Irish Times writers review events at the Dublin theatre festivals

Dublin Theatre Festival

Shining City, Gate Theatre

If Conor McPherson's new play were directed by someone other than the author it would be easy to guess what had happened. A flawed but sensitive, intelligent and often beautifully written play had been vandalised by a fool who had lost his nerve and tacked on an ending of incredible crassness. As, however, McPherson is both writer

and director, it is clear that the problems are of his own making and that Shining City signals something of a crisis in the career of an outstanding young dramatist.

The problem is not that Shining City is a bad play. Even the best playwrights write plenty of those, and, anyway, much of Shining City is superb. McPherson has gone out his way to invite comparison with one of the great Irish dramas of the past 25 years, Tom Murphy's The Gigli Concert. There is the same setting: a dingy office in a rundown Georgian house in Dublin. There is the same basic situation: a comfortable middle-aged man, representative of mainstream Ireland, is in the midst of a

psychological and spiritual breakdown. He lands in the office of a quack counsellor who is scarcely saner than himself. There is even, as in Murphy's play, a scene in which the would-be counsellor is visited by his lover and the depth of his inadequacy is fully revealed.

It says much for McPherson's talent that he can invite this comparison and, on some levels, not be embarrassed by it. His equivalents of Murphy's quack and patient are vibrant figures in their own right. Michael McElhatton's Ian, a former priest who has set himself up as a counsellor, is a quivering bundle of barely suppressed anxieties held together with peeling Sellotape. He is visited by John, a 54-year-old sales rep whose wife has died in a car crash and is now revisiting him as a ghost. McPherson's writing of John's part is splendidly accomplished. He manages one of the most difficult feats - the creation, without banality, of a banal character - and in doing so allows Stanley Townsend to create the performance of a lifetime.

John's dialogue, especially in the opening scene, is a great aria of repetitions, hesitations, evasions and ejaculations, and Townsend sings it out with a perfection that reminds us just how good McPherson can be.

And yet there is a whole other level on which the analogy of The Gigli Concert only exposes McPherson's problems. Murphy's play ultimately soars because its author found a governing myth to act as a bridge between the natural and the supernatural, the physical and the metaphysical. McPherson is still searching for a myth, and Shining City is a symptom of how badly he needs to find one.

So far his mythology has been rooted in the 19th-century Irish Gothic of Bram Stoker and Sheridan LeFanu. The ghost story (as in The Weir) and even the vampire story (as in St Nicholas) are the templates from which he has worked. Shining City is no exception: John's attempts to exorcise the ghost of his wife is the engine that drives it. But the problem with Gothic stories is that they can so easily tip into hokum. If McPherson was thinking, when he chose his title, of the greatest Gothic movie of recent decades, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, he might have noticed how even that film lurches in the end towards the bathetic and the ludicrous.

It says a lot about Shining City that, like some corny slice of Jeffrey Archeresque rubbish, it has an ending that reviewers can't reveal. An eloquent contemplation of the sheer sadness of real lives is boiled down to one short and stupid word: "Boo!" McElhatton's subtle acting (a scene in which he silently wraps a teddy bear for his daughter is vastly more haunting than any ghost or ghoul) and Townsend's magnificent orchestration of silences and hesitancies are betrayed by a gesture that reeks of panic and a loss of faith in the material.

Yet this collapse is not entirely unheralded. An earlier scene in which Ian rows with his lover (Kathy Kiera Clarke, struggling with a hopeless task) is so clunkily written that, in retrospect, it seems obvious that this strand of the story was going nowhere but down in flames. With some of his best and most of his worst work sharing its space, Shining City should at least reflect back to its author the stark choices he has to make.

Runs on after October 9th

Fintan O'Toole

The Dandy Dolls, Purgatory & Riders To The Sea, Peacock Theatre

The director Conall Morrison has a way of filling a stage with imaginative energy, and George Fitzmaurice's The Dandy Dolls lets him loose with bells on. He prefaces it with a fantastic scene in which Roger the dollmaker's creations fill his workroom with aberrant and threatening behaviour. Outside, his neglected wife has a visitor, the menacing Grey Man, who wants the newest doll. A belligerent priest comes calling, and soon the Hag of Barna and her son enter the fray, all doll-driven. The non-stop action fills the stage to the melodramatic ending, leaving the audience sated with verbal and visual colour. Derbhla Crotty, Barry

Cassin and Ned Dennehy lead a first-rate cast through some very energetic paces.

