Reviews

A selection of reviews by Irish Timescritics

Murder Monologues

Teachers Club, Dublin

Eventually, the whodunnit genre reached its last revelation. (It was Professor Plum. In the library. With the candlestick.) Modern crime writers instead shifted their attentions to the whydunnit, a greater and somehow fresher font of mystery, which could never be satisfactorily resolved. (It was Hannibal Lecter. In the basement. With the nice Chianti.)

Jane Mulcahy’s monologue play for Plastic Theatre, in which seven killers dutifully report what they dun and why they dun it, lies somewhere between the two phenomena. Each speaker is neatly compelled, apropos of little but format, to divest himself or herself of the precise method, means and motive, like the chief suspect at the end of an Agatha Christie adaptation when the jig is finally up. Inevitably, this approach lacks drama (so do most monologue plays), but it also lacks psychological complexity. People are more interesting for what they conceal, how they delude themselves as much as the authorities, and these confessionals cast the audience not as witness but as court reporter. We wait patiently for the details.

Seven may be a good number for deadly sins, but while Murder Monologueshas an admirable brevity, its gallery of rogues suffers, understandably, from overkill.

Though his story is based on a real case, our first killer, a tweed-suited psychopath with a cut-glass accent (in the hotel room, with the riding crop), seems among the least believable. Real people don't do psychological stripteases and Mulcahy, who also directs and performs, seems unwilling to shed his layers. Her own Pam Lampe (in the mansion, with the lesbian lover) is a cocktail-lounge femme fatale,and while Eugene Leary's eurosceptic farmer (in the German holiday home, with the pitchfork) seems to suggest a desire for social relevance, there's something weirdly impersonal about the entire exercise, as though a commentary piece is being inserted into each character's mouth.

The most psychological detail we get comes, bizarrely, through an engaging comic performance from Diane Jennings as a homicidal version of Pippi Longstocking (from the high window, with the gentle push), who has a penchant for torturing squirrels.

Unbalanced by the broader strokes, though, it is hard to know what to make of our last slayer, Mustafa Al Shalobi (Hamza Firdous), perpetrator of an “honour” killing in Jordan. Mulcahy’s moral outrage is seethingly clear, and her research into the honour-killing phenomenon, Jordanian prison terms and hardline Islamic rationales is unswervingly precise.

Yet the character – unrepentant in word and manner for the killing of his raped sister – is more public polemic than private man.

This murderer, one suspects, belongs to the play Mulcahy ought to write, a much deeper mystery that could be fleshed out through dialogue and drama. As he exists now, he suffers from the same problem as all of the killers in this show, who, more than their victims, seem barely alive. PETER CRAWLEY

Until April 18, then returning from April 27 to May 2

Soloists, RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Ó Duinn

NCH, Dublin

This was a concert to mark the 250th anniversary of the death of Handel on April 14th, 1759. It was given by Our Lady’s Choral Society as part of the six-day Dublin Handel Festival organised by the Temple Bar Cultural Trust.

Bravely, the programme featured a welcome airing for lesser-known music. It began and ended with works having connections to Messiah, premiered in Dublin in 1742 and the reason for Dublin's long love affair with Handel. Typically, given the baroque convention of composers poaching from their own music, the 1749 Anthem for the Peaceincludes an interesting alto-and-bass duet version of "How beautiful are the feet". The closing chorus begins with Messiah's"Blessing and glory, pow'r and honour".

Similarly, the Foundling Hospital Anthemends with the Hallelujah chorus. Handel's comfort in doing this is explained in the excellent (uncredited) programme notes as owing to the fact that Messiahwas not then so well-liked or frequently given in London as in Dublin, where there had been annual performances since the premiere.

Other works in the programme dated back to 1707, including a concert highlight in his setting of Psalm 126, Nisi Dominus, composed when the 22-year-old composer was living in Italy. It features fine solos for alto and bass and a real gem in the Beatus vir, sung with quiet dignity by tenor Robin Tritschler.

From 1735, there was the Organ Concerto in F, Opus 4 No 4, played with some small lapses of security but great spirit and flash by Peter Sweeney. It was in a rare version, which ends with an intrusion from the choir in the form of a different"Alleluia" chorus.

Our Lady’s Choral Society came fresh from radio and television broadcasts of its recent concert in the presence of the Pope in Rome. Though the singers lost far too much rhythmic vitality due to remarkably weak consonants, they were very lively and alert in their responses to the stylish direction of conductor Proinnsías Ó Duinn.

While all four soloists were suitably Handelian of voice, notably in running passages, the rather score-bound singing of the two young women, Katy Kelly (soprano) and Chloe Hinton (alto), took from the communication aspect of their performance. Illustrating the difference was Hinton's superior performance from memory of "Lo faro" from the opera Rodelinda. 

Bass Jeffrey Ledwidge's best moment was his solemn "Sicut sagittae" from Nisi Dominus. MICHAEL DUNGAN

Opera Theatre Company

Guinness Storehouse, Dublin

Handel died 200 years ago, and that same year Arthur Guinness founded his Dublin brewery. That happy coincidence handed Opera Theatre Company another opportunity to mount a site-specific production, and this one, with the support of Guinness, took place in the impressive surroundings of the Guinness Storehouse.

The company's production of Handel's Acis and Galateahit the mark in the areas that matter most. A mixture between masque, pastoral drama and mini-opera, Acis needs to be brisk, but sometimes it should also let the music do its stuff unhindered by stage action. In that respect – the pacing of the music and dramatic movement – this production was impeccable. The extraordinary lamenting pieces were all the more effective because of the stillness on the stage, and when the main characters were engaging in their flirty goings-on, the dashing about was just right and very funny.

The young cast of six singers was deeply engaged, and in the ensemble pieces created a pleasingly homogeneous sound.

As Galatea, Nicola Mulligan was good at spanning the highs and lows of emotion, as she gets together with Acis, flees from the rapine intentions of Polyphemus, loses Acis to the giant’s violence, and sees him reborn as a fountain.

As Acis, Dean Power lived up to his name, for there was nothing nerdy or wimpish about this rural swain.

On the instrumental side, the harpsichord sound was nigglingly over-prominent and persistent, while occasional effects, such as pronounced crescendos and non-vibrato string playing, seemed over-obvious.

Nevertheless, the ensemble of seven players, let by Andrew Synnott, were pleasingly on the ball.

The sets, costumes and staging were economical and effective. Polyphemus was a giant puppet, with Gavan Ring singing from inside. Scary and funny, the idea was at one with the production and the music – joyous and healthy. MARTIN ADAMS