REVIEWS: SARA KEATINGreviews The Poe Showat Bewley's Cafe Theatre, Dublin while MICHAEL DUNGANreviews Hughes, RTÉ NCO/Speringat the NCH in Dublin
The Poe Show
Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Dublin
It might be a bit unseasonal, but The Poe Showis a haunting piece of gothic entertainment that pays good tribute to the master of macabre fiction, Edgar Allan Poe. Created by director/performer Michael James Ford, it fits together three of Poe's famous short stories with some of his better poems for a 50-minute feast of gore and suspense.
In what is essentially glorified storytelling, the emphasis must always be on the teller, and in Stephen Swift, who performs the opening story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Ford has found a compelling companion. In The Tell-Tale Heart, madness is an "over-acuteness of the senses" and, in Swift's depiction, the narrator's spiral into insanity seems physical as much mental, as the heart of his murdered master thumps on insistently beneath the floorboards.
Ford himself joins Swift for the frightening recollection of Fortunato's fate in The Cask of Amontillado, whose dialogue format suits the live context very well.
Rhiannon Clarke, meanwhile, makes a ballad out of the narrative poem, Annabel Lee, accompanied by Trevor Knight's suitably spooky score and given unearthly live resonance by Iseult Golden's violin. With the carnivalesque undertones of a Kurt Weill composition, it is The Poe Show'saccidental centrepiece and undoubted highlight.
Some of the scene transitions, which include commentaries from contemporary memoir and Poe's own diary, seem unnecessary, while even the tone of insanity lent to Poe's poem The Bellsfails to justify the inclusion of what is surely the worst poem in the English language.
However, for the most part, The Poe Showis a slick introduction to the sordid world of early gothic literature, and, in fact, much of the material – which can seem rather dry and dated on the page – gains a huge amount in live performance.
Martin Cahill’s prison-cell setting, complete with skeleton hand climbing up the wall, is complemented by Colm Maher’s atmospheric lighting, which even enables a labyrinthine journey through the catacombs as Montresor wreaks his horrible revenge on Fortunato.
The lunchtime presentation may be more suited to a Halloween evening than an early spring afternoon, but there are "voluptuous pleasures" to be had nonetheless. SARA KEATING
Until April 25
Hughes, RTÉ NSO/Spering
NCH, Dublin
Tuesday was the 250th anniversary of the death of Handel, the German-born London resident who has a most special place in the hearts of Dubliners owing to the premiere in their city of Messiahin 1742.
There are commemorative concerts and other events running throughout this week, most of them part of the 2009 Dublin Handel Festival organised by the Temple Bar Cultural Trust.
This lunchtime concert wasn’t one of them. It was, however, RTÉ’s contribution to the European Broadcasting Union’s “Euroradio Handel Special Day”, which on Sunday will broadcast 16 hours of Handel from European and American cities (RTÉ Lyric FM is a contributing member to the European Broadcasting Union but is not carrying the broadcast).
This RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra concert will be the second item, at 11am Central European Time. I’m wondering whether European listeners will be as puzzled as I was, given that the NSO invited a baroque specialist, Andreas Spering, to conduct and then played as though the period performance movement had never happened. Spering either failed to negotiate or else simply didn’t attempt to draw out the kind of characteristic energy and sharp contrasts that can make baroque music sound so exciting even when it is played on modern instruments – think of the Irish Chamber Orchestra under Nicholas McGegan. It all sounded like mid-1970s recordings of Bach by the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields – worthy and accurate but ultimately disappointing.
That said, there were good things in the concert, notably the young London-born soprano, Ruby Hughes, winner of this year's London Handel Singing Competition where, for once, both first prize and the audience prize went to the same person. She displayed a warm, lithe, bell-like vocal presence in virtuosic arias from Alcinaand Giulio Cesareand in "Rejoice Greatly" from Messiah.
One of Spering’s few nods to period performance was to reduce the number of strings. This threw into high profile some very fine playing from the two oboists, notably in the Concerto Grosso No 3.
The popular Water MusicSuite No 2 featured bright, crisp playing from pairs of trumpets and horns. MICHAEL DUNGAN
