Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review Leavesat Druid Theatre, Galway; RTÉ NSO/Markson at NCH and The Image Makersat Smock Alley

Leavesat Druid Theatre, Galway,  As Lucy Caldwell's debut play begins, a Belfast family prepares itself for the fraught and sudden homecoming of their eldest child. Little is revealed in the muted tensions of parents David and Phyllis, or the bickering allegro of their young daughters, but the occasion weighs heavily upon them all.

Finally, when middle child Clover (Penelope Maguire) seizes a poignantly-considered "list of reasons" from her younger sister Poppy (Daisy Maguire, sharing the role with Alana Brennan), the secret is revealed with withering adolescent disdain. "That isn't even how you spell 'suicide' anyway," Clover announces.

The dreadful reason why, however, lies at the centre of this sensitive family drama from Druid, in a co-production with The Royal Court. It is hinted at, avoided, grasped momentarily, stormily contested but ultimately - and quite problematically - allowed to slip away.

"She had a happy childhood," Fiona Bell's Phyllis defiantly insists. "We protected her from Belfast."

Lori's father, the excellent Conor Lovett, bows his head low, taking refuge in academia. At one point Phyllis seeks nutritional guidance from You Are What You Eat.Caldwell is too sensitive to her subject to pass off a suicide attempt as a plot device. When Lori finally emerges, in a fine performance by Kathy Rose O'Brien, she is no political metaphor, no overarching symbol, but rather as realistic a picture of deep depression as has ever walked the stage . No one quite knows how to deal with Lori, and that seems to include Caldwell.

The details of Leaves are certainly acutely wrought, from Francis O'Connor's evocative set and Ben Omerod's subtle lights to the excellent (and in Daisy Maguire's case, exceptional) performances.

Unfortunately little of this ensures a compelling drama. Airing - but not investigating - a host of issues, from the political to the psychological, the play finally suggests there can be no explanation.Skipping back in time to the eve of Lori's departure, we end with a halcyon fantasy of summer dresses, skipping ropes and cakes cooling gently on the rack. When the production has mapped the dark clouds of depression so convincingly, it is hard to believe this sunshine. Such ambiguity seems deliberate, but it is hard to know what to make of the play's equivocal conclusion: that no one could have seen this coming? Or that, like us, Caldwell doesn't have all the answers. Peter Crawley

Collins, RTÉ NSO/Markson at NCH

• Mozart - Piano Concerto in C minor
• Mahler - Symphony No 6

Mozart's Concerto in C minor is a work which includes some of the most glorious wind writing ever conceived for a piano concerto. And at the same time it is also one of the composer's works which most frequently stimulates Beethovenian responses in performance.

The orchestral playing in Friday's performance with the RTÉ NSO conductor Gerhard Markson seemed more strongly attuned to the latter than the former. But soloist Finghin Collins struck a more independent path, relishing the expressive yield of delicacy and refinement in Mozart, and steadfastly eschewing the sub-Beethoven effects of the orchestral playing. The juicy cadenzas he chose by Paul Badura-Skoda allowed him plenty of scope to let his hair down. The orchestral playing was altogether more pointed and vivid in Mahler's Sixth Symphony after the interval. The performance was at its most successful in conveying aspects of the extraordinary orchestral colouring of the music.

Markson's was a scruff-of-the-neck approach, urgent, impetuous, raspy in the biting charge of the first movement, often focusing on momentary angularity at the expense of longer-term momentum. The slow movement was an island of repose in the storm-tossed surroundings. Michael Dervan

The Image Makersat Smock Alley

Per-Olov Enquist's play, presented by the Dionysos Theatre Company, seems past its time and out of its depth. It is set in the early years of cinema, and features four eminent people of that era. Selma Lagerlof was a Nobel-winning author, Viktor Sjostrom a film director, Tora Teje a star actress and Julius Jaenzon a pioneering cinematographer.

In real life they met in 1920 for a preview of Sostrom's silent film, based on a famous novel by Lagerlof. The outcome of their meeting is not known, and Enquist attempted to fill this void with his own imagination. The elderly writer takes a shine to the young actress, and moves from spiky exchanges to revelations about her relationship with her alcoholic father, achieving a kind of catharsis.

These two roles occupy the centre of the stage, while the director and cinematographer fill in background, mostly of sexual relationships with Teje. Michael James Ford and Sean Murphy give authoritative performances, but the evening belongs to Britta Smith's Lagerlof.

The role of Teje, taken by Helena Lewin, is quite clunkily written in this (uncredited) translation, littered with crude anachronisms - tosser, dumped and the usual four-letter expletives. Her performance does nothing to redeem this.

Joshua Edelman directs, but the play is probably beyond revival except for those with a biographical interest in its characters. Gerry Colgan