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| go to lobby page | more reviews | go to other departments | GLENN LONEY'S SHOW NOTES
By Glenn Loney, November 9, 1999
[01] Family Drama at Dublin Festival
MOLLY MALONE--Greeting guests at the Dublin Festival. Photo: Copyright ©—Glenn Loney 1999/The Everett Collection.
[02] Ireland's National Theatre—The Abbey
[03] World War II in "Dolly West's Kitchen"
[04] Violence and Suicide in "The Map Maker's Sorrow"
[05] Farce & Fear in "The Spirit of Annie Ross"
[06] Dublin as Celtic Tiger "Boomtown"
[07] Unleashing the Libido of "Jane Eyre"
[08] Australia's Five-Hour Family Marathon "Cloudstreet"
[09] Gersher's Theatre's Pre-Israel Palestinian "Village"
[10] 60 Shows on the Dublin Fringe
[11] "Red Day"—Picasso's Cubism in 3-D
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For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
The Dublin Festival
There were no banners strung above major streets in downtown Dublin proclaiming Family Drama as the theme of this year's festival. Instead, the streetwide banners featured words such as Pride, Lust, Anger, and several other of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Features New Family Dramas From Ireland and AbroadThose disreputable emotions were certainly very much in evidence in most of the new dramas. But they were shown in action—not in isolation—in plays about families and communities—which are, after all, extensions or enlargements of the Family Concept.
The emphasis on Family doesn't seem to have been a deliberate or even a conscious decision. It just worked out that way, with fascinating results.
Almost all of the dramas discussed below should find interested North American audiences, in both professional and amateur productions.
At the Irish National Theatres—
The Abbey and The Peacock:It may be Ireland's National Theatre, but the Abbey is small by Broadway standards. And its second and more experimental stage, the Peacock, is even smaller.
ABBEY POSTER TRIO--Ads for "Dolly West's Kitchen." With a local and tourist audience increasingly interested in attending the Abbey, it seems to be in something of a quandary. The great modern classics of Irish drama should be on view at the Abbey in exemplary and innovative productions.
Tourists certainly expect that. Where else can you see mystical verse dramas by William Butler Yeats? When was the last time you saw John Millington Synge's "Riders To the Sea" on any stage?
At the same time, the Abbey ensemble and Artistic Director Patrick Mason are eager to give young—and aging—Irish playwrights the opportunity to develop their newest works in a most professional atmosphere.
No one wants to play a steady rotation of repertory classics—except in opera. It's too easy to get stale.
That's why, across the Irish Channel years ago, Peter Hall, Peter Brook, and Michel St. Denis decided to provide a balance of Shakespeare and modern drama for both the Royal Shakespeare Company and for its audiences.
But at the Abbey, it's not economic to play repertory. And everyone wants to see a successful new drama in its first run.
Even if it's highly controversial, they want to see it even more. So Abbey productions are largely limited runs. Often of new dramas, not the classics.
If you are going to Dublin for the first time, do not expect to spend four or five nights in a row at the Abbey, catching up on Sheridan, Shaw, Synge, not to mention Goldsmith, Beckett, Wilde, Behan, or Lennox Robinson.
An evening at the Abbey and one at the Peacock will exhaust the week's possibilities at the National Theatre. But these will surely be challenging evenings indeed!
Fortunately, the Abbey isn't the only professional theatre in Dublin. The Gate Theatre now has a long and honored tradition of presenting classics—including non-Irish dramas—and giving voice to new plays.
The historic Gaiety and Olympic Theatres—Victorian/Edwardian candybox curiosities—also host tours from at home and abroad. Not only are there interesting Alternative Theatre ensembles in Dublin, but also in other cities such as Waterford and Cork.
"Dolly West's Kitchen"
Frank McGuinness' new Irish family drama at the Abbey Theatre doesn't have that sudden burst of frenetic ecstasy that made Brian Friel's "Dancing at Lughnasa" such a hit on Broadway. But "Dolly West's Kitchen" is just as passionate and compelling.
Frank McGuinness' World War II DramaIt surely has more to offer than "Lonesome West" or even "Beauty Queen of Leenane." Thus far, however, McGuinness' Broadway triumphs have been his adaptations of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" and Sophocles' "Electra."
