Reviews

Irish Times writers review tanks a lot! at the Project in Dublin, the Castleward Opera at Castleward House in Strangford, The Hives at Dublin's Ambassador Theatre and Girls Aloud at the Olympia Theatre.

tanks a lot!

Project, Dublin

Fintan O'Toole

One of the key moments in the emergence of modern culture came in 1599 when the clown Will Kemp left the theatre company called the Chamberlain's Men which was just in the process of establishing itself at the Globe in London. Kemp, the first Falstaff, had been so central to William Shakespeare's writing that at times in his manuscripts he had written, instead of the name of the character, simply "Enter Will Kemp". But Shakespeare was determined to break with the rough past and establish the primacy of the playwright over the clown. Kemp either left or was pushed out. He celebrated his departure with a defiantly antic spectacle, dancing all the way from London to Norwich, but with him an ancient, carnivalesque world withdrew from the mainstream of western theatre. Clowns took refuge in circuses and drama became a serious business.

For 12 years now, the Dublin-based company Barabbas has been on a mission to call back the clowns. Its style, drawing on the inspiration of Jacques Lecoq in Paris, has stretched between purely non-verbal theatre, based on mime and movement, and highly original versions of texts like The Whiteheaded Boy and Macbeth. Raymond Keane, who combines a career as a writer and director with an impressive range of physical skills, has been central to that versatility. In recent years, though, we've seen less of the performer and more of the writer and director. His new one-man show, tanks a lot!, devised in conjunction with the director Judy Hegarty Lovett and Thomas Conway, is a delightful reminder of what we've been missing.

Keane has a striking stage presence. His whippet-thin, angular body and hawkish features give him a degree of severity. But his mobile, playful face, with its lively movements exaggerated by the simple red nose he sports, has a warm, childlike quality. tanks a lot! exploits these slightly contradictory elements to fine effect. The sweetness and naivety of his clown persona is balanced by the edgier qualities that lie beneath. The show flirts all the time with the danger of becoming merely twee, but it has enough hard discipline to keep it always on the right side of the line.

The fascination of the clown is agelessness: a grown-up acting, thinking and feeling like a child. Keane captures this superbly. He is a middle-aged with grey hair and an unfashionable suit who comes onto the open wooden platform that forms the basis of Miriam Duffy's set and starts to play like a kid in a sandpit. That, essentially, is what the hour-long show consists of: a man messing about with a brush, a ladder, a rope, a red handkerchief and a box of odd objects from which he conjures an old gramophone and a picnic that might satisfy his obsession with the holy trinity of Irish biscuits - kimberly, mikado and coconut creams.

At heart, then, this is a very simple show. But it is also a very sophisticated one. Lovett's production pulls together a great deal of high technical mastery: Keane's precise movement and nerveless occupation of the stage, Roger Gregg's brilliant, multi-layered soundscape, and Mark Gallione's meticulous lighting. A hell of a lot of knowledge has gone into the clownish innocence and it gives a sense of strictly focused concentration to the gentle, charming humour. In a world where harsh overstatement has become the colloquial cultural language, there has to be a place for such cunning tenderness, such hard-won ease.

Castleward Opera

Castleward House, Strangford

Michael Dervan

Mozart - Magic Flute.

The annual opera season at Castleward is 21 years old this summer and the anniversary is being marked through a return to the composer whose work launched the company in 1985 and who has featured most prominently in its repertoire since then, Mozart.

The opening performance of The Magic Flute on Thursday was dedicated to the memory of soprano Irene Sandford, who died last January.

She was a great presence at Castleward, and sang in a number of its productions before her retirement in 1991.

Director Tom Hawkes set out his stall very clearly in the programme book by dedicating his new production "to the child in all of us". David Craig's costumes place the work fairly and squarely in the 18th century, providing as good a contrast as any I've seen to the opera's elements of pantomime. And Hawkes's handling of the plot's comic situations certainly seemed to hit the audience's funny bone.

Musically and vocally, things were less clear. Apologies were offered in advance on behalf of the infection afflicted Tamino (Ashley Catling) and Pamina (Mary Nelson). Catling sounded clearly under the weather, but Nelson's delivery, plain if at times too matter-of-fact, sounded agreeably secure.

Victoria Joyce's Queen of the Night delivered sometimes spectacularly on the stratospheric coloratura, but didn't always manage to centre her notes when the going was less demanding. Gerard O'Connor showed the necessary gravity of manner as Sarastro, and he bore himself with great dignity. But he pressed his voice rather too consistently hard - hardly necessary in the confines of the converted barn at Castleward - with results that proved uneven.

