REVIEWS

Irish Times reviewers today look at children's theatre at the Peacock, opera at the Helix and classical music at the Ulster Hall.

Sons and Daughters
Peacock Theatre

Two plays in the fairytale style comprise this offering aimed at children of 8-12 years, although there is much here to entertain their seniors, not excluding adults, for the hour or so of their duration.

There is a freshness in the writing, acting and imaginative direction that is quite captivating.

Jim Nolan's The Road to Carne tells of a journeyman who tries to fell a magic oak, and is struck down. His family are now dependent on the young son, who sets out to find work. But he is not strong enough to plough, or skilled enough to bind sheaves, and things look black until a mysterious stranger gives him a battered old flute. There is magic in its music, and the adventure proceeds to a happy ending.

Meat and Salt is by Marina Carr and begins in the palace of Big Daddy, a tyrannical king who demands of his daughters that they say how much they love him (a touch of Lear here). The youngest daughter is too truthful for her own good, and is banished. She encounters a Wolf Prince, who lets her escape, and travels on to the palace of a Young King, whom she marries.

The two seasoned authors invest some creativity in the stories, and and there is scope for director Andrea Ainsworth to shape eye-catching images and to make the transition from the first play to the second a seamless one, without an interval.

The audience is seated on both sides of the playing area and is easily engaged in the action.

Each of the cast of five plays multiple roles, clearly defined by their interpretative skills. Andrew Bennett brings authority to his characters and Ruth Negga confirms the serious talent recently displayed in her title role in Lolita. Matthew Dunphy, Emma Colohan and Caroline Lynch are uniformly excellent.

The quality of this production makes it a taste-forming experience for the young. Get them started.

Gerry Colgan

Russian State Opera of Rostov
Mahony Hall, The Helix
Madama Butterfly . . . . . Puccini

Puccini's well-loved geisha made an auspicious north Dublin debut at a packed Mahony Hall on Friday, courtesy of a terrific presentation by the Russian State Opera of Rostov.

The action all took place in Vyacheslav Okunev's unit set, a run-down Japanese house and garden which gave a suitably claustrophobic ambience to the drama. Yuri Alexandrov's inventive staging, one high on detail and character delineation, was clearly the work of a musically-oriented director.

It was complemented by Andrei Galanov's authoritative conducting. Blessed with a splendid 50-piece orchestra, whose luscious violin sound almost upstaged the singers, he moulded each act as a single movement and heightened the dramatic tensions with well-weighted climaxes. His speeds were expansive, but never beyond the staying power of the performers, who reciprocated with some admirably expressive singing.

Irina Krikounova, slight of figure and believably teenaged, was a heartbreaking Cio-Cio-San of silvery middle voice and creamy top. Like many a lyric Butterfly, she hadn't enough vocal reserve to overwhelm at climaxes, but that was a small price to pay for so much pleasure elsewhere. Much the same applied to Vladimir Kabanov as the initially callous and later remorseful Pinkerton. His medium-weight lyric tenor, although a notch or two short in decibels, matched his partner in expressiveness and passion, especially in their extended first act duet.

Baritone Petr Makarov acted and sang convincingly as the Consul Sharples; and Oxana Andreeva was a perfect Suzuki, whose smooth mezzo blended effectively with the soprano in a touching flower duet.
John Allen

Ulster Orchestra/Thierry Fischer

Ulster Hall, Belfast

Symphony No 2 . . . . . Schubert

Piano Concerto No 3 . . . . . Beethoven

Symphony No 8 (Unfinished) . . . . . Schubert

A world of difference in style and feeling separates Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, begun and apparently abandoned in 1822, from his Second, completed just seven years earlier.

It is a difference which the varying approaches shown in these performances threw into stark relief.

The first movement of the Unfinished was expansive and brooding, full of carefully-articulated contrasts and played with sensitivity and feeling. The ensuing Andante was very much con moto and, in the tutti passages at least, lost some of its expressive magic as a result. But the intervening wind solos were persuasively played and the string accompaniments were finely shaded.

Fischer's approach to the Second Symphony was, like his earlier account of the First Symphony, very historically informed, with hard timpani sticks and driving tempi.

In the outer movements, this made for superficial brilliance at the expense of much of the work's inherent geniality and charm, and while the Ulster Orchestra's strings coped well with the demands made on them, one could not help feeling that a less rigorous approach might have allowed the music more personality - as indeed the performances of the second movement Variations and the trio section of the third movement indicated.

Fischer again showed a tendency to force the pace in the last movement tuttis in the Beethoven concerto, necessitating a slowing-down for the clarinet solo.

John O'Conor responded with fiery but poised playing in the outer movements, but was understandably more at home in the delicate tracery of the slow movement.

Dermot Gault