Reviews today include Maxim Vengerov at the NCH, How Many Miles to Babylon? at The Helix and Dionne Warwick in Vicar Street
Vengerov, ICO/Walker
NCH, Dublin
Beethoven - Violin Concerto, Symphony No 1
Maxim Vengerov takes an unusually slow tempo in the first movement of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. It's necessary to do so, he says, "to give the poetry its due". That's not quite how things worked out at the National Concert Hall when the great Siberian violinist opened a short tour with the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) under Garry Walker.
Walker, who showed himself to be resourceful in holding things together in Vengerov's dangerously slow-motion world, didn't quite manage to get an adequate grip on the opening. And Vengerov's own playing, for all its finely spun tone and clean-cut nobility of manner, never quite shook off the effect of stilted diction.
The slow movement, too, was treated with a kind of reverential stillness, as reflective and unhurried as you could imagine. It was not until the finale that the inner life of the music was eventually stirred. But after what were in effect two contrived slow movements, the spring of the closing Rondo was too little, too late.
The fascination of Vengerov's performance was that of witnessing a supremely well-equipped performer engaging with impeccable finesse on a largely implausible undertaking.
Conductor Garry Walker, who faced a well-nigh insurmountable task, made valiant efforts to energise the performance without destabilising the soloist's vision, and the responses of the ICO were razor-sharp.
Walker's speeds for Beethoven's First Symphony were, by contrast, at all times well-judged. The music-making had a spring in its step, and showed an elegance of contour in the string playing as well as an awareness of period-performance balances from the brass. The playing may not have been quite as well turned as in the concerto, but it had an engaging combination of lightness and bite.
The ICO as currently constituted is a strings-only orchestra, which occasionally broaches more mainstream repertoire by bringing in wind players for individual concerts. This programme was one of the finest foretastes Irish audiences have had of what the rewards will be when the orchestra finally gets the resources to fund a permanent wind section.
How Many Miles to Babylon?
The Helix, Dublin
For most authors, having a work set as a school text is an ambiguous experience. The sales are welcome but the captive nature of the audience is not. Theatrical versions of school texts create a further layer of discomfort. The involuntary nature of at least some of the audience can take away the sense of exposure that is central to the theatrical experience.
It is to the credit of Alan Stanford's Second Age company that, while its version of Jennifer Johnston's 1974 novel, How Many Miles to Babylon?, never entirely transcends its primary didactic purpose, it refuses to be entirely limited by that purpose either. High production values, good acting and a sense of artistic purpose keep the dogs of mere duty at bay.
The novel itself, as Kevin Myers points out in an evocative programme note, pre-dated, and to some extent inspired, the current awareness of the importance of the first World War in Irish history. That awareness, and the obvious political contest for ownership of early 20th-century Ireland, gives Second Age's production a resonance far beyond the school curriculum and justifies its attempt to span both school and general audiences with afternoon and evening shows.
Stanford's adaptation of Johnston's text is unusual in that it comes in the wake of the author's own theatrical version of the story, staged at the Lyric in Belfast in 1993. Ironically, what marks Stanford's elegant adaptation is its refusal to pretend that it is anything other than a staging of the novel. It retains as much of the author's voice as possible by keeping a strong core of direct narrative.
We start with Sam Peter Corry's callow Alec, a young Irish officer in the British army in Flanders, awaiting execution. He tells us how he has reached this dead end: his upbringing as the only son of a coldly unhappy Anglo-Irish family on a Co Wicklow estate, his friendship with a local Catholic lad, Jerry, and the different motivations that take them both to the trenches. The narrative gives way at regular intervals to enacted dialogue, but remains as the backbone of the piece.
In at least one respect, this determination to cleave to the novel's own contours is obviously limiting. Stanford's version rather shirks the issue of the precise nature of the relationship between Alec and Jerry - a question that arises much more clearly on the stage than on the page. He allows others, not least their commanding officer (played with a terse power by Anthony Brophy) to hint at a dangerously homoerotic edge, but this is not carried through in performance. On the other hand, however, the respect for the novel means that Stanford's version gives far more attention to Alec's stricken, defeated father than Johnston's own adaptation did. The result is entirely positive: Philip O'Sullivan invests the old man with a genuinely poignant decorum, and his presence makes sense of Alec's sudden decision to join the army.
This centrality of straight storytelling places a large burden on narrative pace and David Parnell's production, hampered by a gratuitous half-hour interval, does not yet move with sufficient sharpness. But it is greatly helped by the clear focus of the performances and by a highly intelligent visual style. The stage, in Sabine Dargent's design, is dominated by a huge gold picture frame, through which an ever-changing kaleidoscope of photographic images of war, landscape and buildings is projected. What might be a fussy distraction is executed with such good taste that it creates an atmosphere of dignified wistfulness that offsets the slowness of the pace.
The central performances of Corry and of Fergal McElherron as Jerry are, moreover, finely contrasted. Corry achieves the difficult balance of making Alec both goofily naive and fiercely strong, showing moreover that the strength is rooted in the innocence. McElherron gives Jerry a dark vitality, while steering clear of paddywhackery, and rises gracefully to the emotion of the story's denouement. Between them, they bring the story to life as far more than a lesson to be learned.
Runs until Nov 25, then tours to Galway, Ennis and Castleblayney
Dionne Warwick
Vicar Street, Dublin
A little bit sharp ("have a liiiiiiittle bit of patience, please - I'll get to those songs!") and a whole lot sophisticated, Dionne Warwick walked on stage to the sound of applause normally reserved for people a lot younger and far more commercially successful. To say she has been around for decades is true; to say that the songs she sings are timeless is probably true as well.
She more or less rifles through the back catalogue of her 30 US hits between the years 1962-72 - these were written by the hit machine that was Burt Bacharach and Hal David and constitute some of the best easy-listening material of that period. The scary thing about these songs is just how many there are; just when you think the hits are coming to an end, Warwick pulls another one out of the bag.
So the upside is the quality of the tunes: any gig with the likes of Anyone Who Had a Heart, Do You Know the Way to San Jose?, Walk On By, Alfie and You'll Never Get to Heaven (If You Break My Heart) has got to have something going for it.
The downside is that Warwick has been singing most of these songs for more than 40 years, and who could therefore blame her if the gloss on them has become ever so slightly worn away? Not that this mattered to the audience, who from start to finish were transported in a velvet-lined limousine to probably the best karaoke club in the world.
Throughout, Warwick strolled from one side of the stage to the other, gently admonishing those who were calling out for songs not yet performed, but always maintaining her poise even when the calls continued.
She remains a throwback to a different era when music might have been production-line but was not crass, when it was performed with a scintilla of grace, evening wear and a professional smile. It might seem in parts like a soft-shoe shuffle cabaret night (because it is, frankly), but it's executed with enough swish and swirl for even the most tight-lipped to break into song.
