As this year's exciting and varied Dublin Theatre Festival heads towards its final weekend, our reviewers assess a clutch of international productions
It's Only The End of the World
Pavillion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire
A young man is about to die. He returns to his village to see his family after a long absence. They have mixed feelings about him.
One of the reasons French playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce's work has been so widely performed and translated since his early death in 1995 is its timelessness. His language is simple, but aims to communicate difficult things. Through repetition and recapitulation, his characters strive to clarify and refine their thoughts, for themselves as much as anyone else. The result is an ebb and flow of words, closer to a kind of existentialist poetry than to conventional theatre dialogue.
In the hands of the Colombian theatre company, ALODHE, this universal story of the return of the prodigal is stripped to its essentials, on a completely bare black stage. We are told by Luis (John Alex Toro), the eldest son, that he is dying - we assume of Aids, though this is not stated. This inherently melodramatic premise is undercut by director Manuel Enrique Orjuela Cortés's stripped-back production.
In a studio-style arrangement, the characters sit along the side of the stage. Each family member is lit by a single dazzling lamp above their face, which they switch off when they're not speaking. The effect creates a sense of mystery, of hidden family secrets, amplified by some ominous percussion. We could read allusions to torture and political terror into this, but only at the most allegorical level; what emerges are ordinary sibling rivalries, loves and resentments, the sense of abandonment created by Luis's absence.
Although on opening night the surtitles translating the Spanish text were erratic and a bit distracting, the performances compelled attention. In torrents of words, Luis's fractious younger sister and brother try to tell him what it was like for them without him. The more silent and detached he remains, the more prolix they become, and we realise that his isolation is not something brought about by awareness of his imminent death: it was self-imposed years before and he can't break out of it. His final, Munch-like, silent scream is an apt coda to this delicately understated, lyrical work that withholds as much as it expresses. Until Sat HELEN MEANY
The Attic Under the Sky
The Ark
"Are you Mary Poppins?" roared one inquisitive theatre-goer to the willowy Danish puppeteer who, dressed entirely in inky antique-black, welcomed her young and volatile audience to this hour-long show. Standing very still on the gloomily beautiful set of an attic room, the puppeteer explained to her exuberant audience that what they were about to see was something to "experience and enjoy" without necessarily "understanding".
On a rainy Dublin morning, the spectators seemed prepared to give her (and her fellow female performer from the Carte Blanche company) the benefit of the doubt - just. Throughout a beautiful, somewhat esoteric hour, the children did seem engaged, if a little mystified, as a series of dream-like images filled the stage and strange boxes were opened to reveal the memorabilia of past lives: black-and-white photographs, a luminous globe, a gramophone, a recording of an English-language tutorial, a miniature yet sinister paper- and popsicle-stick family. Like all dreams, the narrative in this inventive, strangely haunting piece was non-linear, and the demand on the audience was simply to let the images flow over them, to allow the delicately stylised sequences to permeate their imaginations. But children like to fill in the gaps: "Maybe her Daddy is dead," whispered one young viewer when one of the actors passed a collection of old photos over glowing amber light.
Largely due to precision puppeteering, involving a sweet little spirit-doll in search of a body, who borrows the actor's fingertips to make her angelic procession around the dreamy set, this is a warmly emotional visual treat. Unfortunately, however, the show's presence in Dublin is as fleeting as its imagery, running in the Ark for just three days. Concludes today. HILARY FANNIN
The Magic Flute
Gaiety Theatre
This remarkable Isango/ Portobello production of The Magic Flute (Impempe Yomlingo)transforms Mozart's 18th-century Viennese opera into a contemporary piece of South African musical theatre. Mozart's supernatural masonic tale is reworked to accommodate the cultural rites of passage of South Africa's Xhosa tribe, and his original score - groundbreaking at the time for its demanding arias for both male and female soloists - is reinterpreted through traditional African instruments.
While classical purists might baulk at such a prospect, the musical arrangement takes no liberties with Mozart's score, as the opening overture - played by eight musicians on unamplified marimbas - makes startlingly clear. The syncopated rhythms and deep resonance of the wooden, xylophone-like instruments strike an unerring note for the original score, instantly recognisable and an astonishing surprise.
There are more of these radical revisions in store, most notably the use of a jazz trumpet in place of the magic flute, and a fresh interpretation of Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto, which - sung in a blend of English and Xhosa, with its distinctive clicking-consonant sounds - is sexy and funny and thoroughly up to date.
The 47-strong cast fill the theatre with their reverberating vocals. Pauline Malefane, as Queen of the Night, reaches every impossibly high note, while the warm tones of Mhlekazi Andy Mosiea convey both the musical and emotional sense of the transformational Tamino. However, although the juxtaposition of the operatic set pieces with the more informally interpreted choral numbers works well, when the myriad styles (jazz, gospel, soul and trained opera voice) are subsumed in a single set piece, the result is more discordant than melodic.
Adaptor/director Mark Dornford-May's simple setting - a tilted wooden floor and exposed scaffolding - evokes African folk performance models, while the mix of traditional African costumes and more contemporary outfits creates an explosive contrast of colour across the bare stage.
The story suffers quite badly from the production's focus on passionate singing-and-dancing routines, which is a potential problem for the theatre-going end of the diverse audience that it will attract. However, for opera lovers more familiar with reverent treatments of Mozart's most popular opera, and for anyone with an interest in African music, this version of The Magic Fluteis a must-see. Until Sat. SARA KEATING
Waves
Samuel Beckett Theatre
As many commentators have noted, one of the most interesting aspects of this year's Dublin Theatre Festival is that it features so many productions which adapt books for the stage. However, this Royal National Theatre version of Virginia Woolf's The Wavesis very different from shows such as Gatz, Deliriumand Metamorphosis. Indeed, it is utterly unlike any of the other productions in this year's festival.
Woolf's 1931 novel presents the overlapping streams of consciousness of seven characters, attempting to find a language for their pre-verbal thoughts. Her text is dream-like and poetic, full of free association and non-sequiturs. So the challenge for director Katie Mitchell and her company is to present physically a story that is rooted in the subconscious.
To do so, the actors use a combination of sound and images. Excerpts from the text are recited over microphones, accompanied by sound and musical effects created live on stage. Simultaneously, the actors create visual images that are projected instantly on to a large screen hanging over the performance space.
The audience is presented with images and sounds that are often very beautiful but also, importantly, they see see how those effects are made. On the screen, for instance, we might see the suggestive image of an eye peeking through a hedge, while on the stage, we simultaneously see an actor sitting at a table with a branch held over his face. The contrast between the beauty of the image and the banality of its construction works as an analogy for the contrast between the characters' physical appearance on screen, and their private thoughts and feelings, as evoked by the actors.
What Mitchell is attempting, then, is to find a new theatrical language, one that can accommodate Woolf's attempt to present the public and private simultaneously. Like Woolf's original work, her production is sometimes difficult to follow, and occasionally risks being too self-referential, but (again like the original) the experiment is as daring as it is challenging.
Wavestherefore offers audiences that rarest of experiences: the chance to see a production that is genuinely doing something that has never been done before. Until Sat. PATRICK LONERGAN
