Reviews

The Irish Times reviews: The Playboy of the Western World and Riverdance

The Playboy of the Western World Town Hall Theatre, Galway

Three years since the National Theatre last staged it and four months since Druid's touring production opened, the Abbey presents the Playboy as part of its centenary programme.

Director Ben Barnes is striving towards a formal, almost ritualistic aesthetic, using music (by Joe Townsend), tableaux, and a set (by Guido Tondino) that opens out to reveal a white screen with figures silhouetted in front.

He has also introduced an archetypal figure, a master of revels (Simon O'Gorman) who presents a wordy prologue based on Synge's introduction to the published text. Stalking the stage, he animates scenes with a clash of his cymbals.

Yet despite these self-conscious layers which slow things down and seem a bit ponderous, Barnes's presentation of the play is rooted in the creation of fully-realised, fleshed out characters. At its best it's an exploration of relationships, feelings and predicaments, rather than abstractions, and its strength, appropriately, lies in its casting.

Reversing the roles they played so well in the Peacock/Blue Raincoat production, Cathy Belton (Pegeen Mike) and Olwen Fouéré (Widow Quinn) demonstrate their impressive range and versatility, and bring this production to life. For all her swaggering in a man's trousers, jacket and felt hat, this Widow Quinn can't hide her yearning for the skittish Christy (Tom Vaughan Lawlor), while Belton's Pegeen is remarkably expressive.

Other performances that shine are Andrew Bennett's as Shawneen Keogh and Maeliosa Stafford's as Old Mahon.

Monica Frawley's vivid, ill-assorted costumes make everyone look as if they're wearing cast-offs, from different periods, or different productions perhaps - a knowing reference to the challenge of making something new from familiar materials. Synge knew a lot about that.

Until June 19th, then touring nationally until July 31st. - Helen Meany

Riverdance Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

Branded and established globally through its relentless touring, Riverdance has returned home to the Gaiety in a show that's subtitled The Homecoming. Proud but close audience scrutiny is possible in this scaled-down production on the small Gaiety stage, but blemishes that are usually covered by distance, like foot-synching to pre-recorded taps, are all too real up close.

Comparisons always return to the original Eurovision filler, which had the essence of what this show is about: consideration, simplicity and the confidence in allowing the raw thumping dance speak for itself.

It spawned its imitators, and Bill Whelan's music launched a thousand poly-rhythmic jig tunes, but even in the tarted-up evening show dance is allowed to speak for itself rather than squashed into a narrative. This in essence is what keeps the original the best.

In spite of the powerful personalities it has picked up along the way, the dance has sustained the show through cast changes. The sequences are comfortingly familiar in The Homecoming, but the performances feel fresh and enthusiastic through recasting.

Flamenco dancer Yolanda Gonzalez Sobrado, the Riverdance Tappers - Walter "Sundance" Freeman and Corey Hutchins - and fiddler Zoë Conway best embody this eagerness in replacing the original Celtic Tiger swagger.

But 10 years on the symbolism of the Eurovision performance seems forgotten. When Irish-Americans Michael Flatley and Jean Butler returned to perform Irish dance, the effects of emigration and vibrancy of the diaspora was unsaid but tangible. Now, watching the second act opening in the evening show, you seem more aware of the need to explain all of this through a stage-"oirish" village scene and the departing of the emigrant. It jars, particularly as the first act ends with the original Riverdance sequence, which in ways is the real ending: the culmination of cultural cross-breeding abroad brought home to Ireland. - Michael Seaver