THEATRE:JANE COYLE; PETER CRAWLEY; MARY LELAND; PATRICK LONERGAN review the highlights and lowlights of year in theatre.
THE HIGHLIGHTS
ANTIGONE
Belfast Festival at Queen's
A new version of Antigone by Owen McCafferty - a play we thought we knew so well until McCafferty switched the focus onto Creon and the inner workings of this soldier-turned-king, majestically played by Ian McElhinney. Splendid performances by Walter McGonagle and Harry Towb made Prime Cut's handsome Belfast Festival production, directed by McCafferty, a night to remember. JC
BLACK WATCH
Dublin Theatre Festival
Under attack both at home and abroad, the storied Black Watch regiment saw the demise of its 300-year tradition in Scotland, while simultaneously being tarnished and overwhelmed in Iraq. The National Theatre of Scotland's production (above right), as much an elegy for the regiment as an exaltation of performance, focused on the soldiers to create a production both political and physical, blending verbatim text with dance sequences, using its ingenuity and rigor to win hearts and minds. PC
ENDA WALSH SEASON
Galway Arts Festival
The status of Enda Walsh as a major Irish writer was confirmed this summer with Druid's production of a mini-season of his plays for the Galway Arts Festival. New Electric Ballroom featured some of the best acting seen anywhere in Ireland during 2008, while his shorter play Gentrification was a grippingly pertinent exploration of social class and the commercialisation of everyday life. PL
THE FIRST GALWAY THEATRE FESTIVAL
Galway, October
There is a growing sense of excitement about the emergence of so many new theatre companies in Galway. The first Galway Theatre Festival showed why that excitement is justified, presenting six different productions over four days in October. PL
GATZ
Dublin Theatre Festival
Never mind the length (seven and a half hours, but whos timing?), the Elevator Repair Service's epic Gatz, performed at the Dublin Theatre Festival, somehow transformed F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby into a theatrically immersive experience. Without sparing a word of the jazz age satire, John Collins's masterful production combined straight reading with continual inventiveness, shifting its rules and rhythms to show how fiction eclipses the distractions of the outside world. PC
LITERARY ADAPTATIONS
One pleasing trend in theatre this year has been the inclusion of words never intended to be spoken. Just as literary adaptations abounded in 2008, from Katie Mitchell's electrifying Waves to Livin Dred's invigorating revival of The Dead School, so Selina Cartmell's Big Love and Tea Algic's sparingly seductive The Brothers Size found room to articulate their stage directions.
The most unforgettable extra-dialogic instruction, though, came during Druid's reading of John McManus's splenetic satire A Lock of Fierce Roars - "Davy casually throws the rat into the audience" - a gag made more unshakeable for happening only in the mind. PC
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ENCOUNTER TRILOGY
Baboró Festival
The Baboró Festival celebrated its 12th anniversary by presenting a trilogy of plays for children by New International Encounter, a celebrated European company. Focusing on vulnerable individuals who are caught up in major historical events, NIE's work was affirmative, intelligent, and wonderfully performed. PL
THE PARKER PROJECT
Belfast Festival at Queen's and Dublin's Smock Alley
Twenty years after the death of Stewart Parker, the Lyric Theatre and Rough Magic combined to produce The Parker Project. This imaginative pairing of his first and last plays 'Spokesong' and 'Pentecost' was directed by Lynne Parker and first performed in the atmospheric surroundings of the old Belfast Assembly Rooms, at the heart of the maze of streets where Parker's unique dramatic vision unfolded. JC
TOWERING PERFORMANCES
In a year featuring several star turns, some seemed appropriate - Michael Gambon's gravitas and generosity teasing open No Man's Land at The Gate - while others seemed like overkill. If the performance of the year proves to be star making, it is because Tom Vaughan Lawlor's Arturo Ui, a contorted clown uncurling into a ramrod fascist, commanded full attention while serving the play.
That shouldn't overshadow some quiet triumphs: Aaron Monaghan's coiled and hopeful Cripple Billy, Marty Rea's wit and fluidity across the Parker Project, or the brilliant Fiona Bell simply breaking some eggs to prefigure the tragedy of Further Than The Furthest Thing. PC
WAR OF THE ROSES TRILOGY
Dublin Theatre Festival
The final instalment of the War of the Roses trilogy - Paul Burke's maddeningly ephemeral adaptation of Shakespeare's history plays - not only epitomised the rigour and success of this year's Dublin Fringe Festival, but also the astonishing industry of adapter Gavin Kostick. Performed outdoors, during a biblical deluge, and spurred on by the knowledge that its rock-opera, battle-heavy adaptation shouldn't have worked in even clement conditions, the shows energy, intelligence and warm audience rapport compelled it to become something special. PC
THE LOWLIGHTS
A VERY PUBLIC AIRING
When Druid's hopes to stage an O'Casey cycle were sadly scuppered, prompting a very public spat with the Abbey over performance rights, the clash was more emotive than procedural, suggesting a wider anxiety about "a big beast in a very small jungle". For a while Irish theatre looked embittered, defensive and uncooperative. With all arts organisations now competing for diminished funding, such rifts will hopefully be healed. PC
HIMSELF AND NORA
Bloomsday
If anyone harbours vague suspicions that the Dennys Breakfast is a trivial way of celebrating James Joyce, Himself and Nora, an American musical, offered something more indigestible. Squeezing every literary innovation into a reductive showstopper, we got Joyce on the church: "I won't kneel, I will write!" Joyce on exile: "If I stay I'll never be the voice of Ireland" and - a personal favourite - Joyce's challenging way with language: "Ireland, my Ireland, home of the most perfect word. . . Love!" PC
ACTOR TRAINING
The Forum on Acting Training this year recommended the founding of an Irish Academy of Theatre Arts. It's an ambitious proposal, particularly with an economy in the doldrums. The new Dramatic Arts Academy was announced with much fanfare, but, with funding still being sought, the Maynooth programme has noticeably quietened. With training opportunities shrinking here, the gurgle of a talent drain may soon be heard. PC
CARNIVAL
Belfast Festival at Queen's
High hopes were dashed by the Kabosh premiere of Lucy Caldwell's Carnival, one of the anticipated highlights of the festival. For all the picturesque lushness of the Spiegeltent, the actors struggled with external noise and poor sightlines, as well as with an unwieldy script which, while focusing on an important issue - the plight of the Roma - never came anywhere near to feeling like a play. JC
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ISLAND THEATRE
The effective disappearance of Limerick's Island Theatre company is bad news - not only for its local community, but for Irish theatre generally. Since its foundation, Island has premiered new Irish plays and developed local acting talent; more recently, they've introduced important new British playwrights like Gregory Burke and David Greig to Irish audiences. It's difficult to see how that vacuum can be filled. PL
MACBETH
Second Age
At a time when approaches to the teaching and performance of Shakespeare are being revolutionised internationally, it was genuinely depressing to see Second Age's latest version of Macbeth - their fifth in a decade. As with so many of that company's productions of Shakespeare over the years, this was unimaginative and lifeless - and with acting and directing that were overwhelmingly poor.
Irish school audiences deserve much better - will they ever get it? PL