They did the mash, the monster mash

It is a dark and stormy night.

Three thunderous knocks on a door.

The heavy door creaks open, faint classical music in background.

VIKTOR: Oh God, it’s you, Monster.

MORRIE: Master, we’ve been through this. (beat) You know I prefer Morrie.

VIKTOR: (sighs) What do you want?

MORRIE: I was just leaving the barn and noticed all the chandeliers blazing away in the mansion. Are you … having a party?

VIKTOR: What?! No… Nooo, I was just … looking for something.

MORRIE: And you left the candles burning in all the rooms?

VIKTOR: Morrie, you may not have noticed this, but, I’m really, really rich.

MORRIE: Well, see, I also thought I heard music.

VIKTOR: Oh! Um, Gundula is just messing about on the piano.

MORRIE: I thought I heard strings.

VIKTOR: She’s lilting the violin part.

MORRIE: There’s more than one violin part, it’s the Trout Quintet.

VIKTOR: She’s throwing her voice.

A faint trumpet.

MORRIE: That was a trumpet!!

VIKTOR: Okay!! Fine! (beat) I have a small chamber orchestra in the mansion, because (beat) I am in fact … having a party.

MORRIE: And you didn’t invite me… (beat) Are Dracula’s Wyrd Sisters here?

VIKTOR: That’s Count Dracula to you, peasant! And … yes, they are. And what’s it to you whether they’re here or not anyway? You’re a married man!

MORRIE: HA! Some marriage. She can’t stand the sight of me!

VIKTOR: Oh come on, you two were literally made for each other.

MORRIE: You were there! She took one look at me, and screamed. Not a word, just a shriek of despair when she saw my face.

VIKTOR: Well, who wouldn’t shriek when they see your face for the first time.

MORRIE: What?…

VIKTOR: Without wishing to hurt your feelings, Morrie, I could have done better. This hideous looking face, the bolts, I mean, you’re not my best work. If we’re being perfectly honest I was only 60-40 certain of success with you. If I’d been 80-20 I would have rooted around the graveyard a bit more for better materiel, like I did with the Bride. That’s why she’s such a knockout.

MORRIE: Talking of knockouts! (beat) HUBBA HUBBA! Who is that foxy lady?

Viktor slams the door shut. Faint music disappears.

VIKTOR: Are you trying to get us both torn limb from limb?! You better hope she didn’t hear that. You can’t call her a foxy lady, she’s a wolf-woman. That happens to be Miss Lycanthrope Bohemia.

MORRIE: Oh Master, you got to let me in to this party.

VIKTOR: No, absolutely not. You can’t come in, for two reasons. First, I have a lot of sophisticated ladies in there. Not only do I have Miss Lycanthrope Bohemia, but I also have three former Miss Transylvanias; one of whom went on to be Miss Balkans The last thing I need is you (beat) rampaging around the place roaring ‘HUBBA HUBBA’ at them. Second, I have the Golem of Prague in there, and he’s a very nervous character. One look at your misbegotten misshapen just awful face and he might go to pieces, literally. Then instead of driving him home to the Chief Rabbi in my best carriage in the morning, I’m shipping him back in crates. And Shlomo is a personal friend. I don’t want to tell him he’s got to do the Kabbalah magick from scratch again over some clay because my Monster scared the life out of his Golem.

MORRIE: (beat) Sometimes I think you just try to be hurtful.

VIKTOR: Oh, don’t I do enough for you, Morrie? For instance, don’t you and the Bride have to go to couples counselling at 9 tonight, with the therapist I suggested?

MAURICE: How did you know that?

VIKTOR: What?

MAURICE: We always go at 5, but Dr Bergmann sent a carrier pigeon to the barn earlier, moving it to 9, and I haven’t been out since then, and neither has the Bride, so… Wait…

Viktor noisily opens the door. Faint music reappears.

VIKTOR: So, if you’ll just be on your way, I have a party to get back to…

MAURICE: (beat) The only way you would have known … it had been moved to 9 … was if you asked Dr Bergmann to move it to 9, just to keep me away while you were having a party!

