Reviews

The opening night of the Lyric's autumn season, under its new artistic director Paula McFetridge, was all about atmosphere and a sense of renewal.

Macbeth

Lyric Theatre, Belfast

As the witching hour approached, the plaintive sounds of the highland pipes drifted down over the Lagan, setting the scene for Prime Cut's ambitious revival of the Scottish Play. Stuart Marshall's staging starkly impresses upon the senses the carnage, usurpation and murderous intent of what passed for politics in Shakespeare's take on 11th-century Scotland. A cavernous wooden fortress, its thick walls pierced by narrow windows, balconies and walkways, is fronted by a ditch, strewn with headless corpses and dismembered limbs, the remains of the casualties of ongoing skirmishes, internecine feuds and power struggles. Bell Helicopter's swirling sound score dramatically conjures first celebration, then menace, while Gerry Jenkinson's lighting casts a shadowy, crepuscular gloom upon the dark deeds of Macbeth and his lady; theirs is a world, literally, removed from the light of day.

Director Jackie Doyle has opted for an almost total internalising of Macbeth's moral and psychological descent and, for much of the time, Stephen Scott masterfully realises that vision in his powerful interpretation of a calculating but impressionable mind descending into freefall. But the balance is skewed both by the fact that some others in the cast are unable to reach his level of performance and that, ultimately, he exceeds the demands even of this overreaching role and gives himself nowhere to go except towards increased volume and hysteria. Doyle consciously denies the audience the surreal visual images of the appearance of the ghostly Banquo (an unusually subdued Conor Grimes) and the encroaching Burnham Wood, thus diminishing their pivotal significance in Macbeth's helter-skelter disintegration to anyone unfamiliar with the play. The three witches are reduced to two disembodied voices and a single physical presence in Maria Connolly's weird, wraith-like soul, casting her magic from the outer reaches. Kathy Kiera Clarke's spikily youthful Lady Macbeth is possessed of a feral stealth, which has the makings of a perverse, destructive partnership with Scott's lithe, muscular warrior. And Miche Doherty's sardonic presence and vocal fluency are underused in the supporting role of Rosse, while Andrew Moore has not yet acquired the clarity and rhythm of verse-speaking to carry off the difficult, sometimes thankless character of the heir-apparent Malcolm.

There are some memorable set-piece moments - Lady Macduff's (Abigail McGibbon) stomach-churning death; the bubbling woodland pool, in which Macbeth drowns the last of his humanity - but the production has yet to settle into a consistency of pace and purpose, essential to face down the challenge of Macbeth's despairing epitaph to life itself, as being ". . . full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". - Jane Coyle

Macbeth runs at the Lyric until October 5th. Bookings on tel: 048- 9038 1081

Richard Ashcroft

The Ambassador

a new album, Human Condition, out soon, the former Verve front man is in fine condition, ready to tackle a cynical world head on and bring some meaning into modern pop. The Wigan soul boy arrived at Dublin's Ambassador for two shows, and the crowd greeted him like a rock 'n' roll saviour. Ashcroft launched straight into Sonnet, his rich, resonant voice soaring above his seven-piece backing band. The line-up includes former Verve drummer Pete Salisbury, and Ashcroft's wife, Kate Radley, on keyboards.

The set-list features nine out of the 10 songs on his new album, and Ashcroft eased us into unfamiliar territory with the slightly hippy-dippy Nature Is The Law, co-written with the head Beach Boy himself, Brian Wilson.

Lord I've Been Trying was a better effort, the music raising its arms up to heaven in search of something higher. The swirl of saxophones, flutes, cello and percussion gave depth and dynamism to Paradise, Buy It In Bottles and New York, and there were many moments when it felt like the whole band was about to levitate like some sonic hovercraft. When Ashcroft played solo acoustic guitar for The Drugs Don't Work and History, however, things glided back down to earth with a graceful touch.

With God In The Numbers and current single, Check The Meaning, Ashcroft resumed the search for a higher spiritual plane, but Lucky Man showed that he already found that Northern soul while still a member of The Verve. He still carried some baggage from that band, but shrugged it off brilliantly with Bitter Sweet Symphony, leaving out the big, swooping strings and letting the band set a different, more reflective mood. The only thing lacking in this warm, uplifting gig was some imaginative lead guitar to counterpoint Ashcroft's vocal style. I'm not suggesting he reconcile with Verve guitarist, Nick McCabe, but Ashcroft needs a similarly gifted axeman to put that celestial sparkle into the mix.

