Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events
The Last Days of the Celtic Tiger, Olympia Theatre, Dublin
"The ledge" of a thousand teenage fantasies is brought to life in The Last Days of the Celtic Tiger, as Paul Howard's south Dublin, self-styled superman Ross O'Carroll-Kelly (aka ROCK, Rosser, The Kicker) takes to the stage. Rory Nolan (pictured, with Lisa Lambe) is the ledge writ large, his stiff quiff and forward-thrusting pelvic swagger the very perma-tanned essence of post-pubescent petulance that defines Ross. Nolan's life, I fear, will never be the same again.
Ross's life too seems destined to change. What with his fat-cat daddy Charles (a resonant Philip O'Sullivan) in Mountjoy on corruption charges, his sex-starved mother (a nubile, nasal Susan Fitzgerald) scoping out his life for sordid details for her smutty books, and his wife Sorcha (the gorgeous Lisa Lambe) determined to do a Britney Spears. Oh, and then there are the shenanigans of his "skobie" son Ronan (brought to life in a brilliant piece of characterisation by Rory Keenan) to deal with.
Howard's play is pitched for the mass audience already enamoured with his legendary anti-hero, the action of the play picking up where his last book, This Champagne Mojito Is the Last Thing I Own, left off. However, for first-time consumers of the O'Carroll-Kelly phenomenon, Howard sculpts a slick drama in which the exploits of Ross and "how he had it all and lost it all" are clear even to the casual viewer.
That said, the play could do with a serious edit. For example, the short scenes in which Sorcha plays with a blueberry muffin/asparagus quiche/Mediterranean tart, or Fionnuala name-checks a variety of RTÉ celebs, do little to advance the plot or characterisation, although they do make room for designer Conor Murphy to show off his edge for interior furnishings. Meanwhile the voice-over excerpts from Fionnuala's "grit-lit" in progress, which opens the play and breaks up its otherwise conservative dramaturgy, go nowhere.
Even so, Mall Teasers and Ugger Huggers will be riveted from the opening to the closing gag. And if the CAB-busted Charles can claim that his shady contracts "were the deals that the Celtic Tiger was built on", it seems only fair to give Howard some credit too: Ross and his shameless buddies are the ideals that are keeping the Celtic Tiger going. Sara Keating
Until Dec 5
Jonathan Plowright (piano), National Gallery, Dublin
Paderewski - Humoresques de Concert. Stojowksi - Quatre Morceaux (exc). Deux Orientales. Chopin - Barcarolle. Polonaise in A flat Op 53 (Heroic). Stojowski - Pensées Musicales. Paderewski - Sonata in E flat minor.
The National Gallery's current exhibition of Polish paintings was complemented on Sunday by a piano recital juxtaposing the music of Chopin with the work of two less well-known compatriots, Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) and Zygmunt Stojowski (1870-1946).
Paderewski was a giant in the musical world of his time. He was a household name, by virtue of the fact that he was far more than a pianist - for a short time he was prime minister of a newly independent Poland after the first World War. His recordings are still in print, but his own music, most of it in the form of miniatures, is now rarely heard.
Stojowski is the kind of figure known mainly to pianophiles, one of those composer-pianists whose output remained firmly in the romantic mould, while the musical revolutions of the first half of the 20th century exploded around them.
British pianist Jonathan Plowright has taken up the cause of both composers on disc and in concert. In this selection of shorter pieces he responded with sometimes coltish alacrity to the music's virtuoso invitations. Those invitations are pronounced even in Paderewski's celebrated Minuet in G, and more so in Stojowski's Thème cracovien varié, where the subject seems less the theme itself than the pianism that's called for in delivering the florid roulades of the variations.
Plowright is a player of formidable ease and accomplishment, fearless and consistent in his mastery of the knottiest challenges. Musically, in the shorter pieces, he seemed to get rather more out of Stojowski than Paderewski, and his handling of two pieces by Chopin, the Barcarolle and Heroic Polonaise, showed limitations of finesse in the handling of rubato.
