Jane Coyle reviews A Very Weird Manor at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, while Gerry Golcgan headed to the Focus Theatre to watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Michael Dervan reviews an all-Vivaldi programme at the NCH.
A Very Weird Manor, Lyric Theatre, Belfast
As anyone living on this planet knows, the most successful reality TV shows thrive on the unedifying prospect of uninteresting people saying and doing uninteresting things, under the unquestioning gaze of a riveted, adoring public. So, when the usually shrewd, mischievous gaze of Marie Jones alights upon this, the ultimate form of popular culture, who can blame us for rubbing our hands in anticipated glee.
When Enda O'Loane (Barry McEvoy), lazing in self-imposed exile on an Australian beach, learns he has inherited a crumbling manor and 40 acres of bogland in the backside of Ireland, he is a little taken aback, but well up for it. But his cocky demeanour disintegrates when he meets the bunch of weirdos who constitute the staff of his ancestral home, McNutt Manor.
Strapped for cash, Enda volunteers them to an Australian TV company as the last word in Paddy-wacking reality, a role they take to as ducks to water.
Initially, within David Craig's storybook-style set, so far seems so good. But the satirical stiletto, which Jones once wielded to such devastating effect, has now turned into a rather blunt instrument, reliant on in-your-face slapstick and caricatured characters, shouting and bawling their way around the stage. As the TV production team demands ever more surreal happenings and events for viewers back in Oz, the locals queue up to play the crazy Irish card for all it's worth and offer to perform their self-penned murder mystery play - for real.
Director Ian McElhinney allows too much madness and too many inconsequential scenes to go on for too long. And while one cannot deny the cast's commitment and work rate - particularly Helen Norton's doughty cook and bottle-washer Virginia, Laura Hughes's batty maid Dorcas, Michael Condron's obsessive factotum Harcourt and Dan Gordon's self-important Garda Tuomey - they can't compensate for the lack of a big moment to make sense of it all. There's a lack of logic in the scripting, too - narrator Enda begins as a beach bum telling his story in retrospect, but ends up as a headcase in a wheelchair. Maybe, just maybe, that's the point? - Jane Coyle
Runs until July 23.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Focus Theatre
The tiny Focus is pulsating at present with the sounds and psychic energy of this Obie (off-Broadway) award-winner by John Cameron Mitchell, not recommended to those of delicate hearing or tender sensibilities.
Hedwig would be a drag queen except for the botched sex operation that made her into an ultimately pathetic human, a pseudo-female performer and internationally ignored song stylist. She has a partner of sorts, the apparently male Yitzhak who may be a woman. The Angry Inch is a rock band (two guitars, keyboard and drums) that accompanies their act.
They get going with a series of double - a new multiplier is really called for - entendres from Hedwig. She thereafter tells her story, from childhood in East Berlin to her present, and sings a number of songs. A few of her numbers are quite good, melodic and verbally meaningful, fleshing out the narrative. Others support the ambience of a raucous, anything-goes cabaret.
So Hedwig, abandoned by her GI father virtually from birth, sleeps with her mother to the age of 26. An American proposes marriage to her on condition that she becomes the young woman he thought she was. Thence the operation, emigration to the US and desertion.
The scenario turns quite black towards the end, when one of her few tender moments is, literally and messily, thrown back in her face by Yitzhak.
En route to this dying fall, the script plays name-dropping games with musical greats, a kind of modern de profundis. The crudities of the play are redeemed by its intelligence and, improbably, its compassion. Joe Roch is a splendid Hedwig, and Megan Riordan is brilliant as a tip-of-the-iceberg Yitzhak. The musicians - Rob Allen, Rob Grimes, Greg Hannon and Brian Wolohan - are vigorously in the spirit of the work, directed by Erin Murray. - Gerry Colgan
Runs until June 18
IBO/Huggett, NCH, Dublin
Vivaldi - L'Olimpiade Overture. Sonata Al Santo Sepolcro RV130. Sinfonia alla rustica RV151. Four Seasons
An all-Vivaldi programme is a strong draw for any orchestra exploring baroque repertoire, especially if the ubiquitous Four Seasons are included.
The Irish Baroque Orchestra's second appearance at the National Concert
Hall on Wednesday took the challenge head-on - the Four Seasons, but as you might not have heard them in Ireland before, not least because the other and less well-known works on the programme were interspersed with
the more famous ones. The most important characteristic of the evening's music-making was not, however, the interleaving of the different pieces, welcome indeed as that was.
Guest director Monica Huggett, who also played the solo violin part, galvanised the orchestra, sharpening
and tightening the ensemble, sending
the players on new expressive quests, and generally engendering a sense let-your-hair-down enthusiasm that was quite infectious.
Her style of music-making was premised on sharply drawn contrasts
of dynamic and gesture, freedom in the manipulation of tempo, and a fondness for the heightening of pictorial elements that sometimes raced well beyond exaggeration and into caricature.
The birds in Huggett's Vivaldi sang like prima donnas, not so much with heedless innocence but instead always taking time to register with their listeners.
The staggering of the drunkard was not left to the woozy shaping of
Vivaldi's already lurching melodic line, but also found the soloist herself tilting and teetering in sympathy.
There were, inevitably, a few rough edges in a concert that risked so many extremes. But the vitality of the playing was irresistible, and the audience demanded - and got - an encore before Huggett led her team off the stage. - Michael Dervan
