ArtScape:It was a homecoming of sorts at the Sports and Social Club last night, as RTÉ Radio Drama celebrated winning the Prix Europa Best Radio Drama award for Veronica Coburn's Mayday, a project that was born and bred in the club just a few months ago. The Prix Europa is the premier international media prize (www.prix-europa.de) and the awards in Berlin last month in front of 1,000 people were televised live in Germany.
Head of radio drama Kevin Reynolds, who produced Mayday, described winning the Prix Europa as "like the Oscars, not only because of its prestige, but because it is voted for by a jury of one's peers".
The jury said: "This radio drama drags the listener into an authentic and thrilling insight into a regular Dublin Saturday in May. We become accomplices in stealing a car, and we take part in an anti-abortion demonstration. From the perspective of five young people from very different backgrounds, we feel their desperate emergency call for a future that is worth living for, and, from the prison cell where we end up in the middle of the night, we hear their urgent Mayday - Mayday - Mayday."
Inspired by music commissioned from Brian Crosby of Irish rock band BellX1, Mayday is a snapshot of modern Ireland, set in Dublin on May 1st, in the run-up to a general election. Last April a group of actors led by Coburn "hibernated" with the music for a week in the Sports and Social Club, and came up with Mayday. The party there last night included Coburn, Brian Crosby, Richard McCullough, actors Ali White, Feidhlim Cannon, Elaine Murphy, Helen Roche and Matthew Keenan, and, from RTÉ, Lorelei Harris and Reynolds; dropping by on their way to the theatre were Rory Nolan (off to the Olympia to play Ross O'Carroll-Kelly), and Kate Brennan (off to the Abbey for Playboy).
This is the second devised radio drama involving writer and director Veronica Coburn, sound engineer Richard McCullough and producer Kevin Reynolds; Coburn's Twenty Seven won Best Drama at the 2006 New York Festival, and this year The Woman at the Window by John McKenna also won in New York, making Mayday the third international award won by RTÉ Radio Drama in the past year.
It's a good time for the drama department: it has just finished a Human Rights Season with world premieres from Frank McGuinness, Roddy Doyle and Eugene McCabe, and has permission to produce a radio version of Harold Pinter's Mountain Language, an idea which started with a conversation between Maeve Binchy, Amnesty's Sean Love and Reynolds.
Mayday will be re-broadcast on December 30th at 8pm on RTÉ Radio 1 and is on www.rte.ie/radio1/drama.
Oh what a lovely war
Rough Magic's Improbable Frequency recently began a major national tour in Galway, writes Patrick Lonergan. Written by Arthur Riordan and Bell Helicopter, this musical comedy about strange goings-on in Dublin during the second World War has been a huge hit since its 2004 premiere - touring internationally, and reinvigorating musical theatre in Ireland.
This touring production will allow audiences throughout the country to enjoy everything that made the original so popular: catchy tunes, biting satire, hilariously bad puns, and terrific direction from Lynne Parker.
But there have been some important changes, too. As with the original, there is a careful balance between strong actors and talented singers - but because the show has been almost entirely recast, there are some crucial shifts in emphasis in the new production. For a start, it often seems funnier. Lisa Lambe stole the show first time around. She's replaced here by Sarah-Jane Drummey - a talented singer, but a very different kind of actor.
Drummey's particular talent is to wring irony from every situation: everything she does and says is performed as if it were written within quotation marks. This means that there's no longer a single moment in the show when the audience is transported by the quality of the singing. But the loss of pathos allows the humour to emerge more clearly - and places greater emphasis on the quality of the ensemble. Drummey is joined by Louis Lovett, who takes the lead role of fresh-faced crossword enthusiast-turned spy, Tristram Faraday. Author Arthur Riordan delivers many of his own best lines as the physicist (and apparent sex addict) Erwin Schrodinger; while the sole survivor from the original production, Darragh Kelly, impresses again as Myles na gCopaleen. Much of the responsibility for the production's musical elements now falls to Carrie Crowley and Nick Grennell, two wonderful singers whose style is closer to cabaret and music hall than Broadway bombast - which, again, makes the show seem funnier.
At a post-show talk at Galway's Black Box theatre, Riordan and the rest of the cast acknowledged that some of the material may be provocative: the play's hero is a British spy working in Dublin, its villain is an IRA commander in league with the Nazis, and the coy references to weapons of mass destruction and Irish neutrality are obviously directed at Ireland's present as well as its past. Yet, as Riordan points out, some of the play's most improbable moments are drawn from the historical record.
Most of the cast play several roles, investing so much energy in their performances that it is genuinely surprising to see only six actors taking a bow at the end of the night.
Improbable Frequency continues on tour until December 9th, appearing in Dún Laoghaire, Letterkenny, Ennis, Portlaoise and Longford.
• In drama, the amateur and professional worlds probably don't often collide, but this afternoon at the Mermaid in Bray there's an opportunity to see such a collision. Professional company the Performance Corporation and Bray-based amateur group Square One are presenting a rehearsed reading of Nikolai Gogol's short story The Nose, adapted by Tom Swift (an entirely new piece originally commissioned by the Helix), and directed by Performance Corporation artistic director Jo Mangan. Mermaid and artistic director Maureen Kennelly hope to build on such projects next year. The Nose is at 2pm today at the Mermaid. Tickets €5 www.mermaidartscentre.ie
• If you're in Venice over the next few days, you could catch artist Gerard Byrne's exhibition representing Ireland - plus the other international exhibits - at the Venice Biennale. The 52nd International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale is running since June and closes on Wednesday, and Byrne's solo show is at the Istituto Provinciale per L'Infanzia (for the first time in the same building as the Northern Ireland Pavilion, which features Derry-born artist Willie Doherty). And for those who don't make it to Venice, the OPW hosts the Irish and Northern Ireland exhibitions at Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin, March 8th to May 8th next year. www.farmleighgallery.ie and www.farmleigh.ie.
• Live performance can be a closed shop for those with sight or hearing difficulties, so a new development from Arts & Disability Ireland (ADI) and Abbey Theatre is to be welcomed. For the first time the Abbey is to have both audio-described and captioned performances, for Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle's new Playboy. The show will be audio-described (with a live commentary of the visual elements through individual headsets) tonight and captioned (similar to subtitling, for deaf audiences) next Saturday in a project co-ordinated by ADI, with Arts Council funding and supported by Belfast audio-describers Sight Lines, the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, Theatre Forum and UK captioner Stagetext.
ADI director Pádraig Naughton, who is visually impaired, plans to include audio-descriptions and captioned performances next year for Abbey and DTF productions and performances outside Dublin. www.adiarts.ie Booking: www.abbeytheatre.ie
• A top job in the arts is currently open, as Mark Mulqueen prepares to move to head of communications at the Oireachtas, leaving the Irish Film Institute after nearly seven years at the helm. The Dublin-based director is responsible for its strategic development, leading 60 staff at the IFI, which operates the IFI Centre and Cinemas, the Irish Film Archive, a nationwide Film Education Programme and specialist film festivals. Details at www.irishfilm.ie. The deadline for applications is next Wednesday, November 21st.