New York has yet to see a major staging of his tragic vision of Irishmen—Catholic and Protestant—fighting for Britain in World War I. This unusual drama is called "Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme."
Staged by the Abbey's able Artistic Director, Patrick Mason—as is "Dolly West's Kitchen"—this play was an outstanding success at the Edinburgh Festival.
For Irish Nationalists who took part in the disastrous Easter Uprising of 1916—in the midst of the First World War—any Irishman who fought for the British was a traitor.
And, as McGuinness makes clear in the drama, in the aftermath of the war, with the soldiers' return, there was no praise, no reward.
As Ireland changed from the Irish Free State to the Republic of Ireland, Protestant Irish veterans were even beaten and murdered.
Talk about the savagery of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovars! Some Irish factions are still at it.
"Dolly West's Kitchen" reveals some of these same passions and prejudices, but this time in the context of a family on the fringes of World War II.
Dolly [Donna Dent] is a wonderful cook, the feisty daughter of a strong-willed and plain-spoken mother, Rima West, wonderfully embodied in that great actress, Pauline Flanagan.
It's Rima who bitterly and regretfully comments on Irish isolationism and prejudice. Ireland took in no refugees; it saved no Jews from the Death Camps.
Ireland stayed "neutral" in the Second World War, and it's suggested this was primarily to hurt the English, rather than from any anti-war principles.
[In the United States during the war, it was even rumored that some fanatic IRA men were signaling to German submarines to help them sink British ships.]
McGuinness also manages to include the almost incomprehensible information that Ireland's Prime Minister Eamon De Valera—born in America—sent the German Embassy a Letter of Condolence on the death of Adolf Hitler!
But these disturbing attitudes and actions on the governmental level do give greater resonance to American-Anglo-Irish relations on the family level.
Dolly has a special fondness for the Brit, Alec Redding [Anthony Calf]. But he is an Anglo, and that's always a problem.
Her younger brother, Justin [Michael Colgan], is a slim but ramrod-straight Home Guard Officer, protecting Donegal's ports and inlets against intrusion by the warring powers. He seems ready to preserve Ireland's neutrality single-handed.
Across the Northern Ireland border, in Derry, American soldiers are in training for the invasion of Fortress Europe. Two of them—in uniform—come down to dear old Donegal for a weekend.
Jamie O'Brien [Harry Carnahan] is a tough, street-wise Irish-American, with a sexual urge that won't be denied.
He begins a torrid affair with Dolly's younger—but married—sister, Esther [Catherine Byrne]. As Esther's plodding sergeant-husband pretends not to notice.
Jamie's buddy and cousin is the flamboyant Italian-American Marco Delavicario. He is very flamboyantly played by Perry Laylon Ojeda, who was seen last season on Broadway as Gabey in "On the Town."
Marco immediately senses what makes Justin so difficult and self-righteous. He kisses him—and voilà, Justin is out of his old Irish cupboard. McGuinness also dealt sympathetically with homosexual love in "Observe the Sons of Ulster."
The time-span of the play—set in Dolly's comfortable kitchen, designed by Joe Vanek—is 1943-45. In those long months, the confrontations of Irish, Americans, and a Brit in the West kitchen change all their lives.
But so does World War II, in a much deeper and larger way. McGuinness' ingenious gift in this play is to suggest that through the life of the West Family.
Also able actors were Lucianne McEvoy as Anna and Simon O'Gorman as Ned. Nick Chelton provided highly selective and effective lighting on the minimalist set.
A Footnote about Long and Vengeful Irish Memories: During the run of McGuinness' drama, north of the border between the Two Irelands, Ulster officials finally got round to honoring the courage and the memory of a Belfast Roman Catholic sailor in the British Forces in World War II.
In a frogman's suit, swimming underwater from a midget submarine, he attached explosives to the hull of a Japanese warship—with only seconds to spare before the explosion and the expiration of his air-supply.
He was awarded Britain's highest award, the Victoria Cross. When he came home, he should have had a Victor's Welcome. But he was unfortunately a Catholic, and the Protestant Powers in Ulster refused to honor him.
