The Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival: A Feast

By Gwen Orel

I didn't get a decent meal when I was in Dublin last month. That's not Dublin's fault - at the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, I never had time to eat (I made time to drink, but that's another story!).

The day I arrived, I saw five shows, including a work in development. I had a croissant in the morning and some biscuits at my evening show.

But I was fed.

The Theatre Festival, which has been running since 1957, is a must destination for American producers and scouts. Under the Radar's Mark Russell and Meiyin Wang were among the first people I bumped into; former boss, Actors Theatre of Louisville's Artistic Director Marc Masterson, was literally the first - I saw him in the lobby of the Morrison hotel as I was checking in. Delegates to the Irish Theatre Institute included Irish Examiner's man of the year, Origin Theatre's George C. Heslin. The Directors' Circle had its first international meeting at the Festival.

From October 7-11, I saw eight plays, two pieces in development, one late-night dance piece, one director talk. I went to the Gaiety, the Peacock, the Gate, the Project Arts Centre, the Ark, the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, and O'Reilly Theatre. I drank pints, thanks to friends who sent lists or brought me, included the Long Hall, the Stag's Head, Grogan's, Mulligan's, the Palace and the International (not in one night!). Yeah, it's better there.

My reviews below.

THE INCREDIBLE

The Silver Tassie

Druid Theatre's production of Sean O'Casey's 1928 play, presented as part of the ReViewed program. Directed by Garry Hynes.

Ireland's participation in World War I and the devastation wrought among its soldiers, fighting in the British army at the very time Ireland was struggling for independence, is not a subject much represented in theatre and song (John Doyle's ballad "Farewell to All That," performed with Andy Irvine last year, takes it on).

O'Casey's play searingly examines the devastation of that war, and all wars,while lovingly portraying Dubliners exaggerating, courting, drinking and living. He mixes Music Hall styles with then - cutting edge Expressionism. The Gaiety with its gaudiness perfectly set the show.

The title refers to the championship cup won by handsome athlete Harry Heegan (Aaron Monaghan) before the war. The town hero is loved by Jessie Taite (Aoife Duffin) as well as Susie Monican (Clare Dunne), who covers hurt pride with religious zeal.

Sylvester Heegan (Eamon Morrissey) and Simon Norton (John Olohan), in bowler hats, serve as vaudevillians and Greek chorus. Act One takes place in Dublin, before the war; Act Two in the trenches; Act Three in the hospital, where Harry lies paralyezed from a spine injury, and Act Four at a dance. There, the real aftermath of war sets in. Jessie has turned to the man who saved Harry's life. The bully Teddy Foran (Liam Carney) is blind. And life goes on

There's comedy as well as expressionism - early on when Mrs. Foran (Derbhile Crotty) burns the steaks, she actually keens over them. In the hospital, a doctor plays the cello while speaking. Yet style never outshadows searing emotion: Harry's shout from the hospital for Jessie is wrenching. Despondence ends with a prayer.

Hynes wisely, takes each act break - letting us breathe, and see how each act plays with form. The cast were stunning. My only fault with the production was an accordion called a concertina. This belongs on Broadway, and I hope it gets here.

Phaedra

Rough Magic's production of a new version of Racine's version of the Greek tragedy. Hilary Fannin and Ellen Cranitch adapted. Directed by Lynn Parker. World Premiere. Project Arts Centre.

Rough Magic brought Improbably Frequency to New York in 2008, a wildly inventive piece about Irish spies during World War II - in verse!

Their production of Phaedra, though not the same creative team, also delights and surprises.

I chose not to see it my first day because I thought verse would make me sleepy. But the show was more like a rock or trad musical than a neoclassical opera.

Musicians onstage play uillean pipes and bodhran as well as cello and flute. Fannin and Cranitch set the show in a kind of mythic Ireland - not tying it down to time and place but using references like "horlock's" (I had to ask my neighbor what that was). The chorus are gods Artemis, Poseidon and Aphrodite (glorious singers Fionnuala Gill, Rory Musgrave, Cary White), costumed in otherworldy, semi-punk fashion (designed by Bláithín Sheerin). Music blends from baroque to trad and back.

Beautiful Phaedra (Catherine Walker), complains to her celeb-mag reading maid, Enone (Michele Forbes), about her husband Theseus (boorish Stephen Brennan). She yearns for her stepson, chaste Hippolytus (appropriately gorgeous Allen Leech), still bitter about the death of his mother who committed suicide by drowning, despairing at Theseus' neglect.

The script is sharp, bitter and smart. Another drowned woman, we learn, was identified by "the serial marks on her implants." When Theseus is reported dead, Phaedra rejoices - but he shows up alive. His love Aricia (Gemma Reeves) was beggared by Theseus' greed. When they fall in love, she imagines going to New York and eating "cheese blintzes at midnight on the fire excape."

Parker brings out the spectacle-exits are taken at times as processionals as slow as those in Noh drama. There's a hologram that ends Act One.

Overall this blew me away. Sizzling and fresh.

THE VERY GOOD

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

Pan Pan's take on Hamlet. Text of Hamlet by William Shakespeare (other text uncredited). Directed by Gavin Quinn. At the Samuel Beckett Theatre. ReViewed Theatre Program.