VIKTOR: Okay!! Fine! You got me.

MAURICE: Master, if you don’t let me in to this party, I’m, I’m going to do something drastic!

VIKTOR: Oh yeah, like what?

MAURICE: I’m, I’m going to gatecrash the next party you throw. And by God, won’t you be sorry then, Viktor!

VIKTOR: That’s Baron Frankenstein to you, peasant!

Viktor slams the door, then immediately creaks it open again.

VIKTOR: If you pass Igor on your way tell him to forget the new silverware, the werewolves are being picky enough eaters as it is without that slap in the face.

Keanu Reeves at the Lighthouse

The Lighthouse cinema is gearing up for something called Keanurama, a whole season of films starring the inimitable Keanu Reeves. Talking Movies‘ reaction to this news could only be captured by one word – whoa.

There is a veritable feast of Keanu Reeves on offer here, from his team-ups with Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, A Scanner Darkly and Destination Wedding to his 1990s-defining action movies Point Break and Speed, from his indie classics River’s Edge and My Own Private Idaho to his mainstream hits Parenthood and Devil’s Advocate, from his original breakthrough Bill & Ted movies to his recent John Wick comeback trilogy.

John Wick & John Wick: Chapter 2 DOUBLE BILL

May 10th

Keanu had three movies (Henry’s Crime, Generation Um…, Man of Tai Chi) that didn’t make Irish cinemas but made one hell of a comeback as the principled hit-man universally beloved in the hit-community, the larger underworld, and the small town he retired to. Keanu’s stunt-work was an endearing mix of fluency and occasional rustiness, and he made us love Wick as he rampaged after the mobsters who killed his puppy. The flabby sequel expanded the Man from UNCLE-like Continental universe too much, but featured some memorable fights; especially the Wellesian throwdown with Ruby Rose.

Destination Wedding

May 10th

Fellows 1990s icon and latterly cinematic exile Winona Ryder made her great comeback in Stranger Things in 2016 so it was only fitting that she would reunite for a third time with Keanu in this 2018 rom-com by Mad About You writer /director Victor Levin about two misanthropes travelling to a hopelessly pretentious destination wedding and being lumbered with each other there. In a curious twist it seems that this film, just like 2017’s similarly themed rom-com Table 19 about the people you invite to weddings and seat far away to avoid them, hides some very formalist experimentation behind innocuous trappings.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

May 10th

Keanu and Winona’s first film together saw them gamely battle with cut-glass English accents as married couple Jonathan and Mina Harker for Francis Ford Coppola’s curate’s egg of a horror movie, that aspires to great fidelity to its source text even as screenwriter James V Hart makes sweeping inventions about reincarnated immortal beloveds so that Gary Oldman’s rejuvenating Count can lust over Winona. Roman Coppola rummages thru the Old Hollywood playbook for practical magic, and Sadie Frost and Monica Bellucci go all out for eroticism, but despite an impressive ensemble (including Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing) this never catches fire.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

May 15th

Legendary hit-man and lover of dogs John Wick is excommunicado, having conducted business on Continental property. Now Ian McShane has given Keanu one hour’s grace in which he must fight his way out of New York with a $14 million contract on his life and every assassin in the Five Boroughs eager to collect. The production photo of a besuited Keanu riding a horse thru NYC has already taken on a life of its own, and we’re promised an equally tantalising samurai sword fight on motorbikes, as well as a detour to Africa with ally Halle Berry.

Speed 35mm

May 25th

Die Hard cinematographer Jan De Bont made an auspicious directorial debut with this high-concept action blockbuster about a mad bomber targeting an LA bus that has to stay above 50mph in a city known for its congestion. The leads Keanu and Sandra Bullock strike sparks, Jeff Daniels and Joe Morton are terrific in support, and Dennis Hopper chews the scenery as the crazed bomber – sorry, he’s not crazy, “poor people are crazy, Jack, I’m eccentric” – delivering witticisms from the pen of Joss Whedon. Mark Mancina’s score is a triumph of urgency and elation as Keanu attempts to save the day.

