Given the pivotal role of the event in modern Irish history, it is remarkable that fictional representations of the 1916 Rising have tended to be so angular.
Perhaps because it was itself so self-consciously metaphoric, the rising has been more interesting to writers as an image to be subverted than as a real episode to be anatomised.
In fiction, from Raymond Queneau's 1947 surrealist spoof We Always Treat Women Too Well to Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry, the angle of vision has been anything but direct.
In the theatre, I can think of only one reasonably straight take on the rising: GP Gallivan's Decision at Easter. The rest, from Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars to Denis Johnston's The Scythe and the Sunset, take an oblique and ironic view. In some respects, Sebastian Barry's White Woman Street, where Easter 1916 is filtered through the story of a gang of desperados in Ohio, is more typical than Gallivan's respectful attitude.
All of this is by way of saying that Des Bishop and Arthur Riordan's new play for Bedrock, Shooting Gallery, is somewhat less daring than it thinks it is. It sees the rising through the eyes of two dope fiends with republican pretensions who sit out the cataclysmic events in a smelly room in Rathmines that is so well evoked by Ferdia Murphy's superb design that its rank odour seems to assail your nostrils.
As an exploration of the unlikely borderlands where The Shadow of a Gunman meets Trainspotting, it is entertaining enough, and at times delightfully funny. But the approach is not subversive or original enough to sustain the momentum necessary to carry a play with a very small cast and a single set into uncharted realms.
The central metaphor of the piece is obvious - perhaps too obvious. Riordan and Bishop are drawing a parallel between the heady effects of nationalist rhetoric on one side and the morphine to which the young medical student Sean (Tadhg Murphy) and his older friend David (played by Riordan himself) are addicted. Revolutionary fervour - as they discover when Síle, a member of Cumann na mBan (Simone Kirby), takes refuge in their room - is "a mad irrational urge that goes beyond any sense of reality".
Ireland is a drug no less addictive than heroin and the craving for it induces the same kind of euphoric recklessness.One kind of shooting-up is pretty much like another.
The conceit may be accurate and it certainly carries a mock-heroic charge. But it is also rather easily digested, leaving the play with little else to chew on. The serious point inclines the tone towards political satire, but the form - a single room with multiple entrances and exits - is pure farce, and the two notes don't always work in harmony. Jimmy Fay's crisp production emphasises the farcical, and the performances work best at this level, with Susan FitzGerald especially amusing as the loyalist neighbour Mrs Synott.
Broadly, the production unfolds in three phases: an initial pleasure as the basic joke is established, a fairly tedious stretch as it is extended beyond its limits, and a final, delightful denouement when Riordan and Bishop find a witty and elegant ending. Rather like the history of Irish nationalism in the 20th century, perhaps. - Fintan O'Toole
Runs until Oct 29
Al Martino - National Concert Hall, Dublin
The Italian-American crooner Frank Sinatra once publicly threatened to rough up the Italian-American crooner Al Martino for daring to play the mafia-assisted Italian-American crooner Johnny Fontane in The Godfather.
Any similarities to persons living or dead may have been less than purely coincidental. Tonight, however, the Mob are the least of Martino's worries.
When Martino finally appears - after 30 minutes wasted with a tittering, wink-winking and nudge-nudging comedian, then a 20-minute interval - his 78-year-old brow may be creaseless, but he looks like a shrunken Tony Bennett. Neatly attired in a Rodeo Drive tuxedo, Martino initially seems unsteady, swivelling through The Sound of Music as though he has just been released from a cage.
It is steadily more distressing when he continually blanks through Love is a Many Splendoured Thing, approaching his musical director for the lyrics sheet. "I think I'm getting Italian Alzheimer's disease," he tells us at the song's conclusion. "That's when you forget everything but a grudge." It's a sweet and saving gesture, even if his pleading eyes and outstretched hand on Once Upon a Time look less like a pose of wistful heartbreak and more like a request for spare change.
Few others feel this way (certainly not the silver-haired lady who pushed past a slower candidate to dance with her idol). For them, the holder of the first ever UK Number 1 single, 1952's Here in My Heart, essentially represents the invention of pop music. His lyrics are from a time before rock'n'roll, before the fall: he loves you because you understand him; he loves you more and more each day; in his heart he's alone and so lonely; he has but one heart to share with you.
Martino gets better as he relaxes and his pleasantly innocent performance is tinged with the alarming legend (omitted from his official biography) that mafia intrusions interrupted much of his early career. Still, one has to wonder, was signing on for a tour of cruise-ship-variety nostalgia really an offer he couldn't refuse? - Peter Crawley
Sean McSweeney - Vangard Gallery, Cork
Sean McSweeney's interpretation of the landscape around the west coast has taken on something of an iconic status within the realm of Irish contemporary painting - partly from the consistency of his vision, where bog and coastline features are codified through his staple rectangular semi-abstract shapes.
In this exhibition of predominately new paintings, McSweeney preserves his style more or less intact. However, there are some important differences. The scale of certain paintings has increased considerably upon earlier works, with the largest being more than six by four foot. And the imagery strays some distance from semi-abstraction into work which is, relatively speaking, quite referential in its evocation of landscape.
The strongest examples of this are seen in Bearna Bhuí with its convincing portrayal of coastline sand, rocks and water and Shoreline, Doonel with its potent representation of a breaking wave. The imagery seems to embrace an enhanced spatial awareness which stretches beyond the picture plane itself.
With this slight shift in emphasis there would perhaps be a danger that the relationship between symbolic and physical representations of the landscape would in some ways be incompatible. But McSweeney knits everything together through a unified palette that favours muted or earthy colours which are often punctuated by intense flashes of colour - notably cerulean blue.
A further attribute that lends cohesion is the attention to mark making, where the artist demonstrates the enviable knack of making spontaneous statements with the brush appear as if they are finely crafted. A skill honed through an ineffable understanding of how oil paint should be handled. - Mark Ewart
Runs until Nov 5
