Gerry Colgan reviews Exit 2. Surviving A. at the Project Cube. Jim Carroll was at Vicar Street for the The Matthew Herbet Big Band, while Anna Carey reviews The La's at the Ambassador. Michael Dervan was at the NCH for a recital by the Degani Ensemble.
Exit 2. Surviving A. - Project Cube, Dublin
This is the second production by the Slaughterhouse company, founded last year. Like many youthful groups, its ambitions are large and, in this case, far beyond its reach. The stated aim is to create a holistic theatre experience, bombarding the audience with sensations - but this is not what happens.
It opens with a trio dressed in white like spacemen. They soon disrobe and are revealed as two men and a woman. The woman (Medea) and one of the men (Proctor) help each other out of their outer garments, and they appear to be husband and wife. The other man seems to assume the role of a doctor.
Medea reads a fairy story, Proctor goes off and finds a shop-window model, which he later strips and dances with. Medea seems to be having a pregnancy test on an operating table. The mannequin disintegrates, and Medea has a brief soliloquy hostile to men; she would rather fight three battles than have one baby.
The tip of a theme emerges, in which she decides to abort her children rather than kill them as the legend decrees. A gory ending ensues.
Words are few enough, and movement is less than meaningful. Acting skills generally are not on serious display, simply because the script offers no real opportunities. For 75 minutes, the trio enact a spasmodic sequence of dimly-related stage exercises, with form at a discount and style an absentee. Kate McLaughlin conceived and directs the play, enacted by Claudia Schwartz, Will Irvine and Liam McGonagle.
Experiment by simple definition may fail, and this one collapses long before its opaque ending. The one essential ingredient in theatre is communication - emotional, intellectual or instinctual - with the audience. If this is missing, the effort is doomed to failure. - Gerry Colgan
Runs to June 11th
Matthew Herbert Big Band - Vicar Street, Dublin
It's when the 16 musicians decked out in tuxedos onstage begin to tear up copies of the Daily Mail that the evening's incongruity becomes the norm. The band will also blow up balloons and use flash-cameras as musical inputs, but no one here will bat an eyelid. For one night, big band jazz is about wide-eyed experimentation rather than nostalgia.
You wouldn't expect anything else from Matthew Herbert, the innovative producer whose 2003 Goodbye Swingtime album paired big band arrangements with radical electronic improvisations. While the cost of bringing them under one roof has worked against regular touring, their occasional live shows are to be savoured for how they embellish the adventurous tilt of the album.
The die is cast from the moment the musicians and musical director Peter Wraight join Herbert onstage to take up the reins with Riding Out. As trumpets, trombones and saxophones punctuate the tune's highs and lows with stabs and crescendos, Herbert uses a sampler and keyboards to manipulate and replay the music. It's hugely dramatic, especially when the musicians themselves begin to respond to the samples.
Such sampling adds a selection of effects, textures and contexts to the overall sound. Vocalist Dani Sicialiano's contributions to Simple Mind and Fiction add a further dimension, her powerful voice giving Herbert another tool to sharpen using his sampler.
Despite their somewhat gimmicky connotations, Herbert's use of unlikely sample material onstage provides the real fun. Whether it's the sound of newspapers being torn up, a battery of balloons being blown up or the clicking of a gallery of flash-cameras on and off stage, Herbert finds rhythms to work with from the most unlikely seeds.
It's by knitting and embroidering these into the band's score that Herbert creates a series of fascinating musical moods and an idiosyncratic swing engulfs the room. While experimental music tends to be glum, furrowed brows are eschewed here in favour of impromptu paper fights or the conductor using glowsticks instead of batons on occasion. Ambitious, charming and entertaining, it deserves a longer run. - Jim Carroll
The La's - The Ambassador, Dublin
This is the gig no one thought would happen. The La's released their incandescent debut album of jangly, melancholy pop songs in 1990 - memorably described by one contemporary reviewer as "an album that could have been made 20 years ago, but not two". Then, to the gradual dismay of those who loved that debut, they more or less vanished. While bassist John Power went on to enjoy modest success with Cast, frontman Lee Mavers became a recluse and few thought they'd ever see him perform with his old mate again.
But here they are, together again (with two hired hands on drums and guitar) for what's just their second gig in over a decade, breaking into the spiky opening chords of Son of a Gun to the delight of the crowd.
They're note perfect, but it's impossible not to feel nervous - the pressure feels immense, and something seems bound to go wrong. But it doesn't.
Mavers seems nervous at first (he never speaks to the crowd), but John Power seems to be enjoying himself immensely throughout. Gradually, however, Mavers appears to relax, and rumours of his total breakdown seem somewhat exaggerated.
The songs still sound as fresh as ever; in fact, the performance of Timeless Melody sounds better than the original, thanks in part to the ferociously nonchalant drumming of newcomer Jay Lewis, who plays the drums standing up like a military drummer boy. Best of all are the sweetly whining voices of Mavers and Power, blending together to form the best Scouse harmonies since Lennon and McCartney. - Anna Carey
Degani Ensemble - NCH John Field Room, Dublin
Mozart - Oboe Quartet. Britten - Phantasy Quartet. Schubert - String Trio movement in B flat. Moeran - Fantasy Quartet. Bax - Oboe Quintet.
The Degani Ensemble, formed in the 1980s, has not been around for a while. The printed programme for the group's concert here spoke of the group having re-formed, with three of the original players (oboist Ruby Ashley, violinist Alan Smale and cellist David James) now joined by violinist Elaine Clarke and viola player John Lynch.
The chamber music scene in Ireland has developed considerably since the original Deganis presented themselves to the public. The Music Network has brought chamber music to audiences who never before had it within easy reach. Sligo and Galway have both benefitted from residencies by professional string quartets. The West Cork Chamber Music Festival and Vogler Spring Festival have already created exciting new forums.
In the Ireland of the 21st century, the Degani's playing here frequently harked back to a time when expressively muted, under-characterised music-making was deemed adequate for concert presentation if the niceties of technical presentation were not significantly trespassed upon.
Oboist Ruby Ashley engaged with the essentials of musical communication with a sense of purpose that eluded her colleagues in the quartets by Mozart, Britten and Moeran, and the Schubert string trio was given a pallid reading.
Then, in Bax's 1922 Oboe Quintet (which, like the Moeran and Britten was written for Leon Goossens) the whole evening came vibrantly into lively focus. The effect was like a transition in a film from grainy black and white to full-toned colour, and the almost Percy Graingerish high spirits of the Irish jig in the finale made a lively conclusion. - Michael Dervan
