Irish Timeswriters review Truth in Translation as part of the Belfast Festival, the English Chamber Orchestra at the NCH and the Suitcase Kid at the Helix.
BELFAST FESTIVAL: Truth in Translation, Lyric Theatre
In 1994, Nelson Mandela asked of South Africa, "Can you forgive the past to survive the future?" The country said yes, thereby avoiding a certain bloodbath and breaking the tit-for-tat cycle of revenge.
The subsequent establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave victims and perpetrators of more than 300 years of colonialism and apartheid the space in which to tell their stories and have them listened to, investigated, forgiven. Many thousands of stories emerged, most of them unimaginably horrific and plumbing the very depths of humanity. But New York director Michael Lessac, whose Collonades Theatre Lab focuses on situations of conflict and human rights violations all over the world, has chosen to concentrate this intense piece of music theatre not on the obvious dramas of violence and racism, but on the more subtle, oblique dilemmas facing the group of interpretors, charged with simultaneously translating the testimonies into the 11 official languages of South Africa for nationwide radio and television.
Lessac brought on board the distinguished South African musician Hugh Masekela, who has composed and arranged a sequence of songs, which reach into the very heart of his nation and are delivered with smooth, creamy perfection by the cast of 11 superb mixed-raced actors. With such a store of contextual material to draw on, there is no need for visual embellishment, beyond a backdrop of discarded shirts, jumpers and T-shirts, onto which blurry news footage of horribly familiar events is projected.
The interpretors sit at dull grey desks, or are they storage trunks or partition walls, or coffins?
Tension slowly mounts as the baggage of their individual lives, their prejudices, their humour, their needs and desires seep into the manner in which they interpret, translate and become inextricably embedded in the first-person testimonies of humble village women, torturers and even the saint/monster Winnie Mandela.
This landmark production is all about dignity, restraint and a recognition that, through the worst of times, there is another way - a shining example for a situation rather closer to our own back door. - Jane Coyle
Runs until November 3rd.
Chang, English Chamber Orchestra/Gonley, NCH, Dublin
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No 3 Tchaikovsky - Serenade in C
Vivaldi - Four Seasons
Two different soloists/directors led the English Chamber Orchestra in baroque concertos at Thursday night's Irish TimesNational Concert Hall Celebrity concert.
First up was ECO leader Stephanie Gonley who played the first violin solo and directed in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3.
It's a modest work for a soloist of her refinement. Bach's busy and intricate nine-voice texture (three each of violins, violas and cellos) doesn't allow the spotlight to stick to any one part for too long.
That said, she showed - as she did some years ago in the Bach Double Violin Concerto with Tasmin Little at the Helix - that she is a nimble and high-spirited player.
Under her direction the ECO's performance clearly favoured a sitting-room fireplace kind of warmth and contentment, certainly very pleasing while at the same time void of bite.
After the interval, headline soloist Sarah Chang injected a certain amount of extra vitality into the ensemble when it was her turn with Vivaldi's set of four pictorial concertos, The Four Seasons. Her directorial approach would appear to be quite minimalist, allowing her to countenance, for example, an unusual prominence to the viola's barking dog in the Spring Concerto.
Where she really shone was in her effortless dispatch of Vivaldi's savagely virtuosic solo writing, with the whole evening coming to an exciting finish with the icy, howling winds of Winter.
In between Bach and Vivaldi the ECO seemed most at home in the rich romanticism of Tchaikovsky's String Serenade in C. Even here, however, a little more baroque-style appetite for strong contrasts would not have gone astray.
Otherwise, the playing had much the same attributes as it had in the Bach - it just worked better here.
In all, a conservative programme played largely in conservative style. It was the kind of concert "that does exactly what it says on the tin".
The Suitcase Kid, The Helix, Dublin
Novels by children's fiction writer Jacqueline Wilson lend themselves well to stage adaptations. So full are they of children facing adversity - parents splitting up, troublesome friends, classmates or siblings - that there is plenty of inherent dramatic tension and contrasting characters.
Watershed Productions and The Orange Tree Theatre's current touring production of The Suitcase Kid is classic Jacqueline Wilson. After her parents' break-up, 10-year-old Andy/ Andrea (Sarah-Lee-Dicks) struggles to divide her time between her mum's new home with her new partner and three children and her dad's new home with his new partner and toddler twins.
The problem is that in spite of such good dramatic material and an experienced cast of actors, the play simply lacked emotional engagement. In part one, we met all the characters and witnessed how Andy simply didn't fit into either household.
We saw how she escaped into fantasy play with her tiny rabbit toy, Radish, and watched how this play was weakly transformed into episodes in which all the cast wore rabbit ears and danced around the stage.
The stage itself was exceptionally bare and the tiny changes that were made to bring us from one house to another were minimal, which left a heavier burden on the actors to energise the show, which in the main they simply failed to do.
To be fair, there were some nice touches, such as how the toddler twins were played by two life-size puppets.
And, many of the cast also deserve praise - Kerry Gooderson in particular, who performed well as a nasty little sister, a psychologist and a puppeteer - for playing multiple roles.
But, all in all, the actors seemed quite relieved to get to the end of the one-and-a-half- hour performance.
Perhaps the cast were simply experiencing a mid-tour dip in energy.
But for those of us at the Helix Theatre this week, the show didn't do justice to the talented crew and cast of Watershed Productions, who have previously wowed audiences on their visits to Dublin. - Sylvia Thompson
• The Suitcase Kid (for 7-12 year olds), which is part of Fizz Fest Arts Festival for Young People, runs in the Helix Theatre until tomorrow (Booking 01-7007000).
