whose lines are occasionally lost in the blurry sound system. Likewise, many of May McFettridge's subversive ad libs are difficult to catch and her scripted role as Mrs Smee is less flamboyant, in-your-face and wonderfully raucous than usual. In his first panto outing, Jack Ellis is a smashing, over-the-top Capt Hook, looking like a cross between Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen and King Billy. In doubling his casting as the Darling children's strict father, the notion of parallel universes is neatly set up, then finally rounded off with a surprising revelation of his connection to Peter's world of lost boys, pirates, Indians and fairies.
And when the swashing and buckling is done and the adventure comes to an end, the looks on the faces of the cheering children say it all.
Until Jan 20
St Petersburg Ballet Theatre:Swan Lake
The Helix, Dublin
Christie Taylor
The St Petersburg Ballet Theatre presented their elegant version of Swan Lake at the Helix and brought more than 100 years of history to life. Watching a Russian ballet company perform the ballet provides the quintessential dance experience where the smallest gestures are so articulately performed they expand to fill the stage.
First created in 1895, Swan Lake premiered at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and ever since has been one of the most coveted roles for a ballerina to dance. Irina Kolesnikova performed the lead role of Odette/Odile as if she had received advice from all those who had come before her.
Her regal characterisation and exquisite technique made her an utterly calm, confident Odette during Act I, transforming into a magnificent, vibrant Odile in Act II. Most remarkable was the way she used her arms like wings, softly fluttering when leading her fellow swans, quivering when she met the prince, and becoming limp and lifeless when her love looked to be in danger. She led the other swans in an utterly believable portrayal.
The corps wore expressionless faces and adapted their own detailed gestures until all traces of humanness disappeared. Their preening was made even more real because the dancers' Vaganova technique promotes the kind of fluid arm movements, supple backs and upper bodies associated with a swan.
They paid such precise attention to their winged interpretations that as they flocked together at the lake during the famous second scene in Act I, they looked to be proudly expressing their heritage.
Dmitri Akalinin offered a natural and compelling portrayal of Prince Seigfried, following his true love while battling his nemesis, the awful Von Rothbart. As Von Rothbart, Dymchic Saykeev possessed a strange likeability that was both menacing and intriguing.
With powerful leaps and dazzling turns, Von Rothbart tried to keep the swan away from her prince, but in the end - which is not always the case in other companies' version of the ballet - love endured. The love story comprised the heart of the ballet, but as my young companion and I agreed, the swans were by far the best part.
Gang of Four
Tripod, Dublin
Peter Crawley
To judge from the crowd in the recently opened and appealingly designed Tripod, the Gang of Four's following has now come to resemble its sound: an uneasy combination of disparate elements that don't seem to belong together, yet which somehow get along. Tonight, original fans in search of late-1970s post-punk memories mill around with fresh-faced hipsters, lured in by countless derivative brands, now keen to try the harder stuff.
All factions are united by the spiky jabs of Andy Gill's guitar on Return The Gift, ringing loud and crunchy over a pulsing rhythm. And, just as the band's skeletal funk and menacing rock still feel alarmingly potent, their rabble-rousing politics have not been diminished by the years.
The hard-edged Not Great Men rants ferociously about revisionist history, singer Jon King delivering lines such as "No weak men in the books at home" and "The poor still weak the rich still rule" with styptic intensity, before placing his hands on his thighs and whirling around the stage like a frozen Cossack dancer.
This performance can seem both ludicrous and terrifying: preserving a razor-edge balance which few of their musical imitators would dare attempt.
But, like Gill's arrhythmic, atonal guitar line, which sends splinters through the miasma of At Home He's a Tourist, some things are best left to the experts.
Spare a thought, though, for their roadies. Scuttling around the stage to retrieve a microphone that King and Gill have spent a good time kicking, or fetching King's much-abused guitar from wherever it lands during the feedback squalls of Anthrax seem to be among the stage crew's easier jobs.
One poor soul has to hold a microwave oven in position while King assaults it with a crowbar, producing the most horrible sound in history as the machine groans and shatters.
It's all over within the space of an hour, the set largely restricted to the group's masterful debut album, Entertainment!, leaving the audience to bask in the tinnitus of chaos and conviction. That, of course, is the desired effect: as the clenched mantra from Natural's Not In It goes, "This heaven gives me migraine."