Not only was he spurned by the Protestants, but Irish Nationalists north of the border regarded him as an Irish traitor for having helped the British in any way.
Only this past October, did Ulster officialdom finally unveil a very modest monument to his memory and his daring.
What is it with these people anyway? Isn't Christianity supposed to transform human lives?
"The Map Maker's Sorrow"—
In the Abbey's downstairs studio-theatre, the Peacock, even more minimalist was Chris Lee's "The Map Maker's Sorrow." Designer Paul McCauley used only a few set-props to suggest the various locales of a number of short, sharp, fast-paced scenes.
Chris Lee's Family TragedyThe sophisticated, super-intelligent, passionate environmentalist, map-maker Morag is so intent on her work, her causes, and her visions of the future, that she hasn't really had time for her estranged alcoholic husband Henry and her desperately drifting son.
Nor is Henry able to help the suicidal young man. He has his own problems with drink, debts, and gambling.
A teenage prostitute befriends the lad, and she's the one who finds him hanged. She's also the "property" of a burly, angry pimp.
Although she is abused and beaten in sexual sessions with a wealthy political Spin-Meister, this is nothing compared to the pimp's wrath and revenge after she takes shelter with Morag.
The politico saves Henry from a brutal stomping and possible death at the hands of the pimp—who is also a bookie. All the characters are deftly inter-related in Lee's drama.
Although the scene, the attitudes, and the personal problems relate strongly to modern Dublin in the time of the economic Celtic Tiger, this painful story is being enacted live and for real in many cities and towns in the western world.
The central problem is not prostitution, gambling, perversion, or violence. Instead, it's about the failure of modern families to communicate and connect.
In trying to understand their son's death, Morag and Henry begin realize that their expectations for him were unrealistic. He wanted to be a chef. [He should have been upstairs in Dolly West's kitchen!]
And they begin to see that their own expectations for themselves and for each other have been unrealistic—even destructive. Henry, for instance, is a Sleep Specialist with virtually no clients.
Fortunately, the Politico cannot sleep. He needs Henry's help—which proves grotesque.
This is a painful play about healing and caring. But it's also one which could engage audiences in many communities.
It does have some "cute," even schematic, stylized devices such as a single word introducing each scene. And Death as a lovely young maiden, coming to claim her victims.
Brian Brady directed a fine cast which included Ingrid Craigie, Neilí Conroy, Catherine Mack, Patrick McGrath, Andrew Bennett, Chris McHallem, Phillip McMahon, and Kevin Lennon.
At the Historic Gate Theatre:
Bernard Farrell's "The Spirit of Annie Ross"At the opening of the Gate Theatre's new mystery-farce, "The Spirit of Annie Ross," a limping old caretaker [Fred Pearson] begins to remove dust-covers from limp old furniture in a rather spooky parlor. On a dark & stormy night, no less!
OPENING AT THE GATE--Posters for "The Spirit of Annie Ross." Photo: Copyright ©—Glenn Loney 1999/The Everett Collection. He's just like all those other darkly menacing caretakers and house-keepers in horror-films. Not exactly as grim as Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca," however. More like a male Marian Seldes in that recent horror, "The Haunting." ["Some Houses Are Bad!" Yes, and so are some movies!]
Like Seldes, he's leaving the premises as soon as he can. Those who remain will be completely cut off from the outer world. Mobile phones will fail!
Tonight is the night that the ghost of Annie Ross will walk, as she does every year on this anniversary of her suicide in this very room.
The Babbitish Larry [Mark Lambert] has rented the house for the night. He proposes to tape the appearance of Annie, which will then be broadcast on the Gerry Ryan Show—an actual Irish program, with Gerry's own voice heard on the radio!
If Annie doesn't show, so much the better. Larry, the Ghost-Buster, will have disproved an old-wives' tale.
And it's all in a good cause: Larry is helping raise money for African Famine Relief. As if there were no poverty-pockets in Ireland!
The bottom-line, however, is that Larry—despite his frenetic optimism and ridiculous boosterism—is a deeply insecure little man. He's already had a nervous-breakdown and is clearly heading for another.
He pines for promotion and approbation, but his present position is probably at risk.
