REVIEWS

Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events and shows around the country.

Red Riding Hood

Everyman Palace, Cork

MARY LELAND

The best, perhaps the only, thing to do about this Cork Association of Dramatic Arts production is to sit back and enjoy it. Sitting back is not what the juvenile audience likes to do and there are lots of opportunities for the youngsters to respond to the tumult on the stage, where diverse talents compete for the wandering limelight without ever achieving a coherent coalition.

The ebullient band, under Eamon Nash, plays as if its members know they're never going to get in tune, in time or even in step with anyone else, apart from the high-end singing of Mary Sexton, who manages most of the time to reach an acceptable balance between her voice, her microphone and her musical director. Some charming costuming by Patricia Mahon and Ann Burton helps the different dancing groups cope with accommodating choreography from Jenni Dunne, but Paul Denby's lighting behaves as if in need of satellite navigation.

There are three Red Riding Hoods mustered for the run of this production and, on press night, the role was taken by an undaunted Niamh Duggan, a little trouper whose personality and professionalism shone. While the second act settled into something like a sequential story, with much of the required excitement and anticipation, the script, written by Kevin Power in association with director Catherine Mahon-Buckley, has a loose construction which allows everyone to do more or less their own thing.

What is most disappointing about this pantomime is the way it quenches ordinary theatre craft, such as narrative connectivity or sustaining a joke. This cast possesses all the qualities to do these things, but gets lost in a welter of shouting and action.

Davy Dummigan's set design struggles to meet the challenge of perspective but becomes something magical in the final tableau, a reminder that there is, after all, something admirable in the absolute refusal of the creative team to adjust its ambitions to the size and resources of the theatre, packed as it is with appreciative children. Until Jan 11

Resurgam, IBO/Cooper

St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin

MICHAEL DERVAN

Handel - Messiah.

The big, re-orchestrated Messiahs of yesteryear are gone, apart from those documented in recordings. But few Christmas-time performances in Ireland of Handel's oratorio are as spartan as this one by the Resurgam Choir and the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO) under Gary Cooper.

The choir numbered just 20 voices. The orchestra came to 19 players if you include Cooper himself on continuo harpsichord. And there were no oboes or bassoons. But from my seat near the front of the cathedral, there was no lack of impact. Everything came across with the unspoiled clarity that is to be heard on CD more than in the concert hall.

The easy directness that Cooper sought was obvious from the relaxed opening. This was a performance that, however fleet it became, only felt driven at moments of high drama.

The bass, Matthew Brook (standing in for the indisposed Martin Robson), was the soloist who communicated the strongest sense of engagement with the words. Tenor James Oxley was consistently commanding and true, and counter-tenor Christopher Ainslie sang with an affecting directness that was completely devoid of the many mannerisms that counter-tenors are prone to. Soprano Katherine Manley made a lovely sound, but indulged in some vocal gestures appropriate to later musical styles in a way that made her stand out from her colleagues. With Resurgam in as lithe and responsive a mode as I've ever heard them, and the players of the IBO also on top form, this Messiah was a treat from start to finish.

The Musician

Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast

Jane Coyle

The Old Museum Arts Centre and Cahoots NI, a company dedicated to producing theatre for children, have joined forces in luring Sean Kearns onto a Belfast stage during his short break from the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as securing the services of Conor Mitchell, the Armagh-born composer and musical dramatist. Under Matt Peover's creative direction, The Musician becomes a chilling horror-opera, a story of broken dreams and broken music, which challenges the imagination of its young audience and the performance standards of its actors and musicians. None are found wanting.

Mitchell is on stage throughout, playing and directing David Mayes and Marty Wilson through a score that is haunting, jangling and discordant - yet beautiful too. Jack Beale's Reader beckons us into the desperate life of Boy (Stuart Matthews), a street urchin living in a filthy hole in the ground with only a mouse for company. He is barely tolerated by the people of the town, personified by Lisa Kerr's snooty, Girl, who breaks a promise and sets in train a horrific sequence of events.

Kearns is the Musician, whose melodic flute inspires in the Boy a gift he never imagined he possessed. But gifts are to be treasured not traded and as he grows up, the talented child becomes a cynical manipulator in a brightly coloured cloak, a far cry from the merry-faced fluter. In collaboration with set and lighting designers James Cotterill and Lizzie Powell, Peover has created an intriguing, densely populated world around Mitchell's dark preface to a tale we thought we knew so well. Until Dec 20

Josh Ritter

Vicar Street, Dublin

Davin O'Dwyer

Josh Ritter's folk songs sound perfectly good when played either by the man alone on his guitar or with the backing of his full band. Fans were eager to hear how his work would sound with the accompaniment of a 24-piece orchestra and this joyous performance felt very much like an early Christmas present.

Ritter started with a plaintive, solo rendition of Idaho, an overture of sorts before the orchestra struck up for a lush Best for the Best. At first, hearing the strings swell behind his familiar tunes induced a kind of giddy glee in both Ritter and the audience - it sounded like he had scored a Disney movie. But after the initial burst of string and horn, the orchestra was used sparingly - evidently, Ritter is not going to become Richard Ashcroft overnight. Instead, the orchestration was sprinkled like fairy dust throughout - the epic Thin Blue Flame, an obvious candidate for the full-blown orchestral treatment, was instead accompanied by a sole violin.

This was very much a deluxe Josh Ritter presentation, and by the time he launched into Kathleen and Empty Heart, both certified roof-raisers, this show had firmly established itself as one of the gigs of the year. Ritter is going to repeat the orchestral experience at the Marquee in Cork next July, so we can be charmed all over again.