Reviews

A selection of reviews by Irish Timescritics

Nick Cave

Vicar Street, Dublin

Nick Cave’s favourite colour is yellow. Or possibly pistachio. His wife recently shaved off his moustache. He will be highly offended if you find his latest book misogynistic, and he gets his suits from his tailor.

This is the sum total of what we learn about Cave during this pseudo-book reading, performance and question-and-answers session.

“Ask me anything you want. I’m at your service. Do whatever you like,” Cave tells a simmering Vicar Street crowd. Perhaps cowed by the sharpness of his wit or the mere gravity of his presence, this crowd is shy with questions. But when it comes to suggesting songs, the barracking is thick and fast, with Cave plucking tracks out of the air to rumble around on with his stripped-down outfit of Martyn P Casey on bass and Warren Ellis on violin, guitar, some alleged drumming and whatever else comes to hand.

The idea is initially charming, but as the night wears on the mob grows more confident and Cave appears to grow weary of the setup he has created. What's surprising, given the oddness of the format, is the somewhat predictable set. Into My Arms, The Mercy Seat, Red Right Handand Lime Tree Arbourall get an airing, but they've been at the core of his live set for years now. It was good to hear some tracks in stripped-down formats, but this is an ill-rehearsed band with little concern about timing and dynamics: Casey does a fine job of lending the outfit some rhythmic spine, but Ellis's drumming is more random smash-and-grab than any sort of solidifying force, though he can still cause a crowd to draw breath sharply with his haunting bowed notes on the violin.

The reason for this tour is to promote Cave's latest work of fiction, The Death of Bunny Munro, and the readings were powerful and animated, Cave declaiming with lofty seriousness and humour black as pitch. His delivery of one of the most brutal parts of the book is genuinely uncomfortable, and the applause afterwards is somewhat haltering, as if wondering whether Cave should be congratulated for dragging such a dark scene from his unconscious into the light of literary day. Cave wants to move quickly on to a song, but you get the impression he is quietly pleased with pushing the crowd out of its comfort zone.

This is an odd mix of a show, neither reading nor free-flowing QA, and it is certainly not a concert. It is more than a little self-indulgent, but when this somewhat ramshackle format hits the spot, it punches hard. It's an intriguing concept, somewhat special, but far from extraordinary. LAURENCE MACKIN

Cabaret

Gaiety Theatre

Willkommenis spelt out in large letters on a bare black stage as the audience take their seats and the orchestra plays the famous overture to Cabaret. Wayne Sleep's camp cross-

dressing cockney MC pops his head out from the “o” and welcomes us all to the Kit Kat Klub in tawdry, terrible pre-War Berlin. National Socialism may be on the rise, but there are other dramas taking centre stage for cabaret singer Sally Bowles and aspiring novelist Cliff Bradshaw.

Touring since 2008, this Bill Kenwright production is a thoroughly adult affair. Javier de Frutos’ bawdy choreography is all bare bottoms, and any opportunity for nudity, phallic imagery or mammary exposure is embraced by director Rufus Norris. The 7.30 start had obviously deceived some parents, who had brought children along; it is really not suitable for the under 16s.

However, despite the squealing shoestring cast, the production is a lot of fun. If Siobhan Dillon's Sally Bowles lacks Liza Minelli's sardonic edge, she more than makes up for it with her powerful singing voice, no more so than in Maybe This Time. Unfortunately, however, Sleep's salacious MC makes little impact vocally or physically; his voice struggles to rise above the orchestra and his mangled accented English is for the most part indecipherable.

Yet the supporting cast of Jenny Logan (Fraulein Shneider), Matt Zimmerman (Herr Schultz), and Henry Luxemburg (Cliff Bradshaw) sing over his shortcomings, effortlessly gliding through their musical numbers. They are some of the most memorable numbers in musical theatre history (Bowles's big anthem above; the theme song Cabaret; Mein Herr), though there are some strange fillers in John Kander's score too – an ode to a pineapple, for instance ( It Couldn't Please Me More).

