Irish Times writers review events at the Dublin Theatre Festival, the Dublin Fringe Festival and other performances.
Dublin Theatre Festival
Flamenco Republic, Olympia Theatre
By Michael Seaver
Performances drawn on folk-dance traditions can end up being history lessons or beginner's guides to evolution, exploration and integration. María Pagés has been performing for too long to stifle her dance with explanations: what you see is what you get. Yet she can still gently ease us into her show with subtlety and charm.
First the lone light bulb pulses to the sound of a heart, the elemental rhythm behind everything we are about to see. A quartet of female dancers focuses on florea, intricate hand gestures driven by swirling wrists. Then four men, shoulders back and chest out, hammer out zapateado, those exhilarating percussive foot taps. By the time Pagés arrives, with her swirling upper torso and beautifully expressive arms, the essential elements of flamenco are present.
The informality is charming. The musicians are seated upstage, talking to each other, shouting encouragement to the dancers and raising eyebrows at the events. Dancers mingle with them, sitting to add their claps to the guitars
and voices.
The joyous dancing flows between groups, showing shaded variations of the dance. One dark septet, performed in silence, was all gnarled arms and wrists, focus turned inward and shoes scraping across the floor, trailing behind the body. Then sudden lightness as the women gently swayed through the stage.
What Federico García Lorca called "the dark sounds" of flamenco were embodied in the extraordinary dancing of Pagés. Her frowning face, twisted torso and stamps recalled another famous poet's lines: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" Soon everything had degenerated into one big party. Good-humoured show-stoppers, complete with fans, canes and castanets, brought about a perfect ending.
Ends tomorrow
One Last Flutter, Liberty Hall Theatre
By Peter Crawley
"It isn't easy being British sometimes," Dillie Keane sombrely informs her Dublin audience before Fascinating Aïda's final bow. Her audience seems to have fewer troubles, devouring jokes about socialist Britain and sequins, or Harrods' food hall and council tax, and laughing louder than strictly necessary at a gag involving the Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe.
Keane utters the statement with an appropriate indication of Home Counties hand-wringing, a comfortably middle-class guilt at being "America's whore", politically and militarily speaking. Poor old Britain, you think as the Union Jack is projected (ironically, of course) on the back wall of Liberty Hall.
The preceding number, Stick Your Head Between Your Legs, is the stock-in-trade of Fascinating Aïda: a winsomely polite polemic charged with the frisson of taboo - the word "bum" features - performed by the witty Keane, the elegant Adèle Anderson and the charmingly operatic Marilyn Cutts.
Their performance is akin to the tremulous pleasure of a Marks & Spencer cream-cake aisle. There are other similarities too.
One Last Flutter is a classy affair, glossily presented, expertly co-ordinated and exclusively middle-class. It is gently ironic, as edifyingly British as the BBC World Service and pokes fun at almost every nation except Ireland.
Fascinating Aïda's satirical muse is beginning to show its age, though, As playfully enjoyable as they can be, leading the audience through a song about relocating to New Zealand suggests
not so much common values as a commonwealth. Nice frocks, though.
Ends tomorrow
Dublin Fringe Festival
Pig, The Helix
By Peter Crawley
You followed a resounding snore up the stairs of the Helix, and there she was: 30 astonishing feet, from wrinkling snout to curling tail. A huge brass eyelid fluttered, her eye involuntarily rolled, my hand trembled.
Combining a junior-school fascination with agriculture and the obligatory psychedelia of children's entertainment, the UK's Whalley Range All Stars invited blasé tykes and wide-eyed adults to peer inside a sow's belly for a 10-minute farming spectacle. Mr and Mrs Farmer (shoeless and so, presumably, unsubsidised) nurse piglets, sew and harvest crops, sheer a shivering lamb and forage for goose eggs while puppets move against a swirling soundscape. If the twee content doesn't quite match the magical context, there is a mind-expanding conclusion when our piglets develop wings.
Other reviews
The Making Of Antigone Ryan, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray
By Gerry Colgan
TEAM Educational Theatre Company, whose new work is directed at post-primary students, has been in existence for 28 years, so it is to be expected that they know what they are about. Written and directed by Martin Murphy, the play combines modern versions of Antigone (Sophocles) and St Joan (Shaw) in a scenario that is both entertaining and thought provoking; way to go.
The setting is a running club, and Jo Ryan (Orla Ní Dhuinn) is one of its most committed members. Their coach (Niall Ó Sioradain) has laid down strict rules of discipline and behaviour, to which they subscribe. But Jo faces a terrible dilemma. Her brother owes money to drug dealers, who are threatening him with dire retribution. She steals club funds to bail him out, choosing loyalty to family over social dictates.
It is not precisely the same choice that once faced Antigone, but the elements are still there. Coach persuades Jo to change her position on certain understandings but, when these are subverted, she reverts in anger to her first commitment - the St Joan dimension.
The story ends in somewhat contrived tragedy, but it serves to bring the story to a logical and, for the play's purpose, open-ended conclusion.
All five actors (including Orlagh de Bhaldraithe, Tony Leddy and Ritchie McEntee) play the main roles, together with some effective doubling-up, with instinctive naturalism and convincing characterisations.
The controlled direction, including the use of television images at rear of stage and some well-choreographed movement, creates the kind of illusions demanded by a theatrical performance.
As this is TEAM, the play comes with add-ons that extend its educational value: a workshop, a teacher's pack of notes and suggestions and other supports. It is a highly successful project, built on the solid foundation laid over the years by this thriving company.
Tours next to Mullingar Arts Centre (today and tomorrow) and Project, Dublin (October 21st and 22nd)
Twisted Nerve, The Village, Dublin
By Laurence Mackin
Nerve Records was founded by Andrew Shallcross and Damon Gough, a.k.a. Andy Votel and Badly Drawn Boy. The label is more about the music than money, so a showcase of three of its bands should throw up something refreshing and original. That's the theory, anyhow.
First up were The Jukes, a three-piece with an unusual set-up: a female drummer who also sings, backed up by guitar and bass. Unfortunately, this is the most remarkable thing about the band. The drummer sings elegantly, but having to hold down the beat stops her from furthering an impressive vocal performance. The songs all begin with guitar or drums, add some distortion, build a little and end. Occasionally the guitarist squats down to plunk awkwardly on the piano. The most obvious solution would be to get another drummer, then send the vocalist up front and let her take care of secondary musical duties; even Glenn Hoddle could have figured that tactic out.
Aidan Smith is an odd package. Just him, his piano and guitar occupy the stage; if David Lynch owned a Holiday Inn, Smith would tinkle the ivories in the lounge.
His music is endearingly clichéd, reminiscent of cockney ditties and French country odes, with occasional forays into the classical part of the city. His lyrics, on the other hand, are malevolent, bitter and shot through with a black streak of
humour. Marvellous off-kilter musical hooch.
Again, all that was distinctive about headliners Misty Dixon was their being four girls and a guy. Every song shoe-gazed blithely on, with little to distinguish it from the last. Misty Dixon are a bit like the Cardigans, except the colour is bland, they don't fit and they are badly knitted.
