Dandelions Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Fiona Looney's much-heralded first play comes with a zing, in dialogue and the thinking that drives it, which marks the arrival of a new voice. It has defects, mostly of excess in the pursuit of laughter and in a writer's self-indulgence; but is finally a case of who dares, wins.
It opens with neighbours Jean (Deirdre O'Kane) and Noirín (Pauline McLynn) chatting in the former's suburban home. They are both given to witty quips bemoaning their dull maternal lives. But their friendship is put to the test when Orla (Dawn Bradfield) and Damian (Keith Duffy) move in next door with an adopted baby from an eastern country. In a coincidence rather too far, Damian and Jean, once old flames, had a last fling shortly after she married, and her first son may be his.
This all moves at a cracking pace and soon Noirín is feeling betrayed by the friend who never confided this episode to her. But she is really suffering from a sense of her own inadequate life, devoid of drama. Her reaction, though irrational, makes for tense exchanges from which Jean emerges as the sane and unselfish one. This is underpinned in a meeting with Damian in which he improbably wants them to abscond with the boy, a proposal frustrated by her innate unselfishness and realism.
So the mix is one of exceptional observation and wit, stirred in with some near-melodrama and a little hokum.
The author will have to learn not to insert wiseacre gags, such as the one about Jean's son being some day introduced to Louis Walsh with a view to forming a boy band - Keith Duffy's stage provenance, of course.
The acting from all four is right in the groove, with Deirdre O'Kane a runaway winner, and Michael Caven's direction plays them all like a jazz piano. - Gerry Colgan
Runs until Nov 19th
Sinéad O'Connor, The Helix, Dublin
Sinéad O'Connor has made a formidable if stop-start career out of being one of the few women in contemporary music to dare to challenge the norm.
She may irritate some people with her views on religion and perplex others with the apparent dichotomy of being a responsible mother with a penchant for ganja, but when it comes to her music you can safely bet that she has important things to say.
Why, then, is the latest incarnation of O'Connor such a nondescript enterprise?
O'Connor's new album, Throw Down Your Arms, comprises cover versions of reggae songs by the likes of Lee Perry, Peter Tosh and Burning Spear's Winston Rodney.
It's a very decent exercise in cultural tourism, but it's also the kind of thing that UB40 have spent the past 25 years perfecting; and while there's no question of O'Connor's motives being anything other than pure, it nevertheless fails to convince.
It doesn't help that the venue, while fine for a myriad of other kinds of shows, has all the charm of a used nappy. With the seats taken out to enable dancing (not that there was much of that going on), it changed from what it usually is - a comfortable theatre setting - into an expensive- looking barn.
But the real problem wasn't the venue; rather, it was the music and the slight voice of O'Connor attempting to seamlessly dovetail into it.
Working at it for all she was worth but just not making it count (forced intonation equals lack of authenticity), O'Connor and her nine-piece reggae ensemble group, which included the master reggae rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, ran through the new album in its entirety.
A few other reggae songs padded out the set, which, in typically perverse O'Connor fashion, featured not even one of her better-known songs.
In many ways this is fair enough - she is the artist, after all, and it is her right to structure the delivery of her art in the best way she sees fit. If, however, O'Connor wants to couple her undoubtedly genuine love of reggae music (and its associated religious connotations) with the more prosaic practicalities of being an entertainer, it might be no harm if she learns the difference between Burning Spear and damp squib. - Tony Clayton-Lea
Family Plot, Queen's Drama Centre, Belfast Festival
It is an unquiet grave where four generations of the Kerr family are buried together. Death has not brought peace, merely a never-ending replay of the disputes, hatred and bitterness that dogged their earthly lives.
In this darkly humorous new play for Tinderbox, Daragh Carville pitches us into a macabre world, inhabited by the the shades of the living dead and presented by designer Stuart Marshall as an echoing grey-green chamber, devoid of refuge or the light of day.
In a corner, clutching her rosary beads, sits Aunt Lizzie (Helena Bereen), the first arrival.
After a long lonely wait, she has been followed in turn by her nephew Charlie - Gordon Fulton a menacing, Buddha-like figure in pyjamas - his long-suffering wife Nellie (Susie Kelly) and their warring son and daughter-in-law Frank and Tess (Frankie McCafferty and Libby Smyth).
While the performances are universally sound and truthful, McCafferty and Smyth do not entirely click as a couple and McCafferty, a naturally witty, engaging actor, has to work hard to get under the skin of the hateful Frank, the linchpin of the play.
