Sean Quinn is out of control. A bedraggled, faintly ridiculous figure, he rages through a hotel room in his underwear, at times clutching a film can or slicing the air with a Hurley, clambering across the furniture as his story spools out.
He has been dispossessed, dethroned, destroyed. He is, of course, a movie director.
In Darren Thornton's deliciously arch and ferociously entertaining new production, the monologue play meets the narrative logic of the DVD: the chapters skip briskly forward, the angles are constantly reversing, and Owen McDonnell's engaging performance tumbles out like a frantic director's commentary.
A promising young filmmaker from Cavan lensing his first feature (a "hurler discovers son" story), Quinn falls prey to the vagaries of an industry where, as William Goldman famously put it, nobody knows anything. The shoot is fractious. The test screening is disastrous. Harvey Weinstein is not pleased. Appearing on a bank of television screens that hang over Kieran McNulty's set like jagged teeth, Quinn's producers usurp him with four chilling words: "We have some ideas."
Thornton's play has plenty of its own: how complex stories are distorted by commercial formulas; what the world really expects from Irish art; the jump cuts we make from loyalty to betrayal, envy to neurosis. It also has a highly visual (but not exactly theatrical) language; Quinn's speech is a stew of film references, his uneasy dreams spliced to music videos and blockbuster sequences. Here, spiritual guidance comes courtesy of Britney Spears and damnation may be a bullet-paced drubbing on The Blizzard of Odd.
This world is hilarious not for its absurdity, but for its truth.
As director, Thornton and his film crew make Calipso's production a show-and-tell affair, a multimedia jamboree that seamlessly passes the story between McDonnell's monologue and a series of filmed cameos (one of them, an early celebrity appearance, is a gag worth the price of admission alone - the others should cost you extra).
Self-aware and playfully ironic, Thornton's production can't critique formulaic plots without eventually succumbing to one (a drug-fuelled epiphany is a film cliché - and, at this point, a theatre cliché - too far), but it never flags in its wit, its imagination and its unswerving determination to give an audience a good time. Come to think of it, these guys should be in pictures. - Peter Crawley
Runs until February 4th
NYOI Camerata/d'Arcy - NCH Dublin
Mozart's reputation as the ultimate musical Wunderkind made this concert an apt opening to the National Concert Hall's celebration of his birth 250 years ago. Michael d'Arcy, the director of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland Camerata, was by far the oldest person on the platform; and he was born in 1968.
The concert included two young soloists. Sebastian O'Shea Farren (13) and Adam McDonagh (12) played in the slow movements of, respectively, the Clarinet Concerto K622 and the Piano Concerto in C K467. Their unaffected, natural shaping of melody, control of tone, and relaxed stage-presence suggested that we are likely to hear them again.
Mozart's own precocity was represented by his Symphony No. 1 in E flat K16, written when he was eight. It has curiosity value only; but the rest of the music represented him at or near his full powers of maturity.
Arias and duets from the composer's later operas were sung by Mairéad Buicke and Norah King, whose sureness justified their reputations as rising Irish singers. Stephanie McCabe carried off similar honours for her playing of the slow movement of the Violin Concerto in C K216; and Finghin Collins's characteristically spry, healthy and reliable playing felt just right for the Piano Concerto in B flat K595.
Despite these soloists and this top-quality music, I found that the most rewarding aspect of the evening was the playing of the NYOI Camerata - nay, their very existence. I doubt that, 10 or 15 years ago, a player-led initiative of this kind could have prospered so securely. With Michael d'Arcy leading discreetly yet firmly while seated at the front desk, every member of this 30-piece group has to listen hard, with the responsiveness of the chamber musician. Their success testifies to personal confidence, as well as musicianship. - Martin Adams
Marc Carroll - Spirit Store, Dundalk
Mooching around the ex-pat periphery of Irish rock for many years now, Marc Carroll has gradually established himself as something of an unwitting, unwilling maverick.
A founding member of the venerated Dublin band Puppy Love Bomb (perhaps remembered as much now for their "Dublin Is Dead" T-shirt as for their extremely catchy pop/punk music), Carroll has eked out a living in London for the past 10 years, releasing a few albums (Ten of Swords, All Wrongs Reversed, and World on a Wire) to heaps of critical acclaim but not much else besides.
Incorrectly perceived as the Irish saviour of power pop (although he does that genre better than most), latterly Carroll has dispensed with his love of guitar-drenched "B" bands (Beach Boys, Badfinger, Beatles, Byrds) and grown into the skin of someone that can fuse pristine pop/punk and morose, reflective songwriting with Irish folk idioms without coming across as a chancer.
He rarely returns home to play gigs, but this performance - part of a triple pack of concerts around the country - even further enhanced his reputation as a solitary and singular songwriter who is surely in it for the love of the game and the long haul. Well, you'd have to be to play in front of 10 people, a gathering that included the promoter, the sound man, the bar staff, and yours truly. Unphased by lack of atmosphere and poor attendance, Carroll filled his one hour set with songs from his back catalogue (every one a winner) and some superb covers (including Grant Hart's heartbreaking 2541). With a strong voice and a fine, tough acoustic guitar playing style, Carroll put to rest the power pop image (for a while, at least; his next album, he imparts, will be electric guitar heavy) via a sequence of bruised and battered Dylanesque flourishes, as equally adept as idiosyncratic yet always beholden to no one but himself.
For an artist of his calibre to play in front of less than a dozen people borders on the shameful; stuff 'em all that didn't show up, seemed to be Carroll's implicit response.
By implication alone he was dead right. - Tony Clayton-Lea
