IF it was the intention of the author, Antoine O Flatharta, and the director, Brian Brady, simply to offer an impressionistic picture of young people living in chaos and misinformation, subject to commercial, cultural and parental pressures, then this presentation by the newly-reconstructed National Youth Theatre on the smaller stage of the National Theatre Society may be deemed a modest success. But if the intention was to offer a coherent drama, then the evening was lost on this member of the audience. In terms of theatrical structure, the piece - bursting with half-formed ideas and unrealised conflicts - lacks shape, focus and any kind of rounded characterisations.
Young Hazel Gannon returns from Spain to take over the supermarket owned by her father, who died over Christmas of a heart attack. She does not want to be a shopkeeper. The shop is at risk of subsidence. One of its check-out staff is determined to prove that most of its products are toxic or dangerous to health. A local radio disc jockey is trying to date the reluctant new owner. The place is (for no immediately apparent dramatic reason) inhabited by ghosts (including an unlikely Santa Claus) and by a crowd of phantom shoppers, never mind the structural engineers who come in to try to shore up the foundations against collapse. And one new recruit to the staff - incompetent but committed and a grocery salesman are about the only human supports for the enterprise.
The young players commit themselves to their tasks with energy, but none of them is given the time or the words to craft a convincing character and most are forced to glide around on roller blades or on long telephone lines as seeming symbols of the changing world (maybe?). Throughout the 90 uninterrupted minutes there is no apparent drawing together of any of the multitudinous threads which might have offered any cogent sense of dramatic purpose.
V.M. Bhatt & Chris Smither Empire Music Hall, Belfast
By COLIN HARPER
IT'LL be a long time before any bar in Belfast sees all entertainment show as memorable as this thrilling double bill, which opened the Belfast Folk Festival. Both Smither and Bhatt are guitarists with instantly recognisable techniques and substantial reputations, and while the hoped-for get-together may have been the stuff of fantasy, the two individual sets were as compelling as they were diverse.
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt is for his 1994 collaboration with Ry Cooder, a Grammy winner and we were reminded of this (and a litany of other achievements) through a singularly immodest self-penned introduction, in which we also discovered his name translates as "world charmer". One must assume this is a custom of some sort, although in truth his virtuosity lived up to the preamble. Seated lotus-like and stilling an awed crowd, Bhatt - on a guitar adaptation played with a lap steel and sonically reminiscent of sitar meets musical saw - and his two accompanists performed two classical pieces and one original.
The chemistry throughout was simply awesome. Smither needs no chemistry with anyone to be awesome; he just needs a stage and someone to listen. The austere, serene aura of the Indians contrasted at once with the wounded soul from, New Orleans wrestling physically with his guitar, and laying before a packed house this achingly beautiful and deeply resonant music. A near silence was broken only by the amplified thud of his foot beating a desolate rhythm on the stage. There are all kinds of emotions in Smither's music humour, tenderness, bravado but the voice is that of a manic depressive channeling a very real despair through music in search of healing. In the process he gives, unassumingly and with a smile that shows experience and professionalism caging turmoil, a kind of healing to us all.