Katrina Lindsay's clever, two-tiered set enables several seamless shifts in location, completing what is a slick, if slightly tired, touring production. Until Oct 24th SARA KEATING

Resurgam/Duley

Pro-Cathedral,

Resurgam is a successful, project-based, professional chamber choir, six years old, now for the first time in receipt of well-merited public funding via the Arts Council.

Financial security has emboldened the choir to supplement the baroque repertoire with which it has established its name with more expansive programming.

The first instance of this new direction was Saturday night's all a capella programme called Through the Veil. It took no prisoners in a consciously esoteric approach, replacing piece-by-

piece programme notes with a densely-argued essay that followed the philosophical thread between works attempting to lift “the veil” that separates the dualities of life and death, things seen and unseen.

The music ranged from Late Renaissance polychoral style in Francesco Guerrero's Duo Seraphim– with the interesting effects occasioned by the spacing wide apart of three four-part choirs — to a simpler, romantic anthem style in double-choir settings of Dunne and Spenser by the English organist William Harris.

The concert took its sub-title – "Gleams of a remoter world" – from the first of two contemporary pieces by a composer closely associated with the BBC Singers, Judith Bingham. There was a hint of Holst's "Neptune" from The Planetsin the atmosphere of mystery she wove around words from Shelley's Mont Blanc, and a paradoxical despair in her unusually dark setting of the otherwise comforting Psalm 23, The Lord is My Shepherd.

Amidst a certain commonality of musical device in the first half, the piece which made the strongest impact was a contemporary setting of the Cherubic Hymnby Penderecki. Its blending of long notes in high or low voices with short lyrical figures and gently mysterious harmonies hit the heart in a more consistent way than did the other pieces.

The second half consisted of generous excerpts from Rachmaninov's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. While the performance didn't always live up to this music's rapturous, ethereal billing, conductor Mark Duley, as throughout, drew effectively shaped, finely controlled singing from his 24 singers, who seemed to relish the linguistic possibilities of the Russian text and to grasp the idea of the concert as a whole. MICHAEL DUNGAN

Fidelio Trio

Hugh Lane Gallery

Schumann– Five Pieces Op 102.

Piers Hellawell– Etruscan Games.

Schumann– Piano Trio in D Minor Op 63

The Sundays at Noon series of free concerts opened its 34th year with performances by the Fidelio Trio of music by Schumann and the Belfast-based English composer Piers Hellawell (who was in attendance).

After a brief and welcome spoken introduction, the Fidelio’s cellist Robin Michael played Schumann’s Op. 102 Five Piece in Folk Style for cello and piano with Mary Dullea.

The eponymous folk style refers less to the ideas behind each piece – in one instance a reference to Goethe, another to Dichterliebe– than to the musical manner Schumann adopts. This is direct, romantic, infused sometimes with a dance rhythm or a lullaby, and concise – about three minutes each.

Michael gave each with great conviction, undeterred by brevity from plumbing full expressive value.

Then violinist Darragh Morgan joined the two to complete the trio and give the Irish premiere of Hellawell's 2007 Etruscan Games. The first three movements spotlight each instrument in turn before the fourth and concluding movement combines aspects of all three.

This grand finale ably drew together echoes of the piano’s sharply rhythmic chords, the violin’s harmonics accompanied by drumming on the cello and the plucking of piano strings, and the slow pace and mysterious mood of the cello with its snatches of plaintive melody.

Somehow these disparate elements worked fulfillingly together, all the more persuasive for the Fidelios’ committed playing.

They closed with the D minor Trio Op. 63, Schumann here treating with greater expansion some of the elements that are just touched on in the Five Pieces. Always expressive, if not quite always compelling, the Fidelio exercised clear, collective thinking in the almost palpable sense they created of something heading inexorably towards conclusion. The final movement – Mit Feuer– was especially notable for being at once both tense and sensitive, and concluding with real fire. MICHAEL DUNGAN