There were no such reservations to be had about the afternoon's biggest work, the large-scale Sonata in E flat minor that Paderewski worked on between 1887 and 1903. This piece exults in a kind of tortured turbulence, conveyed in a style of harmonic over-ripeness that heightens its hothouse fervour.
The passing of time has seen the work of Paderewski and Stojowski pale into insignificance beside the music of their greater contemporaries, Rachmaninov and Scriabin to the east, Debussy and Ravel to the west. If more pianists can be found to play Paderewski's sonata with the persuasive passion that Jonathan Plowright can bring to it, that situation might begin to change. Michael Dervan
It's Not All Rain and Potatoes, Grand Opera House, Belfast
Debunking myths, slaughtering sacred cows and de-greening Ireland is what this new sketch comedy by Nuala McKeever, Andrea Montgomery and Anthony Toner sets out to do. It's hardly an original premise but, nevertheless, the so-called new Ireland does offer up boundless opportunities for thought-provoking satire and sharp-edged humour. The creative team for Terra Nova Productions ticks all the right boxes. McKeever is billed as Ulster's funniest woman; Montgomery was until recently the highly successful artistic director of Coleraine's Riverside Theatre; and Toner is a talented musician and former newspaper editor. The result, however, is disappointing, as one set of cliches is exchanged for another and the writing and content fail to live up to expectations.
McKeever has an engaging personality and, along with fellow performers Stephen Daly and Faolan Morgan, she works hard to craft an evening's entertainment on the shallow stage of the Grand Opera House's new Baby Grand space. With virtually no set, save three green, shamrock-embellished chairs, this two-hour show rattles through a series of mildly amusing sketches, covering the standard fare of Irish mothers, myths, families, tourism, horse racing, films, music, ghosts, saints and speed-dating. It ends with an excruciating piece of improvisation using subjects suggested by the audience. The writers flag up the fact that much of their material has been gleaned from real-life stories posted onto a specially set-up website but, given their individual credentials, they would have been better advised to trawl their own considerable intellects and imaginations. Jane Coyle
Until Sat, then tours Antrim, Strabane, Portstewart
OSC/Marriner, NCH, Dublin
Haydn - Symphony No 104 (London). Mozart - Symphony No 40.
Mendelssohn - Italian Symphony.
Neville Marriner's second concert with the Orchestra of St Cecilia was every bit as interesting as the first. Mozart and Haydn are a lot less well served in orchestral concerts in Ireland than Beethoven, the subject of last week's programme.
Marriner's approach to the two 18th-century masters was a pleasant shock to the system. He likes both grace and grip in 18th-century music, while eschewing the sharp-edged ruggedness that players of period instruments often favour. He places a high value on the sort of transparency that allows one to listen through the texture to almost any melodic line or instrumental colour that the ear would like to focus on.
It's the kind of approach that's usually predicated on a scaling of dynamics that accommodates the weak rather than allowing a willy-nilly domination by the strong, and secures the kind of balances between the various sections of an orchestra that come from the players adjusting to what they hear at any given moment, rather than following the dictates of a rigidly pre-ordained plan.
Marriner once again delivered a style of carefully nuanced music-making that has not been one of the Orchestra of St Cecilia's attainments in the past. Indeed, it's not a regular attainment of the two RTÉ orchestras, either, in the repertoire that was on offer. The biggest shock that Marriner provided was that of hearing Mozart and Haydn performed with the kind of natural-sounding ease Dublin audiences are so rarely treated to in this repertoire.
The OSC's playing was not always ideally tight in ensemble, and the dashing opening of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony had some rough violin passage-work that momentarily made one fear the worst. But things quickly settled, and, even though the body of strings was small, Marriner brought bite and energy to the playing, and secured a real illusion of weight, to cast the music in an entirely different light to the works of the first half.
Nothing in Monday's programme impacted as did the two Beethoven symphonies a week earlier. But that was surely more a matter of the music than the playing. It will be interesting to see how much of the new, concentrated way of working will survive in the orchestra's future programmes. Michael Dervan
