`We're inland but you couldn't call us insular," a Kilkenny businessman said proudly at Friday night's opening reception of Kilkenny Arts Festival. As Keith Donald's saxophone unfurled musical smoke-rings through the wide open spaces of the Advance Factory and the crowds admired David Mach's towering columns made from newspapers, insular was not a word that came to mind. There's a distinct impression that this festival is reaching out, both internationally and locally. While Kilkenny residents have complained in the past that the annual arts event has been closed, conservative and uninviting, last year's free, open-air performances helped overcome their reservations. More progress needs to be made in this regard, certainly, but seeing the festival spill out onto the streets has begun to make it more tangible for local audiences.
There's a notable Polish influence at work this year: from Teatr Osmego Dnia's outdoor spectacle The Summit, to Maciek Reszezynski's direction of Judas for Theatre Unlimited, to the Polish novelist who famously chose to write in English, Joseph Conrad, whose Heart Of Darkness will be given a stage adaptation by the Royal Shakespeare Company's Fringe next weekend. The Summit, which burst through the darkness and drizzle onto Market Yard with music and fireworks, was a wordless, satirical presentation of global real-politik, as world leaders lined up together for ritual summit talks and photo opportunities. Its exciting visual style was reminiscent of another Polish company, Teatr Biuro Podrozy, whose superb, open-air Carmen Funebre was performed at the Galway Arts Festival three years ago.
In The Summit, four cloaked figures representing the US, Europe, Russia and Africa circled and swirled through the crowds on vast aluminium trolleys, strutting and swaggering to the strains of Beethoven's Ode To Joy and showering each other with gold sequins. When a fifth, semi-naked figure in a Che Guevara beret arrived on a tricycle, a confrontation was inevitable, and soon they're all running around with machine guns. Only a military coup led by Identikit men in suits, shades and headphones could restore order.
As a comment on the unequal distribution of wealth and power in the world, this was not very subtle, but it was an effective spectacle - highly charged, dramatic and extremely menacing, as the trolleys, now propelled by faceless figures in silver masks and shields lunged at the crowds, forcing them to scatter, while a peasant was crushed.
IF the exploiters and power-mongers in The Summit had spoken, they would probably have had all the best lines, as evil characters in literature traditionally do. In his extended, satirical sequence of poems, The Book Of Judas, Brendan Kennelly could be accused, like Milton, of belonging to "the Devil's party": he is on the side of Judas insofar as he sees the Judas in all of us.
In Judas, Theatre Unlimited's stage adaptation of the poems, which premiered on Saturday at Watergate Theatre, Kennelly's theme of Judas as Everyman is amplified. Adrian Dunbar is a smooth, reasonable, contemporary Judas. The worst he could be accused of is having bad taste - he lives in Bungalow Bliss. When Judas swaps roles with Phelim Drew's Jesus, emphasising the arbitrariness of events, playing with the "what ifs" of history, he finds that he can't do it convincingly. Jesus, on the other hand, makes a "touchingly human" Judas and seems to see into his soul.
Maciek Reszezynski's production emphasises the irreverent humour of the text, the playful anachronisms, the surreal conflation of Irish and Biblical history. Brendan Behan gate-crashes the last supper, Michael Collins adds to the confusion and James Joyce pays a visit to the Holy Family, sings The Rose of Nazareth and is told by Jesus that his prose is "divine". As a series of clever, knowing, comic sketches and one-liners, this is entertaining; as a piece of theatre it lacks depth and a dramatic heart. It is uninvolving, despite the best efforts of Dunbar, Drew and David Collins - who plays all the secondary characters with great versatility.
While Kennelly's text is not concerned with theological speculation, it does explore the emotional impulses behind betrayal. In the play, the exchange of roles between Jesus and Judas should be pivotal, but is not probed or developed sufficiently. Everything is kept at arm's length. Some of Judas's more reflective speeches are delivered in voiceover, or down a phoneline, which keeps them at a distance.
The set design adds to the distancing effect: the stage is cluttered with props, highlighting the episodic nature of the play, and a cumbersome, raised diagonal walkway - doubling up as a table, a crucifix and a tombstone - dominates the centre of the stage, forcing the performers to walk around it, or stand behind it with their lower bodies obscured.
Donal O'Kelly's one-man show, Bat the Father, Rabbit the Son (Parade Tower, Kilkenny Castle until tomorrow) has retained the same simple staging from its original production 12 years ago. A table designed by Robert Ballagh becomes a boat and bath with ease in O'Kelly's confident hands. Little else has changed in this superbly written and performed portrayal of a father/son relationship and Irish society in transition: he has slipped in some timely references to "£200,000 in manila envelopes" but few updates are necessary. It is still comically perceptive, but seems somehow more poignant this time around, as the world of the decent, kindly, generous-spirited Dubliner, Bat, recedes from view - or is built over.
Kilkenny Arts Festival continues until Sunday. Booking at: www.kilkennyarts.ie, on 056- 52175 or in person from the box office on Kieran St, Kilkenny.