Reviews

Irish Times writers review The Coral at the Ambassador, One Whose Veins Ran Lightning at the New Theatre in Temple Bar and Double Act at the Cork Opera House.

The Coral

Ambassador

Kevin Courtney

If you were forming a rock band, which influences would you not choose? When Liverpool brothers James and Ian Skelly formed The Coral, they went for the kind of music we'd forgotten even existed: rum-soaked sea shanties, jittery jugband blues, mescaline-fuelled marching tunes and spazzed-out psychedelic skiffle. Their dads must be scratching their heads and wondering where their kids heard all this stuff. The Coral are aged between 18 and 21, but their contemporaries are bands like Procol Harum, The Animals and early-Pink Floyd; their movie viewing is either Fiddler On The Roof or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and their favourite dance is a twisted blend of tango, rhumba and rock 'n' roll. They are not of this era.

The Coral were originally scheduled to play here in February, but had to postpone their UK and Irish tour because guitarist Lee Southall was suffering from tendonitis. With their début album earning a Mercury Music Prize nomination, it's clear The Coral are not your common or garden Scouse six-piece. They arrived onstage to the theme from Indiana Jones, and opened with their swashbuckling anthem, Spanish Main. Bad Man laid down their jerky, tempo-jumping style, while Don't Think You're The First showed they could stick to a mesmerizing beat, and still sound completely off the wall. Calendars And Clocks played to Skelly's lyrical strengths, while Simon Diamond sounded like some strange collaboration between early Blur and very early Genesis.

And so the strangeness continued. Shadows Fall began like a funeral lament, then zipped into a full-on swing-jazz stomp.

Dreaming Of You brought Skelly's rich rasp to the fore, while Goodbye served as the launchpad for a lengthy jam session which served as a suitably bonkers finale. It was actually the band cleverly trying out the riffs for a raft of new songs, but it sounded like Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, The End and I Am The Resurrection all rolled into one.

One Whose Veins Ran Lightning

New Theatre, Temple Bar

Gerry Colgan

Gerry McDonnell, in pursuance of his deep interest in 19th-century poet James Clarence Mangan, has written the libretto of a chamber opera, a radio play, and now, a work for the stage. It is a homage to his subject, a poetic exploration of Mangan's tragic life in thrall to his gift, here personified as the Greek Muse of tragedy, Melpomene. These two are the central characters and the main interest of this unusual play.

One might, indeed, say that there are two intertwined plays here. The first tries, with some success, to distil the essence of a disturbed psyche dislodged from normality by the demands of talent. Mangan is addicted to alcohol and drugs, and suffers from malnutrition. Half-man, half-ghost, he walks the streets of Dublin like a shadow on its walls, ignored by the passing parade, steadily moving towards his premature death in the cholera sheds of a public hospital.

His Muse, well played by Fedelma Cullen, speaks with and for him, measuring his pain and endurance. Daniel Reardon is the gaunt, haunted poet, and their scenes together have a surreal quality, with words of an intensity that confirm the author's own status as a poet. They consist largely of quasi-monologues, poetic rather than naturalistic.

The second play, and here's the rub, adds eight more characters to the dramatis personae to flesh out the story, and succeeds only in diluting it.

They are minor, mere sounding boards for Mangan, and McDonnell has provided them with dialogue that falls strangely on the ear, neither realistic nor poetic. They are mostly a distraction, introducing irrelevant songs and bits of business, and some of them are enacted at a level below professional standards.

Director Derek Chapman manages his mixed bag of thespians with creativity where possible, and with basic disciplines where it is not. The uneven result is its own criticism.

Runs until May 10th

Double Act

Cork Opera House

Mary Leland

The popularity of Jacqueline Wilson's novels for young readers is due largely to the vitality of her writing style and to the strong recognition factor in her characters. Absolutely nothing of these qualities survive in Vicky Ireland's stage adaptation of Double Act. Obviously, the plot remains: Ruby and Garnet are twin sisters whose closeness and mutual dependency are rocked when their widowed father puts Gran in sheltered housing and moves the girls to a village, along with himself and his new partner. How the girls react to the various challenges of this relocation provides a semblance of drama, and the entertainment is assisted by Gemma Fripp's imaginative design and Ian Waller's choreography.

But the direction, also by Vicky Ireland, is desultory, and the willing cast are defeated by a script which sags at all the significant moments and at most others as well. This Watershed Productions and Polka Theatre presentation is also afflicted by the 7.30 p.m. start, which meant a lot of late-comers on opening night, and by the noise of a young audience, to which eating and drinking is the essential ingredient of theatre.

Runs until Saturday, May 3rd