A look at what is going on in the arts by Irish Timeswriters
PaperworldPavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
If your children have ever had more fun playing around with the pile of paper after the party game, Pass the Parcel then they will love Paper Worldby Mimirichi Clowns from the Ukraine. First performed in the Pavilion last year, the Dún Laoghaire theatre invited the playful trio of clowns back again at the weekend to perform in the first shows of their new international children's theatre festival, Flip Flop.
Right from the start when the first clown began sweeping around the aisles and even brushing the hair of some of the adults in the audience, we knew we were in for an interactive show. Back on stage and tired from all his sweeping, he falls asleep and in his dreams, we are introduced to his two companions as wonderful shadow figures chasing behind a massive white paper screen.
Then the fun really starts as the three clowns - dressed in white with classic clown noses, big boots and funny hairdos - play tricks on one another. Soon, they are punching holes in the big white paper screen, running through it and
throwing big piles of paper into the audience. The children in the audience go wild with excitement, throwing paper everywhere and they even jump onto the stage.
Children back in their seats, three dads are brought on stage to participate in a fake football game while Olé, Olé, Oléplays loudly in the background.
Part two begins more calmly as two clowns covered in white sheet-like costumes cleverly transform themselves into an elephant which the other clown rides. Next, there's a monster with
a basket head and then a clown without a head who, once he finds his head, becomes the king of paperworld. In classic clown form, the trio are sad to end their performance, sending long strips of paper up through the audience as mementoes of their fantastic show.
Flip Flop continues until Thurs with international theatre and workshops Sylvia Thompson
Johnny LoganVicar Street, Dublin
In a venue heaving with oestrogen, Johnny Logan found himself in a wash of nostalgia for simpler times, when rhinestone belt-buckles were a badge of honour and clincher ballads were the darlings of every Eurovision jury from Luxembourg to Louvain.
It's been 20 years since our very own J Lo played a home-town gig, and it showed. While Logan's been busily carving a healthy career for himself in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, he's also been nurturing a certain paddywhackery in his set list: concocting a curious mix of power ballads and rabble rousers (from Follow Me Up to Carlowto Molly Malone, Spancil Hilland The Town I Loved So Well) that conjured a cartoonish facsimile of the man whose voice could stop a clock back in his heyday of the early 1980s. Fact was, there were times when we wondered whether we'd strayed into a Jury's cabaret revival, and clearly, that's precisely what Logan's punters had craved during all those years of his absence.
That voice is remarkably intact, swooping and soaring, as warmly generous today as it was when Shay Healy hammocked it so perfectly in What's Another Year?The trouble is, amid Logan's curious mix of high kicks and breathless stage moves, it's faced with an oddly impulsive set list that swings precariously from his own set pieces, Hold Me Nowand Why Me?into (mercifully brief) inexplicable encounters with No Woman No Cryand Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
Logan exploits his impressive stature to its limits, shamelessly declaring himself a Tom Jones wannabe with a cover of Prince's Kiss, and later pitches the perfect pose, pop singer as lovelorn gigolo, in honour of his hijacking of Robbie Williams's Angels. Amid the mini avalanche of G-strings and copious audience declarations that he's a ride, Logan's good humour buoyed him past the paunchy pelvic thrusts that he shamelessly dispensed like jelly babies while he tackled an Elvis medley with some grace and a whole lot of danger.
There's no doubting Johnny Logan's status as an entertainer, and his largely Scandinavian band (augmented by his brother, guitarist Mick Sherrard) provided a robust and highly rehearsed backdrop to his sweeping set list.
It's a small pity though, that with a voice like his, Logan's opted for a stylised cabaret show instead of digging deeper beneath the surface. A tad more attention to his wardrobe wouldn't have gone astray either: unless, of course, those crotch-clutching trousers were integral to hitting the high notes? Siobhán Long
NCC/ SimonpietriNational Gallery, Dublin
Alain- Kyrie. Agnus Dei. Duruflé- Notre Père. Ubi caritas. Tantum ergo. Daniel-Lesur- Cantique des cantiques (exc). Messiaen- Cinq rechants (exc). Bach- Nun komm der heiden Heiland (chorale). Thierry Escaich- Sanctus (after Nun komm der heiden Heiland).
This was one of those rare concerts that makes you feel you've never heard anything better. If you think, you realise that the feeling may be an illusion. But music-making should aim to do that - to dig so deeply in the present moment that nothing more seems left to be said.
Such performances depend far less on technical perfection than on a vision of what the music is and can be. That's what the conductor of this concert, the last in the National Chamber Choir's Portraits series, had in abundance.