A Scanner Darkly 35mm

June 1st

Richard Linklater adapted Philip K Dick’s hallucinogenic novel using his favoured animation technique, rotoscoping, to create a uniquely hellish new world in which an undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result. Keanu is said cop, and he’s romancing Winona Ryder in their second film together. But she, and indeed everyone else, may not be what they seem as the drugs start to take hold. A pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr is very, very funny in his role as a rambling, voluble, paranoid junkie.

Parenthood

June 5th

Director Ron Howard bade farewell to the 1980s with this ensemble comedy led by Steve Martin dealing with his ever-expanding Midwestern American family. The impressive cast includes Dianne Wiest, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Joaquin Phoenix, and Rick Moranis. Keanu stretches his comedic muscles as Tod, the not too bright but thoroughly amiable boyfriend to Martin’s fiery oldest daughter Julie (Martha Plimpton), a small but memorable turn. It’s tempting to draw a direct line from Keanu’s performance here to that of Reid Ewing as Dylan, the nice but dim boyfriend to the eldest Dunphy daughter in this current decade’s defining sitcom Modern Family.

River’s Edge

June 7th

Keanu and Dennis Hopper co-star again in a far more sombre movie than Speed. A group of high school friends including Keanu, Ione Skye, Crispin Glover, and Roxana Zal must come to terms with the fact that one of their gang, Daniel Roebuck, has unapologetically killed his girlfriend. This look at the private lives of teenagers; their misdemeanours, code of honour, betrayals; consciously courted controversy by basing the grim tale on a real-life occurrence in California. This is one of Keanu’s earliest roles, agonised and soulful, in a haunting and pitch-black 80s teen drama that almost seems to have invited Heathers.

The Devil’s Advocate

June 14th

Keanu’s up and coming Florida lawyer Kevin Lomax accepts a high-powered position at a New York law firm headed by legal shark John Milton (Al Pacino). Meanwhile, Keanu’s wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron in her first Hollywood iteration) begins to have frightening hallucinations warping her sense of reality. Kevin quickly learns that his mentor’s life isn’t about simply winning court cases without scruples. Pacino and Connie Nielsen have something far darker in mind. Pacino literally being the Devil in this gaudy thriller featuring creatures by the legendary Rick Baker; he of the lycanthropic transformations in An American Werewolf in London.

My Own Private Idaho

June 18th

Writer/director Gus Van Sant followed up his hit Drugstore Cowboy with a far looser movie featuring one of Keanu’s most nuanced performances and an affecting turn by River Phoenix. This key work of the New Queer Cinema follows two street hustlers, Phoenix’s Mike and Keanu’s Scott, as they embark on a road-trip from Portland, Oregon to Mike’s hometown in Idaho, and then eventually to Rome in search of Mike’s mother.  All the while Scott Favor has no intention of leading this street life forever. Van Sant incorporates Henry IV better than you’d believe possible with Keanu as bisexual Hal.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

June 21st

Bill S Preston (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu) are in danger of failing their history final most heinously. This will result in Ted’s disciplinarian cop father sending him to military school. And that would be the end of Wyld Stallyns, the band the pair are trying to make into an MTV sensation despite a total lack of musical ability. It turns out, as Rufus (George Carlin), a dude from the future tells them, it would be the end of the world too. And so comedic time-travelling and borrowing historical figures ensues to ace the history final!

 

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey

June 22nd

Keanu’s major sequel problem (John Wick: Chapter 2, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and being blacklisted by 20^th Century Fox for passing on Speed 2) began with this bogus journey. William Sadler is sublime as the Grim Reaper, straight out of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and crummy at Battleship. There is some wonderful set design, but, despite multiple robot versions of our heroes and more time-travelling and time-travel fuzzy logic than you can shake a stick at, this just isn’t as much goofy good-natured fun as its underdog predecessor. Third time’s the charm next year dude?

So first you watch one film with us, and then you watch another film with us, right after?

Bill & Ted DOUBLE BILL

June 23rd

WHOA! Two heads are better than one dude!

