Irish Timeswriters cast a critical eye over events at the Dublin Fringe Festival this week and beyond.
The Electric Picture Palace
Spiegeltent, Iveagh Gardens
Hidden from view by two projector screens displaying mirror versions of the same image, Donal Dineen and 3epkano's latest collaboration was a match made in heaven. Dineen, best-known for his left-field electronica radio show, Small Hours, has developed his interest in film-making over the past decade, while Dublin band 3epkano specialise in providing their own scores for classic silent movies.
It's one thing creating soundtracks for feature films, but accompanying a collection of disjointed scenes presents a very different challenge. Dineen's work, shot mostly on Super 8 film, presents disparate images of modified bric-a-brac, urban and rural landscapes and human figures, all in various stages of motion. 3epkano's compositions, post-rock by any other name, were thoughtful and sympathetic. Using quiet/loud sound dynamics to ideal effect, the seven musicians added further colour and depth, and most importantly, masterfully facilitated the audience's own interpretations.
Show concluded
- BRIAN KEANE
Equilibre
Grand Canal Square
The sun was the most welcome special effect as an audience of all ages huddled on the pavement at Hanover Quay for this free, family-friendly event. A trio of French street-performance pieces celebrating physical stamina and daring began with Nous Tube 2,which nodded in the direction of a Victorian freak-show. An acrobat submerged in a giant glass cylinder played with our perspective on the human body, while suggesting more disturbing aspects of test-tube foetal experiments.
Les Étoilesgenerated a fairground thrill as two mischievous tightrope dancers spun and shimmied in their stilettos, in a witty variation on an old art. The climax was provided by Beau Geste's Transport Exceptionelle, a balletic pas de deuxbetween a sinuous dancer and - erm - a mechanical digger. Man and machine in a kinetic dialogue, accompanied by Maria Callas at full throttle - what else would you do on a Saturday afternoon?
Show concluded
- HELEN MEANY
Paranoid
Secret Meeting Point
There is something effectively cold-sweat-inducing about receiving a Saturday-night text message to confirm a secret meeting place the following afternoon in the city centre for a Fringe performance, with the addition of: "Paranoid? You should be."
Factor in the show's proviso, that anyone you meet over the 90 minutes of Paranoia may be in on the act, and you're guaranteed clammy palms and a mind ripe for messing with. Despite that, and for all its convincing performances and quirky set pieces, Paranoid ultimately squanders the excitement of its mysterious set-up. While the premise - the sole audience member is taken through Dublin's streets without any warning of what's around the next corner - is novel and compelling, the theatrical strands fail to come together to produce any coherent whole, or even the promised, and by the end of the show, strangely desirable, state of paranoia. Until Sat
- FIONA MCCANN
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Old Ballymun Comprehensive
Perhaps it's churlish to use these words to complain, but it would help if someone at Fringe Central (not least the box-office) had bothered to find out which of several schools known locally as "Ballymun Comp" Roundabout Youth Theatre's new production was being held in. Apparently, such practical pandemonium "won't affect your enjoyment of the show" Actually, it does - but it won't affect my review.
Rock, Paper, Scissors(pictured) is an ambitious blend of dance, drama, and installation art. Set in a near-derelict school that seethes with nightmarish atmosphere, the technical set-up of constant classroom-changing is well-executed, ensuring momentum for the 120-minute show. However, there is no dramatic cohesion to the various (cliched) stories that unfold.
Apart from one stunning silent scene in the boys' toilets and a few amusing caricatures, Rock, Paper, Scissorsis irredeemably unfocused: "school" is a setting, not a theme. As with the venue fiasco, a clear sense of direction would help.
Until Sun
- SARA KEATING
Storytaker
The Lab
Written and directed by Patrick Bridgeman, Storytakeris a piece of promenade theatre which follows the fate of an amnesiac who has taken on the identity of a man he has killed - or has he? As the play unfolds across the various levels of the narrow stairwell in the Lab, the audience is asked to decide to what extent the lost protagonist is responsible for stealing someone else's story and to what extent their own involvement has authored the drama they have just witnessed.
Although the unforgiving lighting in the stairwell robs the production of any atmosphere and the acting is often overly indebted to am-dram improv, Storytakeris a well-executed and clever conceit.
It might have made a better short film, but it is a satisfying piece of theatre nonetheless.
Until Sun
- SARA KEATING
Sugarhill Gang
Spiegeltent, Iveagh Gardens
Despite the teeming rain, the doors remained shut at the Spiegeltent until 9.30pm and when the Sugarhill Gang took to the stage an hour later it was for just about 70 minutes - but it was a blistering set of the finest old school hip hop, audience dance-offs, MC face-offs and Gang-related madness.
They've been ripping it up for three decades, and the height of bling in their lyrics is still a sunroof Cadillac and a colour TV. And to cap it all off, they hipped to the hop, the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, and they didn't stop the rock until the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat (as the lyrics from Rapper's Delightgo, nearly). And the Spiegeltent almost blew up.
Show concluded
- LAURENCE MACKIN
Viva!
Bosco Theatre
Maria Tecce's new show has a Latin swing to it, with tango rhythms and Spanish finger-clicking numbers. The audience in the medium-size Bosco tent took to it all with enthusiasm.
Some old favourites, such as The Man I Loveand Besame Mucho(in Spanish) helped to create a mood that the entertainer built on. An elderly male was induced to join her in an exotic dance, under the tolerant gaze of his wife, to general applause. The mix was clearly working, and even the naughty My Chocolate Jesuscaught on nicely.
Tecce was in impressive voice in a range of songs, the final one of which she sang without accompaniment.
Before that she was supported by a brilliant guitarist, Mike Neilson, and an excellent bass player. Her programme would have benefited from a better linking script, and by a venue less vulnerable to outside noise - but then that's the Fringe.
