Reviews

Irish Times writers review The Murder Ballads at Nero's Nightclub, Kilkenny, Michael Thompson (horn)/Prague Chamber Orchestra (Ondrej Kukal) at St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny and Translations  at the Everyman Palace in Cork

Murder mysteries and films have never been more popular, the reality of murder remains remote for most of us. Safely ensconced at home or in the cinema, we can witness the act, lured to the danger but always detached from the reality. This morbid fascination is what Finola Cronin sets up in The Murder Ballads, which premièred at Kilkenny Arts Festival at the weekend. Taking Caryl Churchill's play, The Lives of the Great Poisoners, the expressive language of Tanztheater and the conventions of German cabaret, she assembles a scatty collection of vignettes set to the dark songs of Tom Waits, Peggy Lee, P.J. Harvey and Nick Cave. Sitting in Nero's Nightclub with pints in front of us, we could also view murder with safe detachment.

Eschewing gore in favour of dark humour, Cronin constructs a world around three very different characters. Ríonach Ní Néill is wide-eyed, inadequate and can't commit the act of murder or even whistle; singer Camille O'Sullivan is a more streetwise and controlled commentator, and Ester O'Brolchain observes from a distance but would seem to be the most cunning and devious of them all. Although German cabaret might promise a bit more menace and edge, there are still some moments that jar. Camille O'Sullivan sings one of the murder ballads while scoring the inside of her forearm with dark lines, while at other times it is Ní Néill's vulnerability that is set against her dark words.

This susceptibility emerges from her first dance, in which gesture and movement merge and find full expression through her bound physicality. All of the performances are strong and committed. In particular, O'Brolchain finds huge changes in characterisation though minute changes in facial expression and steals the show with her dance to Tico-Tico.

The Murder Ballads is not without some lumpy moments. Energy dissipates in long moments of silence (not helped by the everyday noises filtering in from outside) and the ending feels a bit rushed. But, overall, the show is effective, drawing us into the world of the conventions of murder. It is very welcome as the first dance production by Kilkenny Arts Festival.

Prague Chamber Orchestra sets the standard for performing without a conductor. It is one thing to do what many chamber orchestras manage well - lead 15 to 20 strings from the front desk; it is another to achieve, from around 33 strings, wind and percussion, the deft responsiveness of a small chamber ensemble. A large audience heard just that, last Saturday night, in the opening concert of Kilkenny Arts Festival's main classical music programme.

For Mozart's Horn Concerto in E flat K447, the orchestra was joined by Michael Thompson, who is also the curator of the festival's international chamber music series. His playing was perfectly designed for the building, and maintained a fine balance between individual panache and membership of a group. This was the evening's best performance of Mozart.

Not that there was much wrong with the rest of the first half. In the miraculous acoustic of St Canice's Cathedral, with players who knew everyone else's parts in addition to their own, one could hear every note of Mozart's most elaborate and contrapuntal symphony, No 38, the Prague. Yet neither the symphony nor the Don Giovanni Overture packed the emotional punch that even less accomplished performances can achieve. The composer's legendary compositional facility seemed over-amplified by the fast speeds and the orchestra's extraordinary abilities. There was no struggle.

It was different with Janacek's early Suite for Strings, and Dvorak's Czech Suite in D, Opus 39. Music which so rarefies the materials of folk song and dance sounds best when the playing matches the compositional polish. Subtle shifts of colour, elasticised timing and, above all, the impression that this was rustic dance idealised and made elegant - all these made for performances which were authentic, in the fullest sense of the word.

A respectful approach to Brian Friel's Translations at the Everyman Palace takes nothing from the play but adds nothing to it either. Perhaps director Mary Curtin is wise in this approach, as the writing is so fine, the drama both so intricate and so defined, and the slow-release impact so lasting that this closely woven examination of the links between geography, language and culture needs no further enchancement. Yet even after applauding the solid performances of Chris Collins as the master of the hedge school in which the action takes place; of Peter O'Mahony and Ian McGuirk as his different sons, one aware of but bewildered by the imminence of change, the other embracing it enthusiastically; and of Barry O'Reilly as the old student besieged by Homer - even then there is a sense that the crisis of the play is not endorsed by this production. The crisis, as Friel makes clear, is change - in this case, the looming linguistic eviction heralded by the map-makers of the English army in the Co Donegal of 1833.

The townland has more immediate worries. The threat of potato blight, the staffing of the new school, and the resentment of the officers by local desperadoes all disguise the current forcing the plot beyond these contours, and it is Friel's genius for conjunction that brings the tributaries together into one profoundly effective flood. But it is the director's business to illuminate this process rather than merely to chart it.

It is important, too, that the hedge school setting is not patronised, and Patrick Murray's set solidifies the context while letting in beams of Paul Denby's lighting scheme. Edmund Burke, for example, spent much of his boyhood studying in just such a place, as Friel knows well.

Translations continues as part of the '4 x Friel' season at the Everyman Palace until Saturday (to book, tel: 021-4543210).