“Will you be at this party?” “Definitely.”

Point Break 4th July Party

July 6th

“Vaya Con Dios…”

Point Break

July 11th

Keanu leads this hybrid undercover cop in too deep/surfing/action heist/bromance Point Break with alternately lyrical and muscular direction from Kathryn Bigelow and a script polish by James Cameron. A string of bank robberies in Southern California where the villains disguise themselves as former US presidents sees hot-shot FBI agent and former college football star Johnny Utah (Keanu) assigned the dead-end case and Gary Busey’s gruff veteran. Keanu and Busey realise their crazy theory is correct – these bank-robbers are surfers! Keanu goes undercover, and romances Lori Petty’s surfer while growing closer to the gang’s leader Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Will he arrest him?

And coming directly after all that is the 20th anniversary re-release of … The Matrix.

What becomes a Christie most?

Can the melancholic approach taken in Murder on the Orient Express work for a proposed Death on the Nile sequel?

I was quite surprised by the melancholic tone of Branagh’s first Poirot outing, but that, more than anything else, even his energetic performance as an exacting, physical Poirot, was what made the film work. And with a 350 million return on a 55 million budget it is inevitable that the sequel set up in its final scene will happen – Death on the Nile. Discussing this prospect with occasional co-writer Friedrich Bagel (which I still strongly suspect of being an assumed name) he opined that it would be better to go for a Christie mystery that has not been filmed, like The Mysterious Affair at Styles or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Sadly, I opined right back, two things stand in the way of that – people would riot in their cinemas at the finale of Ackroyd, and marketers would riot in their boardrooms at the prospect of actually having to do their job rather than utilise the name recognition of already beloved properties. Alors, Nile…

One hopes that someone in Burbank isn’t thus scrolling through Peter Ustinov’s IMDb profile. Ticking off Evil Under the Sun and Appointment with Death as the final entries in the Branagh Poirot quadrilogy, sneakily noting Thirteen at Dinner, Dead Man’s Folly, and Murder in Three Acts as potential TV specials to cross the street with to HBO if the Branagh Poirots hit a wall at the box office, or God help us looking about for young Branaghs for a potential prequel Mysterious Affair at Styles. We know that Michael Green will again be adapting Christie’s novel for Branagh to star and direct. Reviewing Murder on the Orient Express back in November I noted that Green redeemed himself from the double whammy disasters of Alien: Covenant and Blade Runner 2049 with his melancholic interpretation, which saw Branagh and composer Patrick Doyle render the murder almost as a mourning ritual. But that card can only be played once, leaving an obvious possibility that will annoy the purists.

That card is the trump that left the London Times spitting blood this Easter weekend when the BBC changed the identity of the killer in Ordeal by Innocence. It’s impossible to change the killer in Murder on the Orient Express, and one would think the same applies to Death on the Nile, but a severe rewrite (in the order of the tortures visited upon Stoker for Laurence Olivier’s Dracula) could yield anything. It is disconcerting when screenwriters assume they know better than the Queen of Crime who done it, but then there is a general tendency to sniff at Christie’s writing as being mere three-card-trick-plotting, overlooking some wonderful sly comedy as well as much darker effects of suspense, paranoia, and cynicism in The Hollow and And Then There Were None. No, if Green were to change the identity of the killer in Death on the Nile it wouldn’t be totally inadmissible, but it would be a hefty task of rewriting to keep Christie’s logic intact.

It is a matter of opinion that the melancholic card can only be played once. Green’s invented character arc for Poirot, where he admits shades of grey into a Manichean worldview is similar to the moral agony endured by Suchet’s Poirot on the same case. But Suchet’s crisis was explicitly Catholic while Branagh’s was, predictably for Hollywood, a crisis in the secular Markwellian ethics of consistency; allied to the writing of Poirot’s OCD as the scrupulosity of consistency in all things. (Although I vigorously object to the tendency to dub any and all devotion to precision as OCD, rather than, say, a devotion to precision.) I hold that the senseless murder of a kidnapped child naturally occasions a melancholic atmosphere in a way that a twisted love triangle climaxing in slaughter does not, but as Green threw out large chunks of plotting and minutiae to focus on a mood, it would not be outrageous to think he could do much the same thing for Nile.

