Reviews

Odd as it may seem, any review of the revival of Ulick O'Connor's 1988 play A Trinity of Two at Liberty Hall must be somewhat speculative.

This is because its opening night was so cruelly beset by misfortunes that it would be wholly unfair to draw too many conclusions about what the production will feel like when it gets a clear run.

Both members of Caroline FitzGerald's cast of two struggled. Adrian Dunbar, playing Oscar Wilde, battled with an illness that clearly subdued his natural exuberance. Patrick Bergin, playing Edmund Carson, the unionist leader who cross-examined Wilde during his ill-fated libel action against the Marquis of Queensbury, had persistent problems with his lines.

Just to prove that sorrows come in whole battalions, the lighting, which is crucial to a rather static play, had a rhythm of its own that was not always in synch with the action. Any judgment based solely on the opening night would be too harsh if it reflected merely the misadventures of the moment or too soft if was excessively swayed by the heroic professionalism of Dunbar and Bergin's determination to soldier on.

What can be said with some confidence is that A Trinity of Two is no more of a theatrical text than it seemed in 1988 when it had its premiere at the Peacock. It is an animated biographical lecture, driven by little more than the coincidence of Wilde and Carson having been contemporaries at Trinity College Dublin.

Wilde sits on one side of the stage, Carson on the other. Each man tells us things about himself. They engage only during the re-enactment of excerpts from Carson's cross-examination of Wilde.

Beyond the indisputable facts of a shared education and a trial in which they were antagonists, O'Connor posits the rather dubious notion that the two men were really alike as Irishmen at war with the Tory establishment. Into the mouth of Carson, who was so despised by the English ruling class that they made him solicitor general, attorney general, a life peer and a Lord of Appeal, he puts the line "I was a mere puppet in a political game . . . to keep the Tory establishment in power."

It does not ring true, not least because the phrase "the establishment" which O'Connor repeatedly gives to both Wilde and Carson, is a coinage of the 1950s. He also gives his Carson a free run at the equally dubious notion that England was under the perpetual rule of a "homosexual clique" who made Wilde a scapegoat for their sins.

In spite of these problems, however, some of the material on which O'Connor draws - especially the trial - is strong enough to hold the attention, and Dunbar and Bergin are superbly cast. The physical contrast between them - Dunbar tall and airy, Bergin muscular and imposing - is not so much a literal as a metaphorical divergence. It hints at the most interesting aspect of O'Connor's play - the notion that initial differences of personality lead to vast deviations in the careers of two men with similar backgrounds. There is a core of richness there and under happier stars it may develop into something worthwhile. - Fintan O'Toole

Runs until Nov 12

Intro 05 - Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray

Intro 05, a nonet of the best and brightest of the country's young jazz musicians organised by The Improvised Music Company, opened a six-day tour with an absorbing and hugely enjoyable concert. On the basis of only a few days' rehearsal, the standard achieved was not simply good; it was astonishing.

Under the direction of Boston-based guitarist and teacher Rick Peckham, the ensemble delivered not only a remarkably good crispness of execution of tricky and complex arrangements, but also reached a fine understanding of the expressive detail needed to bring them to musical life.

The result was a series of vibrant performances whose grasp of a palpably wide range of writing was impressive.

The group - Aoife Doyle (voice), Bill Blackmore (trumpet), Colm O'Hara (trombone), Matt Berrill (alto/clarinet), Simone Mendonca (violin), Stephen McFarlane (guitar), Julie Cruickshank (piano), Andrew Csibi (bass) and Phil McMullan (drums) - is large enough to offer an arranger a wide palette of orchestral colour, and small enough to have the kind of flexibility any music using improvisation requires. It has the solo strength, from Colm O'Hara and the rest of the front line, through Aoife Doyle and Julie Cruickshank right through the band to match the demands of the material, all based on a rock-solid rhythm section.

After an understandably careful opening on Wayne Shorter's Go, they began to hit their stride with Peckham's somewhat Mingus-like Ruggles, on which the composer joined for a solo. An arrangement of Sweet and Lovely clearly suffused with Bob Brookmeyer's wit allowed Aoife Doyle and Colm O'Hara a chance to impress, while a marvellous adaptation of Thelonious Monk's Humph included Monk's original solo orchestrated for the full ensemble, with fine alto, guitar and trumpet solos.

Some uncertainty was evident getting into Dylan Rynhart's perilously slow The Difference Between Light and Hard, but gradually Rynhart's adept use of the ensemble resources emerged beautifully; notable also was a lovely trombone solo with sensitive support from Cruickshank, and a brief drum solo supported by clarinet and trumpet. The first set ended with a rousing minor blues, Pumpkin's Delight.

Apart from some misunderstanding on Ronan Guilfoyle's demanding Jigsaw, the second set was even better, opening with a lovely bossa, Zingara, using voice, bass and Rick Peckham on guitar. Other delights included Guilfoyle's well-crafted Sostenuto, the superb ensemble precision of Ornette Coleman's Happy House and new work by two young Irish composer/arrangers.

These were Dan Jacobsen's adventurous and demanding writing for his Fractal, handled with admirable control and aplomb, and Jonathan O'Donovan's Integration and Cascade, both of which showed a considerable talent for composition and orchestration. In fact, Cascade brought the concert to a fittingly exuberant conclusion. - Ray Comiskey

Isserlis, Hough - NCH, Dublin

Strauss - Sonata Op 6.

Brahms - Sonata in E minor Op 38.

Webern - Two Early Pieces.

Brahms - Sonata in F Op 99

Richard Strauss's Cello Sonata is an early work, written when the future composer of Elektra and Salome was still in his teens.

It's confident in gesture and style, highlighting a familiarity with the music of Mendelssohn and Schumann rather than prefiguring the radical developments that Strauss himself would soon undertake.

The two pieces for cello and piano written by Anton Webern in 1899 are altogether shorter and slighter, mere wavering shoots which now stand as the composer's first known attempts at composition. Strauss's sonata is an accomplishment that many a minor composer of the 1880s would have been happy to have written. The two pieces by the 16-year-old Webern are of interest only because of the name that's attached to them.

The cello and piano duo of Steven Isserlis and Stephen Hough offered the two teenagers' works as introductory makeweights to their performances of the two Brahms cello sonatas as part of The Irish Times Celebrity Concert Series at the National Concert Hall on Thursday.

In comparison with many, if not most, of his colleagues, Isserlis is a cellist who dispenses with megaphone effects. He never seeks to impress his listeners by sheer mass of tone. Instead, he's like a quiet-spoken individual with an intense aura, who knows that when he does choose to raise his voice he can be assured of all the attention he needs.

Hough has the lightness and fleetness of finger, as well as the fine control of intricate voicing to match Isserlis all the way. And of course he can make his instrument bark and trumpet too.

The real meat of the evening, of course, was in the two sonatas by Brahms. Fine as the duo were in the ruminative Sonata in E minor, it was the more fiery and passionate F minor Sonata which found them at their very best, surging in expression, illuminating in musical detail, and showing the wonderfully easy give and take of a successful partnership.

They also offered two encores of their own composition, a rather sentimental piece by Hough, and a tongue-in-cheek, spooky special-effects piece with narration by Isserlis. - Michael Dervan