A look at what is happening in the world of the arts.
Romeo and Juliet
Gaiety Theatre
This production from Lithuania (with English surtitles), directed by Oskaras Korsunovas, is quite extraordinary. It is set in a modern pizzeria with a surreal set design, and opens with the entire cast standing silently for several minutes. Then they begin to jostle each other, throw flour around and make vulgar dough-sculptures. The Capulets and Montagues are at it.
When talk eventually begins, so does Shakespeare. Romeo slouches about disconsolately, but is persuaded to go to the Capulet ball, where he is transported by the sight of Juliet. Their doomed love thereafter takes the traditional path and, despite numerous startling innovations, holds to its course.
The great strength of this version is that the passion of the youngsters - she is played at the scripted age of 14 - is utterly convincing. It underpins the central tragedy and the many directorial departures from the prescribed action. Not all of these departures are likely to attract uncritical approval.
There is a lot of undiluted slapstick, at times turning the play into a broad, not to say brash, comedy. Some characters - the Nurse, Mercutio - take off into far-out interpretations and, when the Nurse is seen getting it on with Friar Laurence, the mind boggles.
But these reservations are based on our accustomed norms and the roles are in themselves splendidly acted and an extension of the comedy that permeates much of the work.
So many diversions; the weird duel between Tybalt and Mercutio, the flour- strewn people and corpses; the presence of on-stage ghosts of the slain watching the survivors; the startling variations in the final scene in which Romeo, Juliet and Paris all die - these and more make for an interpretation with a cogent difference. But the lovers' burning passion illuminates it all, and by the dramatic ending we know that we have seen a pyrotechnical vision of an immortal play.
It is a pity that this production, a jewel in the crown of the Festival, had only a two-night run. I would not willingly have missed it.
Gerry Colgan
Lords of the Railway
The Ark, Dublin
From Germany's Theater Handgemenge comes this quirky comedy for children aged about seven to 12. It is based on a splendid model railway set, supported on trestles and filling the small stage. Two young men, Uwe and Dirk, are setting it up at the start, putting the ancillary pieces - station-house, signals, farm animals and so on - in place; and then we're off.
There is something quite engaging about watching the elaborate model in motion as the trains chug in and out of the station, where miniature people are waiting to get off and on. Among those disembarking are a small boy and his aunt, but they accidentally leave his dog behind, now on an unplanned trip to Warsaw. The story begins to take its creators over. They hear the boy crying in his bed that night, and Uwe decides to take a train to Berlin to seek a replacement.
All this is the product, of course, of two fertile imaginations on the loose, as the action never leaves the model area.
Uwe takes the train to Berlin on his mission of mercy and, when he gets there, Dirk receives him in the guise of several shopkeepers. Finally a suitable dog is found, but there is a major hitch before the mandatory happy ending unfolds.
The low-key story, with background music including Sentimental Journey and Chattanooga Choo Choo, is skilfully enacted by the two men. A pleasant entertainment for children who have not yet reached the age of cynicism.
Tours next to Galway and Mayo
Gerry Colgan
RTE NSO/Eddins
NCH, Dublin
Haydn - Symphony No 85. Ravel - Piano Concerto in G. L Boulanger -- Faust et Hélène.
Few conductors have proved so consistent in getting the best from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra as William Eddins. On this occasion, Haydn's Symphony No. 85 (La Reine) was impeccably scaled, with a natural, unforced animation of rhythm at all tempos.
Everything had the characterisation that comes when musicians understand their roles, when they listen to one another as well as watch the conductor.
A slimmed-down string section was retained for Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, which William Eddins directed from the keyboard.
The smaller-than-usual orchestra, lidless piano and a soloist with his back to the audience made this work sound lighter than usual, almost like amplified chamber music; and the piano's sound mixed with the orchestra's rather than projecting into the hall.
Despite the impressive solo playing, I remain unconvinced that music much later than Beethoven benefits from this essentially Classical practice; and in the outer movements that doubt was reinforced by some wobbly ensemble between the front and back of the orchestra.
Lili Boulanger was 19 when she became the first woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome composition prize with Faust et Hélène.
In this performance, immensely secure playing by the RTÉ NSO was complemented by one of the strongest groups of soloists I have heard anywhere - mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, tenor Bonaventura Bottone and bass-baritone Paul Whelan.
Faust et Hélène makes you wonder what Boulanger might have achieved had she not died aged 24. Compositional craft is never in question; and although youth is shown in the constant echoes of other composers, the music does far more than milk those associations or provide an apt backdrop to the words. It shows a sustained musico-dramatic instinct for which many older composers would give their eye teeth.
Martin Adams
Dublin Theatre Festival
Betrayal,
The Gate Theatre
If there was any fear that the resonance, humour and menace of a dramatic career could be sapped by too much reverence, the Gate's superb production of Betrayal ensures that this year's Nobel laureate for literature is still far from becoming a well-regarded museum piece.
Though respectful of the play, director Robin Lefèvre doesn't stand in awe of Harold Pinter, rolling up his sleeves to lift this triangle of infidelity and unreliable memory out of its 1970s context and transplant it, with minimal fuss, to 2004.
Carrying neither the threat of the absurd nor a conspicuously political tone, Betrayal remains thematically and formally unsettling.
Beginning two years after the end of an affair between Jerry (Risteárd Cooper) and Emma (Cathy Belton), the wife of his oldest friend Robert (Nick Dunning), the play moves backwards in time, uncovering webs of mutual deception from finish to start.
"I thought you knew I knew," Dunning's consciously cuckolded Robert tells a shocked Cooper with reassuringly liquid tones.
These characters, the rhythm of their utterances and their fathomless subtext are gifts to actors, and Dunning's outstanding performance is full of smothered rage and controlled explosions.
To watch his brutal civility, his tamped-down frustrations, is to witness a master class in self-betrayal.
Cathy Belton matches such nuance with a layered and pointed performance, revealing the details of her five-year affair with cruel directness.
"We're lovers," she says, the words leaden and poisonous.
"Ah. Yes," Dunning replies airily. "I thought it might be something like that."
In Betrayal, a laugh rarely comes without a shudder.
Against the electricity of these bitter exchanges (Lefèvre never allows a single pause or silence to pass without purpose), you could almost miss the achievement of Cooper's smug Jerry.
Though prone to comic fillips, Cooper plays a long game.
His Jerry is betrayed by the reversing years; the smooth affectations and public-school accent of his London literary agent gradually shedding until only a shallow East-End pretender remains.
In a play where no one says what they mean, where it is hard to determine when betrayal begins and where it may end, memories prove equally deceptive.
Eileen Diss' supple and sparing designs treat the scenes like dimming recollections: a restaurant, the lovers' secret flat, or a hotel in Venice contain only the most certain details, their backgrounds grown hazy and indistinct.
There's no point in nostalgia though, as Emmasays, and the key to this success is that Betrayal feels like a new play, rife with fresh discoveries.
Even in an eventful month for Harold Pinter, there's really no better tribute.
Peter Crawley
