Sunday, November 16, 2003

By Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

DUBLIN, Ireland -- The Irish didn't invent theater. But it's one way they could beat the British at their own game, as witness all the Irish-bred playwrights who have taken London by storm over the centuries, from Goldsmith and Sheridan to Wilde and Shaw.

	Dublin theater festivals The 2004 Dublin Theatre Festival is set for Sept. 27-Oct. 9. Its schedule is typically announced in late spring, whereupon it produces a useful brochure. Preliminary announcements appear during the year. You can keep up to date by watching www.dublintheatrefestival.com. The Festival box office is at 44 East Essex St. in Temple Bar; 011-353-1-677-8899. The 2004 Dublin Fringe Festival will run Sept. 20-Oct. 9. Its brochure appears in the summer. The Web site is www.fringefest.com; the office is at 12 East Essex St., Temple Bar, 011-353-1-679-2320. Even during the Festival, some theaters handle their own tickets. For these, and for information at other times of the year, contact: Abbey Theatre (includes Peacock), Lower Abbey Street: 011-353-1-878-7222. Gaiety Theatre, South King Street: 011-353-1-677-1717. Gate Theatre, Cavendish Row: 011-353-1-874-4045. Olympia Theatre, Dame Street: 011-353-1-679-3323. Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College: 011-353-1-608-2461.

Freed of the British yoke -- most of it, anyway -- in the past 100 years, the Irish have developed a theater culture central to the English-speaking world. So it's not surprising that for a theater lover, the Dublin Theatre Festival is a delight -- and it's in Dublin, itself an inviting city of charm, history and excitement.

There's always some sort of theater available in Dublin, but the annual festival is when you get critical theatrical mass, with the added zest of being crammed into a couple of weeks in the early fall. The whole city hums with high-profile international groups and Irish companies, most from Dublin but others visiting from Belfast, Galway or Cork.

Dublin, of course, is always Dublin, which means a visitor can expect a friendly reception, good conversation and bustle. There are more museums, historic sights and special neighborhoods than can be exhausted in several visits. But at festival time, the bustle intensifies, touching the whole city with a sense of occasion.

The 45th edition of the Dublin Theatre Festival took place this year Sept. 29-Oct. 11, accompanied by the Dublin Fringe Festival, which gets a week head start. Should the account of activities that follows whet your appetite, you can mark your calendar now with the dates of the 46th festival, set for Sept. 27-Oct. 9, 2004.

And if it doesn't whet your appetite, theater just isn't your meal of choice.

The 2003 festival featured 14 major theater attractions -- "theater" in the large current sense, shading off into music and dance -- along with programs of children's plays, art exhibits and concerts, plus a large accompaniment of lectures, critical panels and encounters. It wouldn't be Ireland if the art weren't bolstered by lashings of good talk.

The major international artists included Quebec's Robert Lepage, Israel's Rina Yerushalmi, Spain's Calixto Bieito, Belgium's Het Muziek Lod and Ro Theater, London's Royal Shakespeare Company and director Max Stafford-Clark of the Royal Court and Out of Joint.

Lepage brought his marvelous "the far side of the moon," a moving, technologically complex, one-actor play of great beauty -- of particular interest in Pittsburgh, because it was supposed to have been a highlight of the Cultural Trust's Quebec Festival. Coincidentally, it was staged at Dublin's O'Reilly Theatre, named for the same Tony O'Reilly as Pittsburgh's. This is a modern, multi-purpose space at Belvedere College, O'Reilly's secondary school (and also James Joyce's).

Yerushalmi is known in Pittsburgh from her tenure as a director at Carnegie Mellon. She brought "Mythos," her own exciting new adaptation into Hebrew of Aeschylus' "Oresteia," staged by Israel's ITIM and Cameri theaters with simultaneous English translation. Bieito brought his raw version of "Hamlet," staged with British actors originally for the Edinburgh Festival. And the RSC contribution was a coals-to-Newcastle special, "The Lieutenant of Inishmore," a grisly funny play set in Ireland but written by the London Irish Martin McDonagh and controversial in Ireland for that reason and for its savage satire of the IRA.

The work of the Irish companies mirrored this international dynamic, whether in inspiration, content or personnel. Ireland is no longer the mossy emerald backwater of American nostalgia but an energetic crossroads of contemporary Europe, and Dublin, awash in foreign students, has a pan-European flavor.