Act One deconstructs Shakespeare's tragedy through an extended "audition," showing us different cast members put through their paces in the role. Before the show begins, a great dane catches skulls tossed to him, and at the top of the show an academic (Amanda Piesse, who is in fact an academic) lectures us about the play, holding on to the dane's leash. At the end of the act, the audience votes for the best Hamlet.

The second half presents us with the play itself, innovatively and often unforgettably staged. It's very smart, with striking imagery (set design by Aedín Cosgrove, costume and props by Sarah Bacon) but for me didn't quite reach my heart - the savvy gloss of Act One felt unconnected from the scenes of Act Two. It didn't quite gel, but it fascinated.

The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly

The Ark and Theatre Lovett. Finegan Kruckemeyer, directed by Lynne Parker, at the Ark. Part of the ReViewed program.

Louis Lovett enthralled and delighted an audience of mostly under-fives (one of whom no doubt gifted me with the virus that's been plaguing me since touching back down in New York) with his story of Peggy O'Hegarty, a box-packer, and her adventures.

He's a hilarious, funny performer whose banter with one precocious child who scolded him for reminding her of her cat who died was natural and hilarious. It's a show for children, but silly fun for everyone.

B for Baby

World Premiere by the Abbey Theatre on the Peacock Stage. By Carmel Winters. Directed by Mikel Murfi.

Louis Lovett is in this one also-playing B, a mentally retarded young man in a home for adults with intellectual disabilities, and Brian, the husband of Mrs. C, a counselor at the home. Michele Moran plays Mrs. C and also Dee, B's angry would-be girlfriend in the home. Both actors remarkably show their range as they shift seamlessly from character to character. B is an innocent, sweet-natured and kind.

Mrs. C wants a baby - and seduces B when husband Brian can't give her one. It's a touching, often funny and gently sad look at yearning for life, love, and family.

Watching B's heart break is heartbreaking, but the play never devolves into a cause - there are no villains, just people. Haunting.

Where Did It All Go Right?

Devised by Ponydance, directed by Leonie McDonagh.

This comic dance drama set in a disco was performed in The Festival Club (the Odessa) upstairs, in a disco setting. The four dancers, Paula O'Reilly, Leonie McDonagh, Lorcan O'Neill and Duane Waters, were both agile and funny, which is no mean trick. Watching a little duel over a man by two women, pretending not to be, to a disco song, was like Tracy Ullman meets Twyla Tharp. Lots of fun.

THE GOOD

In this category I put both Beckett pieces that I saw - well done indeed both but not standouts.

Act Without Words II

Company SJ. Samuel Beckett, directed by Sarah Jane Scaife. Show performed in an alley off of Grafton Street. Part of the ReViewed Program.

Beckett's play in which two tramps wake up, dress and undress, slowly and painstakingly, is here set in an alley, reimagining the figures as homeless men. The literalness doesn't add much to Beckett's vision (any more than JoAnne Akalaitis' staging of EndGame in a subway with homeless people years ago), but the performers, Raymond Keane and Bryan Burroughs, poignantly linger on each gesture and grunt. Having to stand and feel the chill as you watch adds to the feeling of gloom.

Watt

Samuel Beckett. Directed by Tom Creed, starring Barry McGovern. At the Gate. McGovern's an exceptional actor, with a wonderful voice, and Creed brings out the humor in this adaptation of Beckett's story of Watt making his way to Mr Knott's house from the train station.

But, Beckett was a supreme dramatist - and this is not one of his plays, but one of his novels. He would, I think, have written it differently if he'd written it as a play. One of the great joys of his novels are the parenthetical digressions - but they don't work the same way in the theatre, where you can't catch yourself and just read the page again. But a deft and strong performance.

THE MEH

Factory 2

This was part of a showcase of Polish work in Dublin. Master director Krystian Lupa created six hour show envisioning Andy Warhol's film Factory in New York in the sixties. In Polish, with supertitles.

I also caught Lupa's director talk. What with the interpretor and Lupa's inclination to say the same thing five different ways, the one hour talk covered only about three questions.

Honestly, the show was much like that. The first act, in which we encountered some of the vivid personalities from Warhol's scene - Edie Sedgwick, UltraViolet - was fun. Had the show ended there, this would be a rave.

Warhol notoriously made films by just pointing the camera for hours (not unlike some installation art today). And there are points where they turn the cameras on the audience, and we are aware of how the camera changes behavior onstage.

Maybe they don't have reality television in Poland yet, but it's not exactly news that people change when cameras roll ("Real Housewives of New Jersey," anyone?) Curtain call, to the Velvet Underground, captured the New York energy lacking in the show lacked. Some brilliance but more of an ordeal.

UNREVIEWED

Unreviewed because they are in development, but watch for Brokentalkers' new piece on abuse in industrial schools, The Blue Boy, and Fishamble's new work by Pat Kinevane, Silent.

I wasn't allowed to see The Abbey's John Gabriel Borkman (it was in its last days of previews), but it is coming to BAM. There were 363 performances in 22 venues from 10 different countries.

Some shows had closed, and there are only so many hours in a day. But I had more than enough to eat. It was a feast.