Bagel took me to task for harping on Branagh as a physical Poirot, declaiming that Poirot was a policeman so he should be able to chase people, and that Christie herself admitted she’d blundered with his age, being retired in 1920 he would be 105 when solving crimes in 1960s Chelsea; a mistake akin to PG Wodehouse initially locating Blandings Castle damnably far from London for later plotting purposes. I retorted that Branagh’s physicality distinguishes his interpretation. Peter Ustinov naturally brought a raconteurish quality, and his bumbling was a play on how Christie made Poirot exaggerate his foreignness to trick villains into complacency. Suchet, lacking that flaneuring spirit, emphasised Poirot’s prim and proper sedentary use of the little grey cells; more true to the retired from active duty to pure consultation of Christie’s first forays with the detective. Branagh takes some of the fire from Suchet’s Poirot, indignant at evildoers expecting to get away scot-free, and makes his Belgian less retiree, more Fury at large.

To end where we began Herr Bagel wrung his hands that there is no decent actor who can play Hastings, the Watson to Poirot’s Sherlock, without being ‘annoying’. Hugh Fraser was perfect in the part for ITV, and, by indirect associations; he had previously played a villain in Edge of Darkness, he was tall where Suchet was small; I led myself to the only candidate (sic) for the part – Toby Jones. Who, by good fortune, was recently in Witness for the Prosecution for the BBC, and previously played opposite the great David Suchet on ITV’s Murder on the Orient Express. Branagh is Poirot, Jones is Hastings, the sun is high, the Nile water deceptively calm…

Bram Stoker Festival 2014

You may have noticed something odd about O’Connell Street. Something a bit off about the statues: red eyes, little Dracula capes. It can only be Bram Stoker Festival 2014 time!

The Performance Coporation aka Big House have been given the reins of the Bram Stoker Festival this year – and are goth-ing it up!

Film premières focus on the Goth music movement of the 1980s with Beautiful Noise  and The Cure in Orange, the Abbey Theatre’s on-site costume store is providing capes for the unmissable Shapeshifters Ball by Body&Soul at IMMA in association with Bram Stoker Festival. There’s an unusually anarchic literary event with the Literary Death Match on Saturday night. And go under the city with Gothic Underground… There are whispers of a mysterious tunnel under the Phoenix Park, but some of us have heard more than we dare let on… Is it real?  Where does it go?  Now is your chance to find out the truth… With music by Tom Lane and directed by Maeve Stone, this unique performance rattles under the city for one night only.

The Zombie V Goth Dance-Off has recruited dancers online to work with Megan Kennedy of junk ensemble. Dressed in their finest bloody threads and having to chosen to dance with the goths or walk among the dead.  This will be a dance off unlike anything seen before.  And possibly the most demented feature of all – fall with style across the city centre: The Vampwire is a golden ticket offering – register here for the chance of a free caped flight. The Vampwire is a real and slightly scary opportunity to make like a Count transformed into a bat and zip over the city. Suitable for most ages (if not all constitutions) tickets for Dublin’s first city-centre zip wire are free, but in high-demand, and golden tickets will be allocated by ballot.

The opening film première is the extraordinary Curse of Styria featuring Stephen Rea and Eleanor Tomlinson. Directors Mauricio Chernovetzky & Mark Devendorf will be in attendance at this “suspenseful, secretive, sexy and sinister” film. Inspired by Carmilla, the seminal 19th Century vampire novella by Dublin writer Sheridan LeFanu, this film plunges the viewer into a haunted world of fantasy & obsession. Near Gone is a beautiful show which just won a Total Theatre Award in Edinburgh. Two performers have a difficult story to tell… Delivered in English and Bulgarian, with pounding gypsy-inspired music, this beautiful performance fills an empty space with two performers, hundreds of fresh flowers and a storm of emotion. And The Performance Corporation (proper) is reprising The Judge’s House  for Marsh’s Library – already fully booked already, but there may be returns on the door.

