Reviews

MICHAEL DERVANreviews Castleward Operain Co. Down and SIOBHÁN LONGreviews Volvo Ocean Race festival concertsin Galway

Castleward Opera

Castleward House, Strangford, Co Down

Comedy is a very serious affair. Well, it is if you want to get it right. And in Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus, there's the added problem of the music. Strauss's frolicsome, often featherlight writing demands to be delivered with an insouciance which fully masks its considerable technical challenges.

Castleward Opera, whose performing space is one wing of the stable yard at Castleward House, has never been shy of a challenge. It's celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a new production of Die Fledermauswhich will venture south of the border to the Wexford Opera House in August.

The opening night at Castleward got off to a strenuous start, with an unduly effortful and not always tidy account of the overture. Conductor David Angus’s approach showed confusion between the functions of firmness, emphasis and forcefulness, and his stuttering moments of mock-Viennese rubato were an added encumbrance.

Sadly, the rest of the evening proceeded in a similar vein. Tenor David Revels was so over the top as Alfred that he created the impression of self-parody and wholly undermined the idea that his singing voice might be the fatal attraction for the Rosalinde of Lee Bisset. Bisset herself came across as a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde character, agreeable and attractive at moderate volume in her middle and lower registers, but apt to sound shrieky on her high notes.

Both James Cleverton (as Rosalinde’s husband Gabriel) and James McOran Campbell (as the manipulative Falke) sounded ridiculously formal, and Carolyn Dobbin’s Prince Orlofsky (unconvincingly clad in ripped jeans) veered in and out of her Russian accent.

I’m not sure what benefits director Tom Hawkes expected to produce by updating late 19th-century Vienna to the present. David Craig’s sets and designs were mostly good to look at, although the Austin Powers romp that the opening stage picture seemed to promise was not to be.

The best moments in this Fledermauswere provided by the promising agility of Rebekah Coffey as Rosalinde's maid Adèle, and the solid and solidly funny Frank of Lynton Black. The chorus, too, sang with a strength which was not a feature of the evening in general. And the adaptation of Alistair Beaton's English translation included some topical references to Susan Boyle and Simon Cowell. MICHAEL DERVAN

Volvo Ocean Race festival concerts

Galway

INEVITABLY, sunshine was the real star of this magnificent maritime festival, hosted in the name of the Volvo Ocean Race stopover. In reality, though, there were more landlubbers than seadogs in sight, snaking their way from the Topaz main stage at the docks to local trusty venues, where sweat and sparks flew in equal measure as the humidity of the evenings gathered force in small corners and wide open terraces.

Fiddler Máirín Fahy brought her troupe to the party, replete with step dancers mounted high on strategically positioned pedestals – for all the world to savour every tap and batter of their toes. It was crowd-pleasing music that found full expression in the midst of the festive atmosphere, but Fahy's inclusion of the balefully saccharine You Raise Me Upthreatened to lodge the night's performance forever in the Vegas Does The Claddagh remainder bins.

For pinprick precision though, it was Sunday night that shimmied its way deep into the subconscious. Hebridean singer Julie Fowlis joined forces with Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Éamon Doorley and Ross Martin for a glorious airing of Scottish and Irish songs taken from their collaborative recording, Dual. In keeping with a graffito around the corner encouraging all who passed it to "practise random acts of kindness", the intimacy of the Crane Bar encouraged an almost instant communion between performer and punters, as Nic Amhlaoibh gave full flight to the west- Kerry Beauty Deas An Oileánand Fowlis dug deep beneath the pain of the love song An Eala Bhán.

Headliner Máirtín O'Connor, his band and The ConTempo String Quartet brought this Whit weekend to a suitably celebratory close with a rollicking set. The Road West, one of O'Connor's most scintillating compositions, grabbed its audience by the scruff of the neck and led it on a merry dance. The marriage of folk and classical influences with the Romanian ConTempo Quartet occasionally creaked beneath the weight of its own heady expectations, but ultimately this was music that celebrated life, rooted in a modest sense of homeplace. It reverberated long after the curfew had run us all from the docks, ushering to a close an unforgettable weekend. SIOBHÁN LONG