Paris-based Catherine Simonpietri said she chose music by 20th-century French organist-composers because she identified closely with how they write for voices. She showed a telling ability to get the NCC to share her identification, for she seemed to do very little; but the singers knew what to do.
All the music was polyphonic, and from the opening bars of Alain's 20th-century stile antico settings of the Kyrie and Agnus Dei, it was evident that togetherness had nothing to do with beat-counting. People knew their parts, could hear how they inter-meshed, and could feel what each piece was intended to achieve.
The sugar-sweet harmonies of three motets by Duruflé were never sickly, because expression was not injected into the music. It was inherent. The absolute polyphony of two movements from Daniel- Lesur's Cantique des cantiqueswas spine-tinglingly sensuous, and all the more so because detail was so clear when performed as the composer intended - by 12 soloists.
The same scoring is used by Theirry Escaich in his Sanctus (after Nun komm der heiden Heiland). Like everything on this programme, it has deep roots, in this case reaching back to medieval music. If ever one wanted a living definition of musical authenticity, this concert was it. Martin Adams
Murphy, RTÉ NSO/RemmereitNCH, Dublin
Beethoven- Symphony No 4. Wagner- Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. Strauss- Tod und Verklarung
It's just over a year since soprano Miriam Murphy shared first prize in the inaugural Seattle International Wagner Competition. Tralee-born Murphy had been funding the advanced stages of her vocal training by working as a receptionist at Heathrow Airport, so the prize money was very welcome.
As was the international recognition, although she had already been earning that. In March of last year she made her Covent Garden debut standing in for the indisposed Violeta Urmana as Lady Macbeth. Her performance was critically acclaimed, and she was applauded onstage with exceptional generosity by her Macbeth, Thomas Hampson.
The concert with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under Arild Remmereit gave an Irish audience the chance to hear Murphy in the music she seems to have been born to sing: Wagner.
As the devastated princess Isolde lamenting the dead Tristan, she nimbly navigated the music's twists of grief and ecstasy and her singing was characterised by a penetrating strength deployed with well-measured restraint. Her high notes were easy and strong, and when called upon she comfortably held her own against the huge Wagner orchestra at full throttle. She received a partial standing ovation, an honour NCH audiences rarely bestow on anything other than a concert's final item.
Here, as in Strauss's tone poem Tod und Verklarung (Death and Transfiguration),Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit handled the solemn subject matter with weighty but precise control. The more variegated Strauss afforded him opportunities to show a wider emotional spectrum, which he did.
The concert opened with Beethoven's Symphony No 4, Remmereit using a full string complement and so making no significant concessions to period style. That said, under his direction the wind voices were always quite clear and - after a slightly uncertain opening - his account was lively and colourful. Michael Dungan
Dowdall, Lynch, Malir Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Bax- Elegiac Trio. Takemitsu - And then I knew t'was wind. Debussy- Sonata
Once you remove all the obscure and non-mainstream names - such as Srul Irving Glick and Dorothea Franchi - from the list of composers who have written for the chamber combination of flute, viola, and harp, what's left is a very short list. About half of it was presented at the Hugh Lane by William Dowdall (flute), John Lynch (viola) and Andreja Malir (harp).
The two earliest works - the sonata by Debussy and the Elegiac Trio by Bax - were composed in the same year, 1916. Bax suffers alongside the likes of Elgar and Britten as an English composer and therefore subject to a collective blindspot for Irish audiences. It's especially ironic and unfortunate in the case of Bax who loved Ireland, lived here for years, learned to speak Irish, and bought a house in Rathgar. So it was good to hear the Elegiac Trio, one of a number of works - including an In memoriam Patric Pearsewhom he had met - that he wrote in honour of those who died during the Easter Rising.
Despite its title it's brighter than those other works, being almost as dreamy as it is elegiac. Also rather dreamy is Takemitsu's 1992 And then I knew t'was wind, the title taken from a line by Emily Dickinson, and the piece a pretty opaquely esoteric response to the poem. Even if it had been printed in the programme, and even though it was read out beforehand, it remained music that was reluctant to share its secrets. There was a perception of delicately perfumed textures, of a vague, poetic connection with wind and rain, and a feeling that 14 minutes was a bit too long without a little more help.
The quicksilver finale of Debussy's 1916 Sonata - the first major work for this combination - provided welcome contrast to all the dreaminess, although perhaps too little too late.
Still, it was the best piece in the programme and brought out the best playing. Michael Dungan
