Reviews

Tim Loane's first stage play Caught Red Handed is reviewed by Jane Coyle and pieces from Beethoven as performed by violinist Eyal Kless and pianist John O'Conor is reviewed by  Michael Dervan

Caught Red Handed Northern Bank Building, Belfast

The year is 2005 and Northern Ireland hovers precariously on the brink of democracy. A referendum has been called to decide on the issue of a united Ireland. The people will choose and the Alternative Unionist Party is not happy. Its leader feels the hand of history lying heavy upon his broad, pinstriped shoulders and stands poised to call the mad dogs out onto the streets and put an end to all this nonsense.

Tim Loane's first stage play cleverly spots the cyclical nature of politics and turns the clock simultaneously forward and back - forward to the imagined day of judgement three years along the road, back to the 1974 Ulster Workers' Strike, when the rhetoric of unionist leaders brought life in their beloved land to a halt.

David Craig's Stormont-inspired design perfectly capitalises on the historic atmosphere of the high stucco-ceilinged rooms and weighty columns of the former Northern Bank Building, which 200 years ago was the Belfast Assembly Rooms. It is the perfect setting for Tinderbox's multi-media production, which director Simon Magill guides between Whitehall farce, sometimes heavy-handed political satire and live television news reporting.

Dan Gordon strikes a familiar note as the Leader, massive in voice, stature and influence, surrounded by a predictable group of sycophantic henchmen: Richard Clements's nodding son, Alan McKee's flaky press spokesman, Ian Beattie's mean-faced former petty criminal, Peter Ballance's sanctimonious clergyman and Amanda Hurwitz's devoted wife.

While the scenario is amusing, enjoyable and pithy, it takes much too long in making - and remaking - its points. The "less is more" rule of scriptwriting needs to be invoked, in order to prevent events on stage falling into the tiring, long-winded mode of their real-life counterparts.

Jane Coyle

Caught Red Handed is at the Northern Bank Building in Waring Street, Belfast until March 2nd (to book, phone 04890-439313) and then tours to Cookstown, Armagh, Derry, Enniskillen, Coleraine and Letterkenny

Eyal Kless (violin), John O'Conor (piano)

RIAM

Sonata in A minor, Op 23........................Beethoven

Sonata in A, Op 30 No 1..........................Beethoven

Sonata in C minor, Op 30 No 2................Beethoven

THE second of the three recitals covering Beethoven's complete sonatas for violin and piano, given by Eyal Kless and John O'Conor on Monday, was, in terms of performance, a backward step from the first. O'Conor's assertiveness, which in the first programme seemed to represent a musical point of view, here came to sound merely insensitive.

Kless did not come across as an equal partner in the duo. His playing seemed as weak in tone and expression as O'Conor's was forced. The violinist rarely managed to present himself with that consistency of presence and cogency of utterance which would have been necessary to enable the two instruments to engage in meaningful dialogue. He also showed a surprising fallibility of intonation.

Fallibility of detail afflicted O'Conor, too, although he had the music in front of him on the piano. The niceties of manner that were to be observed in his playing during the opening concert were largely absent. This could, I suppose, be attributed partly to the different nature of the music on offer. But no amount of stormy intention on Beethoven's part could account for the lapses of ensemble between the players, or the piano-heavy one- sidedness of the presentation.

The dead acoustic of the Dagg Hall is proving a drawback in this enterprise. With two pairs of Lyric FM microphones on the stage, it may be that the most rewarding musical balance will be that presented to radio listeners when these performances are eventually broadcast.

Michael Dervan