His dutiful and worried wife Helen [Lynn Cahill] is a victim of Decorator Mania. She could be the Martha Stewart of Ireland. She's also having an affair with an athletic old friend, under the guise of taking Evening School courses.
She's prepared a tasty indoor picnic for the ghost-watch, and she's invited her bubble-headed beautician [Fiona Glascott]. This twit, named Aisling, unfortunately says the first thing that comes into what may be laughingly called her mind.
The group is completed by a woolly-minded young teacher [Michael Devaney] who wants to give it all up and roam the world seeking adventure.
There are only two doors—one at either side of Tom Piper's vintage box-set—but as the farcical aspects of the night develop, they could be a Feydeau multitude of doors.
The developments are hilarious indeed, but they also reveal deep insecurities and contradictions in each of the characters.
There is a dark side to all the fun, as so often in the comedies of Britain's Alan Ayckbourne. It's to Ben Barnes' directorial credit that he so well balances the guffaws with the sharp little insights.
There are a number of marvelous one-liners. Neil Simon could be envious, but the emotional subtexts are far more serious than in Simon's comedies.
Bernard Farrell's very enjoyable comedy is set in County Dublin, but it could easily be relocated in Düsseldorf, Lyons, Aarhus, Reggio Emilia, Utrecht, Toronto, or Denver.
This is a script which should have a long life with community and school theatre groups.
Unleashing the Celtic Tiger:
At the recent Edinburgh Festival, Ireland's Rough Magic Theatre Company had quite a success with its production of "The Whisperers," an l8th century sentimental comedy, written largely by Richard Brinsley Sheridan's mother.
Rough Magic's Dublin as "Boomtown"Unfortunately, its Dublin Festival world premiere, "Boomtown," demonstrated none of the devastating wit, congenial comedy, or deft plotting of the Sheridans. Or even of other vintage Irish playwrights such as Oliver Goldsmith and Dion Boucicault. Oscar Wilde would have been appalled. Sean O'Casey would have moved to England.
All week before the premiere, workers, techies, and artists were frantically constructing and outfitting a temporary scaffold-theatre in the handsome open space at Meeting House Square—flanked by national film and photo archives and theatres.
On opening-night, audiences found themselves surrounding a rectangular arena-stage, with two levels of balconies above the playing-area. The stage even had traps and elevators for ingenious special effects.
The bumptious low, low comedy opened on the occasion of the Pope's Visit to Dublin. This auspicious religious event—at least in the show—was viewed as a symbol of the dramatic changes in Dublin with the unleashing of the fearsome Celtic Tiger.
Even in the 1950s, Dublin was a sad and shabby city. The grime of one or two centuries clung to the older architectural monuments. Poverty was everywhere. Even the good hotels were seedy and threadbare.
Twenty years ago, however, things began to change rapidly. Developers appeared from nowhere. Or from Hell.
American factories opened. American Irish returned to the Ould Sod to retire—or to start new businesses.
With Ireland's entry into the European Community—and the resultant EU co-investment of millions and millions—Ireland's farms, villages, roads, ports, and major cities began a new vibrant life. This is the effect of the Celtic Tiger—and it is very impressive, especially in trendy, swinging Dublin.
Meeting House Square, site of the premiere, is in the heart of the splendid development of the Temple Bar area along the River Liffey. Carefully restored historic buildings jostle with daring Modernist facades.
There seem to be three times as many pubs, coffee-bars, and Italian Ristorantes as there are boutiques. But there are still more than enough smart shops with jewelry, ceramics, and sweaters.
Smartly-dressed young Dubliners, raffish Trinity College students, and trendy teen tourists throng the streets, bars, and eateries till the early hours of morn.
But twenty years ago, Temple Bar was at risk from developers. It was threatened with demolition. The City Fathers were considering widening Dublin's narrow streets.
Considering the constantly stalled traffic-columns on both sides of the Liffey every day, this might have been a commercial blessing.
But it would have destroyed the core of Dublin's historic heritage. Fortunately, a balance has been struck between ancient and modern, between movement and stasis.
"Boomtown" was devised to mock the developers, politicians, hucksters, and "thieves, punks, hookers, and cannibals" who were involved in Dublin's transformation. It also lampooned how they had transformed themselves with the new prosperity.