Through a series of understated hints, glances and gestures, culminating in the chillingly dramatic arrival of Frank and Tess's daughter Emer (Claire Lomont) - the last of the Kerrs - director Michael Duke relentlessly winds the audience into a confrontation with the past, which it may not care to witness.
But the second act brings a curious change of tone, in which weighty exposition takes precedence over quiet subtlety, and the anticipated awful truths turn out to be not so awful after all. It takes real theatrical flourish to raise the ante for the closing scene, which offers unexpected resolution based on orthodox spiritual belief.
With celestial light shining on and from her face, Bereen's Lizzie leads the faithful along the long-awaited path to righteousness, while the single unbeliever remains forever condemned to solitary, self-inflicted punishment. - Jane Coyle
Ends tonight, then tours to Newry, Cookstown, Coalisland, Coleraine, Monaghan, Armagh, Downpatrick and Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast
Lang Lang (piano), NCH, Dublin
Mozart - Sonata in C K330
Chopin - Sonata in B minor Op 58
Schumann - Kinderszenen
Rachmaninov - Preludes in B flat Op 23 No 2, in G minor Op 23 No 5
Liszt - Petrarch Sonnet 104
Liszt/Horowitz - Hungarian Rhapsody No 2
The great Artur Schnabel's often-quoted remark about Mozart's sonatas being too easy for children and too difficult for artists came to mind during Lang Lang's recital at the National Concert Hall.
The Chinese pianist's approach was that of a virtuoso who sees in Mozart mainly prettiness, so that, for all the straightforward clarity of his sound and effortless technical ease, he made the Sonata in C, K330, prattle as if it were purely decorative, without any substance at its core.
Chopin's Sonata in B minor showed off this young player's keyboard prowess even more keenly, but it also revealed more of his musical shortcomings.
He fussed over the music's melodic content, sometimes worrying it like a dog with a bone, but ignored the issues of momentum and connectivity that are best addressed through the shaping of the harmony.
His sometimes arresting detailing of the moment failed to accumulate into a satisfying presentation of the whole.
One might have expected the miniatures of Schumann's Scenes from Childhood to suit him down to the ground. But, no.
The fussiness remained at too high a level, with strong attitudes - an unexpected emphasis of liner or accent or an adjustment of tempo - sometimes struck for no apparent reason other than personal whimsy.
The two Rachmaninov preludes were driven by a roughly whipping energy which may have been directed at the gallery, but the excitement was very real. And while Liszt's Petrarch Sonnet 104 was made to stutter uncomfortably, the no-holds-barred approach to the composer's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, with copious reinforcements, embellishments and snuck-in counter-melodies by Horowitz, was clearly designed to bring the house down, which it did.
On the evidence of this recital, there's no doubting either Lang Lang's exceptional keyboard facility or his fearlessness in the use of it. He is fleet of finger and rapid of wrist and he showed unusual control of tone colour, dynamics, and voicing. But at the moment his playing seems altogether more focused on what the music can do for him, than on what he can do for the music. - Michael Dervan
Our Lady's Choral Society National Sinfonia/Ó Duinn NCH, Dublin
Cherubini - Requiem in C minor
Karl Jenkins - The Armed Man
Though The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace is currently being hailed as the latest addition to the choral-orchestral canon, it doesn't truly belong to the classical mainstream.
To be sure, its hotchpotch of liturgical and secular texts recalls Britten's War Requiem. But Jenkins's librettist, Guy Wilson, gets nowhere near the sophisticated intertextuality of that sublime work.
True, Jenkins taps into the racy, neo-medieval spirit famously conjured up by another Karl in that orgiastic exposition of luck, drink and sex, Carmina Burana. By doing so, however, he trivialises his more delicate and emotive subjects of war and religion. And while he seems to be trying to end on a sincerely religious note with a chorale à la JS Bach, the effect is mawkish.
At the moment, then, The Armed Man has the status of a great work simply because it's very, very popular.
So too was Cherubini's Requiem in its early days. Now, it comes across as a piece of functional liturgical music that, despite a few histrionics at the right moments, makes for a less than satisfying concert experience. It was a pity that this combination of works gave a bright young team of vocal soloists so little to sing.
Cherubini excluded them altogether out of a prim objection to operatic elements in a sacred context.
Nor did Jenkins give them many opportunities to shine.
Soprano Colette Boushell and tenor Eamonn Mulhall coped as best they could with parts that grovelled in ranges identical to those of alto Maria de Moel and bass Jeffrey Ledwidge.
So it was very much the choir's evening. Singing with gusto, and with tenors outnumbering basses by a ratio of nearly three-to-two, Our Lady's Choral Society has more than just a 60th anniversary to celebrate this year. - Andrew Johnstone
