Reviews

A look at what is happening in the world of the arts and culture.

Leonard, Johnston, Owen

Slane Castle, Co Meath

Barber - Cello Sonata. Messiaen - Thème et Variations. Beethoven - Violin Sonata in C minor Op 30 No 2. Mendelssohn - Trio in C minor Op 66

Ireland's leading violinist, Catherine Leonard, teamed up with pianist Charles Owen and cellist Guy Johnston in the ballroom of Slane Castle as the Music in Great Irish Houses Festival continued.

The works in their programme spanned a century and a quarter, from Beethoven in 1803 to Barber and Messiaen, both 1932. And yet most of the music was essentially romantic, either anticipating or reflecting the fully-fledged romanticism represented by the Mendelssohn C minor Trio that proved the culmination of the evening's music-making.

Barber, for example, composed his popular Cello Sonata while still a student in his early 20s. Brahms and Franck are among the influences that leap out, especially in the two outer movements, while the nimble sparkle of the yearning Adagio's contrasting middle section demonstrates the young American's creative assurance.

The special dramatic significance of C minor for Beethoven is unmistakeable in his Violin Sonata Op 30 No 2 (a late change from the advertised programme). The contrasts are strong, both between movements - for example, between the C major gentility of the third movement and the virtuosic storminess of the Finale - and within them, as in the first movement where Beethoven flits back and forth between intense seriousness and a kind of fecklessness with logic-defying ease and credibility.

The square peg in the programme was Messiaen's Thème et Variations. As it moves from an other-worldly delicacy to a much fiercer declamation, a beauty emerges, albeit a cold, starry one.

The playing to this point was superb: Leonard alternately full-blooded for Beethoven, cooler for Messiaen; the young Johnston taking Barber's romanticism at face value; Owen indefatigable in expressivity as well as in sheer numbers of notes. After the interval, the three then came together for the Mendelssohn in a highly-charged performance which had been nicely set up by all that preceded it.

Michael Dungan

Laundry and Bourbon/ Lone Star

Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin

These two linked plays by James McLure, first produced in 1959 under the composite title of Pink Thunderbird, are slight but entertaining. The author, a minor American writer, has a talent for dialogue and character sketching but does not dig deeply into his scenarios or their people. But when they are staged as entertainingly as here, the pay-off is at least enjoyment.

Both are set in a region of south Texas, and Laundry and Bourbon has three married women chatting and gossiping about their lives and husbands.

Elizabeth, newly pregnant, is worried about Roy, a Vietnam veteran, who has been missing for two days. Hattie has three over-lively children and despises her spouse, a poor substitute for her previous hellraising lover, who dumped her. Amy Lee is a starchy Baptist, married to weedy businessman Cletis. They talk a lot, and quarrel a little.

Lone Star brings in the men, outside the local bar. Roy has been reunited with Elizabeth, who has just gone home. He is now dangerously drunk, talking to his young brother Ray, and speaking of his longing for a pre-war past that is irretrievable. Ray confesses to a sexual relationship with Elizabeth during Roy's army stint, and Cletis puts in an unwanted appearance. More uneven than the first play, this one slides too often into broad comedy, deliberately soliciting laughter at the expense of the trio, and getting it.

The juxtaposition of the two pieces gives a stereo effect to what might have been a thin monotone. Actors Andrea Murphy, Maura Duffy, Celine Mullins, Arthur Kearns Cillian Roche and Joseph Moylan turn in persuasive performances, complete with credibly nuanced accents. The clued-in director is Patrick Joseph Byrnes, and the imaginative set design is by the creative Robert Lane.

Runs until Saturday

Gerry Colgan