Purgatory, by W. B. Yeats, is considerably less dramatic, although it is psychologically and physically violent. An elderly man and his son stop by a ruined mansion where the former was born. His mother died at his birth, and, in time, he killed his drunken and unloving father. Now he is about to kill his son. It is a very declamatory play, and the words are worth listening to, as delivered by Eamon Morrissey.

But it is, in terms of drama, a very static work, leaving little resonance behind it.

Finally, Synge's Riders To The Sea takes the stage, in a translation to Irish by Tomás Ó Flaithearta. This short Synge classic, about the lives and deaths of fishermen of the west, is inherently a gripping piece of theatre, but the decision to change its language, and the manner of its staging, are puzzling. There is no difficulty in understanding the story, but there is more to Synge than that. His rhythmic, lyrical language is a unique element in his plays. I found myself mentally having to translate back to English - surely a nonsense - and not finding the complete Synge. It is played on an open stage with offstage actors visible at the side, losing atmosphere. These deviations considerably diminished the impact of this gem of Irish theatre.

Gerry Colgan

Run until October 26th

Death Of A Salesman, Gaiety Theatre

Late at night a man has come home. Across the stage of the Gaiety he hauls his heavy baggage while memories of the past grow so vivid that they threaten to overwhelm the present. Yet for all his apparent distractions, and emphasis on surface appearance, this man, by now an icon of the theatre, is still commanding. The night may hold difficulties for him, but he radiates optimism and an unswerving belief in the American dream. This man is Joe Dowling. "It's all right," echoes Willy Loman. "I came back."

Returning to the theatre where he directed Arthur Miller's classic of post-war disillusionment in 1986, Dowling now brings his Guthrie Theater production to Dublin. The tremendous focus of its central performances, where a family's hopes build and shatter, make it an occasionally striking production but also one that leaves the edges less clearly defined.

As Willy, the exhausted and addled fabulist, Peter Michael Goetz slides between deep authority and shrill fantasy, climbing his scales like a woozy trombonist. Setting down his sample cases in a permanent frozen spotlight, this salesman is in search of spectacle. Dowling, a director who recently whipped a storm through the Abbey's All My Sons, then revolved a cottage for the Gate's Dancing At Lughnasa, is looking for ways to dazzle us.

But while the Brooklyn facades and airless rooms of Richard Hoover's design sail down silently from the flies or roll on, indelicately, from the wings, nothing on stage is as magnificent as Helen Carey. Between the cautious young mother of Willy's flashbacks or the greying, supportive wife of the present, her Linda resounds with heart and fire. Elsewhere, Miller's few female characters - mistresses, models, secretaries - simply bear the brunt of a bruised post-war masculinity while fathers and sons lick their wounds.

A classic play, though, will always strike a chord with the present. "The jails are full of fearless characters," cautions Charley before the morally hazy entrepreneur Ben approves, "And the stock exchange, friend." Somewhere, Martha Stewart is shivering.

For today's US, sharply divided between dreams and fables, the play retains a strong currency. But, whether it's from over familiarity with the play or from a lacklustre production, there is an air of inevitability about the death of this salesman. In Miller's play Loman's destruction is a modern tragedy; in this production it's just a crying shame.

Peter Crawley

Runs until October 9th

No Comment, Samuel Beckett Theatre

Ideally, a review of this production by the Belgian Needcompany would echo the title. In the last of three monologues, written by the company's director, Jan Lauwers, a forthright woman called Ulrike (Viviane de Muynck) questions the necessity for us always to have an opinion. Lauwers and his co-authors, Charles L. Mee and Josse De Pauw, are not offering us opinions but presenting experiences, as three female characters reflect on their lives and a fourth performs a complementary solo dance.