Canadian baritone Alan Corbishley, making no noticeable attempt to hide his accent (which jostled with contributions of stagey elocution and others of locally-accented dramatic flatness), hammed it up merrily as Papageno. But he sang with some style, too, and made himself the most engaging presence of the evening.

The smaller roles were taken with mixed success, but the chorus was in fine voice.

Conductor David Angus drove the music with an energy which paid rather too little attention to the intimacy which is also required. In Mozart of all composers the small size of the venue and the use of a small orchestra could be turned to the music's overwhelming advantage. On this occasion he certainly delivered moments which were exciting, but too often seemed to be hankering after effects at the wrong end of the scale.

The Hives

Ambassador, Dublin

Peter Crawley

It all happened so fast. Within seconds of taking the stage, Howlin' Pelle Almqvist has delivered his ninth straight scissor-kick while a pummelling Abra Cadaver jackknifes into the abrasive Main Offender.

Such is the relentless acceleration of Sweden's irony-soaked garage rockers that even their singer becomes disorientated and promptly introduces the song he has just finished.

At Bud Rising, the Hives may give it their all, but neither they nor their fans can sustain this volatile pace. As the group open throttle through the twists and turns of their angular punk rock, the ride is exhilaratingly and chaotic, surging with raw power but crashing in confined spaces.

Long ago the group chose to paint themselves into this corner, setting a strict aesthetic of black and white suits with three-minute slabs of frayed rock. That formula has already begun to look suffocating; their uniforms now embellished with incongruous gangster spats and Colonel Sanders neckties, while newer songs such as Diabolic Scheme and Two-Timing Touch And Broken Bones represent slight New Wave departures. But at this speed who can tell? At least the self-preening, applause-wringing Almqvist still functions as the group's aggressive PR Department: "If one or two of you are not having fun," he calls, "that means you must be traitors." As Almqvist scales a bank of speakers to howl down the clenched lyrics of Walk Idiot Walk while Vigilante Carlstroem stabs out its pinched guitar hook, they resemble wild animals; ferocious but caged. And as recent material garners only muted responses, even their fans realise that, with a band of finite possibilities, owning one Hives album may be enough.

Their career may now resemble the brief explosion of a fireworks display, yet in the infectious clatter of Die, Alright! and the handbrake turns of Hate To Say I Told You, at least the Hives soar and burst into sparks before slowly falling away.

Girls Aloud

The Olympia

Anthea McTeirnan

Chavtastic. Kimberley, Nadine, Cheryl, Sarah and Nicola, the future is yours. The unlikeliest manufactured pop success of the last couple of years took to the stage at the Olympia with a ballsy declaration. Here We Go was an obvious kick-off point and kick it off they did in an explosion of big hair, fake tan and sequins.

The auditorium oozed oestrogen. Baby oestrogen in many cases - this really was a girls' night out - and, knowing their demographic, the bigger, more scantily-clad girls on the stage offered up the ultimate in pop panto. Costume changes aplenty, lithe male dancers, a funky set with stairs to writhe on and the obligatory flashing video graphics. This is the MTV generation. They want it all and Girls Aloud gave it to them.

These girls are no one-hit wonders either. What Will The Neigbours Say, the band's stonking last album, and their debut, Sound of the Underground, are peppered with classic pop. The girls chavved out the chastity anthem The Show - "nobody sees the show until my heart says so . . ." Mmmm. Methinks we've seen quite a lot of the show already ladies. Mind you, it was very hot and the dancing was relentless. So relentless, in fact, that the couple of lip-synched numbers in the middle of the set could be forgiven. Doing them in a minimalist version of school uniform would certainly have thrown a few people off the scent. There's something marvellous about a band who were all one step away from a job on the check-out at their local Asda before getting a sniff of the big time. They know they've escaped and have no problem with payback time.

There was something here for everyone. A cover of the classic Duran Duran track Girls on Film was bootilicious. A slow set featuring the girls in classy evening dresses yielded the classic noughties ladies' anthem Deadlines and Diets.

Out of chiffon and back where they belong, in leather corsets, bra-tops and gold lamé hotpants, a finale of Van Halen's Jump was followed by that lip-kissing girl snarl that is Sound of the Underground. Girls allowed to fulfil their potential never sounded so good.