Rough Magic described the show as "a high-octane low farce celebration of that special Irish gift for excess."
The buffoonish Irish stereotypes—gross in physical appearance, dress, and behavior—would surely have enraged American-Irish if shown in the St. Paddy's Day Parade in Manhattan. Even I—though hardly a super-patriotic Irish-American—found these unfunny and irritating.
For me, it was as if this travesty were being performed in Urdu. Not just because of the excessive Irish brogues, but also because most of the visual, textual, and situational jokes were primarily for Insiders—the Real Dubliners who have lived through the transformational 80's and 90's.
If you cannot figure out what is being made fun of—or why—parody won't work.
Worse, however, was the fact that the performances were on the level of High School Stunt Night. I could not believe that this was the same ensemble I had so admired in Edinburgh just two months previous.
As for Irish Excess, I think I know what Rough Magic means by the term. Driving around Ireland, I have been amazed at the color-sense of newly prosperous Irish farmers and villagers.
It has long pleased English and American WASPish patricians to look down their long noses with contempt at the bizarre fondness of "Mediterraneans" for a riot of bold basic colors in artworks, decoration, ornament, and fashions.
The Irish have the Latins all beat. Not in costume, which seems to be Basic Black—thanks to Roman Catholicism—always in waiting for a wake and funeral. No, the Irish flair for color is celebrated on exteriors of houses, pubs, and shops.
In a long row of joined cottages swooping down a village hill, it's not unusual to find each one—two small windows flanking a door—garishly painted in bright colors which clash with those on either side.
This Rainbow Coalition of housing is, however, preferable to long avenues of sooty gray facades. These can still be found in many villages and town not yet visited by the Celtic Tiger.
How about a long low modern farmhouse, brand-new, with expansive windows, plunked down on a big concrete pad in the middle of a plowed field?
No trees, shrubs, or lawns yet, but a long frontal wall of bright violet, with deep purple coping and a pair of yellow eagles on its entry-posts?
The house itself might be painted an almost luminescent chartreuse, with intensely saturated bright apple-green trim on windows, doors, and eaves. For an extra bit of Irish Excess, the door could be bright blue.
From Great Britain:
Shared Experience's "Jane Eyre"Polly Teale is clearly a feminist-playwright. Her adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's disturbing novel, "Jane Eyre," has an additional character the parson's daughter did not see fit to include in her narrative.
LIBIDO IN RED--Harriette Ashcroft and Penny Layden as Jane Eyre's Id and Ego in a new adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel at the Dublin Festival. Or, viewed from another perspective, this Woman in Red is a schizoid projection of Mr. Rochester's deranged wife, locked in the attic—from which she escapes from time to time to attack her husband or to try to set fire to the house.
But, for Teale, this passionate woman is also Jane's Id, her suppressed libido. Initially—as Jane familiarizes herself with the ruined staircase that represents Mr. Rochester's Country House—the red-robed woman clings to Jane like a Siamese twin or an aroused lover.
To quote from the program: "Jane is poor, obscure, and plain. But locked up in the attic of her imagination lives a woman so passionate, so wild, so full of longing, she must be guarded night and day for fear of the havoc she would wreak."
Brontë's sub-text, for Teale, is the clash between Jane's Victorian upbringing and her fiery inner nature.
Although in the novel Jane seems obedient to orders and restraints imposed on her by various men in authority—or by women in similar positions—her own good sense makes her question the order of things. As well as meditate on what seem to her injustices, though society assumes women must and will accept them.
This understated and subtle treatment seems more effective than visualizing an modern imagining of what may be going on Jane's mind and heart.
But, in the Age of Television and short-attention-spans, Teale's dramatic device may get the point across more forcefully. If Teale really is in tune with Charlotte's own imaginings for her much-abused heroine.
Although I would have admired this interesting and handsomely-designed production much more without the Woman in Red, as conceived it is still a powerful piece of theatre.
One Dublin critic found fault with the adaptation—that too much detail from the novel had been included, and some of that in narration, rather than action.
I thought Teale crafted a very absorbing and moving drama. It uses some of the techniques of Story Theatre quite effectively. Playing a dog or a horse, male actors in the ensemble prove as vital as their human characters.