Witness the festival's hottest Irish show, "Giselle." I hadn't picked it in advance, since who goes all the way to Dublin to see a familiar old ballet? But this was neither familiar nor old: Michael Keegan Dolan moved the classic story into a fevered cross between the Irish hinterlands and the American West, performing it with a predominantly male company drawn from not just Ireland and the United Kingdom but also Slovakia, Austria, Nigeria, America and Italy. The international face of contemporary Ireland was also featured in "HURL," Barabbas theater's sprawling play about a hurling team of immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe who compete for the Irish championship.

If there are degrees of Irishness, the most Irish show on offer was "Sharon's Grave," a lyrical, darkly mystical piece by the great, recently deceased John B. Keane. It was directed by Garry Hynes of Galway's Druid Theatre, one of Ireland's hot international directors, originator of McDonagh's "Beauty Queen of Lenane," but to my deep regret it was scheduled in the festival's first week, before I arrived. Irish in a more modern sense was the Belgian group's "The Woman Who Walked into Doors," an opera "for soprano, actress and videoscreen," based on the intense novel about a battered wife by the Irish Roddy Doyle.

Young Ireland was represented by Stella Feehily's fresh, gamey "Duck." There were also (also!) world premieres of new plays by Ireland's greatest living playwright, Brian Friel, and one of his peers, Thomas Kilroy. Other mainstage attractions were Fascinating Aida, a comic cabaret trio of "glamorous old troupers"; the flamenco of Compania Maria Pages (Pages is most famous in Ireland from "Riverdance"); and the fabulously weird The Tiger Lillies, a band that's roughly a cross between Weill, Dickens, Joyce and passionate castrati. And among those speaking at the supporting panels and at "Critical Engagement," a week of events arranged by Irish Theatre Magazine, were Arthur Miller and Richard Eyre.

Meanwhile, rumbling along in pubs, art galleries and various holes in the wall, was the Fringe Festival, which described itself as "13 countries, 1,200 participants, 140 events, 650 performances, 20 days, 20 nights." Given the exigencies of eating, drinking, sleeping and non-theater tourism, in three days I could not manage more than the main festival. Two of its attractions I'd reviewed before -- "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" in London last year and "HURL" in Galway last summer -- so here are the six I chose to see.

"Giselle"

The original 1841 story is familiar -- an incognito prince woos a village maiden, who dies when he is unmasked and joins the wilis, vengeful female spirits, from whom she protects him. It's the quintessence of Romanticism. But the brooding mood of Dolan's radical transformation of the story to the fictionalized Irish town of Ballyfeeny, a dark, secretive place, feels familiar, too -- familiar from the plays of Keane, McDonagh and especially Marina Carr.

The brutal lives of Ballyfeeny, with its wild west/Appalachian feel, are lightened when a charismatic dancer comes to teach line dancing. But sexual jealousies are also stirred as he carries on with both men and women. The result is a mix of gothic comedy and horror, stirring powerful currents in which Giselle is caught.

Predominantly ballet but with dialogue, narration and song, this "Giselle" is robust, probing the pretty "Giselle" to reveal its dark side of deceit, lust, repression and class -- the more lurid subjects of the Romantic imagination. The Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre cast of nine men and one woman play many roles with both vigor and grace. "I believe that physical theater should be more visceral than cerebral," Dolan has said. His work is very visual, pulsating with imagery. It feels like theater for today.

"the far side of the moon"

Pittsburgh lost something astonishing when the visit of Lepage's compelling piece, planned for the Byham in April 2004, was canceled. Lepage wrote, directed and originally performed it himself, but it is now performed by Yves Jacques, who plays all the characters, especially two Quebecois brothers, astrophysicist Philip and TV weatherman Carl -- and also their mother. Philip is a hapless romantic, pursuing a Ph.D. in astrophysics and obsessed with strange byways, but also something of an artist, creating a wistful autobiography which turns out to be what we are watching.

The set is dominated by a huge, stage-wide mirror that spins longitudinally, facilitating fabulous transitions as well as mesmerizing optical effects, including one magical sequence that replicates weightlessness in space. At the rear is a metal porthole that starts as a washing machine, then morphs into a goldfish bowl, an airplane window and the airlock in a spacecraft.

Philip was born in 1957 (like Lepage), and his youth is dominated by the space race. Seeing this from a perspective doubly distanced from the United States (Canadian, but also French Canadian), we recall that the early space triumphs were Russian before Americans arrived on the moon in 1969. Lepage interweaves Philip's present, his past, the history of the space race and meditations on humankind's place in the cosmos, using also puppets, magical lighting and the plaintive music of Laurie Anderson. It's a comi-tragedy of two brothers but also a speculation on mirroring (the moon as Earth's mirror) and on the intersection of science and popular culture.

