Reviews

Irish Times critics review a performance of The Blue Room at the Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork; Sly and Robbie at the Ambassador, Dublin and Ogawa with NSO/Markson at the National Concert Hall, Dublin

The Blue Room at the Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork

The social commentary that made Arthur Schnitzler's play La Ronde so notorious has been smudged into irrelevance in The Blue Room, David Hare's admittedly free adaptation. This is not to say the writing isn't immaculate: Hare's dialogue is always sharp, sometimes vicious and often, as here, funny in a wise, offhand way that is diverting but not memorable.

The episodic structure of this two-act two-hander is linked by Joe Harmston's elegant directorial style, assisted by a geometric yet flexible design by Simon Scullion. The choreographed scene changes, Andrew Whelan's reflective score and Robin Carter's lighting build the play and strengthen the visual context in which Tracy Shaw and Jason Connery portray their catalogue of characters, from prostitute to politician and back as the sequence of sexual encounters comes full circle.

A few of these portraits are still accurate; all show sex as a kind of exchange rate, fluctuating - an advertising strip declares the duration of each copulation - according to different desires but leaving unchanged the inner isolation each engagement is meant to console. The woman, both literally and metaphorically, is never on top, even when she thinks she is, but, amazingly for Hare, the play seems weightless, almost trivial, its prevailing note sarcasm rather than satire. Even Schnitzler's agenda is so altered by contemporary circumstances - condoms, AIDS - that in this reading it is little more than a subtle observation of the class-defeating bonds of casual sex.

Shaw has an appealing sweetness that can ferment into acidity when the role demands it, but she needs to strengthen her vocal projection; she and Connery work with confidence, and although he has the greater command of stagecraft, they make an efficient and, for all those who think this is the significant part of the production, a physically very attractive team.

Runs until Saturday

Mary Leland

Sly and Robbie at the Ambassador, Dublin

For the Jamaican 'Riddim Twins' Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, reggae is the main ingredient of a musical soup that's been cooking for more than 20 years. As Grammy-winning producers, they've long been fusing Jamaican rhythms and the pop mainstream, leaving their distinctive mark on many artists, including Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, James Brown, Joe Cocker, Ian Dury, Carly Simon, Herbie Hancock and Grace Jones. Long before the technology became as powerful as it is today, drummer Sly was experimenting with electronic drum kits and samplers, interspersing conventional reggae patterns with all manner of clanging, tangential noises and intricate syncopation, while the bassist has famously declared that the first bass part he ever learned was for Satisfaction, by The Rolling Stones.

Showcasing this melange of reggae, rock, pop, dance, ska and Motown, Sly and Robbie were accompanied by an amazing trio of backing vocalists, who brought energy to the stage, and a four-piece band, straight out of the dance halls of Kingston, that brought the grit. They played their set like an intense jam that ebbed and flowed, each song starting out in a gentle reggae grooves, then slowly building to a rhythmic crescendo, an eight-minute move from reggae to intense drum 'n' bass before going back into the gentler rhythms marking the beginning of the next song.

They performed with typical flair and conviction, but every tune was structurally identical to the last, so seesawing from mellow to frenzied and back again created a sense of false starts and abrupt endings.

As if to reinforce this seeming lack of a beginning, middle and end, the show wound down with a five-minute bass solo from Robbie while Sly and the band packed up and left the stage. In parts, chilled-out, groovy and intense; in all, slightly stilted and underwhelming.

John Lane

Ogawa, NSO/Markson at the National Concert Hall, Dublin

^{From Sea-Grey Shores, Islands Of Discovery - Jane O'Leary.}

^{Riverrun - Takemitsu}

Variability in an orchestra is not necessarily something to turn up your nose at. It's both natural and healthy that players should respond to different conductors in different ways. And variability can be the guarantee that, from time to time, the musicians will surprise everyone by playing beyond themselves.

The difference between the performances of the National Symphony Orchestra here and at their free Horizons concert was more worrying. The conductor was the same, Gerhard Markson, and the works by Jane O'Leary and Toru Takemitsu were from an area of the repertoire that Markson usually shines in. But this music-making sounded ill adjusted, the quality of playing almost unrecognisable as that of the orchestra that had handled itself so impressively a few days earlier.

The two works by Connecticut-born O'Leary, Islands Of Discovery (1991) and From Sea-Grey Shores (1999), were inspired by her adopted home in the west of Ireland and seem to be cut from rough stone. That certainly is how Markson and his players conveyed them, with much cramped intonation and cluttering of internal balances.

The musical effect was dark, strangely oppressive, even at times when the compositional gestures suggested lightness. Strands of regret and tendencies towards lamentation seemed to be heightened. The most effective moment in the two performances came through the hammering insistence and threatening fanfares near the end of Islands Of Discovery.

Takemitsu's Joyce-inspired Riverrun of 1984 is very much an undertaking of equals between piano soloist and orchestra. The music, as in much of Takemitsu's work, is infused with a French flavour. But it flows in a path of its own, in this case with an almost ever-present sense of harmonic infolding, through which the piano steers an independent- voiced course. In spite of soloist Noriko Ogawa's advocacy, this performance was limited in textural depth and lacked the luminous transparency the piece demands.

Michael Dervan