Teale's treatment—and her personal staging—certainly saved me re-reading "Jane Eyre."
For audiences beyond Dublin and Britain—as this bare-bones production seems designed to tour—some will not even have to read the novel the first time.
Penny Layden was a very plain but compelling Jane. Harriette Ashcroft was certainly dynamic and demonic as the possessed Bertha and Jane's Id. Sean Murray was a dignified and distant Mr. Rochester.
Marathon from Australian Perth:
Neil Armfield Stages "Cloudstreet" Family EpicAfter twelve hours of "Schlachten"—all Shakespeare's History-Plays condensed—at this summer's Salzburg Festival, a mere five hours of family-life in Australian Perth seemed no great challenge. That the venue was not in the heart of Dublin meant, however, that we had to be on time to take a bus to the SFX City Theatre.
LAMB FAMILY FISHING--Poor Perth Aussies at the seaside in "Cloudstreet," produced by Australia's Company B/Black Swan Theatre. But "Cloudstreet" was made even more audience-friendly by the provision of great gourmet sandwiches—absolutely free, in our own carry-bags—and drinks in the interval. Wow!
This amazingly engaging and wide-ranging family narrative was wonderfully performed by unfamiliar but very talented Australian actors. Their own rehearsal improvs obviously had a lot to do with the effectiveness of many of the scenes.
But the clear through-line of action, the integration of various lives and passions, the swift but sensitive pacing, and the creation of some stunningly theatrical effects are surely to be credited to director Neil Armfield.
ROMANCE IN THE SAND--A tender moment in"Cloudstreet," a five-hour Australian marathon. I've never been to Perth, let alone Australia, but I already had some sense of Armfield's talents as a director. Three seasons ago, he brilliantly staged Rubenstein's virtually forgotten opera, "Der Dämon," for the Bregenz Festival.
"Cloudstreet" was adapted by Nick Enright and Justin Mojo from the popular Australian novel by Tom Winton. It is the saga of twenty years of two quite different families living side-by-side in a huge old house in Perth, at Cloud Street l.
The production—with fourteen impressive actors playing some forty roles—was already a huge standing-room-only hit in Perth and Sydney.
It requires an inclined ramp from the midst of the orchestra onto the stage, so boats and carts and actors can make effective entrances and exits. But the stage is generally bare, adorned with set-props and improvised effects as needed. A rear scrim reveals silhouettes of the cruel woman and her abused girls who once lived in this strange old ghost-haunted house.
Max Cullen is charming and impossible as the often soused horse-race bettor Sam Pickles. Oddly enough, he wins when least expected. And he inherits the huge house—which he is bound not to sell for 20 years—when the family fortunes are at their lowest.
But the Pickles Family cannot afford to pay the bills by themselves, so half the house is rented to the religious, cautious, and impoverished Lamb Family. John Gaden is very affecting as the decent, loving, but somewhat clueless dad, Lester Lamb.
As his rather rigid and resourceful wife, Oriel, Judi Farr is a force of nature, holding the family together through various disasters.
Their son, Fish Lamb, nearly drowns in a fishing-net. When he's revived, his brain is affected, so he grows as a child with Downes' Syndrome.
Daniel Wyllie is remarkable in his ability to suggest the physical aspects of such an affliction—while at the same time communicating Fish's fears and longings more through gestures and grimaces than through fractured speech.
Oriel opens a grocery and notions shop in the old house, and it prospers. Across the hall, the attractive Dolly Pickles [Kris McQuade] entertains young servicemen, while her often absent or drunken husband pretends he doesn't notice.
Her extremely intelligent and sensitive daughter, Rose [Claire Jones], suffers through the groans and heavings in the next room. As well as from her mother's neglect and cruel jibes.
Initially, I wondered how I'd keep track of so many Lambs and Pickles. Or even how I could get interested in their pathetic little lives and poverty-stricken problems.
Very soon, I found myself completely caught up in their lives and strivings. This wonderful production celebrates The Family, Love, and Continuity.
It should certainly be seen in the United States—and not only in New York. But who is going to undertake underwriting a five-hour epic such as this.
It's the kind of show BAM could do. But its values, stories, and production are so old-fashioned and down-to-earth that they might be out-of-place in BAM's trendy Next Wave avant-garde programs.
