After Darwin at the Project, EUCO at the Helix and Yuko Shiraishi at Cork's Crawford Municipal Art Gallery.

After Darwin

Project Space Upstairs

By Gerry Colgan

The trouble with Timberlake Wertenbaker's play is that it is far too, well, theatrical. Its backbone is the continuing rehearsals of a play about Darwin and Fitzroy, the captain of the Beagle, at first close friends, and later, bitterly divided by the impact of the theory of evolution on Christian beliefs.

These are overlaid by discussions and disputes between the two actors.

Enough, one might think, for a substantial play, but there is more.

The play's director, Millie, is an immigrant Bulgarian on her uppers who discovered the play, and sees in it an escape from obscurity.

Then there is Lawrence, the black American author and academic, who has climbed into the middle-class. The actors are avid for the professional success that has eluded them so far.

There is conviction in the Darwin-Fitzroy relationship, bolstered by some telling exchanges as when the former rebuts an accusation that his work makes men no better than animals; they are, for practical purposes, the same as animals. The notion of the survival of the fittest did not appeal to him; what he observed was the reproductive advantages inherent in evolution. It may be that man has reached the limits of his ability to evolve. But when the play moves to probe its modern characters, it loses credibility.

There is much melodrama in the concept of Bulgarian Millie trying to survive, and Lawrence is bringing family members from America to see the play, increasing the tension level. This is high, because the actor who plays Darwin has just received a lucrative film offer, and decided to abandon his role. It gets higher when his colleague pulls a really nasty stunt to nail his feet to the stage. By now the play is practically shouting Darwinian metaphors about ambition, survival and the compulsive drive of man towards individual success. It ends with all four characters on-stage speaking in what comes across as an opaque precis of what has gone before.The acting is excellent, notably that of Des McAleer and Conleth Hill, supported by Norma Sheahan and Sean Francis; but neither they, nor director Jackie Doyle, can redeem the play's deficiencies. The play runs to May 3rd.

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Bennett, Robles, Kempf, EUCO

Mahony Hall, The Helix, Dublin

By Michael Dervan

Mozart - Symphony No 1. Flute and Harp Concerto. Adagio and Fugue in C minor. Piano Concerto in E flat K449.

For its debut at The Helix on Thursday, the European Union Chamber Orchestra offered an all-Mozart programme of widest appeal. The music ranged from the precocious achievement of an eight year old - the Symphony No. 1 in E flat - to the altogether more musically astonishing creations of twenty and more years later, the Piano Concerto in E flat, K449, and the Adagio and Fugue, K546.

In between came the Flute and Harp Concerto, written when Mozart was 22, a piece of potentially gorgeous colouring that tends to sound problematic in concert. The appeal of the combination is clear, but the limited damping of the harp, an instrument that doesn't always sound comfortable in accommodating to Mozart's, can cause the musical equivalent of sky and mountain running into each other in a wettened watercolour.

The EUCO's current director, violinist Gernot Süssmuth, is a man with distinct musical ideas. In the opening of the symphony, for instance, he chose to sacrifice energy and drive to a strategy of woozy swells and fades to bring interest to the simple patterns of the music.

The effect, as in much of the evening's music-making, was unnecessarily fussy. He often seemed to bring a sort of musical magnifying glass to bear on selected details, but without achieving the necessary focus or clarity.

William Bennett and Maria Robles were the soloists in the Flute and Harp Concerto. These two musicians of repute are both now in their mid-sixties, and are not as sharp or as nimble as of yore. The limitations of their performance stemmed from the unforgiving nature of this particular concerto when faced with performers who choose to adapt the music to them rather than the other way around.

The concert ended with the piano concerto, a move that was unusual in programming terms, but absolutely right in leaving the strongest music-making till last. The Adagio and Fugue for strings was full of attractive tonal colourings, but a bit laboured in emphasis.

It was the piano soloist, the young British pianist Freddy Kempf, who showed the skills of darting and thrusting in Mozart without at any time rending the fabric of the music. There was a freedom and fantasy in his playing that was particularly appealing, and the irrepressible good humour of the finale was particularly well caught. The prolonged applause that greeted his performance suggested an audience hungry for an encore.

On this occasion, however, they didn't persist long enough to get their wish.

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Yuko Shiraishi

There & Back

Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork

By Mark Ewart

Yuko Shiraishi's paintings belong to the long-standing tradition for post painterly abstraction, and specifically, colour field minimalism. Her work has parallels with many artists, but it is Joseph Albers who comes most readily to mind. For both, the examination of colour and the qualities of interaction, marks the central concerns of their art practice.

The format most easily utilised to these ends can be seen in a series of four oils on canvas, where a square of colour resides within the centre of another larger square. The titles of these works; Moon, Lake, Mountain, and Forest, offer a subtle context for the selected colours, but the associations are not explicit. Rather, it is the optical effect of the colour pairings, similar to the phenomena of simultaneous contrast - where colours absorb their complementary partner - which seems to influence the work most strongly.

But these paintings are not exclusively about the science of colour, as the artist allows a more thoughtful and contemplative air to emanate from the work. This is seen further in the installation based piece Scattered Sky, where floor and wall mounted boxes have selected edges painted to suggest the texture of clouds, with warm orange and celadon tones suggesting the sky. But the most obviously impressive aspect of the show is the site-specific work, where the artist has painted directly onto the distinctive curved wall of the upper gallery. The shapes float like projected light and the placement of each, gives a brilliant impression of movement and levity.