The closing event is an encounter with the extraordinary Macnas, who take to the streets of Dublin as mercurial tailors with a glee for stitching laughter to darkness, summoning monsters and marvels from drains, lanes and street corners.  Creatures, characters, contortions dissolve and are remade and revealed.

Full details on www.bramstokerfestival.com

Fast Intent presents Zelda

Before she was Zelda Fitzgerald, she was Zelda Sayre. Before she was a Riviera socialite, she was a Southern belle. Before she was F Scott’s crazy tormentor, she was his beloved muse. And both personae are explored in Eddie Naughton’s new play, Zelda, based on Zelda’s life and own writings.

I’ve been poring over Blake Bailey’s biography of Richard Yates (A Tragic Honesty) again recently, and was struck by the notion that Yates had modelled himself so much on the doomed F Scott as a writer that his entire life started to slide into equal drink-fuelled catastrophe. Yates, of course, was compounding his own mental illness with drinking that erased his medication’s benefit; and Zelda’s own slide into madness was not dissimilar. But there’s another striking note in Bailey’s book; the idea that every writer has some essential tale to tell, that can be disguised in any number of interesting ways – but will always be at the core of their best work. For F Scott, that was his love for the unattainable Zelda; and The Great Gatsby was F Scott spinning out that epic romance into a piercing continent-encompassing metaphor.

Naughton’s play strips away the Daisy Buchanan facade to examine the real woman in a script which puts Zelda in a hospital room telling her story. Zelda Sayre was a Southern belle who became internationally famous alongside her husband F Scott Fitzgerald whose stunning debut This Side of Paradise mythologised their romance; casting Zelda as the archetypal flapper. Their life together was a never-ending parade of alcohol-fuelled jazz-scored parties, with F Scott’s talent keeping them in a luxurious lifestyle; in New York, Paris and the Riviera; previously reserved for the self-indulgent robber barons. Friends with Cole Porter, Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, a writer and painter, dancer and mother, it should never have ended in a fiery death at a psychiatric hospital; but such was the price of alcoholism and escalating mental illness. Naughton resurrects the biting wit before that curtain.

Zelda seems a perfect fit for Fast Intent. Fast Intent was set up in 2011 by director Sarah Finlay and actors Ger Adlum and Nessa Matthews. Their previous productions include Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes (The Complex), Family Voices and One for the Road (New Theatre), Jean Anouilh’s The Lark and William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (both Smock Alley), and an adaptation of Dracula for the Bram Stoker Festival at Dublin Castle; part of a residency there which included Shakespeare by Candlelight in December and a series of monologues for Culture Night in September. Zelda joins Joan of Arc as another radical heroine for Fast Intent to explore in their pared down style that focuses on ideas and emotions. Zelda is performed by Sharon Coade, directed by Sarah Finlay, and produced by Gerard Adlum and KH T’*, with Lights, Sound, and Set design by Eoghan Carrick, Nessa Matthews, and Aoife Fealy respectively.

Zelda runs at Theatre Upstairs from Tuesday the 3^rd of June to Saturday 14^th. Performances are at 1pm, Tuesday to Saturday, when the ticket price of €10 includes a light lunch. There are 7pm performances from Thursday to Saturday. Bookings can be made at http://www.theatreupstairs.ie.

Macbeth Needs Your Money!

Do you want to fund an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of a production of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Globe in Smock Alley? Then click on this link,http://fundit.ie/project/macbeth-1, and take your own tiny step towards being Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love – “Who are you?” “Ah, well, I’m the money”…

