Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events from the world of the arts.
David Adams, The Chapel, Trinity College, Dublin
A 300th-anniversary survey of the complete organ works of Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) began on Thursday night, the first recital of a weekly series taking place in College Chapel, TCD.
In so many technical, stylistic and melodic ways, the music is reminiscent of Bach, who greatly admired Buxtehude and famously walked 250 miles to hear him play. Hearing this recital made you understand why.
Organist David Adams let loose a dancing, rhythmic vitality in gigue-style pieces or sections which punctuated some of the long, multi-part chorale preludes of which the programme included three: BuxWV 136, 137 and 138, all in an irrepressibly jolly C major and the last with the busiest continuous pedal-work of the night.
These pieces were also interspersed with passages of characteristically strong, north-German baroque counterpoint which Adams delivered with energetically focused transparency in three and sometimes four parts.
Worth special mention are the unsettling, strangely appealing overtones yielded by the registration in Ich ruf zu dir, Herr jesu Christ (BuxWV 196), the only chorale fantasia in the programme.
There was also a particularly sweet sopranino melodic line soaring above all the internal activity in the chorale prelude Ach Herr, mich armen Sunder (BuxWV178).
Adams cannot himself receive all the credit for the successful inauguration of the series since at certain points - unannounced and unseen - he surrendered the console to his evidently very fine pupils Peter McBride and Say Jim Kim.
An isolated slip here or there would have given the only obvious suggestion that it wasn't the teacher who was playing.
The series, which is presented by Pipeworks, has been dedicated to the memory of Anne Leahy - organist, teacher, Bach scholar and long-time committee-member of the Pipeworks/ Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival - who died on October 5th. - Michael Dungan
Buxtehude 300 continues every Thursday in Trinity College Chapel until November 22nd
Gorgeous Morons. The New Theatre
Neither as gorgeous nor as moronic as you might have been led to believe, Bradford Scobie and Julie Atlas Muz's shambolic mini-burlesque represents the last wheeze of the "East of East Village" strand of the Dublin Theatre Festival's dalliance with alternative cabaret.
On paper the whole thing looked so promising, daring to ask just what does it for knowing and jaded New York hipsters these days?
With the exception of Reggie Watts though, it has prompted the reply: surely not this.
Irony makes almost anything permissible, from an unpalatable political opinion to a deliberately weak gag, and that partly explains the vogue for throwback burlesque, a phenomenon which was surely exhausted when Dita Von Teese became a cover-girl or The Pussycat Dolls released a clothing line.
Here Atlas Muz will don any number of different scanty costumes in order to whip them off in precisely the same way (the strip tease, for all its implied raciness, is as formally staid as a funeral rite), while the night moves haphazardly along with the stand-up shtick of Scobie, whose genuine wits only shine though in his adlibs. He also strips, but, unlike Muz - whose body we come to know better than our own - he holds a little something back.
The performance clearly has a specific audience in mind, something Scobie acknowledges, with good sense, by early explaining any US-specific references in his gags to come (thus killing those gags). But the show trades heavily on a twin fascination with, and revulsion from, the female form. At one point Atlas Muz appears on stage as a cow, marigold gloves dangling from her chest like udders, while at several stages a video shows her in extreme close-up, lip-syncing with campy songs - just not with her mouth.
Vaginal karaoke is a new one on me, and I can understand the walkouts from The New Theatre, but it was telling that Scobie seemed genuinely surprised by the reaction.
Maybe this never happens among the unshockable patrons of the Slipper Room. Here, however, as an over reliance on body shocks became indistinguishable from a lack of fresh ideas, it was hard to tell whether the fleeing punters were morally outraged or simply bored stupid. - Peter Crawley
Ends tonight (Saturday)
The Giraffe's Journey, The Ark
It may be true that a giraffe travelled from Africa to Paris in 1824, but it is only marginally relevant to this Italian comedy for children, by Roberto Abbiati. It takes place in a large black plastic tent, with a working wall at one end facing the audience. It is made of wood, and incorporates shelves, doors, ornaments and bric-a-brac.
These are required by the troupe of three eccentric comics led by Sir, a Groucho Marx specimen, with one henchman on the lines of Stan Laurel and the other a bulky, choleric individual.
They speak in a mixture of Italian and English, easy to understand. Sir is dressed in a dark suit, lacking undergarments beneath the jacket.
His helpers are in orange tops and bottoms, rather like unruly chef assistants.
We are told, mostly by Sir, of the giraffe's journey from Sudan via the Nile, Alexandria, Marseille and Paris. The real focus is, however, on the kind of slapstick enacted by the trio. They have a mock-break in the middle during which Sir goes in search of a shirt, and the burly chap tries to take up a personal collection for cigarettes, drink, etc.
Following that, a book goes on fire in the Alexandria Library, and just as Sir has beaten the flame out, the Laurel guy arrives and throws water over him; a hoary gag, but one that the young audience revelled in.
Towards the end, a little confusion ensues. Sir tells of the giraffe's death in Paris, but adds that it (she) has been mummified and may be seen by generations. But then the giraffe is revealed in a fridge, plaintively asking to be brought back to Africa.
It ends as the trio and their charge begin the journey in reverse.
More fun than faction, it is a novel entertainment for those aged over seven, which is really all that is required. - Gerry Colgan
