Reviews

The Gaiety School of Acting has entered into an interesting collaboration with Texas Woman's University, in furtherance of which writer Martin Matthew Maguire has written a new play for the latter, directed by Patrick Sutton.

There were two Dublin performances of The Long March last weekend, after which it returns to Texas for a further run. A brief prologue sets the scene for a story of an oppressed racial minority, suggestive of Jews or gypsies, who travel on through generations seeking a home where they may live in peace.

For long periods they settle in apparent tranquillity, but the next pogrom is always around the corner, and the survivors are on the march again.

Here the focus narrows to one family, in which the widowed mother has a single daughter names Sorrow.

She marries again and has another girl, named Joy for the better circumstances of her birth. But they live among their sworn enemies, and an attempt to establish a truce through marriage fails through a grievous misunderstanding. The holocaust returns, and only a few survivors, including Sorrow and her grandmother, travel on to an uncertain future.

The story itself, devised primarily to enable the students to flex their stage muscles, is not notably original, and the love story at its centre is reminiscent of many other dramatic liaisons.

But the treatment is fresh and energetic, and the 15 young American actors bring an air of almost precocious confidence to their interpretations.

A few are already well on the way to professionalism, and none of the others was less than fully committed or persuasive.

There are also three musicians (cello, percussion and keyboard) who provide a colourful sound, and the group's occasional choral singing is excellent.

The set design is appropriately basic - just a few props - and Patrick Sutton's direction makes the best of his cast and script. This should be a rewarding initiative for the Gaiety School. - Gerry Colgan

Pace, RTÉ NSO/Eddins, NCH, Dublin

Stravinsky - Symphony in C.

Liszt - Piano Concerto No 1. Stravinsky - Variations Aldous Huxley in memoriam.

Mozart - Symphony No 41 (Jupiter).

Enrico Pace was the hugely popular runner-up (to Pavel Nersessian) in the 1991 Dublin International Piano Competition.

Why he was such an audience favourite was perfectly clear from his exhilarating account of Liszt's First Piano Concerto with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under William Eddins on Friday night.

He took the Liszt at face value - prodigious talent, lots of ego - and ran with it, demonstrating a thrilling technical ease, especially in the finale.

Eddins was a good partner, uncompromising in all Liszt's grand, romantic gestures, and so allowing Pace to consider the glimpses of depth which the music contains.

Eddins was somewhat less convincing in the Symphony in C, another welcome instalment in the orchestra's season-long exploration of Stravinsky.

Despite its neo-classical scoring and richly-varied instrumentation, this bright music often sounded nondescript. The programme also included the Variations Aldous Huxley in memoriam, a serial piece and somewhat unfathomable, with even Stravinsky advising listeners "to listen not once, but repeatedly".

But even if this short work only reveals its secrets slowly, hearing it - even once - provides another example of how widely Stravinsky's creativity took him beyond Firebird and The Rite of Spring.

The final movement of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, with its numerous, mostly short motivic ideas, is a miracle of the Bach-style polyphony which Mozart had studied, mastered and made his own over the previous few years.

Even in the last few pages, when he seems to ask the orchestra to play all the melodic scraps at once, Mozart's clarity and ingenuity in combining and re-combining allows the listener to hear, simultaneously, both the individual constituent parts and the uplifting totality.

Eddins, though he could not prevent recurring lapses of ensemble among the first violins, drew an exuberant performance that was as transparent as it was brimming with life. - Michael Dungan

The Nutcracker, Coiscéim, Project

There seems no end to new versions of The Nutcracker appearing. We have had a Harlem Nutcracker, a Kathak Nutcracker and even a Dance-Along Nutcracker where the audience can rent a tutu and tiara for the evening.

Some of these treatments are reverential, others revengeful, but most choreographers return to the ballet's dark roots in ETA Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King rather than the more saccharine ballet.

David Bolger's version for Coiscéim carefully treads in the space between upholding the spirit of the original concept of dream versus reality, while twisting the dramatic structure to suit his own vision.

The ballet's two acts divide into the realistic action-packed first half and a dream world in the second. By setting his Nutcracker in an office, Bolger resists the journey into spectacle after the interval, but merely begins another mundane day in the office.

Full of bustle and bluster, the monochrome office stifles the dreams of Clara (Lisa McLoughlin), whose only escape from boredom are the appearances of Drosselmeyer (Tom Hickey) and flirtations with a co-worker (Robert Jackson).

Rather than sketch a gradual journey from reality to dream, Bolger constantly switches from one to the other.

This fast-paced action is pushed along by Tchaikovsky's music in the first half, but the more frivolous music in the second act holds things back.

Drama gets stuck in a holding pattern as character dances take over as the main point of interest.

The choreography for these dances doesn't have the same subtlety as the first act, and even though Bolger is a master of the choreographic punchline, the ending feels a bit rushed and obvious.

This is all the more disappointing at the end of a constantly unfolding plot and breathless drama.

All of the performers deliver the choreographer's wit and craft.

Lisa McLoughlin gives a strong performance as dreamer and drone, in contrast to Robert Jackson's bravura and charisma.

On the second night Muirne Bloomer ably replaced the injured Emma O'Kane as the tiresome ever-present boss. - Michael Seaver

Runs until Saturday and then tours nationwide.