For two weeks in January theatre troupe Fast Intent will convert the atmospheric Smock Alley Boys School space into a traditional Elizabethan Playhouse, a theatre of the type that Shakespeare himself would have recognised. In this heaving indoor cauldron; complete with Shakespeare’s favourite trouble-makers, rowdy groundlings who stand rather than sit because their tickets cost so little; they will present one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most thrilling plays – the brilliantly bloody Macbeth. Taking inspiration from research into Elizabethan and Jacobean staging practices they promise an engaging, thrilling experience, full of blood and guts, swords and shields, raucous crowds and high drama. Playing the power couple to avoid like the plague in medieval Scotland are Gerard Adlum (as Macbeth) and Jennifer Laverty (as Lady M), who both greatly impressed in previous Fast Intent production The Lark. Finbarr Doyle is the vengeful MacDuff, and the ensemble includes Patrick Doyle (fresh from his brilliant Harker in Fast Intent’s recent Dracula), Katie McCann, Conor Marren, Kyle Hixon,Claire Jenkins, and Jamie Hallahan. The set design is by Cait Corkery, and other crew members include Carol Conway and Caoimhe Murphy.

So why fund Macbeth? Star Gerard Adlum explains the appeal of the Thane thus: “He may not have Hamlet’s education, or Richard II’s eloquence, but Macbeth has a dextrous grasp of language and expresses himself with the ease of a poet, though his thoughts are never easy. Left to his own devices he deals in metaphors and similes, as if he desperately needs the audience to know that he is not a thug, not a brute. The challenge for the actor is not to prove his strength but to reveal his innate vulnerability.” For Adlum Macbeth’s key line of self-justification is ‘Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill’ – “This is the unfortunate logic that drives him on; two wrongs will eventually make a right.” Director KH T’*, a sometime co-writer and co-director hereabouts, has previously helmed productions of Richard III and Hamlet; the former starring Adlum as Buckingham. “I have wanted to direct Macbeth for years. It is both incredibly simple and complex. Complex in that it seems to cram into two hours the entire gamut of human emotions: love, hope, fear, desire, greed, guilt, loss. At the same time its speed and simplicity means there is no time to stop and think. Everything is truly experienced in the moment. It lends itself to constant re-interpretation, having something to say for each and every generation. It is human, raw and very, very messy.” T’* finds Lady MacDuff’s line ‘but I remember I am in this earthly world where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly’ “incredibly relevant to the world we are currently living in, where apathy is our common discourse and greed often not just considered lawful, but admirable. It shows that though this may have always been the case, there are always people who will identify it and struggle against it.”

So, that’s what they have to say. So why do I say to you fund Macbeth? Well, I’ve already thrown money at it because this is Fast Intent doing Macbeth. Fast Intent consistently pare back plays to their bare bones, and focus the audience’s energy onto the performances and the text. When it worked with Dracula it brought Stoker’s best prose to vivid, sensuous life. In The Lark it aided Anouilh’s theological ideas to sparkle across the stage, with real emotions grounding them in reality. And this is a cast that has proven itself at Shakespeare at a young age. While still in college Finbarr Doyle played Richard III with gleeful malevolence, Patrick Doyle played Macbeth with striking originality as distracted by visions, and Gerard Adlum played Lear with a startling maturity for such a young actor. But having a great cast is only one competent here. The key to successfully staging Shakespeare is not being afraid to cut his words. Reverence before his text too often is simply fear and trembling before the Bard rather than awe; and the result is a slow untheatrical death. But you need to have a confidence bordering on chutzpah to do the needful sometimes and meddle with the sacred scriptures. KH T’*, directing Hamlet in 2012, cut Polonius’ advice to Laertes, in its entirety, because he wanted a more serious Polonius. So, yeah, he has the confidence to pull this off bustling take…

Fast Intent’s goal is to raise €3,500, which will cover about half of the production costs; including costumes and hiring the venue – Smock Alley’s Boys School. The other half of the budget will consist of sponsorship from local businesses and by hosting various fundraising events. The contribution of Fundit donors is thus vital to the successful realisation of Macbeth. Fast Intent was established in 2011 by director Sarah Finlay with Ger Adlum and Nessa Matthews. Their theatrical work to date has included acclaimed productions of Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes (The Complex), Family Voices and One for the Road (both New Theatre) and The Lark by Jean Anouilh (Smock Alley). 2013 has seen them producing an entire body of work for Dublin Castle’s cultural programme, including historical monologue pieces for Culture Night, an adaptation of Dracula for the Bram Stoker Festival and the just gone Christmas show, Shakespeare by Candlelight. Rewards for funding at various levels are set out on the website, where the company also expresses its desire to have you asone of their “dearest partners of greatness”.

