Reviews

Irish Times writers review After Andersen at Andrews Lane, Damo Suzuki at Crawdaddy and Voyage of No Return at the Lyric Theatre.

After Andersen, Andrews Lane Studio

This is the first project of the young Holy Show Theatre Company, which presented it at last year's Edinburgh Fringe. It has the ambience of a workshop production, the kind that serves as a learning curve for the company rather than mature theatre for an audience. That is not to say that it cannot offer an interesting experience, but it remains a relatively low-flying affair.

The eponymous male is Hans Christian, the Danish spinner of magical tales. He is dead at the opening, but preserved by three individuals who recite his writings over a 200-year wake. We don't get the well-known works; even The Ice Queen is deployed as a key to the hero's death rather than the author's iconic character. Neither do we get anything resembling a biography, with the few facts included being overwhelmed by vivid fiction.

It is always difficult to describe incoherence with clarity, so two recurring themes may give the flavour. Klaus, a patron of Hans and a writer himself, turns into an enemy when denied access to the works of his protégé, and thereafter seeks revenge, even on the corpse that he tries to bring to life so that he may kill it again. Then Hans is represented to have lost his shadow, and to have lived in poverty for years until it returns as his master. They both die, and the play concludes with the fateful and predictable words "Once upon a time".

The work, scripted by Fionn Dempsey, is devised and directed by the company, not usually a good idea. An independent director may be considered the first member of the audience to see a play, and brings a valuable perspective. This show may be assessed as work in progress, from a group with some obvious talents that would be better sharpened on tougher material. Gerry Colgan
Runs to Mar 26

Damo Suzuki, Crawdaddy

Everybody knows the trick to improvisation: you just make things up as you go along. Applied to music, such a freewheeling principle translates into a fiendishly complex discipline. Applied to a life, it makes for an instant cult icon.

Having joined seminal krautrockers Can seemingly by accident - the group discovered their replacement singer busking in Munich - Kenji "Damo" Suzuki left them without warning to become a Jehovah's Witness. If there's one thing that Suzuki knows, it's how to improvise. Whether or not he knows how to network remains to be seen.

Progressing from the Damo Suzuki Band, which featured his fellow Can members in the 1980s, to the looser configuration of Damo Suzuki and Friends, the Japanese aleatory screecher has recently hit upon a new idea for his never-ending tour: random association.

This apparently involves recruiting different musicians (or "sound carriers" as Suzuki calls them) in each city, then performing together without rehearsal for a one-off, unrepeatable experience - a process that both Suzuki and Can understood as "instant composing".

However, while Can was a daring group with a superlative editor (Holger Czukay), the network is such a shot in the dark that Suzuki is as likely to end up emitting demonic shrieks while four mask-wearing local noiseniks pound out a musically worthless racket. Which, of course, is precisely what happens.

There are more camera flashes than cheers as Suzuki nuzzles his microphone, growling indecipherably. Occasionally his body will contort, tumbling his long mane over his face. Meanwhile, the anonymous band pursues a monotonous but steady beat while mauling their keyboards. Announcing the last song, to no audible dismay, Suzuki addresses the crowd. "Sorry for the disappointment," he says, "but it's my hobby!" Perhaps he should turn professional. Peter Crawley

Voyage of No Return, Lyric Theatre, Belfast

A week after St Patrick's Day and with charges of racism and intimidation running rife in the North, Brian Campbell's play about those subjects has made a timely transfer to the Lyric. Premiered by Dubbeljoint at the 2004 West Belfast Festival, where it was performed in the round, it attracted the kind of packed and hugely supportive houses traditionally enjoyed at the company's theatre Amharclann na Carraige.

But in this more conventional space, in front of a sparse and largely unreceptive opening night audience, an entirely different experience emerges. Pam Brighton's usual firebrand style of directing does not light the touch paper under Campbell's wordy, expositional exchange of talking heads. And while both setting and premise offer real dramatic possibilities, the simmering passion and cultural tensions between natives and blow-ins on the island of Montserrat - fondly known as St Patrick's other island - fail to ignite.

The storyline switches between past and present. In today's world, a young tourism executive (Andy Moore) arrives on Montserrat. With little preamble, he falls for a shy local girl (Shereen Patrice) and whisks her away to a better life in Belfast. But there she encounters racist attacks and abuse - and cold indifference from her upwardly mobile Catholic husband, who has his sights set on turning the poverty-stricken island into a holiday paradise.

Centuries previously, thousands of Irish were shipped to the Caribbean by Cromwell's son Henry, where, in their own words, they were regarded as "white niggers". Some became plantation owners, and had no hesitation in turning the tables upon the Africans whom they took as slaves. The parallel story is of the exploitation by such an Irishman (Peter Ballance) upon his ostensibly docile slave Bridget (Ide Chiahemen). Disappointingly, form and language are not sufficiently powerful to drive home the sobering message of prejudice and persecution, which formed Campbell's original starting point. Jane Coyle
At the Lyric until Mar 26