Reviews today include Swan Lake in the Grand Opera House, Belfast, Níor Mhaith Linn do Thrioblóid at the Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe TheatreSpace, The Mint and Paris Conservatoire at the Cork Opera House

Swan Lake

Grand Opera House, Belfast

Swan Lake is a tragic ballet. Tchaikovsky's music, particularly in the last act, is ominously doom-laden and the moral of the tale is that Prince Siegfried proves unworthy and breaks his vow to Odette. It is infuriating, therefore, to still come up against productions that insist on a happy ending like that by Aivars Leimanis for the Latvian Ballet Company. The happy ending originated in the Imperial Theatre of the Tsar, where there was an unwritten rule that everything must end blissfully, but as choreographer John Cranko once remarked: "Odette and Siegfried are not the sort of lovers who can live happily ever after."

Leimanis's production is also uneven dramatically. The first act is particularly non-eventful in spite of the retention of the pas de trois, which often gets moved to Act Two.

Characterisation is a key to the unfolding drama, but it is largely glossed over: Benno hardly registers at all, the tutor doesn't get roaring drunk and the jester is not the usual bubbling ever-presence. In the second act, the first meeting of the Prince and Odette is rushed. She is meant to be fearful of his crossbow, but Leimanis omits the hunting party altogether and her fear has to be imagined.

Shortcomings in the production do not hide some excellent performances from the cast. Julija Gurvica subtly embodies the dual role of swan queen Odette and the temptress Odile, a role associated with company-great Anna Priede (who only gets a cursory mention in the programme's company history). Aleksei Avenchkine made the most of his diluted role of the Prince, but it was some of the performers of the character dances that really caught the eye.

The young Elza Leimane, who danced the Russian folk dance and the pas de trois with the under-used Pavels Vasilcenko, demonstrated technical and dramatic control over everything she performed.

The Latvian Ballet has a legacy of both dramatic passion, through choreographer Eugeny Changa, and a harmonious and precise movement, through Elena Tangiyeva-Birzniece. Right now it seems to be caught somewhere between the two. There were high production values throughout the evening but a very low value placed on dramatic development.

Ends Saturday, April 19th

Michael Seaver

Níor Mhaith Linn do Thrioblóid

Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe TheatreSpace, The Mint

Themes of loneliness, hypocrisy and cruelty are at the heart of this play by one of Connemara's favourite writer/actors, Joe Steve Ó Neachtain. But it is not a dark play. Humour is injected at every turn, usually in the form of cutting one-liners delivered with a sting by actors Diarmuid Mac an Adhastair and Joe Steve himself.

The Máistir's wife has just died. Peadar Lamb cuts a lonely, abandoned figure as he searches inconsolably for his wife. Cut off from his neighbours who accuse the family of having "notions", he finds little solace in his family. They too have been cut off - first by their mother who sent them away to school, so that they would not have to mix locally, and later by social circumstances.

They return to go through the motions of grief and burial and the play becomes a struggle between their desire to keep apart and their neighbour's efforts to play out the traditional community funeral.

Peadar Lamb is a wonderful Máistir, by turns lucid and deranged with grief. There are some great moments when two worlds collide. Lisa, his Brussels Eurocrat daughter, trying to arrange his admission to a nursing home while preparing for the funeral, is asked by a neighbour to see if Brussels can get him a "grant na gcaorach". It is over two years since the play was first produced in An Taibhdhearc and the Dublin audiences which are packing TheatreSpace are relishing every minute of it. They get all the jokes and nuances - it's a bit like having Coláiste Chonnacht transported to Henry Street.

Joe Steve's title exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of many a funeral tradition. We might sympathise . . . if we really meant it. Seamus and Tom drip with insincere sympathy to the family and yet when digging the grave in unco-operative soil, have harsh words about them. Would the grave be big enough? Well, they're not going to be doing the Stack of Barley down there, are they? The dead woman's corpse commands no respect either. If she has to be buried nearer the surface, well, she can have a bottle of sun lotion buried with her. Moments later it's: "Ní maith liom do thrioblóid agus sin í an fhírinne ghlan."

Lisa, the returned bureacrat, is cruel, but not hypocritical, and played acidly by Eithne Nic Einrí. Nobody likes her, but nobody wants to face up to awful truths she exposes either. Her father must leave the house, her brother should face facts and her sister should divorce her husband. "Faigh réidh leo nuair nach dtaitníonn siad leat - tá 'live-in' níos handy."

Maidhc P. Ó Conaola directs with a sure hand and an insider's take on both worlds. Set design is by artist Seán Ó Flaithearta, from Inis Mór, who brings a painter's touch to a complicated stage setting.

Ends Sunday, April 20th

Mairéad Ní Nuadháin

Paris Conservatoire

Cork Opera House

This performance by the Classical Junior Ballet Company from the Paris Conservatoire was their very last. Aged between 17 and 20-years-old they have now retired and will move up to the next stage of their career ladder. But for those of us watching their performance there was a mixture of joy and disbelief that the bodies unfolding such intricate choreography could be so young.

However, you can be young in years and old in days, and the very reason that the company are performing in Ireland is to exhibit excellence in training. They are the product of considered and broad-minded training where the ideological opposites of ballet and contemporary dance are merged and celebrated. Ironically, the newest work, Robert North's Figures Courantes, is the most old-fashioned. The nine dancers introduce themselves through successive highly individual solos and fully embrace the feel-good choreography that oozes joie de vivre and celebrates the performers' youthfulness.

North chose music by Bach as the backdrop to his movements, and Nicolo Fonte's Everyday Incarnation also took Baroque music, by Vivaldi, as his inspiration. Spurning the temptation to slavishly follow the contrapuntal textures of the music like Mark Morris, he focuses on gesture, and constructs a clearly patterned set of recurring phrases. Balanchine and Stravinsky set more precise choreo-musical correspondences in Agon, but it is in this work that the performers seem a bit stretched. There is a detached coolness necessary for this work that evades the performers and while they meet the choreographer's technical demands, the spiritual embodiment seems beyond them.

Petite Suite en Noir, by Davide Bombana, was the fourth work and a self-proclaimed "neo-barocal athletic concerto". Catherine Garnier's imaginative costumes, along with the constantly changing sequences of duets, trios and group dances show a real engagement with the challenge of integrating classical vocabulary with contemporary sensibilities. Moments of attentive partnering and clear phrasing make this work the essence of ballet à la Paris Conservatoire.

Michael Seaver