Irish Times writers review concerts by US college rock veterans REM and Jack L. Also reviewed are a night of Donegal fiddle music in Letterkenny, and Paul Meade's new play Skin Deep and performances by The Wailers and Roy Hargrove in Letterkenny and the play Love in a Time of Afflunce in the Crypt theatre, Dublin Castle.
REM
Marlay Park
Out in the 'burbs of Dublin, a familiar sound is wafting across the overcast evening sky. It's the unmistakeable voice of Michael Stipe, and he's bellowing the words to Animal, one of several rather good new songs REM unveiled during their two outdoor concerts at Marlay Park on Wednesday and Thursday.
Stipe, looking more like John Malkovich by the day, is flanked on either side by bassist Mike Mills and guitarist Peter Buck; the trio is augmented by keyboard player Ken Stringfellow, guitarist Scott McCaughey, and drummer Bill Rieflin. REM recently headlined Glastonbury, so Marlay Park is like, well, a walk in the park to these Athens vets. In fact, this seemed less like a big stadium show and more like an intimate summer soirée - if the sign outside said "Puppet show and REM", you wouldn't bat an eyelid.
The stage props were simple but festive: shimmering backdrops featuring the faces of the band, stylised scenic overviews, and three lit-up L-U-V letters planted on stalks. Hardly Popmart, but it did the job. Stipe played the crowd like Malkovich playing Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons: flirting, strutting, smiling wryly, gesturing gracefully and catching audience members' eyes with just a glint of mischief. I found my mind wandering back nearly 20 years to the first time I saw REM, in a similar park setting, and remembered the shy, diffident frontman who stooped his curly head and mumbled the lyrics to every song. What a journey from there to here.
Along the way, REM have amassed a wonderful back catalogue, and some of their finest worksongs, such as Drive, The Great Beyond, Orange Crush, Fall On Me and Losing My Religion, are returned to active duty. New songs, Final Straw and Bad Day, hark back to REM's greatest moments, when Buck's guitar chimed, Stipe's voice cracked rocks, and Mike Mills's harmonies soared. Imitation Of Life, She Just Wants To Be and Walk Unafraid, however, were evidence that REM haven't lost their mojo in recent years, and Man On The Moon, Everybody Hurts, The One I Love and It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) were proof of REM's enduring shelf-life. My 19-year flashback was completed by a version of Radio Free Europe, the first ever song REM performed in Ireland, back in 1984. The puppet show didn't have a prayer.
Kevin Courtney
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Jack L
Spirit, Dublin
How many times can you re-invent a shaky wheel? Jack Lukeman and his band have been on the Jacques Brel trail before - indeed, his entry into the public consciousness five or so years ago was via superb interpretations of Brel's songs - and it's a moot point whether the same territory can be trodden on without trampling over old ground and making a mess of it. Yet Jack L's new show - the snappily titled Chez Jack L: Love, Sex, Death and Brel - is careful to ensure that his footsteps are placed precisely over previous prints. The result is a show of regular unoriginality, but also one of immense enjoyment.
The key to the show's success is the smooth empathy with Brel's work that Lukeman and his band gainfully employ. A theatrical event, however, this is not. Despite backdrops of visual images of Brel and other atmospheric grainy sequences, and Lukeman's fairly weak attempts at placing the songs into some shape or context, the music is all.
Irritatingly episodic in nature, equal parts strident, dramatic and beautifully poignant in content, and yet sung with far more grandiosity than Brel could ever manage (his singing voice was, at best, tolerable), Lukeman pulls one rabbit after another out of the hat. It's been said before that Lukeman's voice is his saving grace, and it's never as true as when we hear him ripping through one Brel song after another. Oh, dear and stop the presses - it looks like a shaky wheel has been re-invented yet again.
Chez Jack L: Love, Sex, Death and Brel runs at Spirit, Abbey Street, Dublin 2, until August 23rd
Tony Clayton-Lea
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A Night Of Donegal Fiddle Music
An Grianán, Letterkenny
It's no mere boast - as the programme notes for this evening suggest - to say that Donegal offers one of the foremost fiddle traditions in the world today. And it's an inspired move on the part of this year's Earagail Festival to bring together 17 of the finest Donegal fiddlers, all in rare form. Hosted by Altan's Mairead Ni Mhoanaigh, events kicked off to a lively start with a short set of jigs, led by Ni Mhoanaigh and her father Francie. Thus the evening's musical journey began: From The Rosses to the mountains of Virginia (courtesy of a splendid selection of old time tunes from Raphoe's Martin McGinley) and back, there was a tangible buzz to be felt among the various couplings of performers, clearly relishing the assembled company to hand, with a show-stopping virtuoso turn from homecoming son Danny Meehan one of innumerable highlights. The sheer richness of ability on display here - punctuated by that fine, bone-dry Donegal wit - meant that, even as events came to a close with a rousing singalong to Homes Of Donegal, one felt the real craic was only set to begin. All in all, an evening that will be cherished by many, one that should become an annual fixture on the Earagail calendar.
Derek O'Connor
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Skin Deep
Project Arts Centre,
Dublin
Paul Meade's new play, directed by David Parnell for the innovative Gúna Nua company, has several overlapping areas of interest. There is the play itself, a skein of unusual relationships between four young people. The actors all give penetrating, insider performances; they know their characters. And the production values, created by mixed media company One Productions, merge with the play's ebb and flow to become an integral part of it.
The plot pivots on a severed foot, used by an artist as the basis for an avant-garde gallery exhibition. He acquires it from a medical student who, for money, steals it from a teaching hospital's store of body parts. The artist's friend, a photographer, finds out and is disturbed by this latter-day grave-robbing; and his new girl friend, a journalist, thinks it is a matter for the police.
