Irish Times writers review The Bald Soprano at The Factory in Sligo, Seán Scully at the Graphic Works in the Fenton Gallery in Cork and The Cure at the Half Moon Theatre in Cork.
The Bald Soprano
The Factory, Sligo
Patrick Lonergan
Eugene Ionesco was famously inspired to write his first play, The Bald Soprano, after taking English lessons. His course textbook featured dialogues between two English characters - Mr and Mrs Smith - whose speech was full of clichés, banalities, and truisms designed to provide the non-native speaker with useful everyday expressions. Amused by the inherent absurdity of such phrases, Ionesco imagined what might happen if the Smiths entertained friends for dinner. The result was this absurdist parody of polite language, first staged in Paris in 1950.
The play opens in the house of Mr and Mrs Smith (Ciarán McCauley and Sandra O Malley), who are awaiting the arrival of Mr and Mrs Martin (John Carty and Elaine Fox). Both couples are joined onstage by the Smiths' maid (Kellie Hughes), and a fireman (John Lovett). These six characters exchange greetings, tell each other stories, and have arguments that are bizarre but unsettlingly logical. Ionesco uses their interactions to consider how speech is governed by social convention, while arguing that language may reinforce social hierarchies.
Blue Raincoat haven't staged Ionesco before, but the playwright's work is well suited to the style of Niall Henry, the company's director. His cast's delivery of the text is impressive: pacing and enunciation are skilfully used to draw out and clarify Ionesco's themes.
Added to this is some excellent work on non-verbal language. The actors show that gesture, facial expression, dress, and stance can be as clichéd and restrictive as speech often is. The rigidity of the actors' movement is broken only once - toward the conclusion, when the maid recites a poem about fire while performing a wildly inelegant, spontaneous dance. This use of movement complements Ionesco's exploration of the fragmentation and disintegration of language.
Theatrical conventions are also parodied, with asides, the design of Jean Connolly's set, and even the final curtain-call all being used to play with audience expectation. The combination of these features means that this Bald Soprano does justice to Ionesco's excavation of the truths that underlie clichéd language. And importantly, the production also illustrates the importance of originality and spontaneity in theatrical performance.
Runs until Sat
Seán Scully, Graphic Works
Fenton Gallery, Cork
Mark Ewart
Dramatic scale, bold imagery and expressive surfaces all characterise Seán Scully's paintings. In this exhibition there is a change of pace insofar as the artist's exploration of the etching technique has naturally enough resulted in smaller artworks and a diminishment of textural emphasis.
What does remain, however, is Scully's iconic imagery, recognisable for its geometric abstract style and perfectly unified colour relationships. The medium of printmaking and the associated attributes of ordered presentation and impeccable arrangement suit him well. The technique of etching itself yields to the artist's expertise as the process-driven steps of acid biting into metal is sensitively controlled, where layering of colour and tone is as fluid as if he had the freedom of a paintbrush.
The structure of the compositions is, roughly speaking, centred on a grid system. But the relationship between the shapes varies, set into either a vertical half-drop, as in the Munich Mirrors series, or a more random lateral orientation seen elsewhere. The tension and harmonies within these structures are wonderfully poised, not least through the use of colour where syncopated muted tones such as charcoal and sea grey, delicate off whites and earthy browns melt together.
The pristine quality imbued in these prints finds its zenith in the Etchings for Federico Garcia Lorca series. In these, Scully sets his images against the text of the Spanish poet. The text is beautiful, yet melancholic and loaded with rich images that represent themes of loss and regret - themes which perhaps are echoed imperceptibly by Scully also. The artist and the poet in their own way make potent and beguiling statements. Together, they arguably cancel each other out. After all, do you need to listen to Vaughan Williams to enjoy the countryside?
Runs until Apr 9
The Cure
Half Moon Theatre, Cork
Mary Leland
The conventional "page-to-stage" theatrical process is reversed in The Cure at the Half Moon Theatre. As Conal Creedon's piece continues, the implication heightens from a possibility to an imperative: this is a case for reversion from stage to page, for what is presented is essentially an animated short story, and not much animated at that.
The Blood in the Alley production is directed by Geoff Gould who, quite rightly, lets this one-man work lie in the meticulous performance of Mikel Murfi, an actor with a real comic flair. Seeking a cure for a Christmas hangover, his Corkonian untypically mis-judges opening time, and wanders the streets in a dehydrated limbo in which he meets, for no particular reason, people from his past who have followed him into the future.
A few additions to this scenario bring the contemporary city into focus, and it is some measure of Murfi's skill and confidence that all these characters are distinguishable without being exaggerated. Standing centre-stage and almost unmoving for at least half of this hour-long presentation, Murfi excavates a family history embroidered by the playwright's deft and funny detail.
The internal acceleration of remembered events moves as if to a symphonic score from piano to forte, and back again. And there's the problem. The sharp point of Creedon's insight cuts out an itinerary which is more than a "scove" from God's gaff to the blessed pub, but the resolution is as smooth as a pun, satisfactory on the page but despite some excellent writing, signalling an undramatic and unexpected evasion.
Runs at 8.30pm until Apr 8