Nonetheless, in humanity and theatrical effectiveness, "Cloudstreet" puts BAM's recent venture into cutting-edge Family Drama to shame. The Needcompany's pretentious "Morning Song" was an embarrassing travesty, compared to "Cloudstreet."
From Distant Israel:
To sustain the character of the Dublin Festival as International, Tel Aviv's Gersher Theatre brought Joshua Sobel's family-drama, "Village," from Israel.
Gersher Theatre's "Village"This production and this ensemble—founded just eight years ago by Russian immigrants to Israel—have already been greatly and justly admired. The show should surely be widely toured, especially in the United States and Canada.
Sobel sets his wistful drama in a Palestinian village in 1942—and later. Arabs and Jews live in harmony.
Even the British officer—who represents Britain's responsibilities as holder of the colonial Mandate over Palestine—is accepted, though he's having an affair with one Jewish villager's wife.
The greatest concern of the Jewish inhabitants is the steady advance eastward through North Africa of Germany's Marshall Erwin Rommel and his Afrika-Korps. They know only too well what they have to fear from the Nazis if the Germans conquer Palestine.
The framework of the drama is the fond but uncensored recollections of Yossi [Israel Demidov], a village dreamer and the local grave-digger. He conjures up the past and the people who lived through the war into the founding of the State of Israel.
The Arabs had to flee, ordered to do so, in Sobel's version, by Arab leaders who threatened to bomb Palestinian towns. With Palestinian Arabs gone, the village was no longer what it had been for so many long years.
An ingenious feature of Alexander Lisiyansky's set-design was a revolving ring—rather than a simple turntable—which speedily rotated scenes, often to music. It also permitted scenes to be set in its cavity and around its margins.
This unusual turntable proved an apt symbol for the play's "merry-go-round of poignancy, young loves, adult betrayals, and sorrows barely touched by distant horrors." To quote the Gersher's program.
Sentimentally staged by the Gersher's Artistic Director, Yevgeny Arye, this charming production had almost the feeling of a musical. That's thanks in large part to the score of Avi Benjamin
Its overall effect, of course, was made possible by the wonderful Gersher Theatre ensemble. In Hebrew, Gersher means "Bridge," and they are certainly building bridges with such professional and lovingly played productions.
On the Dublin Fringe:
In addition to the professional theatre offerings in the regular festival, there is also a lively Fringe Festival, as in Edinburgh. Some of these productions are every bit as professional as the major attractions, but they are usually smaller-scale and frequently solo shows or two-handers with minimal scenery.
Over Sixty Shows From Which To Choose!There are no less than 22 Fringe venues, most of them in the historic heart of the city
One at some remove is Kilmainham Gaol, where the Irish Patriot Martyrs were imprisoned. Even Eamon De Valera was a political prisoner here, though he survived to become Prime Minister and later President of a free Ireland.
Over sixty separate productions were presented during the festival's three-week term. There were also would-be comics at Carroll's Comedy Club at the Fringe.
At the Irish Film Centre, an interesting selection of classics, avant-garde works, short Irish movies, and cinema workshops were crammed into the two-day Film Fringe. That was a first this year and promises even more next October.
Among the Fringe's more interesting offerings was Frank Grimes' Portrait of James Joyce—"The He and She of It." American playwrights were represented by "Angels in America," "The Mineola Twins," "Death of a Salesman," and "Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll."
Samuel Beckett was honored, more or less, with productions of "End Game" and "Catastrophe." There was no O'Casey, Synge, or Yeats, even in parody.
Some shows had provocative or enigmatic titles such as "If the Dead Could Go Shopping What Would They Buy?" "Do Hens Think?" and "Often I Find That I Am Naked."
I had missed these in Edinburgh, but, as most shows are scheduled in the evening, at the same hour as major events, I missed them again. Also "Happy Birthday Mister Deka D."
Some ensembles have names even more intriguing than their shows: Quare Hawks, Voodoo ToDoCo, Suspect Culture, 13 Spanner Theatre, Skeklers Theatre, Bare Bones Theatre, Block One Theatre, Magpie Theatre, Blue Raincoat Theatre, Common Currency Theatre, and You'll Be Sorry Theatre Company.
