Conleth Hill and Sean Campion, co-stars in Marie Jones's wistful comedy Stones in His Pockets, are always reluctant to upstage each other and quick to acknowledge each other's talent. In the Lyric Theatre's globetrotting production, they each play seven different characters, and slip through multiple changes of accent and gesture. "It's never a case of this is your big moment and this is mine," Hill has said. Last weekend both actors were recognised by the Laurence Olivier awards in London, with Conleth Hill winning the Best Actor award, for which Sean Campion was also nominated.
Marie Jones won the award for Best New Comedy for Stones in His Pockets which has travelled internationally to great acclaim since it made its first appearance abroad at the Edinburgh Festival in 1999. The production, currently running at the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End, also won two Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards last year - for Conleth Hill as Best Actor and for Best Production, under Ian McIlhinney's direction. The Abbey Theatre's production of Frank McGuinness's Dolly West's Kitchen was also feted at the Olivier awards, with a nomination for the BBC Award for Best New Play, while Pauline Flanagan won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Rima. The winner of the Best New Play award was Joe Penhall for Blue/Orange at the Royal National Theatre.
Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Amanda Holden won the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for The Silver Tassie, a new opera based on Sean O'Casey's play, which Opera Ireland is staging in Dublin at the end of this month in a new production directed by Patrick Mason (opening March 31st in the Gaiety).
Among last week's Arts Council funding decisions was the announcement of a grant of £17,326 to the European Academy of Poetry conference, a rotating event which will be hosted in Dublin this year. John F. Deane and Seamus Heaney are the two Irish members of the academy and from April 26th-29th, they will join a small group of notable poets and poetry translators from throughout Europe for a series of public readings and round-table discussions. These will be held in Airfield House, Dundrum, the Irish Writers' Centre and the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre. A medal for poetry translation will be awarded and a book of poems from the academy, published by Daedalus Press, will be launched on Thursday, April 26th. (Further information from: 01-618 0201.)
The remaining Arts Council grant decisions - including those to the National Theatre, the Gate, Druid and Wexford Festival Opera - will be announced at the end of the month.
London theatre critics' admiration for Conor McPherson's work is undimmed, it seems, judging by the reviews of his new play, Port Authority, which premiered this week at the New Ambassador's Theatre. This Gate Theatre production, directed by the author, takes the form of three separate monologues performed by Jim Norton, Stephen Brennan and Eanna Mac Liam on a bare stage. "His terrifically acted production strikes just the right note of understated sadness", writes Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard. "Even if this new play doesn't greatly extend his range, it shows him occupying his familiar terrain with glittering wit and assurance," writes Michael Billington in the Guardian. "The narrative links are tenuous," he continues, "what matters is that the three men, while representing different facets of Ireland, all occupy the same emotional wasteland . . . McPherson's point is that the Irish male is congenitally clumsy in dealing with the heart's affections and treats women as either idolised Madonnas or base sex-objects." While Billington wishes McPherson would return to "the dynamic interchange of dialogue", he writes "like a recording Irish angel" and has "an uncanny empathy with older generations". For Benedict Nightingale in the Times, "it's hard to overpraise the actors" who "leave you marvelling at McPherson's deft writing, humanity and belief in his own gender". In the Financial Times, Alastair Macauley is equally enthusiastic about the performances: "Eanna Mac Liam is very fine as the youngest of the team . . . Jim Norton, never to be forgotten from The Weir is here even more extraordinary as the oldest speaker . . . Most astounding of all is Stephen Brennan. His is the most pathetic tale of all, the most drunken and the funniest . . . his stillness and his timing in delivering it are of the very highest order of theatre magic."
Port Authority transfers to the Gate Theatre on April 24th.
