Reviews

A selection of other reviews.

Othello
Cork Opera House

By Brian O'Connell

Last spring, the Cork Opera House took a leap of imaginative faith when it programmed a spaghetti western version of Romeo and Juliet by a local semi-professional cast. School performances of the classics tread a fine line - teachers expect a certain loyalty to the text to complement their teachings, while students are often so utterly familiar with the words as to harvest ambivalence. Yet Romeo and Juliet was an unexpected success - fresh, funny and contemporary, it succeeded by never straying too far from Shakespeare's emotional core.

Unfortunately, the Opera House seems to have taken two steps backwards with Janus Theatre Company's current take on Othello, which may go a long way towards appeasing curriculum sticklers. For everyone else though, the production should serve as an example of how not to introduce an audience to the possibilities of theatre or the value of interpretation, from a young, impressionable age.

From plodding sound design to lethargic and obvious set design, forgettable costumes and indifferent lighting, on a production level this Othello is found wanting on several fronts. Director Belinda Wild appears to have been so transfixed with cliched Shakespearian throwbacks that she has lost sight of what's important - the text.

Othello is entirely relevant in our multicultural, politically amoral age, yet no attempt is made either in style or substance to forge a link between the ages. Gavin McEntee's Othello is a ghastly mix between Michael Palin and Bob Marley, and by casting a white male with costumed dreadlocks, Wild has inexplicably denied us an insight into Othello's bloodline narrative. Iago is about as menacing as a praying nun, while Ciarán Bermingham is forced to overplay Roderigo in order to inject some comic relief into proceedings.

Accents are inconsistent, moving from country Irish to ham English, often in the same sentence. The one saving grace is Kate McSwiney-O'Rourke's Desdemona - emotionally tangible, distressed and ultimately surrendering. The use of masks throughout may have seemed a good idea on paper, yet with the cast failing to connect meaningfully with the text, in the end they only serve to further alienate the viewer. Runs until Monday

Lenny Henry
Olympia Theatre, Dublin

By Brian Boyd

Lenny Henry has always been a problematic comedian. Problematic in that his fame is predicated on a somewhat cartoonish comedy character approach as opposed to having any real depth to his material. He has been through a few different comedy scenes - including, in the early days, a stint on the UK working men's clubs circuit and a perhaps unwise appearance on The Black and White Minstrel Show.

Over the past few years he has earnestly been trying to shake off his "good time Lenny" persona in favour of a more mature and considered approach. Previous shows have seen him talking about his upbringing in a still very racist Britain in the 1970s, and generally a more introspective side to the man has emerged.

For this current show, Where You From? - which is based around the idea of how humour is regionally influenced (and which went out as a BBC comedy series earlier this year) - he continues with the less manic, more ruminative approach. While the material is more robust than in previous shows, you can't help feeling that the audience is here for "Lenny Henry the comedy superstar" and not for reflections on the nature of comedy.

To be fair, he does make allowances for this - in the latter part of the show he dips into his bag of character comedy and raises more laughs with this more route-one approach.

To be blunt about Henry, though, his material, for the large part, leaves me cold. It is admirable that he is trying to grow as an act and find a new way to present his material. It would be a shame if audience expectations saw him continually going back to a "greatest hits" type of show, because he does have some very good points to make.

His biggest battle, it now seems, is with the preconceptions people have of him. A very mixed show, then - the material doesn't hold up, but he remains a very skilled stage performer.