Today John Allen reviews Il Trovatore at the Gaiety in Dublin, Kevin Courtney reviews Tenacious D at the Ambassador, Gerry Colgan watched Someone Who'll Watch Over Me at the Andrews Lane Studio and Gerry Colgan saw I Can't Remember Anything at the Bewley's Cafe.
Il Trovatore
Anna Livia International Opera Festival
Gaiety, Dublin
John Allen
The narrative of Il Trovatore may sprawl, but the dramatic episodes are boldly, if unsubtly, sculpted by Verdi's spontaneous and gripping score. The Anna Livia presentation at the Gaiety loses much of the tension because Franz-Paul Decker is a singer- friendly conductor who frequently sacrifices thrust for safety in ensemble. Where he feels he can trust his singers to negotiate fast passages accurately, as in episodes like the fourth act soprano/baritone scene, he comes alive.
Roberto Oswald's production, staged in his own picture-book-pretty sets, doesn't add any conceptual intervention. He just tells the story and lets the singers gesture, strut and clutch at will. This old-fashioned approach works well enough with the principals, but the deployment of the chorus is at best naïve and at worst risible. Which rather takes from the impact of the choral singing, one of the evening's musical felicities.
Luis Rodriguez looks well in the title role, but his tremulous tenor is far from heroic. He cannot manage a legato and is severely challenged in matters of rhythm and intonation. By contrast, Bernadette Greevy is a paragon of musical rectitude. Her Azucena eschews the demented hag image, as well as a few top notes, in favour of a calculating, revenge-bent woman whose attire smacks of the fairground booth rather than the mountains. Sadly, some effective chest notes apart, she lacks the tonal depth called for by this music and sings it instead with a dry tone that turns to shrillness in the fraught moments.
The best solo singing comes from the soprano and the baritone. Mary Callan Clarke's convincingly acted Leonora is delivered in pleasant lyric tones. She can't float high phrases, and some top notes are strained, but her phrasing is controlled and meaningful and her voice is perfectly tuned. Simon Neal, as Luna, has similar qualities and his baritone has a vibrant and focused quality.
• Il Trovatore is at the Gaiety at 7.30 p.m. tonight and Saturday
Tenacious D
Ambassador, Dublin
Kevin Courtney
are the self-styled Greatest Band in History, and their first ever composition, Tribute, just happens to be the Best Song in the World. Imagine Simon and Garfunkel eating all the pies and getting high with Cheech and Chong in a Farrelly brothers' movie, and you have some idea what this wacky duo is all about.
One of the D is a famous actor, Jack Black, of Shallow Hal and High Fidelity fame; the other is his close buddy, bit-part actor Kyle Gass. Together, armed with only acoustic guitars and a rapier wit, they perform gross-out comedy songs like Kielbasa and Rock Your Socks, to a growing fan base that includes some of the US's top rock and film stars.
The D proved their high cult value when their Dublin gig was moved from Whelan's to the Ambassador, but the larger venue didn't dwarf the pair's comedic stature. The frat-boy toilet humour still carried, and the crowd went ga-ga for Black's manic onstage persona, one part John Belushi, one part Withnail, and one part Beelzebub. Gass is, by default, the straight man, concentrating on the guitar-playing, and lighting the verbal touchpaper to Black's vocal fireworks.
The show is, of course, completely puerile, featuring lots of swearing, sexual bravado, and references to "cock push-ups" and "rock squats". You presume that the girls in the audience are only there because their boyfriends dragged them along - that is, until they too start laughing like a drain at every poo-poo gag.
The grossest stuff comes with the short filmed sketches, which includes the notorious "Butt Baby" sequence; judging from the alternating groans of disgust and whoops of delight from the crowd, this sketch will run and run. Less sick - but no less funny - is the pair's reading of U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday, complete with Riverdance sequence, and their speedball finale of The Beatles' Carry That Weight/The End.
Truly, they are two wild and crazy guys.
Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin
Gerry Colgan
years have not been altogether unkind to this early play by Frank McGuinness, based on Beirut hostage incidents, but a certain amount of wear and tear has become obvious. Its great merit lies in a theatricality that gives the three actors space to flex their talents to enjoyable effect. The downside is a contrived structure that stamps fiction on a situation that purports to interpret fact.
Three men have been taken hostage in Lebanon simply because they are Westerners and deemed hostile by the simmering natives.
They are held in a cellar never illuminated by daylight, apparently without hope of release.
First to be taken is an American (Adam), who is then joined by an Irishman (Edward) and finally by an Englishman (Michael). They have to find a way to live together under appalling conditions, while avoiding the wrath of their captors.
Each of them is here a somewhat clichéd representative of his nationality. Adam is quiet and serious, with a streak of religion; Edward, a volatile and extrovert type, lacks control; Michael is the original stiff-upper-lip type, self- disciplined and full of common sense. They play mental games, some of them improbable, to pass the time, and learn to know and compensate for each other's weaknesses. One is killed, another released following official representations, and the last is left to face the future alone in his cell.
The best thing about the production is the numerous laughs it evokes, some in sympathy with the trio's defensive tactics, others simply as a reaction to moments of broad comedy. Dominic Perrem, Rory Nolan and Joe Jeffers take on their roles with conviction and with a beguiling stage energy that skates over much of the play's thin ice.
Director Darragh McKeon looks after the acting side well, but might have found a better way of manipulating the props than one of undisguised interruptions, presumably by the stage manager.
• Runs to Saturday; to book, tel: 01-6795720
I Can't Remember Anything
Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin
Gerry Colgan
The current lunchtime play at Bewley's confirms again the value and standards of this small Grafton Street theatre. It is a short work (about 45 minutes) by the great Arthur Miller, and first appeared in 1987 as part of a double bill called Danger! Memory, when it was hailed by the heavyweight US critics.
There are two characters; Leonora, the well-to-do widow of aengineer, and Leo, the latter's friend and assistant. The similarity in the names is significant, as if the two overlap or are complementary in some way. Each evening, they meet for dinner and for talk that reflects their drift into age, into mental and physical failings. Their relationship is now a marriage of sorts, bedevilled by mutual impatience but also blessed with affection.
So he growls at her, at her drinking and general lack of discipline, while she impatiently snaps at his stoicism and willingness to accept the dying of the light. For both of them, the world is a dishonest, vulgar place in which they must pass their final years increasingly under pressure, which they resist in an alliance that transcends their bickering.
Des Cave and Susan Slott play the duo with authority in what feels like a complete realisation of the author's intentions. There is a depth of truth in this apparently slight work that penetrates the veneer of human frailty to discover the means by which some may survive with integrity.
It is directed by the well-known actor, Robert O'Mahony, who is clearly in tune with the play.
• Runs to July 27th; to book, tel: 086-8784001