These relationships are fleshed out with personal details. The student is in money trouble and, when the artist comes back for more, it tips her over a psychological edge. Following his critical success with the foot, the artist is increasingly revealed as an ambitious and obsessive man. The photographer becomes sexually embroiled with the student, and is trapped in conflicting emotions when the journalist undergoes an operation for a brain ulcer.
The ending is not conclusive, and the play dissolves into an open-ended finale. Mark O'Halloran, Emma Colohan, Anthony Brophy and Jennifer O'Dea inhabit their roles with quality performances absorbed into a swirling mix of video projections. A large screen is filled with stills and moving images, at times functioning as set changes, at others mirroring and merging the characters. Perhaps as an inevitable price of the visual novelty, the drama at its heart tends to be muted, receding into the parade rather than dominating it.
Despite that, this is a serious attempt to break moulds, and the talents in it are formidable. It deserves to be seen.
Runs until August 2nd
Gerry Colgan
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The Wailers
The Holiday Inn, Letterkenny
No doubt about it, Bob Marley is a hard act to follow. Gary "Nesta" Pines, however, makes a damn good job of it. Challenging all putative linkages between ganja and lethargy, he gave an energetic, and indeed energising, performance, as part of the Earagail festival. Endowed not only with a fine voice and the obligatory impressive dreadlocks, this man can also move. Dancing and prancing, he engaged with the audience in a very direct way, winning them over very quickly. So, while audience participation in this country usually involves a certain squirm factor, it was with unselfconscious spontaneity, and indeed pleasure, that the crowd burst into song during the chorus of I Don't Want to Wait in Vain For Your Love. From then on the night was made.
Nobody goes to a Wailers' concert expecting new material, and the audience got what it wanted - a trip down memory lane, and a blast of all the old favourites. Is This Love, War, I Shot the Sheriff, No Woman No Cry, Get Up Stand Up - anthems of the 1970s came fast and furious.
Abongy Balengola kept the distinctive reggae beat pulsing, Earl "Wya" Lindo's organ and Keith McCleod's keyboards reinforcing the groove. Aston "Familyman" Barrett anchored the sound on bass, and Glen da Costa's saxophone lifted the atmosphere into the stratosphere, particularly during This Reggae Music.
Pines's exhortations against the evils of tobacco smoking seemed to have little impact. The resonance, however, of the cultural and political subtexts was underlined by the number of black faces in the crowd, their joy in the music palpable. Somewhat more surprising was the number of young faces clamouring about the stage. Young or old, very few people managed to sit still.
Mary Phelan
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Roy Hargrove and the
RH Factor
An Grianán, Letterkenny
There are some gigs where you can sense, from the very first note, that this is going to be something special. Such was the case here, where Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Roy Hargrove and his eight piece RH Factor played their only Irish date as part of the Earagail Arts Festival. Dispensing with introductions, these consummate musicians took to the stage and dived straight in. In fact, the only words spoken throughout was the roll call of musicians at the finale.
The musical idiom was eclectic during the two-hour set, which moved with absolute smoothness through a variety of genres, from hip-hop through funk and soul, synthesising them into a fusion that was eminently satisfying and full of unexpected nuance. The back-line included two drum kits, which caused technical problems, resulting in a shadow puppet effect as the silhouette of the frantic sound engineer was projected on to the stage backdrop. Bobby Sparks gave a mesmerising performance on three different types of keyboards, producing a range of high-tech effects, as did the brass section, with Keith Anderson on alto and tenor sax, and Jacques Swartzbart on tenor sax and clarinet.
Central to the performance was, of course, Hargrove himself, whose eloquent, lyrical trumpet provided the binding force. A refreshingly unegotistical performer, his solo improvisations were stunning, yet he effortlessly slid in and out of the spotlight, allowing band members to strut their stuff.
One such high point was the singing of Renee Neufville, second keyboard player. Statuesque, sexy, with a stage presence as commanding as Grace Jones and a voluptuous voice, her performance was riveting, both vocally and in terms of its emotional directness.
Mary Phelan
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Love in a Time of Affluence
Crypt, Dublin Castle
Arthur Schnitzler's famous La Ronde, written in the 1890s about a linked sequence of loveless sexual encounters, has influenced many other playwrights, but no longer appeals greatly to today's satiated sensations. Its once daring material has become commonplace. Neil Watkins has drawn the structure of his new play from the same well, but adds a golden gimmick; he has turned it into a hilarious comedy.
A male society columnist comes to a taxi firm seeking the coat he left in a car after a debauched night. He finds an unco-operative cleaner who, for money, hands over the coat plus sex. She moves on to her taxi-driver husband, offers him some of the money, and they copulate. The driver drops in to a lap-dancing club, and drives one of the performers home. They do the deed. A young man who works in the club, dressed as a cowboy, delivers a message to an actress about to perform in the National Theatre, who has to play a nude scene. As she agonises, they get it on. The play's author (named Neil Watkins) turns up to insist on her respecting the integrity of his writing, and they have sex.
All of the scenes are written in tongue-in-cheek mode, and are consistently witty in their words and observations. Catherine Siggins plays all the female roles with great versatility and élan.
She is here, however, somewhat relegated to the role of straight man - woman - to Neil Watkins's succession of hilarious men. He switches characters with ease and accents with facility, just sufficiently over the top to avoid farce while touching on satire. It is a bravura outing that establishes him as a significant comic actor, and a writer to be taken seriously. John O'Brien directs with just the required panache.
Runs until August 9th
Gerry Colgan
