Scenes from an Execution

The persistent feeling at the end of this imperfect but dedicated rendering of Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution is one of privilege. The theme - no longer unique to Barker - is painting as a public event, in this case a representation of the 16th-century Battle of Lepanto, commissioned by the Republic of Venice as a monument to this Christian defeat of the Turks. Art was the Internet of the times, employed to persuade doubting citizens that slaughter was required for the greater glory - and security - of their state.

The work is entrusted to the eccentric female artist Galactia; she paints the famous victory as a gory sacrifice. The response of the enraged authorities suggests that the execution of the painting may lead to the execution of the painter as well. A critic intervenes by offering a different way of seeing the picture, and thus saving it.

Art and politics mix here in a brew stirred by an ironic hand, ladling out delectable commentaries - "I love art, but I despise artists," murmurs the Cardinal - among gatherings of people united by a passionate desire to be somewhere else.

At first it seems that Barker weighs his characters down by giving them too much to say. Then Peadar Donoghue's Doge shows how that weight can be carried by phrasing, gesture, stance, tone and total conviction.

This is the play's crucial role; although Maria Hingerty's enigmatic Galactia verges towards irritation rather than provocation, her performance is heroically sustained, and among a uniformly commendable cast Michael McCarthy as the Cardinal and Cal Duggan as the critic are particularly intelligent.

But this is a play about painting, and Director Ger FitzGibbon has given it both depth and perspective first by using almost the entire Granary ground floor so that there are alcoves and alleys in which shadows lurk, then by cloaking the setting (patterned like a marble chess board) in a haze on which the lighting floats as if trying in vain to penetrate the mists of time.

The audience - and this is the reason for the impression of privilege - is witness to more than a play. These technical determinants are as critical to this reflective theatricality as the performances, and hint at references to art and history with a delicacy for which John Cumiskey's lighting, Herman Bailey's sound and Annemarie Smulder's costumes must be applauded.

Scenes from an Execution continues at the Granary to July 7th, tel: 021-4904275