Reviews

Wexford Festival Opera's principal programme is supplemented by Opera Scenes, 90-minute potted operas performed with piano but without chorus, intervals or surtitles. The repertory staples of the series balance the recondite works at the Theatre Royal and give singers with smaller roles a chance to take centre stage.

Time has accentuated the darker elements of Hänsel Und Gretel, but Humperdinck's music is too modest to support the heavy interpretations sometimes foisted on it. John McKeown, the director, wisely opted to play it straight - apart from some Freudian cavortings from the children (Elena Bakanova and Sophie Marilley) and a Sandman made up as a first World War fighter ace (the spectre of Hermann Göring?). Cristiana Aureggi's set of dead leaves and a forest of brooms was suitably sinister.

One never knows quite what to expect in performances of Tales Of Hoffmann; the interrelations between this version, Offenbach's recently restored original, the much-criticised Oeser edition and the familiar Choudens score would make a Hoffmannesque tale in itself. Roberto Recchia's dual-language version - English dialogue, French singing - begins with Hoffmann at a press conference and sets the Olympia act in a seedy Berlin nightclub, with Olympia (Ludmila Marchadier convincing as an automa- ton) a fetish doll in black leather. Nicholas Sharratt's flamboyant turn as the servants annoyed after a while; Richard Weigold (Crespel) was a diffident actor but a convincing bass. The acts were performed in the correct order - Munich before Venice - but the Venice act made little sense, with no feeling of any relationship between Giulietta (Olga Wells) and Hoffmann (a slightly pallid Ricardo Mirabelli). It was a nice idea to have the ailing Antonia (Sinéad Campbell) listen to attractively Mozartian music by the real-life E. T. A. Hoffmann - The Elixir Of Immortality, which the radio voice suggested might suit an enterprising opera festival.

Teens are slouching in a classroom; the teacher arrives, confiscates a ghetto blaster and has them perform L'Elisir D'Amore, the teacher (Allesandro Svab) taking the part of Dulcamara. The initially reluctant pupils sing very nicely; this most technically demanding of the Opera Scenes received the best singing, with Vicenç Esteve (fresh-voiced rather than ringing as Nemorino), Kim Sheehan (Adina) and Alberto Arrabal (Belcore) also acquitting themselves well. The school scenario did not block the action, and the performance had an agreeably light touch. The versatile Rosetta Cucchi directed and accompanied.

Dermot Gault

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Festival concerts

Various venues

The subsidiary events supplementing Wexford's main operatic performances include two orchestral concerts given by the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus, which for the past few years has taken over from the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. The concerts give the orchestra - or the part sent to Wexford, for it surely has more than three double basses - a chance to shine.

But if the variable acoustics of the Theatre Royal mean it is not the best place to judge an orchestra's finer qualities, the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Rowe Street is not ideal either, lovely though it is. From where I was sitting, during the first of these concerts, the double basses, separated from the rest of the orchestra by pillars, might as well not have been there.

The upper strings produced a warm sound in the andante second movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, but one longed for a thrilling tone from the violins in the fourth movement. The wind, some reedy oboes apart, were subdued, and the Spanish conductor Max Bragado-Darman allowed the brass, not especially brilliant in themselves, to become overpowering - although the persistence of the distinctive Slavic horn tone is to be welcomed in these days of increasing homogeneity, and it was right for Borodin's Polovtsian Dances. Balance was particularly problematic in the Rimsky-Korsakov, a work that depends on transparent textures for its effect, and in the final orgía of Turina's Danzas Fantásticas. It was only in the Miller's Dance from Falla's Three-Cornered Hat that we at last heard the really committed playing the music demands.

Another supplement was provided by a concert devoted to operetta numbers, given at Whites Hotel by sopranos Silvia Vazquez and Elena Bakanova (both with charming light voices), tenor David Curry (refined rather than assertive) and baritone Gianfranco Montresor (commanding but one-dimensional), with pianist Rosetta Cucchi. Events such as this can seem like a meal consisting only of sweets, but if the programme was musically thin it was reasonably varied, unfamiliar items by Audran, Lombardo, Vives and others interspersed with old favourites such as Mein Herr Marquis from Die Fledermaus and the Vilja-Lied and Waltz from The Merry Widow, a work that represents the apex of operetta. Nostalgia and sentimentality mark the post-first World War works Lehár wrote for Richard Tauber, represented here by Dein Ist Mein Ganzes Herz from The Land Of Smiles. But the presentation by the costumed characters - evening dress and feathered boas - added to the charm, and other festival performers joined the singers for a final ensemble from The Merry Widow.

Wexford Festival Opera continues until November 2nd. See www.wexfordopera. com

Dermot Gault

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Other Reviews

My Life As A Chatshow Host

Bewley's Cafe Theatre, Dublin

The title of Gary Jermyn's show is a gambit, a tactical move to lure the unwary in an unexpected direction. Despite his opening hello, good evening and welcome, he is not a chat-show host but a poet trapped in an accountant's body. His mission is to speak his poems, which have famous characters as their subjects - guests on this fantasy gig that has brought him some success, including a festival appearance in Finland.

So we begin with Oedipus Rex, an interview that went well until our host asked him how his parents were getting on. Then there's a tryst with Kylie Minogue, met on the top of an old bus on her way to open a pub extension in Ashbourne, which is his Damascus. Michael Jackson turns up in a London park, orgasmic at the sight of squirrels.

As it started, so it continues. We meet, sometimes briefly, Napoleon Bonaparte, Spike Milligan, George Best and others. Elvis Presley turns up in reasonable facsimile in Dingle at a hotel show and, later, in person on Mount Brandon. And there are many more. Jermyn has a pleasant personality, a good voice and a sense of humour. As stage entertainment his show is very muted, the delicate wit more conducive to chuckles than to laughs, and there can be an imbalance between the jokes and the serious matter. It is also off-putting that he partly reads the poems, an attenuation of direct contact with the audience. But he is amusing and intelligently different.

Gerry Colgan

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Striking Distance

Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast

Simon Reid's life is a mess. He has been expelled from school for assaulting a fellow student, his violent father has left home and his mother has moved them away from the temptations of the city to a postcard-pretty village. Big deal. If it weren't for Simeon he would be lost.

Simeon is his alter ego, a macho, swaggering fantasy hero who inhabits the pages of the graphic novels the impressionable teenager loves to read. All Simon wants is to belong, but here in this rural backwater of loud-mouthed country boys and flirty, worldly-wise girls he has no chance.

Replay, Northern Ireland's theatre-in- education company, has again hit on one of the toughest issues facing young people: here, social exclusion leading to suicide. Raymond Scannell's play, devised in 2001 with the Cork-based company Graffiti, is a curious creation: no heroes, no villains, nobody any better or worse than the next person.

Within Gary McCann's soaring set, Richard Croxford's persuasive production drops softly into the hearts and minds of an unexpectedly attentive teenage audience. Jo Donnelly flits with great versatility from Simon's feisty mother to wannabe girlfriend Jessica; Joe Rea is all mouth as Jessica's long- standing boyfriend; the angel-faced Ruairí Tohill earnestly conveys Simon's confusion and despair; and Richard Clements never misses a beat as the irresistible Simeon, beckoning Simon up a path from which, we fear, he may never return.

At the Market Place Theatre, Armagh, today and Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, on November 11th and 12th

Jane Coyle