Charles Way's play for young people, about world-famous percussionist Evelyn Glennie, premiered in London in 1998, but this production carries the inimitable mark of the Ark - the energy and rhythm that so often buzzes through this children's culture centre.
It's just as well that it does. On reflection, Way's text itself only occasionally rises above the well-made, competently telling the real-life tale of Glennie's progress from hearing eight-year-old to profoundly deaf but musically ambitious teenager. When this show sags at all (and in 80-odd minutes, it happens once or twice), it's usually when the author's words are the only things to hold our attention. Happily, that's rare.
It may be unfair to Way to say his play is a mere scaffold, but certainly it's hard to imagine this show soaring without the extraordinary contributions of music director and composer David Boyd in particular. He has the whole cast playing away on a wild range of musical instruments, from glockenspiel to African drums to some tuned plastic tubes with the onomatopoeic name of "boomwhackers" - gotta get me some.
A particularly impressive element is the performance of Janet Moran, who apparently had never seriously "percussed" before this year but who inhabits Glennie persuasively, charismatically, with a heart that we can nearly hear beating. The other four cast members, in a variety of roles, are equally excellent, particularly when director Martin Drury, Boyd and "movement director" Caimin Collins send them spinning around the stage in pursuit of domestic mischief or musical mayhem.
Sure, this is an inspirational story (albeit an odd one to be telling on behalf of a woman who supposedly resents being singled out because of her disability). But for my eight- and five-year-olds - respectively at and below the recommended lower age threshold for this show - the main thing is: it's got a great beat.
Runs at The Ark, Temple Bar, until March 15th, then at Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford, until March 22nd.