Ireland and French Canada share a long struggle against the British empire and the English language. At the curtain call, performer Jacques told the audience he is part Irish and felt at home -- much of what "far side of the moon" is about.

"Performances"

Everything Brian Friel writes commands interest, but his past two plays have been short on the fully imagined life and spiritual dimension that fired "Translations," "Faith Healer," "Dancing at Lughnasa" and "Molly Sweeney," to name just four. "Afterplay" is all delicate surface, without the rich context we expect. And "Performances," just 65 minutes long, feels like an essay, not a play.

The two characters are Czech composer Leos Janacek (1854-1928) and Anezka Ungrova, a present-day researcher working on the history of Janacek's autumnal love of Kamila Stosslova, 36 years his junior, whom he met in 1917. He wrote her some 700 love letters and made her his muse for song cycles and operas, culminating in his second string quartet, "Intimate Letters."

Returned from the grave, Janacek argues with Ungrova over the meaning of his love for Stosslova and its relationship to his art. The debate is important, but she is never a convincing person with something at stake -- just a mouthpiece, telling him about his past or talking like a music critic. And as played in a language where he is not at home by the distinguished Romanian actor, Ion Caramitru, Janacek seems more genial floorwalker than passionate artist.

As they argue, part of that final quartet is played off-stage by the Alba String Quartet, who then enter -- talking, as characters scripted by Friel -- to play the rest of it on stage. This is moving, supporting Janacek's insistence that the meaning is in the music, not the letters, a theme familiar from other Friel plays.

"The Shape of Metal"

Thomas Kilroy is another Irish master, though his output of 13 plays is far less than Friel's. Staged at the Abbey, "The Shape of Metal" asks, like "Performances," how much the artist may consume people in pursuit of art. But it, too, feels like deep speculation in search of a play to embody it.

Kilroy's artist, Nell, played by Sara Kestelman, is a strong, independent sculptor, age 82, who has led her life for herself and her art, depriving her daughter Judith, 47, of motherly attention. There is another daughter, Grace, older than Judith, who has disappeared -- we see her only in flashbacks, at age 25, 30 years before. The ultimate selfish, controlling mother, Nell is Lear-like, her chair set mid-stage like a throne. She will hide behind any justification for her selfish ways -- age, art, even parenthood. But where is her heart? Judith is just a device to accuse Nell, but Nell is such a monster of self that she's impervious.

Kilroy's speculation on art is extended by Nell's memories of great men -- Beckett, whom she knew in Paris and who introduced her to Giacometti -- and by her sculptures, which show many a different influence. For a while, the play seems ready to turn into a mystery, and, in a surreal surprise that suggests other non-naturalistic possibilities, Nell's portrait bust of Grace speaks. Act 2 gathers interest, but it is a long slog to get there.

Still, as with Friel, Kilroy's track record suggests that, freed of this shrill but empty production, his play may prove worthier with time.

"Duck"

The brochures appropriately call this a "sparky and moving first play from Stella Feehily." The central character is working-class Cat, called Duck by her domineering boyfriend. She and her middle-class friend, Sophy, are teenagers living risky lives in nighttime Dublin. Though the play keeps threatening to slide into brutal violence, it never really does. Feehily has an eye for telling detail and sociological complexity, and you come to care about these tough but vulnerable waifs surviving on vivacity, spunk and good luck. Director Max Stafford-Clark has a nurturing way with new writing. And you can't take your eyes off the emotionally transparent young Ruth Negga, playing Cat.

"The Woman Who Walked into Doors"

This opera by Kris Defoort (libretto and music) and Guy Cassiers (libretto and direction) tackles Doyle's book with lavish resources -- an actress and a soprano who voice the abused wife, Paula; 22-person classical orchestra; 10-person jazz combo; and elaborate, large-screen video accompaniment, including lots of text.

Paula's tale is harrowing, taking her from abused youth, repressed and discouraged by her teachers, to a brutal marriage that, with so little self-confidence, she is slow to protest. But gradually she begins to see more clearly through her alcoholism and splintered consciousness, and she escapes. The turbulence and pain of the story occasion music with many varied moods, modes and rhythms, sometimes cacophonic, sometimes sweet. Most of the time, it's like being inside Paula's head -- a painful, powerful 90-minute experience.

Let's hope that some of the above productions eventually come to Pittsburgh: If "Giselle" tours, the Cultural Trust should try to entice it, and why give up on "far side of the moon"?

As to the Dublin Theatre Festival, it will offer a whole new slate next fall.

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