REVIEWS

Reviewed today are The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uiat the Abbey Theatre, Cork City Ballet at the Cork Opera House and Leonard, Johnston, OSC/Daniel at the NCH

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

Abbey Theatre, Dublin

There is an astonishing moment in the Abbey's striking new production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uithat halts Bertolt Brecht's splenetic parody in its tracks, a moment so chilling that icicles form in the air.

Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as the mercurial Ui, a Chicago gangster and despot in the making, is taking ridiculous lessons from an image consultant - Des Cave's washed-up actor - and playing with his mannerisms like a child with a loaded gun.

Suddenly he hits on a particular gesture, a salute so familiar, so easy to lampoon, that it shouldn't shock us. But it does.

His arm held aloft with unnerving intensity, it slices through the innumerable references in Vaughan-Lawlor's extraordinary performance - the crumpled posture of Richard III, the Runyonesque "Noo Yoik" accent, the hyper-animation of Charlie Chaplin - and delivers not just a stunning picture of Hitler but a lesson in the dangerous allure of spectacle.

Jimmy Fay's production may arrive suffused with contextual parallels, carrying echoes of the 1929 depression and political disaffection into the present day, but its depiction of Chicago gangsters muscling in on the cauliflower business places its satiric emphasis squarely on America.

Conor Murphy's design, a starkly impressive picture of industrial grey recesses lined with vegetable crates and meathooks, also finds room for American iconoclast Jasper Johns, whose American Flaglooms over the stage, while Denis Clohessy's thrillingly effective music extends a guest appearance to Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner, piercing though the play's sham trial scene.

Such criticism may seem heavy-handed, particularly when the American political narrative has just entered one of its most hopeful chapters.

Similarly, Brecht's allegory - written in 1941, before the true horror of the "final solution" - is stodgy with political detail, leadenly announcing its historical allusions, here delivered by George Seremba through a loudhailer.

For all the anti-illusion and distancing dictums of Brecht's epic theatre, Fay's production is most absorbing for its rich and rough aesthetic.

Presenting Ui as a 20ft judge, towering over a perversion of justice, may overstate the point, but it feeds the imagination.

Likewise, whatever Brecht's misgivings about the seduction of performance, it's the cast who hold the attention like a vice.

Ui's clownish cavorting and paranoid twisting wouldn't be so effective without Eamon Morrissey's haunted stillness as the corrupted Dogsborough, or Aidan Kelly's nerveless tough guy, Roma.

Kate Brennan and Malcolm Adams also distinguish themselves among an excellent supporting cast.

Ultimately, though, this is Tom Vaughan-Lawlor's show. His Ui uncurls at the play's beginning like an awakening monster, tears through it with bravura (anyone who thinks he's overdoing it should take a quick glance at the actual Hitler) and ends it on a pedestal surrounded by the corrupt, cowed and coerced. Brecht wrote the play to show how such creatures could be stopped.

The charismatic demon and the appalling, enthralling momentum of the show seem to say the opposite. Resistance is useless.

• Until Dec 6 PETER CRAWLEY

Cork City Ballet

Cork Opera House

Expertise is a good partner but no substitute for sophistication, and in The Sleeping Beauty Suite, Cork City Ballet director Alan Foley makes no mistake about the distinction.

The dancers are experts, and in some cases more than that. But the vision, the approach and the style is utterly sophisticated.

This is particularly the case in the first half of this programme, which consists of four divertissements, two of them contemporary works set to modern music.

The muscular lyricism of Gira Con Me(music by Josh Groban, choreography by Alan Foley), expressed by Yuri Demakov, Leigh Alderton and Charles Washington, is carried into a different rhythmic context in Willing and Able(music by Prince, choreography by Foley again, Patricia Crosbie, and Sher Roberts), with the dancers led by Monica Loughman and Robert Gabdullin in a well-conceived performance involving the entire company, their austere costuming exploding into jewel-bright fragments for the finale.

With a quarter of contrasts completed by the lovely Pas d'esclaffrom Le Corsaire(the Petipa version with music by Delibes and Minkus), danced by Chikka Temma and Akzhol Mussakanov, and La Vivandière(Saint-Léon, with music by Pugni), danced by Asami Taki and Leigh Alderton, it becomes clear, as so often with Foley, that contemporary and classical dance can enrich one another in terms both of technique and interpretation.

And of excitement too, for it is obvious again that these dancers must love Foley, who lets them revel in what they do best and puts them in gorgeous costumes as well.

Meanwhile, Lisa Zagone's setting of translucent drapes is constantly transformed by Paul Denby's lighting design.

With skill, brio and sheer enjoyment beaming from the stage (this time less successfully converted to a palace ballroom), it is no surprise that the dances from Aurora's wedding scene in The Sleeping Beautyfollow in sequences relying on the miracles of timing which ballet makes commonplace.

Swept along by Tchaikovsky's music, with Ekaterina Bortyakova as Princess Aurora, Monica Loughman and Robert Gabdullin as the Bluebirds and Chika Temma as the Lilac Fairy, and often with the entire stage a rainbow froth of glitter and tulle, it is easy to admire the elan of individual virtuosity and ensemble composure.

Perhaps this is what prompts the desire for more context: after all, the wedding party is only the end of the story as told by Marius Petipa, although it's a terrific party.

Cork City Ballet's tour continues at the Helix, Dublin, tonight, at Siamsa Tíre, Tralee, tomorrow, at Cork Opera House on Sat, and at University Concert Hall, Limerick, on Sun MARY LELAND

Leonard, Johnston, OSC/Daniel

NCH, Dublin

Bach - Concerto for Oboe and Violin.

Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto.

Elgar - Serenade for strings; Cello Concerto.

The Orchestra of St Cecilia strayed well outside the norms of orchestral programme planning for the second of its November concerts at the National Concert Hall.

With three concertos on offer rather than the more conventional one, this was an evening that managed to begin and end with concertos and offered just a single non-concertante work, Elgar's Serenade for Strings, as a makeweight at the beginning of the second half.

Violinist Catherine Leonard featured in both works in the first half, partnered by Nicholas Daniel (who was also the evening's conductor) in a reconstruction of a Concerto for Oboe and Violin by Bach, and having the limelight to herself in Mendelssohn's Concerto in E minor.

Her playing in both works was light and nimble, although the lightness was not always to the music's advantage.

There was a strange lack of definition in the Bach, as if the overall sound picture was slightly out of focus, an effect that was fully dismissed only when Nicholas Daniel engaged in some moments of full-on expression.

Leonard's playing took some time to settle down in the Mendelssohn, most of the first movement in fact.

It wasn't really until after the cadenza that her mercurial musicality seemed to find its stride.

Daniel's lean and sharply accented handling of the orchestra may have deprived the music of some of its warmth, but it also had an adaptability which seemed to give Leonard free rein in her often impetuous and sometimes even skittish approach to the work.

Elgar's Serenade for Strings and Cello Concerto are pieces often milked for more than they can actually yield. This performance avoided that pitfall.

Admittedly, there was a certain expressive anaemia in the Serenade, and Guy Johnston's reserve in the concerto may not have satisfied listeners who like cellists to take a heart-on-sleeve approach to this piece.

Yet his playing lacked for nothing in nobility, and he brought to the concerto a sense of sometimes profound resignation which more than compensated for those moments where the pallor seemed too consistent.

The audience was well-attuned to his message, and gave his performance the warmest response of the evening. MICHAEL DERVAN