Irish Times reviewers on Can't Stand Up For Falling Down at the International Bar, Gerhardt, Osbourne at Killruddery House, Holzmair, Cooperat St Patrick's Hall and Folk Implosion at the Temple Bar Music Centre.
Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
International Bar, Dublin
by Susan Conley
Despite the familiar interlinked-monologue structure of this Richard Cameron piece, Barefaced Theatre Company, which made an intelligent debut with Freefalling in 2001, is building on that promise by presenting a lyrical and surprising work that plays to its strengths. Don't be deceived by the flippant title of this one-act play about three women: it's not a chick-lit whingefest. Directed by Simon Manahan and featuring Louise Lewis, Nicole Kealy and Judith Ryan, this is a tale drawn delicately but forcefully from the police register - had it ever got there.
Jodie, Lynette and Ruby live in the same small town, a town they warmly bring to life via closely observed geography. A common love of the river that runs through it binds these strangers together, as does their unwitting connection through the violent acts of one of the men in their lives. Royce Boland impregnated and abandoned one, killed the love of another and went on to marry and abuse the last.
Cameron spares us no details, sometimes to the detriment of the flow of the piece, and as the particulars pile on we wonder if it is really worth hearing this story. Haven't we heard it all before? But it is worth it in the end. Cameron gives us a gift, a nasty violent gift that is nonetheless utterly welcome. One could argue (I'll try not to spoil it) that the women have compromised themselves by choosing a typically patriarchal solution, but it appeases a sense of justice that all too often goes unsatisfied. Well and simply produced, with confident and deep performances all round, Manahan makes the most of the material. It is a welcome option in a Dublin theatrical summer that promises to be far too familiar.
Runs until Saturday.
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Gerhardt, Osborne
Killruddery House, Bray
By Michael Dervan
Sonata in C Op 102 No 1 - Beethoven. Huntington Eulogy - Brett Dean. Sonata in C - Britten. Sonata in G minor - Rachmaninov
The German cellist Alban Gerhardt, who is familiar to Irish audiences from his lauded appearances at West Cork Chamber Music Festival in 1999, made his first return visit to play at Killruddery House for a Music in Great Irish Houses concert with the Scottish pianist Steven Osborne, winner in 1991 of the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition, the Swiss contest won by Finghin Collins in 1999.
The programme offered three substantial, contrasting sonatas: by Beethoven, from the early 19th century, Rachmaninov, just after the turn of the 20th, and Britten, from 1961, born of the composer's encounter with Mstislav Rostropovich.
The most recent work, the 2001 Huntington Eulogy by the Australian Brett Dean, was written for the Gerhard/Osborne duo and premiered by them in Manchester last year.
The title is a reference to the Huntington Estate winery in Australia, where the composer (who, as a viola player, was for many years a member of the Berlin Philharmonic) has been associated with the Huntington Music Festival since 1997. The eulogy was inspired by the beauty of the setting and ends with an elegy for a Huntington cellar master who died tragically young.
The duo’s performances were slightly puzzling. There was no doubting that each is a fine player in his own right. Gerhardt projects easily but with no hint of the excessive romanticising cellists are so fond of. Osborne coped admirably with a less than concert-sized grand piano, and even in the often demanding writing of the Britten and Rachmaninovhe never caused the instrument to seem overly stressed.
Yet the peculiar feeling was that, although the players extended each other all the courtesies of chamber-music give and take, and each was admirable in what he was contributing, in their well co-ordinated music-making the two somehow remained expressively apart.
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Holzmair, Cooper
St Patrick’s Hall, Dublin Castle
By Michael Dervan
Winterreise – Schubert
It’s always a bit alarming to hear announcements about infections in advance of a singer’s performing. And, however great the concern may be before the curtain goes up at the opera, the situation is even more
grave at a recital where a single voice bears sole responsibility for an entire evening.
There was an announcement in advance of this performance by the Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair of Schubert's last and greatest song cycle, Winterreise, promoted by Limerick Music Association.
And there were moments when the singer seemed to be affected by his indisposition. There was an unexpected urgency in the early songs, there were some arches of melodic line that seemed less than comfortably within reach and the tone wasn’t always as focused as you would expect from Holzmair at his familiar best.
But Holzmair is a performer who gets to the heart of the chilled and chilling emotions of the winter journey of these great songs. It was the composer himself who remarked that "they have affected me more deeply than was the case with any other songs".
Holzmair sings them not in the manner someone trying in the moment of
performance to convey the darkness of word and music but as someone who has lived so fully in that darkness that he can sing of it with a conviction that has no need of the familiar emphases and demonstrativeness of the singer’s art.
Imogen Cooper is a well nigh perfect partner, attentive to all the needs of the vocal line but also an independent musical voice, setting and supporting the scene with unfailing taste.
As ever in Holzmair's performances of this cycle, the closing song, Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man), was sung with an almost mechanical rigour, the reserve of the delivery suggesting more strongly than any
more explicit emphasis could the depth of feeling dammed up behind this image of someone shunned by his fellow creatures yet somehow beckoning to the forlorn singer.
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Folk Implosion
Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin
By Edward Power
You wouldn't think it to look at them, but this roughshod indie-rock trio once had a US chart hit: 1995's Natural One, from the controversial Larry Clark movie Kids. The delicious irony was that the group was just side project for its legendarily uptight frontman, Lou Barlow, who helmed American lo-fi mainstays Sebadoh as a day
job.
How impossibly distant those heady days must feel. Interscope Records dropped Folk Implosion after 1999's One Part Lullaby album failed to yield a hit single. Barlow was forced to reappraise the band's direction soon afterwards when guitarist John Davis quit, claiming he couldn't cope with being semi-famous.
In such circumstances, this year's The New Folk Implosion CD counted as a modest triumph. Although its patchy blend of psychedelic rock and neo-grunge earned zero points for originality, it was one of those quietly charismatic records that crept into your affections without your really noticing. The burning question for fans awaiting this show was whether Barlow could keep it together on stage.
Simultaneously shy and gregarious, his penchant for throwing mid-set wobblers is the stuff of rock folklore. Happily, such fretting proved groundless. Barlow and his cohort were gracious and sweet natured,
although the singer’s rambling, somewhat unhinged between-song monologues suggested that, after three months of touring, a long holiday is in order.
Barlow's music – poetic, melancholy and painfully honest – couldn't have contrasted more with his irreverent patter. Numbers such as Fuse, Creature Of Salt and End Of Henley lurched satisfyingly between plaintive indie-pop and cacophonous quasi-metal. His bass playing was perhaps a tad anaemic, however, a disappointment offset by guitarist Imaad Wassif's thunderous fretwork and drummer Jason Pollard's seismic percussion.
The show concluded with a passage of sad acoustic tracks. Delicate readings of the new single Pearl and the Sebadoh standard Rebound confirmed that, when not lathered with vitriol, Barlow's dusky voice is without equal. It brought a poignant close to a performance always enthralling and occasionally inspiring.
