Reviews

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

The Ha'penny Bridge at The Point, Dublin

There are at least three good reasons to approach Alastair McGuckian's new musical The Ha'penny Bridge with some trepidation. A wealthy businessman putting money into a lavish production for which he has written the book, lyrics and music smacks of a vanity project. The cavernous Point is a terrible venue for any kind of theatrical production. And the advertising blurb - "A love torn apart in a country divided" - suggests yet another lurve-across-the- barricades plotline.

None of these fears turns out to be entirely ungrounded. There is a degree of self-indulgence in The Ha'penny Bridge, with a running time of two-and-a-half hours plus interval, and at least three numbers that any objective producer would have culled. The vast spaces of the Point make any kind of subtlety - always at a premium in musicals anyway - impossible. And the plot does turn on the doomed love affair between a Dublin woman and an English veteran of the Somme during the Irish civil war. But The Ha'penny Bridge is much odder and rather more endearing than all of this might imply.

In interviews, Alastair McGuckian has revealed that he had trouble thinking up a name for his show. It is easy to see why: Juno and The Paycock was already taken. For The Ha'penny Bridge turns out to be not so much an account of civil-war Dublin as an account of the literature of civil-war Dublin, with a few bits culled from other sources, all set to a pastiche of 20th-century American musicals. An alternative title, if it, too, were not already taken, would be The Thieving Magpie.

Ninety per cent of the book is straight from Juno. Annalene Beechey's Molly is Mary Boyle, the intelligent working-class girl who wants to better herself. Flo McSweeney's Anna is the stout-hearted Juno. John Conroy's Peadar is the blustering ne'er-do-well Captain Boyle and Mark Lambert's Whippet is Joxer Daly. Karl Harpur's Sean is Tancred and Eileen Reid's Maggie is Mrs Tancred complete with "where were you?" lament. The seducer, Stephen Ashfield's George, is slightly different in that he is both English and decent, but the key elements of the plot - the diehards, the murder, the Captain's attempts to avoid an offer of work, the unexpected windfall, the pregnancy - are all booty from a raid on O'Casey's cupboard.

Of the other 10 per cent, half is from Liam O'Flaherty's The Informer (O'Flaherty even appears to make a speech), a third is from Brian Friel's Translations (English boy meets Irish girl - cue a song about the colourful Irish language) and though the rest is of McGuckian's own invention, it is pure hokum. Put all this together with a series of musical incursions on everything from Oklahoma to Cabaret and you get a piece of work that might have been produced by a man locked in a room for a decade with a few Irish classics on the shelf and a series of MGM musicals playing on a constant loop.

It's this off-the-wall conjunction, though, that saves The Ha'penny Bridge from dreariness. It acquires at times an almost surreal quality, best summed up in Bill Deamer's seriously strange choreography for the 18-strong dance company. Deamer picks up on the prevailing mood of anomalous juxtaposition, and creates a dizzy cocktail of Riverdance, Bob Fosse, classical ballet and the Moulin Rouge that is far too compellingly peculiar for anyone to be able to say whether it's any good.

All of these anarchic collisions would usually create a mess, but what makes The Ha'penny Bridge so idiosyncratic is the way its quixotic charm is bolstered by a rigorous professionalism. The big roles, especially McSweeny's, Beechey's and Ashfield's, are superbly sung. Conroy's somewhat zany presence as a camp Captain Boyle is sustained by a real pro's ability to occupy the stage. A touch of class is added by having a proper orchestra, under the constantly inventive direction of Gearóid Grant. Cathal McCabe likewise orchestrates the action with impressive fluency on Patrick Murray's clever and sometimes striking sets. The sheer scale of the whole thing - which has quickly overtaken The Wiremen as the most lavish Irish musical ever - gives it an energy that drives it forward in spite of the absurdities of the plot.

And McGuckian, at least, has something to say. The Ha'penny Bridge is a strained parable on contemporary Northern Ireland, and its attack on violence and plea for social justice lead to an unhappy ending that has the guts to swerve away from sentimentality. It took a thick skin to mount a show as eccentric as this one and it would take a hard heart not to grant this Don Quixote a degree of bemused respect. Fintan O'Toole

Runs until 25th June

Kris Kristofferson at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin

Country's got more than its fair share of Voltaires and Sartres: two-bit philosophers who see universal truths lurking at the bottom of an empty bottle. Occasionally, though, its troubadours manage to put a finger on a handful of life's essence - and when that happens, like an errant child, all its foibles are forgotten, and all that's left to do is to wallow in the divine insights the music has to offer.

Kris Kristofferson's phenomenal popularity round these parts has him slated for Dublin for a six-night run. He's a humanist who's always traded in tales of real lives, many of them squandered, most of them riveting in their detail. In Kristofferson's world, lonesome highways, scheming devils and empty whiskey bottles are the inevitable signposts of life, the things that cause the creases and wrinkles to deepen as the years roll by.

His voice may have lost some of its elasticity, and his guitar picking at times falters, but Kris Kristofferson's connection with his audience is as vital as an umbilical cord. Granted, his audience greeted every note with untrammelled enthusiasm, but still his delight was palpable, as they urged him on through the trials of Billy Dee, The Silvertongued Devil and I, Duvalier's Dream and Johnny Lobo.

He wisely delivered the holy grail of Me and Bobby McGee early on, as if he wanted to clear the slate and play it his way from there on. After that he freewheeled all the way through a languorous two-and-a-quarter hour set that included the regret-filled For The Good Times, Sunday Morning Comin'

Down and Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again), each song like a vintage bourbon, distilled down to its very essence, with just a hint of bittersweet aftertaste.

He paid due tribute to his travelling companions of old: to Johnny Cash, John Prine and Willie Nelson, but his magnificent stage presence was all that really mattered. When Kristofferson was in his 30s, he sang with the wizened knowingness of a troubadour twice his age. Now that he's touching his 70th year, his voice swells skywards as he enters the third hour on stage.

Clearly drawing his energy from his audience, Kris Kristofferson still tells stories like nobody else, and what sets him apart is that he makes no secret about how much he still relishes them, and relishes his audiences' affection for them, decades after they've been written. Siobhán Long

Jones, RTÉ NSO/Markson NCH, Dublin

Schubert - Rosamunde Overture. Weber - Bassoon Concerto. Nicolai - Merry Wives of Windsor Overture. Brahms - Hungarian Dances 5, 6, 7

An RTÉ summer lunchtime concert is an informal affair, with the NSO in casual dress, a witty presenter on the stage, and unreserved seating for the audience. Yet, despite the easygoing ambience, the musicians didn't quite manage to let their hair down in the lively works that opened and closed the first concert of this year's series.

Their ever-so-slight reticence meant that the cheery side of Schubert and Brahms was hinted at rather than realised, even though the performances were attentively detailed and introduced some gently teasing variations of tempo.

Conductor Gerhard Markson's careful approach was much better suited to the more opulent humour of Otto Nicolai's overture, which was delicate, lush or grandiose at every turn. And, in the concerto, he shaped  a sensitive accompaniment for the eloquent bassoon playing of Michael Jones.

The keenly judged paces were simultaneously broad enough for Weber's lyrical tunes and quick enough for the brilliant solo passage-work, which flowed with seemingly effortless precision.

This was a performance in which Jones took his Cinderella of a solo instrument to the ball - and in style. Andrew Johnstone