Show concluded
- GERRY COLGAN
We're Not Real
Dublin Youth Theatre
"Stop narrating me", a teenager screams, as a multitude of voices whisper in her ear. In fact, We're Not Real, four plays devised and directed by members of Dublin Youth Theatre, is all about teenagers taking responsibility for their own stories: the pressures of becoming a man; the disappointments of becoming a woman; the confusion of an adolescent limbo of enforced responsibility and a refusal of control . . .
However, We're Not Realis never self-indulgent. The dramaturgy is generous, as in the first piece, It's a Gift: A Little Parcel, which is resumed again at the evening's end, while in A Line in a Story, cocaine is treated to an impressive meditation on the media and the drug trade as well as peer pressure.
The use of technology in the plays, meanwhile, is incredibly sophisticated, emphasising the increasing emotional distance created in a world where virtual identities can supersede real-life encounters.
The dark themes and raw energy of We're Not Realmay not be for the faint-hearted (perhaps especially not for parents), but as a gauge of the reality, and the maturity, of modern youth culture, it is an eye-opener, as well as an entertaining evening in the theatre.
Until Sat
- SARA KEATING
War of the Roses III: Back in Black
Civic Offices Amphitheatre
Please don't tell us it's over . . . Alas, it seems the third annual instalment of War of the Roses, the smart, ferociously fun and maddeningly ephemeral Whiplash Productions version of Shakespeare's history plays, has brought this series to a fittingly slippery climax of sexual chicanery and international throne-wrangling, virtuoso eye-gouging and rock-opera clamour. Performed outdoors - this year with atmospheric lighting effects (by Conleth White) and a bone-soaking downpour effect (by God) - Paul Burke's exhilarating production recognised that no dynasty is so complex that it can't be identified with the right combination of punk-goth fetish gear, and no battle too brutal to forgo the balletic mayhem of a WWE SmackDown tournament. Gavin Kostick's witty scripting gives the clashes a lean, mean clarity, but it's the quick-witted, high-calibre cast - battling the elements without ever losing grip of their swords or, most impressively, their words - who take this grimy and savage squabble and turn it into something truly heroic.
Show concluded
- PETER CRAWLEY
Boucly, RTÉ NSO/Markson
NCH, Dublin
Schubert -Rosamunde Overture. Reinecke -Flute Concerto in D. Brahms -Symphony No 1.
LIKE A dinner party that opens with drinks in the sitting room but by late evening has evolved into an intense discussion or even argument, this concert used up its quota of small talk in the first half.
Among the initial pleasantries was the D major Flute Concertoof Carl Reinecke. He wrote it in 1908, aged 84, and its essentially German, early romantic style is seasoned with hints of melodic and orchestral sensuousness which show that he admired some of his French contemporaries.
Flautist Philippe Boucly brought a clarity like spring water to the tuneful solo part, among whose best moments was a warm-hearted duet with cello in the slow movement. He delivered the finale's fluttering passage work with easy dispatch.
If there was a little more substance to Schubert's Rosamunde Overture, on this occasion it still only sounded like chat compared with what came after the interval.
This was Brahms's First Symphony. Famously, as he struggled into his forties to produce it, Brahms felt intimidated by the ghost of Beethoven at his shoulder. The final outcome - despite its many deliberate connections to Beethoven, both conspicuous and subtle - is something new, music characterised by a Brahmsian conflation of the romantic age he lived in and the classical ideals to which he remained devoted.
This same combination is personified in the conducting of Gerhard Markson, who was perfectly matched to this symphony. Like Brahms, Markson addresses music's emotional element with restraint rather than indulgence, an approach that enhances expression by controlling it. In this way, Markson heightened the Beethovenian C minor intensity of the first movement, the warmth of the second and the build-up of anticipation in the third. All this is purposefully connected by Brahms to the immense build-up and release that takes place in the finale. Drawing out rich string-playing, fine wind solos and a ringingly resonant trombone chorale, Markson beautifully navigated the symphony's intricate itinerary to produce a performance of memorable emotional power.
- MICHAEL DUNGAN
Abercrombie, Buckley, Guilfoyle, Baron
Whelan's, Dublin
NOW AND again you get an emphatic reminder of the heart, imagination, skill and rhythmic vitality that first drew you to jazz - and, decades later, still binds you to the music you love. This concert, by John Abercrombie (guitar), Michael Buckley (tenor), Ronan Guilfoyle (bass) and Joey Baron (drums), was one such.
That was clear from the palpable warmth of the opening You and the Night and the Music. The musicians clearly enjoyed each other's company, personally and musically. Concerned only to give of their best for each other and the music, they had the talent to do so supremely well.
In an evening abounding in gems, there wasn't a dull moment. Abercrombie's Spring Song, a delightful piece in medium-slow ¾, included a magisterial guitar improvisation in a welter of gripping solos and ended with a long, lingering coda full of marvellous interplay, particularly between guitar and tenor.
Guilfoyle's George's Hat, from his Renaissance Mansuite in memory of his father (and just recorded by this group), opened its solo sequence with a fine bass outing, and developed into a compelling tenor and guitar chase, grooving euphorically under Baron's inspiring drumming.
The second set was even better. Abercrombie's oblique guitar intro became an effervescent take on Thelonious Monk's Nutty, replete with some superb tenor and guitar. A trio version of Abercrombie's Jazz Folkshowed how cohesive a unit he, Guilfoyle and Baron are, while his Jack and Bettyprovided sublime quartet playing of the utmost delicacy.
The encore, The Theme, was simply marvellous blues-playing by all concerned. This, finally, was as much a collective as an individual triumph.
- RAY COMISKEY
