Irish Times writers review She Stoops to Conquer at the Abbey Theatre, Are You Listening To Me Gaybo? at Andrews Lane Studio in Dublin and Albert Schönberger at St Michael's, in Dún Laoghaire
She Stoops to Conquer
Abbey Theatre, Dublin
Review by Fintan O'Toole
Not to put too fine a point on it, Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops To Conquer is a play about rough trade. Its central character, Young Marlow, finds both his libido and his flow of speech frozen in the presence of women of his own class. With women of the lower orders, however, he is sexually rapacious and linguistically prodigious. Posh girls petrify him. Poor girls - "the barmaid of an inn, or even a college bed-maker" - get him going. So Kate, the upper-class woman his father wants him to marry, pretends to be a slapper so he can break though his shyness and court her.
Goldsmith cleverly avoids telling us what to think of all of this. It is possible to see the play as a satire on upper-class hypocrisy, and early on Kate does remark that "in this hypocritical age there are few that do not condemn in public what they practise in private". On the other hand, Goldsmith also gives us stock portrayals of the lower orders as stupid and loose, leaving open the possibility that he has no real problem with Marlow's double standards.
Either way, though, a contemporary production has decisions to make. If the play is to be a satire, then something has to be done about the portrayal of the servants and yokels. If not, then the action has to be distanced so we are not invited to view the weird Marlow simply as a charming young man with an amusing foible.
The essential difficulty with Patrick Mason's rather lacklustre production at the Abbey is that it avoids making any clear decisions at all. Presented simply as a colourful romp, She Stoops To Conquer is mildly amusing rather than madly funny. The absence of clear choices is summed up in two pieces of action. One is the key scene at the end of the third act in which Marlow comes on to Kate, thinking she is a barmaid. In Goldsmith's stage directions, his forwardness is shown by his attempting to kiss her and by his seizing of her hand. Here, Patrick Moy's Marlow throws Justine Mitchell's Kate up on a table, lifts her dress and gets between her thighs as if intending to rape her.
All of this is perfectly justifiable if Marlow is being exposed as a disgusting hypocrite, excessively polite to women of his own class but ready to prey on the poor. Except that nowhere else in the play is he presented in this way.
Shortly afterwards there is a scene in which the servants are getting wildly drunk, much to the fury of Kate's father, Hardcastle (the impressive Des Cave). In the text, Marlow's servant shouts out "Liberty and Fleet Street forever!", a comic expression of lower-class impudence. Here, Derry Power calls out "Liberty and equality!", and the cry is taken up as a chant by all the other servants.
The implication seems clear enough: the masses are revolting. But both before and after this scene the same lower orders are comic dolts.
Here and elsewhere there is the sense that the play's complex comedy of sex, class and language has not been sufficiently thought through. The decision to have the cast put on English accents (unnecessarily - the tension between country and city that Goldsmith exploits could work just as well in 18th-century Ireland) rather weakens the impact of shifting registers of speech. Even the wonderful comic skills of Anita Reeves as Mrs Hardcastle are somewhat blunted when her natural speech and her attempts to talk posh meld into an uncomfortable English accent.
The staging is lavish and vivid, with Paul McCauley's designs and Paul Keogan's lighting creating the sumptuous appearance of a Joshua Reynolds painting. At times, though, the lavishness has an air of panic, as if the play itself can't be trusted to be amusing enough. There is a running piece of business with a dancing bear that is about as funny as lockjaw.
There are nice things, though. Mason's pacing of the action is superb. And Aaron Monaghan makes a stunning Abbey debut as Tony Lumpkin. With the head of a mullet and the body of a squirming toad, his Lumpkin is an extraordinary creature, dark and devilish but with an energy that blasts all complications out of his way. By creating a serious character, Monaghan is much funnier than anyone else. Which suggests that the best way to make this play hilarious is not to stoop to a mere romp but to reach into its strange centre.
Are You Listening To Me Gaybo?
Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin
Review by Gerry Colgan
Willy Russell started it with Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, plays about Liverpool housewives who threw off their shackles to achieve freedom. Then came Mary Halpin, in 1997, with this version of a Dublin woman for whom the broadcasting personality Gay Byrne is an oracle and a friend. One day, when her radio isn't working, she starts to talk to him while doing her chores, and that's the structure of the one-woman play.
Dolores has a slob of a husband who left her for a dolly bird. He may also have been alienated by the cot death of their four-month-old son eight years earlier, and by Dolores's strange behaviour since. She will not accept his death, walks to school with him each day and helps him with homework in the evening: an odd kind of domesticity. But the husband is depicted as a self-centred moron and she as a warm-hearted rock of common sense.
One day a young, virile Dutch businessman comes looking for lodgings and turns life around for Dolores. She finally buries her son in her heart as he advises, sleeps with him and qualifies as a truck driver with a career of adventurous driving across Europe ahead. The lodger turns out to have
been a confidence trickster, but she doesn't mind. He restored her to
life.
The trouble with the play is not just that it lacks credibility. It is suffused with a vulgarity of thought and image that does its character no service and is patronising to her social status, low on the money ladder. She is also emotionally strident, compounding an imbalance that is finally off-putting.
Billie Traynor, directed by Alan Stanford, delivers a vigorous and versatile performance, but she is putty in the hands of this script. It is better the other way around.
- Runs until September 20th
Albert Schönberger
St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire
Review by Martin Adams
Praeludium In D - Buxtehude. Magnificat In D minor - Dandrieu. Ertödt Uns Durch Dein Güte - Bach. Trio In E Flat - Krebs. Fantasy In F Minor, K608 - Mozart. Christ Ist Erstanden - Albert Schönberger. Komm, O Komm, Du Geist Des Lebens - Kirnberger. Flute Concerto In F for Organ - Rinck. Prelude And Variations In C - Stark. Free Improvisation - Albert Schönberger
The organist Albert Schönberger epitomises one of Europe's most robust musical traditions. For more than 500 years the kapellmeister has been lampooned. Yet in Germanic countries this tradition has sustained the values of broad musicianship and craftsmanship.
Since 1985 Schönberger has been organist of Mainz Cathedral, and here he displayed the linked German traditions of sacred song, keyboard playing, composition and improvisation.
We had a praeludium by Buxtehude, who was Bach's exemplar. Then there was a chorale setting by Bach himself, whose pupils Krebs and Kirnberger were included. Mozart was represented by his homage to Bach, the Fantasia In F Minor, K608.Schönberger showed the well-rounded musicianship one would hope for from someone of his background, even if the playing was not always tidy or technically polished.
Although the music was sometimes third-rate and the recital was overly long, Schönberger kept his audience engaged, partly through chats between pieces, his singing of the melodies on which compositions are based and his evident belief in the religious values that gave rise to this music.
The evening closed with improvisations, including one on two Irish hymn tunes submitted just before the recital. Knowing the formulae of improvisation is one thing; using them effectively is another. It was impressive to hear Schönberger present Di Iosa Im Chroise and St Columba first separately, then ease them into combination.
