Reviews

Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme

Táin Theatre, Dundalk

Frank McGuinness’s powerful 1985 memory play continues to impress as a piece of drama. Set in 1916, as a group of protestant Ulster soldiers prepare to fight the most bloody battle of the first World War, the incantatory ritual that structures the play moves with the beauty and strangeness of a religious ceremony. However, instead of church bells, we hear the death knell of a pulsing lambeg drum, calling the soldiers back to their eternal home.

History plays always speak to the present though, and at the play’s premiere at the Peacock Theatre during the height of the Troubles, and its revival on the Abbey stage in 1994 as the Good Friday Agreement was being slowly teased out, its historical politics, and its gesture in cultural understanding, had vital significance for the contemporary situation.

Maree Kearns’s memorable set taps into the symbolism of McGuinness’s script, where every action and image – the nicking of a finger, the premonition of a red sky, the peeling of an apple, a mock re-enactment of the Battle of Scarva – is laden with greater meaning. Kearns’s solid, carved, stone edifice is a memorial to the fallen soldiers as well as a tomb for their unlikely leader, Pyper, the death-driven anti-hero who manages to find the strength to live as his fellow-soldiers, his friends, his lover, march to their grave. Enhanced by Eamon Fox’s lighting design, the set enables some stunning images, especially in the opening scene, where the ghosts of the soldiers are revealed to the Older Pyper, played by Ian McElhinny, or when his tortured face is frozen against the concrete slab like a death-mask on his own head-stone.

But these are stilled images, and the movement of the play never achieves the same effect, despite some strong performances from the ensemble (and from Marty Rea, Simon Boyle and Rory Nolan especially). A misplaced interval diffuses the tension even more.

Ultimately, however, it is the good fortune of the complex peace process in Northern Ireland and its contemporary stability that stunts Livin' Dred's production. Under the direction of Padraic McIntyre, it is utterly competent, but in the contemporary landscape of political stability, there is no sense of urgency behind the company of soldiers' fight for life, and no driving passion behind their final sacrifice, neither for the abstracted Gods of protestant culture, nor for each other. At Roscommon Arts Centre, tonight and tomorrow; Ramor Theatre, Virginia Nov 6-7; Backstage Theatre, Longford, Nov 10-11; Mullingar Arts Centre, Nov 13-14; Droichead Arts Centre, Nov 17-18; Iontas, Castleblaney, Nov 20-21 SARA KEATING

Mackey, ICO/ Marwood

RDS, Dublin

Osvaldo Golijov– Last Round; Barber– Adagio for Strings; Steven Mackey– Four Iconoclastic Episodes; John Kinsella– Prelude and Toccata; Mozart– Symphony No 29

This well-structured programme included three works by living composers, and was part of the Royal Dublin Society’s annual Chamber Music Weekend. It was also an opportunity to hear the Irish Chamber Orchestra in its regular venue for the 09/10 season – the RDS’s newly renovated concert hall. The renovation seems beneficial, for the hall has a welcoming brightness, and the sound is warmer, clearer, and more balanced.

The easiest listening came in the second half. The forceful and engaging playing of John Kinsella's (b. 1932) virtuosic display-piece Prelude and Toccata(2006-8), and of Mozart's Symphony No. 29, typified the bold and sometimes unsubtle performance-style into which the ICO and director Anthony Marwood pitched themselves with unfailing commitment.

Not that the first half, devoted to music from the Americas, had been hard going. It opened with Last Round(1996), whose composer, Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960), has lived in the USA for many years. This homage to his great compatriot, Piazzolla, epitomises the muscular, mongrel vigour that can be such a distinctive strength of American art. It was an effective companion-piece to that icon of Americanism, Barber's Adagio for Stringswhich, like the Kinsella, is the composer's arrangement of a work for string quartet.

The third American work, Four Iconoclastic Episodes, by Stephen Mackey (b. 1956), is a new commission by the ICO and others.

It reflects the composer's printed comments, which include general statements about ideas, influences and techniques, but the music does a pretty good job of speaking for itself. It is a sort of concerto for strings, solo violin (Marwood) and electric guitar (the composer). Although not traditionally contrapuntal, it is bracingly polyphonic, with layers defined by colour, rhythm, pitch, speed of motion – almost anything the composer fancies within his resourceful and disciplined imagination. MARTIN ADAMS