"I want to be less than nothing, to disappear," Ulrike says, but we know that, as she is a suicide terrorist, her obliteration will also destroy others and that, if we refuse to have an opinion, we can make no judgment on her actions. In pinstriped suit and heels she is a compelling presence, confronting us in front of a stripped stage with the house lights up. In the first, and least original, piece, The Tea Drinker, a Balinese dancer (Grace Ellen Barkey) plays with the expectations of femininity and exoticism that accompany her traditional costume, moving in and out of her role, as the platform on which she is perched rises and falls against a backdrop of brightly coloured lights and a pulsing soundtrack.

In Salome a woman (Anneke Bonnema) in evening dress talks with striking detachment about sadomasochistic sex, about orgies, humiliation and abuse, as if these experiences were not her own. Occasionally, she falters and breaks down, acknowledging with her emotions what her words refuse. Drawing on writing by Camille Paglia and others on pornography, this text by Charles L. Mee is subtle and disturbing, with allusions to some of the recent paedophilia scandals in Belgium. Like Ulrike, this character is trying to obliterate herself, through extreme forms of sexual transgression.

The limits of the body are also explored in Tijen Lawton's dance piece, in which movement sequences are repeated against a layered score that builds as the dancer spins her arms like propellers, trying to jump out of her body. Slowly, the four parts of this deceptively low-key work begin to reinforce each other.

Actions and their consequences, the choices we make, how free we are and how determined, the relationship between language and reality: these questions run through the monologues. These existential preoccupations might have resulted in an extremely arid work; instead, thanks to committed performances and impeccable, assured stagecraft, they form one strand of a larger picture, full of subtle, generally dark, contrasts: an untitled essay, written on the body.

Runs until Saturday

Helen Meany

Dublin Fringe Festival

Appointment With A High Wire Lady, Andrews Lane Studio

The clock has stopped on the wall of the state asylum. Richard sits on his chair in the visiting room and tries to remember. His visitor, a former girlfriend called Louise, looks on and waits for him to remember. We've been here before, so we also know to wait - for the cause of Richard's disintegration to be revealed, followed by his redemption and that of those around him. This is familiar territory, and Foxrock Performance Company fails to offer anything new in a production that lacks vision. Performances by Tommy Schrider (Richard), Nurit Monacelli (Louise) and Ruth Reid (as fellow inmate Carla) are limited by a heavy reliance on the script. Despite promises of exuberance, the redemption, when it finally arrives, barely leaves an impression.

Runs until Saturday

Fíona Ní Chinnéide

Bumping Heads, Players Theatre

A foot slaps across a face, and a smack sends the other spinning to the floor: Bumping Heads is about not contact but confrontation, a wonderful piece of acrobatic dance theatre that drags a broken relationship into the boxing ring and pummels it with emotional honesty. Canned laughter and applause signal the end of each bruising round, but it is only in the reruns of sequences that we begin to understand. The precision of Tina McErvale and Brendan Shelper is riveting. The two are so confident in their physical strength and movements that they have time to act, and they do it well. Sometimes fragmented, its meaning not always clear, Bumping Heads is nevertheless proof that you don't need an elaborate set or even a story to create a great performance - but extraordinary physical talent helps.

Runs until Saturday

Fíona Ní Chinnéide

Emily And Byron, Go To Work, Players Theatre

Hey, did you know that corporate America is, like, totally evil and routinely tries to seduce poor, struggling temps into taking permanent positions with the lure of health benefits and paid vacations? If you are familiar with this well-trodden road, then Quattro Gatti's self-consciously madcap jaunt isn't a journey you'll want to take. Written by Amy Frances Quint and Matthew Gunn Park, and starring the authors in the title roles, the text sets several well-observed scenes but neglects to inject much drama into the proceedings. It's a pity, because director Yvonne Hawkins has an excellent sense of staging, and the assembled cast are terrific, with Gunn Park himself a particular standout. We never really feel that Emily and Byron are on the brink of selling out to the corporate "family", however; nor do we invest in them as artists. The play, like Emily and Byron's day job, seems a lot of work for little payoff.

