Reviews

Irish Timeswriters review The Mikadoat the NCH, Michael Hardings Is There Balm in Gilead? at the Pavilion and the  RTÉCOunder the baton of Stephen Hall with soprano Deirdre Moynihan at the NCH.

The Mikado, NCH, Dublin

Grotesquerie looms large in all the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. It was very much to the fore in Festival Productions' colourful and bustling The Mikado at the NCH. In a splendid quartet of well-sung male grotesques, Tony Finnegan's brilliant portrayal of the ridiculously self-important Pooh-Bah was abetted by tenor Eugene O'Hagen's nimbly twee Ko-Ko, Adam Lawlor's smoothie of a Pish-Tush and Derek Ryan's impressive bass monarch whose "object all sublime" is to "make the punishment fit the crime".

On the distaff side, Jackie Curran Olohan was an ogress of a Katisha, but her strong contralto suffered from the wayward amplification, which gave it an unpleasant edge at the top. The most incisive vocalism of the evening was delivered by mezzo Ceara Grehan as a vivacious Pitti-Sing.

The juveniles, Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo, were neatly acted and sung by Claudia Boyle and David Thompson, and Mary-Beth Jennings rounded out the trio of little maids as a pert Peep-Bo. The choral singing was enthusiastic, with the ladies offering more refinement than their lusty male counterparts.

Aidan Faughey, an adept in this repertoire, accompanied the singers convincingly. But he spoiled Sullivan's melodic flow by allowing the stop-start insertion of redundant gags during some of the comic numbers. His 15-piece orchestra lacked tonal depth in the strings and there were a few instances of odd balance and loose ensemble.

Vivian Coates' staging, in his own attractive sets, moved the action along briskly, although with a tad too much fidgety moving about during the spoken passages. The comic impact of the Mikado, in particular, would have benefited from less prowling and more gravitas. The often quite beautiful stage pictures were enhanced by Derek O'Neill's imaginative lighting, and Siobhan McQuillan's choreography was effective, especially so in her elegant handling of the ladies' entrance number. - John Allen

Is There Balm in Gilead? Pavilion, Dún Laoghaire

Michael Harding's work has engaged before with the surreal, and here he adds the supernatural and macabre to the mix. His new play takes its allusive title from the Book of Jeremiah, or from one of the many literary texts that have used it.

Particularly apropos is Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, in which the narrator seeks the eponymous balm to mend his broken heart.

This appears to be set in 19th-century America, and opens with a woman addressing the moon, inviting it to see her bed, while a man lurks unseen behind her. She is wearing a lavish dress, and he is in evening wear. Even when she notices him, she does not address him directly for a time.

When they begin to converse, some sense of relationship permeates their exchanges. They were probably married, but are now strangers in the ultimate sense; they do not really know each other. At one point the man asserts that he has another life, should be in another place. The woman derides him, at moments in coarse language that does violence to her up-market persona.

A certain menace suffuses their exchanges. At one point he draws an open razor behind her, which she senses; but his intended and actual victim is her cat, which he kills offstage with some sadism. She assumes dominance over him in the play's dying fall, which resolves little of the play's narrative puzzles.

No; this is a tale, after Poe, of mystery and imagination. Mary McEvoy and Sean Murphy offer splendidly enigmatic performances, directed by Caroline Fitzgerald, to create a diverting frisson that is its own reward. - Gerry Colgan

Runs until Sat

Moynihan, RTÉCO/Hall, NCH, Dublin

Grieg - Wedding Day at Troldhaugen. Handel - Let the Bright Seraphim. Moore (arr. N Kelehan) - The Last Rose of Summer. Curzon - March of the Bowmen. Binge - The Watermill. Caccini - Ave Maria. Arditi - Il bacio. Sibelius - Humoresque No 1. Ellis - Coronation Scott. Coates - Dambusters March

This was the sort of programme that could have been a ragbag. But it wasn't, largely because of the way works were grouped. The four vocal items were sung by soprano Deirdre Moynihan, whose tone was especially pleasing in the upper register.

They included the famous Caccini Ave Maria. But when, oh when are programmers going to cease from this inane attribution? It's a modern fake by Stephen Mercurio, which takes one vocal phrase from the early 17th-century singer-composer, and extends it via a kitschy pastiche of late 18th-century style.

Handel's Let the Bright Seraphim showed Moynihan's deft ability with light coloratura; though she did not show much awareness of the dramatic possibilities of the dialogue between voice and solo trumpet, the latter ably played by Sean Hooke. Moynihan's singing of the so-called Caccini showed that she can also sustain a long lyric line. However, it was equally obvious that she was most at home, most relaxed, when presenting the cheeky, virtuosic lightness of Arditi's vocal waltz Il Bacio.

The orchestral items, too, were of the lighter kind. Under the baton of Stephen Hall the RTÉ Concert Orchestra played with good ensemble and a pleasing sense of direction and phrase. However, orchestral balance sometimes needed more finesse; and I was reminded of Richard Strauss's reported advice to young conductors: "Never look at the brass; it only encourages them." Ellis's famous Coronation Scott had the right combination of polish and evocation, and Coates' Dambusters March had bracing swagger. However, perhaps the most striking performance in the concert was of Sibelius's Humoresque I. This is a work of profound lightness, and its character was well-captured by the orchestra and by the strong shaping that the RTÉCO's leader, Mia Cooper, brought to the solo violin part. - Martin Adams