The Vagina Monologues

SFX City Theatre

Susan Conley

Ensler's 1996 play comes to us wreathed in worthiness; it is a text that has spawned the V-Day movement, also worthy, that has raised over $14 million to stop violence against girls and women. But what began as a sincere, personal document chronicling a journey from self-loathing to the joy of discovery has disintegrated into a kind of Love Boat celeb-a-thon that has been bled of both the personal and the political.

Three women tell heartfelt and often moving monologues that are interspersed with "happy vagina facts" (the clitoris has over 8,000 nerve endings), a litany of vaginal euphemisms, and a repeated motif in a question-and-answer mode: "If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?" and "If your vagina could speak, what would it say?" The stories range from sexy to sad, feisty to frustrated, and run the gamut of ethnic groups and religions - in short, all bases are covered, and no one, from a geriatric Jewess to a homeless Southern African American lesbian, goes unrepresented.

Is there freedom in saying the word "vagina" aloud-repeatedly? Maybe, maybe not - it depends. If you are the sort of woman who has frank, chatty girlfriends, buys condoms without flinching, and is not ashamed to masturbate when the aforementioned shopping spree is not on the cards, then this production's attempts to shock you and instruct you will fall on already well-tilled (and harvested) ground.

If not, then that's okay too, there's nothing to be ashamed of - just get yourself over to the north side, and listen and learn.

The Monologues have made their way around the world, and still plays in New York's Westside Theatre, with a two-week rotating cast of three available stars of varying fame. Dublin's version, directed by Michael Scott, is aping this rotation scheme, and the inaugural week stars Dillie Keane, Cathy Tyson, and Adele "Twink" King. Scott directs an utterly campy, over-produced show that eschews the fourth wall for a sort of manufactured chumminess that gets swamped in the cavernous SFX Theatre.

From the women's designer gowns to the amped-up lighting plan, what might have been a highly personal, strongly political, idiosyncratic play comes across as nothing more than a jumped-up hen party. -

Kevin Courtney

Runs until September 28th; other performances include Mary McEvoy, Anna Nolan and Juliet Turner. Booking on tel: 01-8554673

Korn

Simmonscourt, RDS

Support band Puddle Of Mud - whose album, Come Clean, recently attained platinum status in Ireland - set off the noise bombs at this superior metal event. The American band might be viewed as sub-Nirvana clones, but several of their songs are way above average, notably She Hates Me and Control. Like others, POM use the by now familiar quiet & slow/fast & loud approach, but there's a strong sense of melody in their material that proves popularity will be theirs for quite some time.

The night, however, belonged to Korn. From Bakersfield, California, Korn have gradually established themselves as the most influential rock band of their generation. Simply put, Korn are metal music's answer to Nirvana, and in lead singer Jonathan Davis - sexually abused minor, alienated adolescent, former autopsy assistant at Bakersfield Coroner's Office and curator of a personal Serial Killer Art museum - fans have their very own disturbed icon.

They start with Here To Stay and follow it with Make Believe (two songs from their latest soaring-success album, Untouchables), and continue for about two hours, their display of kinetic, dynamic metal occasionally raising the bar so much that audience members can only gawp in wonder. In the background to the five members (Davis, vocals; David Silveria, drums; Brian Welch and James Shaffer, guitars; Reginald Arvizu, bass) are scratch video inserts - handheld treatments, decidedly amateur in execution, distinctly freaky in concept.

Blind and Faget (both from their eponymous 1994 debut) feature low-tuned, riff-driven music so raw they inspire mini-Fight Clubs in the audience, yet despite the stupidity of stripped-to-the-waist macho posturing one can very easily understand why Korn inspire such slavish drones: they're good enough to transform the barn-like pavilion into a small venue, thereby gathering and containing the obvious sense of community. A hardly unique community, let it be said, but musically it's quite cut-and-dried: Korn are as cutting edge as it gets. -  Tony Clayton-Lea