Reviews of the Metallica concert in Dublin and Mammy's Boy at Everyman Palace, Cork.
Metallica/RDS, Dublin: Two decades ago Metallica exploded onto the rock scene, wrestled heavy metal from the clutches of the spandex-and-hairspray brigade and conjured up a sound that heralded the future of rock music. In the intervening years they have occasionally lost their way yet still managed to outlive the generation of noisy hybrids they spawned, as well as outlasting grunge, nu-metal, pop-punk, post-punk and the many other pretenders to the throne that Metallica clearly feel is still theirs.
In the open air of the RDS in Dublin, those intervening years were ripped to shreds by a performance from a band who seem to have rediscovered what makes them tick. It may be the rereading of an old chapter rather than a new one - the two-hour-plus set contained just two songs from the band's latest album, St Anger, and even fewer from the previous two efforts - but Metallica turned the pages of their past with glee, confidence and, it must be said, remarkable precision.
Famed for their live shows, the four put on a masterful performance in both showmanship and musicianship. Neither the supposed diminishing power of James Hetfield's voice nor the diminishing respect afforded the band thanks to drummer Lars Ulrich's loud mouth was in evidence as they started with Battery, from their 1985 breakthrough album Master Of Puppets.
From 1983's Kill 'Em All to 1991's "black" album, the set was a furious delivery of the best of Metallica's back catalogue - Seek And Destroy, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Creeping Death, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Blackened, One, Enter Sandman - a rousing noisefest accompanied by flame jets, flash-bangs, fireworks and the head- and fist-banging of 37,000 people.
In an era when many bands' live shows consist of medleys and pastiches of their greatest hits for fear of their audiences' attention span, Metallica romped through many a seven-minute behemoth, never abbreviating, wavering or waning. These old boys were making a fresh mark on heavy metal, one they may be thanked for in the future.
John Lane
Mammy's Boy/Everyman Palace, Cork: The circus comes to town in Mammy's Boy and introduces, to the trumpets of Mayfield Brass Band, the most fabulous act in its repertoire: the O'Donovan household at Harrington's Square in Cork. This bravura opening is, however, the most inspired moment of the play, which was written by Peter Dineen and Jim McKeon and directed by Dineen. Listing thereafter between sentiment and the ironic commentary offered by the writing of Frank O'Connor, the adaptation of his memoirs and short stories opts to keep safe aground on the shores of nostalgia.
The brief for this play, commissioned by Everyman to mark O'Connor's centenary, was the author's childhood as Michael O'Donovan, yet there are times when the tougher dynamics of the O'Donovan marriage indicate other possibilities.
The structural emphasis on the young Michael, the eponymous mammy's boy and exactly the opposite of the "normal, bloodthirsty illiterate of whom his father could be proud", provides a terrific role for Dan Morrissey, whose confident performance and faith in the material illuminate the play as a whole (just as well, given a chaotic lighting design).
But this means that the mother, Minnie, becomes just a template of forgiveness or irritation while the father, Big Mick, is played by Dineen with a forcefulness that suggests the destructive restlessness that was to mark O'Connor's adult life was inherited and that, again, hints at unexplored dramatic potential.
The use by reminiscent narrator Garvan McGrath of an almost internalised reflective voice denies him ownership of the story. With inexplicable inaccuracies in costumes and props - if we don't know what priests wore in the street, or even at a Christmas Mass, in 1913 we should find out, surely? - it is a reminder of the problems inherent in Dineen's multipurpose role.
Although the choral arrangement of The Bells Of Shandon almost justifies the occasional lurch from play to pageant, the production is validated by Patrick Murray's design: two flights of steps meeting in an arched bridge over linked bollards and, beyond this accommodating arrangement, a distant, steepled profile of Cork city, floating like a mirage.
• Runs until August 30th
Mary Leland
