Irish Times reviewers give their verdicts on Beckett Week at Trinity College Dublin, a performance of Bouncers at Everyman Palace, Cork and the Veronica Dunne European Union Singing Competition
Veronica Dunne European Union Singing Competition
at Mahony Hall, The Helix
The final rounds of the Veronica Dunne European Union Singing Competition were held over three days at The Helix. 12 singers from seven EU countries battled it out with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under David Brophy in the semi-finals, and the six-member international jury selected five to compete in the final round for a prize of €20,000, a concert engagement with the RTÉCO and a Waterford Crystal trophy.
By comparison with previous Veronica Dunne Competitions the performing standard this year was disappointing. It is at the very least perplexing to find in the semi-finals of an international competition singers challenged by the basics of holding pitch and simply reaching the notes of the pieces they have chosen to perform.
Matters were not made easier for the competitors by the all-too-often insensitive and unyielding accompaniments provided by David Brophy.
Brophy, a rising young talent who is currently assistant conductor at RTÉ, did not on this occasion show the grasp of operatic idiom or sympathy for vocal needs that a competition of this sort requires. The prize went to the 32-year-old Italian, Stefania Spaggiari, a soprano with a distinctive, smoky tone, who confined herself to operatic excerpts in a single language - she was one of only two singers, both Italian, who refused to stray beyond their native tongue.
Her style was arresting if a bit odd. She was fidgety in physical demeanour, playing with a stole as if it were a prop, and she was sometimes fussy in musical detail, as if placing concerns of voice above the demands of the music. But character she had in abundance, and also good presence at either end of her register. It was she, more than any of her rivals, who created an impression that would not be easy to forget.
Among the other finalists, the British bass baritone Nicholas Warden has a lovely voice, but he did himself no favours by tackling repertoire that's rather beyond its reach. Sopranos from Germany (Anja Augustin) and France (Delphine Gillot) showed rather better balances of ambition and delivery, but Irish soprano Miriam Murphy revisited the tiresome practice of singing too consistently at the top of her voice. That voice has developed hugely in recent years, and is a resource of great potential.
But handling it like a young joy-rider is anything but the best use to which to put it. There was one singer I was sorry not to see in the finals, the German soprano Adreana Julia Kraschewski, whose clarity, control and musical intelligence might well be taken to suggest a career in the period performance world rather than in the regular opera house.
Michael Dervan
Bouncers at Everyman Palace
The adaptability of Bouncers as exploited at the Everyman Palace - and in cities all over the world - is its weakness. Playwright John Godber may not worry about that as the royalties keep rolling in, but perhaps it's time he reclaimed his play from the sad universality which now reduces it to a series of skits. In this case the action takes place in Cork; the script accommodates the name changes and the identifying patois so that the club sub-culture shines in the hilarity of recognition.
Which is really all that the play has to offer, as Godber prefers to parody the possibility of social comment rather than threaten his amiable construction with weight. Or so it seems from this competent, well-drilled presentation in which Cormac Costello, Myles Horgan, Dominic Moore and Peter O'Mahony manage the interchanges of sex, age, character, condition and function with a kind of relaxed accuracy. Their teamwork and comic timing produce lots of laughs.
Mary Leland
Beckett Week at Trinity College Dublin
The University Philosophical Society and Dublin University Players joined forces to present in the last week an impressive series of events to celebrate the life and works of Samuel Beckett on the 50th anniversary of the first performance of Waiting for Godot.
In doing so, they were paying tribute to a distinguished alumnus and, briefly but memorably, a lecturer who remembered - and repaid - his time in Trinity.
Barry McGovern, possibly the actor most associated with Beckett in the public mind today (now Vladimir in the Gate's production of Godot) gave a reading; Fintan O'Toole, critic and author of this parish, spoke; and Anna McMullan, Beckett scholar of the drama department, gave the final lecture at the closing event on Friday evening.
There were stage performances of selected works, led by the indefatigable Conor Lovett who gave two afternoon reprises of his amazing trilogy in which he brings to absorbing life no less than three Beckett novels - Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable - in a three hour marathon. Lovett then trotted over to the Gate each evening to play the role of Lucky; a mind-boggling feat.
The players offered a selection of Beckett's short plays in midday and evening performances. There were very worthwhile stagings of Ohio Impromptu, Footfalls, A Piece of Monologue, Come and Go, What Where and Play. It is not condescension to say that these were offered at a standard higher than one might expect from students.
There was an evening of addresses from a gathering of guests, most of whom knew and were friends with Beckett.
Publishers, film-makers and writers spoke wittily and often movingly of their relationships with him, and he emerged from their reminiscences as a gentle and generous man whose bleak world-view emerged from, not despite, his great humanity.
Israel Horowitz, Barney Rosset, John Calder, Hugh Kenner, John Reilly and Ulick O'Connor entertained as they paid their willing dues.
Gerry Colgan