And there are also Cyclone Productions, Kabosh Productions, Aviary Productions, Bedrock Productions, Chambermade Productions, Clockwork Productions, Rawcus Productions, and the Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre,
One of the most original and intriguing of the Dublin Fringe productions seems very much a work-in-progress. But its concept is so unusual and its visual props are so artfully designed and executed that it promises much more than it delivered in its first presentation.
Be on the lookout for artist-director Elaine Bastible and her Picasso show, "A Red Day." She is a talent to watch—and to encourage.
THE FACES OF DORA MAAR--Elaine Bastible's 3-D Picasso face and body-masks for "A Red Day." Photo: Copyright ©—Glenn Loney 1999/The Everett Collection. Picasso's Paintings Come Alive—
Long after a famed choreography is no longer being performed, its props, costumes, and settings may survive in archives and museum-displays. That certainly has been the case with Isamu Noguchi's powerful sculptural props for Martha Graham's "Cave of the Heart" and other choreographies.
Dora Maar in 3-D in "A Red Day"They are artworks in their own right. That is also very much the case with the creations of Elaine Bastible for the Ishka Theatre's first production, "A Red Day."
She has created a three-dimensional mask of Picasso's onetime lover, Dora Maar, which ingeniously combines two of his two-dimensional cubist distortions of her face. As the dancer playing Maar turns her head right or left, the image changes but with no sense of two clashing visions of Maar's face.
Bastible has also cleverly invoked the image of Picasso in a mask. To provide a focus for Maar's jealousy of Picasso's affairs with other women, Bastible has devised an impressive mask for a more generic Cubist woman as well.
There's also Picasso's rearing, terrified horse from "Guernica." And a heavily armored Cubist warrior.
FUGITIVE FROM GUERNICA--Picasso's frightened horse as a hand-and-arm puppet-mask, in Ishka Theatre's "A Red Day." Photo: Copyright ©—Glenn Loney 1999/The Everett Collection. Bastible quickly realized that facial masks, no matter how powerful, were not enough in performance, even worn by skilled dancers in black leotards.
In fact, there was the danger that, against a black backdrop, the masks might seem disembodied. Like disconnected objects from the Black Theatre of Prague, dancing about in space.
So she devised Cubist body-masks, or costumes, which transform Picasso's painted two-dimensional images into bold, colorful sculptures.
Both facial and body masks are so astonishing that they ought to have their very own gallery or museum show!
But they have even greater potential when in motion.
Bastible explains why she made masks inspired by Picasso:
"It's not very often in theatre that a creative process starts with the design, but that's how this show began. As a designer and performer, I was looking for an interesting way to gel the two disciplines.
"While studying with Lecoq in Paris, we worked with many different kinds of mask, how they were worn and played, each with their own style. It struck me that visual art had passed through many different languages this century, but that the diversity in style and representation hadn't touched the world of masks…
"Picasso was an interesting place to start because of how he puts different viewpoints of the same face together.
"Once the masks were made, we discovered that they couldn't be played on a normal body, so began the work of making their whole bodies. The next step was to see if they could move and have personalities and then if they could have relationships…"
The technical problem was to devise body masks which would embody the Picasso vision, without preventing dancers from moving effectively and evocatively in them.
Made from cardboard and fiberglass—and brightly colored—these constructions can be stiff and awkward to wear. Both designer and choreographer have to keep that in mind.
The Italian parodist, Ennio Marchetto, is making a career of impersonating celebrities in such virtually cut-out costumes—though his are largely two-dimensional—which he unfolds to achieve instant changes or enhancements. His inventions are also stiff, but he manages to move very effectively in them.
As this was Bastible and Ishka's first production ever, it was fascinating more for the potential of the conception than the actual execution.
It needs a better-defined "book," more interesting and challenging choreography, and certainly far more sophisticated lighting than it received in the black-box downstairs theatre at Dublin's ArtHouse.
But Lecoq-trained Bastible and her colleagues—who also have mime and clown training—have made a good beginning. What they need are not only the items cited above, but also sponsors and producers who can help them achieve the professional level of production that Bastible's masks deserve. [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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