Runs until Saturday

Susan Conley

Falling Over, Project Cube

Ouch! This is theatre at its most interactive, physiologically, anyway: as José Miguel Jiménez, Aidan Corcoran and Dylan Tighe (the most impressive tumbler) tip, crash and plummet, the audience tenses, winces, cringes . . . and laughs - we are well trained, by all forms of theatrical and cinematic slapstick, to laugh at some else's potentially painful mishap. Basically, the cast fall over for 25 minutes; although the falls are well executed, they quickly become predictable. The stakes rise as the men pile the set's boxes on top of one another and fall from a height, and while that instils fear in the viewers we're pretty sure that these guys aren't going to hurt themselves - after all, they've a lot more shows to do. Taken out of the brutal context of immediacy and accident, falling over becomes safe, and even a video of a guy slipping on banana skins loses its Schadenfreude.

Runs until Saturday

Susan Conley

Infallible Muse, SS Michael & John

From a fast-forward, voyeuristic glimpse at a video in sepia, in which women in tight lacy underthings and suspender belts did things we couldn't quite discern, Crux Dance Theatre's piece moved into a pastoral setting. To a fuzzy country video, complete with birdsong and babbling water, choreographer Jan Kellaghan and Inma Moya, Ursula Chapman and Sarah Gash undulated behind a frieze of cling film capturing light like a moonlit lake. Transforming from nymphs to city slickers, rendered anonymous by the stockings obscuring their faces, they maintained a supple, elastic energy. At one point a dancer with a flashing bicycle lamp in her mouth, and wearing her stocking camouflage, stalked low and delicate as an insect, arms testing the air like feelers. The images were various, meanings a bit jumbled, but this was aesthetically satisfying and skilled dancing nevertheless.

Run concluded

Christine Madden

A Show Of The Standing Up Variety, New Theatre

The clue is in the title. moOCow's one-man show is a piece of stand-up comedy rather than a straight monologue. Written and performed by Patrick Kavanagh, it is a likeable show, albeit one that often feels like a work in progress. He unwisely admits that he finds it difficult to link his pieces, and this show would get a more critical reception from a comedy audience. Nonetheless, Kavanagh has an impressive bag of accents and personas. Did you ever think a man being stabbed 99 times could be funny? It is. He's also good on the old chestnuts of alcohol and the Irish, and the excesses of Temple Bar, "where the streets are paved with vomit". Nick Kavanagh's simple set is a model of economy and imagination. But at 25 minutes longer than the advertised 50 it's too long - and isn't timing everything in comedy?

Ends today

Rosita Boland

Snow, SS Michael & John

Pat Kaufman's play is the story of an interracial love affair against the backdrop of 1940s, 1950s and 1960s America, staged by the US company Firewords. Middle-class Lily White (Caitlin Barton) falls for black dentist Clayton (Alvin Keith). Their relationship is stormy, upset by the barriers of class and race as well as the prejudices of society. It is told through flashbacks that take us all the way to Lily's early childhood. There is a confusing subplot about a child (Susan Hyon) who mistakenly believes Lily is her mother. The minimalist production makes heavy demands on the three actors, requiring them to play a range of characters and cope with a disjointed script. They do a valiant job, particularly Barton. The play itself is a mess, however. The story hops around wildly, causing constant confusion. It is loaded with symbolism but is dramatically unengaging.

Runs until Saturday

Alex Moffatt

Stitching, New Theatre

Advertised as a love story set at the extremes of emotion, this two-hander by Anthony Neilson is for most of its duration utterly bland. The well-dressed, deodorised young couple at its centre wander around the sparse set seemingly in a state of disengagement from each other, from the text and from the intensity they are supposed to be generating. As the story of Abby's pregnancy and its consequences emerges, and Stu shares with her his sexual plans for healing their relationship, there are moments that verge on the shocking, though these are made meaningless by the blankness of the characters. Things are not helped by a shifting time frame, jumping back and forth through the years with no clues that Abby and Stu have developed or been changed by events. Stitching is a difficult play to stage; an ominous soundtrack and a backdrop of children's drawings are not the solutions. Something went wrong here.

Runs until Saturday

Giles Newington

Spiegel Spiels

What drives you insane about festivals in Dublin? Come to the Spiegeltent, on George's Quay, at 1 p.m. tomorrow to vent your spleen, for better or worse. The OpenGripe panellists will include Vallejo Gantner, of Dublin Fringe Festival, and Fergus Linehan, of Dublin Theatre Festival (and, from 2006, of the Sydney Festival). Admission is free

More festival reviews tomorrow