Oasis, the Point Theatre, Dublin
For a multiplatinum-selling stadium band famed for their live shows, Oasis don't really perform when playing live.
The tortoise-on-hind-legs stance of Liam Gallagher, the scowling inanition of the rest of the band - apart from a little posing with the tambourine, Oasis have little interest in visuals: they're here to play their music without ceremony.
Whatever about the hoariness of their music, on stage their contempt for rock cliché is pretty clear. Instead, they dominate the stage and create an atmosphere through the unpredictability of their famously edgy frontman, by having a career full of songs tailor-made for playing live and by simply going for it full throttle.
Whatever little subtlety they may weave into their recordings, it fails to register live, buried beneath a wall of sound notched up as high as it will go - in part to compete with the singalong tendencies of a few thousand people.
And what a set to sing along to. Oasis have almost a decade of hits to draw from, with a generous helping from their new, mellower album, Heathen Chemistry, mixed up with a selection of the old: Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Little By Little and Songbird showed the return-to-form credentials of the new material.
The high points among the old were thunderous versions of Morning Glory, Supersonic and Cigarettes And Alcohol, with (relatively) new band members Gem Archer and Andy Bell beefing up the sound and acting as a solid musical foundation to the aforementioned
wall. As an encore - one cliché that can't be avoided - Noel led the nostalgia- soaked Don't Look Back In Anger, and for a final flourish Liam again took centre stage for a wistful version of The Who's My Generation.
The years are passing and Oasis know it - Liam recently commented that they would release one more "great" album before splitting up, they've given up on the US and say they'll never do Top Of The Pops again.
Tonight, they were here to do the business, but with middle-age approaching, it seems the Gallaghers do want to get old before they die.
John Lane
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The Strange Voyage Of Donald Crowhurst at Factory Performance Space, Sligo
Donald Crowhurst, a 36-year-old amateur sailor, set out on the first single-handed non-stop round-the- world sailing race, in 1968. Eight months later, his boat was found in mid-Atlantic without its skipper. Documents on board revealed he had been hiding off the coast of Argentina the whole time, never having left the Atlantic.
Without this information, given in the programme notes, it would be hard to know what Malcolm Hamilton's new play, produced by the Blue Raincoat company, is all about. Even with it, the story is by no means crystal clear.
There is a boat, there are two Donalds and three Clares (his wife), all on stage throughout; a new slant on polygamy. The sailors are boastful, confused and rather daft; the wives, with four
children to mind, are anxious and frustrated.
It is soon clear that Blue Raincoat has used the basic story as a launch pad for a flight of the imagination that dismisses limitations of convention or rationality.
The company's high reputation has been built on physical grace and interpretative movement, and Niall Henry's direction ensures that this aspect of its work is given priority here.
At times the stage seems possessed by phantasmagoria, a dream in which the five characters swirl helplessly towards whatever fate awaits them.
The actors - John Carty, Ciaran McCauley, Fiona McGeown, Sandra O'Malley and Barbara Ryan - catch the mood with perfection.
They do not offer us characterisations in depth - it is not that kind of play - but they move like robots, clockwork toys or drunken sailors and speak with a difference that underlines the surrealism.
It is for the audience to suspend logic and let the stage wash over them, then take away from it what they will.
There is a price to be paid for experimentation of this kind. Enjoyment of any stage offering is bound to be discounted if one's ability to understand it is seriously inhibited.
This one is opaque to the point where communication with the audience is undermined, which is hardly a plus. It's a conundrum.
Runs to March 15th.
Gerry Colgan
