Irish Times writers review Educating Rita at the Lyric in Belfast and Sylvia O'Brien and the RTE Concert Orchestra at the NCH.
Educating Rita, Lyric Theatre, Belfast
It may be a quarter of a century since it first saw the light of day, but Willy Russell's perky little two-hander still retains the ability to prod and probe, empower and entertain. Its Pygmalion-like theme pits the lazy intellectual superiority of boozy university lecturer Frank against the raw enthusiasm and raunchy humour of Rita, an untutored young woman bursting to break out of her humdrum routine of hairdressing, trips to the pub and rows with her uncomprehending husband. Rita's thirst for education knows no bounds, as does her longing to discover her true self. In contrast, Frank knows himself all too well and goes to extreme lengths to paper over that knowledge.
When it was announced, Russell's familiar two-step did not register as a particularly imaginative addition to the Lyric's spring/summer season, especially as it is the only full-scale in-house production in the entire programme. But it is good to welcome back Roy Heayberd, whose last Lyric production was The Gigli Concert in 1993. With characteristic flair and brio - plus a few justifiable textual tweaks - Heayberd lands Frank and Rita right into present-day Belfast. Indeed, one can almost smell the freshly cut grass of the Queen's University quad through the firmly closed window. In Ivan Little and Tara Lynne O'Neill, he has found the perfect pairing for the lead roles.
Little's Frank is a towering wreck of a man, like a crumpled old paper bag. O'Neill comes on bright-faced and sassy and proceeds expertly to move Rita from breathy ingenue to confident mature student, carefully balancing choices and opportunities. Individually they are terrific and, as a partnership, completely believable. Stuart Marshall's imposing book-lined study perfectly creates the enclosed little literary world, in which their unlikely relationship builds, flourishes, falters and finally takes flight. - Jane Coyle
Runs until July 1st
Sylvia O'Brien, RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Wagner. NCH, Dublin
This concert began RTÉ's annual Summer Lunchtime Choice series, a weekly helping of light classics that runs until the end of August.
Under its principal conductor, Laurent Wagner, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra opened with the overture to Così Fan Tutte, a quick reminder of Mozart's 250th anniversary. Fantasy and reverie followed with the scherzo from Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream and Fauré's Pavane.
Estudiantina, by French waltz specialist Emil Waldteufel, and the overture to Morning, Noon and Night, by Austrian operetta composer Franz von Suppé, ended the proceedings in a blaze of alfresco oompah.
If the title of Russian composer Reinhold Glière's Concerto for Coloratura Soprano and Orchestra implies formality and étude-like virtuosity, the reality is altogether different. This is tone poetry, a modestly scaled orchestral diptych with seductive operatic garnish.
With an accompaniment sensitively shaped by Wagner and some delicate contributions from the orchestra, soloist Sylvia O'Brien took a somewhat shaded approach to her wordless part that emphasised the darker side of the music's romanticism.
In the swoops and swirls of her opening vocalese, she suggested the hallucinations of a wanderer lost in some sultry landscape; with the thinly veiled waltz outlines that ensued, she conjured up the eerie elation of opening the shutters on some long-sealed-up ballroom.
Yet it wasn't until the closing moments that O'Brien's considerable vocal freedom, clarity and power briefly became fully apparent. What had always been a satisfyingly evocative performance suddenly became also a tantalising one. - Andrew Johnstone