Go on, dream of sound and fury, and click http://fundit.ie/project/macbeth-1

Dracula

Dublin Castle marked their Hallowe’en weekend Bram Stoker Festival with a stripped down theatrical interpretation of Stoker’s original 1897 text in the Print Works space.

Jonathan Harker (Patrick Doyle) travels to Transylvania to make the final legal arrangements for Carfax Manor being signed over to Count Dracula (Karl Shiels). He is warned off by the superstitious locals, and his coachman even attempts to dash past the rendezvous, but Harker’s perseverance pays off … to his misfortune. The Count is initially welcoming, but soon Harker realises he is trapped in a Gothic nightmare. His attempts to escape leave him a broken man in the care of Dr Seward (Neil Fleming) back in England. However, the mysterious death of Seward’s fiancé Lucy Westenra, and the ravings of another patient Renfield (Gerard Adlum) lead Seward to confess the truth to Harker’s wife Mina (Nessa Matthews); Lucy was killed by a vampire, and her emasculated husband was the first English victim of that ancient evil intent on conquest – Dracula…

The Print Works is a difficult space to stage Dracula, as the audience sits in a horseshoe arrangement of rows of chairs around a long raised runway. This works well for the initial scenes as Harker brushes off the peasants and makes his way down the runway towards Castle Dracula, and it allows Dracula some nice scares when he stalks among the audience to make his way onstage, but it makes it hard to be truly scary when there’s no grand guignol supply of squibs. Director KH T’* instead concentrates on using Stoker’s text to hypnotic effect. Patrick Doyle is a very effective Harker. His crisp English accent overlays a subtly played decline of Victorian confidence as grudging respect for the natives’ sincere concern morphs into panicked desperation and impotence. Karl Shiels is an impressive Count. His over-elaborate courtesy is deliciously played, and a nervous tic with his hand betrays the immense bloodlust he is restraining. The weird sister (sic) makes a creepy appearance indebted to The Ring, but the true power lies in Harker and Dracula’s twisted relationship. Mark Curry’s lighting dims to two spotlights on the pair in the large dark room, to focus the impressive sound design by Jody Trehy and Cian Murphy onto Stoker’s language of sensuous rush as Dracula attacks both Harker’s blood and being.

Stephen King dubs Dracula’s vanishing act from his own story one of “English literature’s most remarkable and engaging tricks”, but it breaks the spell of this performance. Jumping from Harker’s escape attempt to Mina visiting Lucy’s grave is disconcerting enough, but then Van Helsing, Godalming and Morris are composited into Dr Seward; and Dracula without Van Helsing is like the Brat Pack without Judd Nelson. This may not disconcert people unfamiliar with the novel, and it works structurally in creating a lean tale, but it also makes Seward and Harker look quite dim. Mina deduces Dracula’s powers and weaknesses not by mastering the chaotic journals and notes of five disorganised men, unaware that they’re working the same case, but by pointing out the obvious to a doctor and his patient. This tragically undermines the character’s strength, despite Nessa Matthews’ commanding presence. Adlum is an unexpectedly restrained Renfield, who’s delusional enough to delightfully fix his hair before meeting Mina, while Fleming exudes decency and gravitas as Seward. Matthews provides the best scare, shrieking when Seward tries (too late) to spell her against Dracula using a communion wafer, but once Dracula fades from the story the power of this production steadily ebbs away as well.

T’* coaxes fine performances as he delivers half of an impressive adaptation here, mounted with gorgeous costumes by Sarah Finlay, but the complications of Stoker’s novel ultimately defeat him.

2.75/5

Axis Cinema

Axis Cinema on Ballymun Main Street is home to The Pictures, which started as a monthly film club and has grown to become a great social network for the over 55s in Ballymun. The Pictures will be presenting a season of ‘book to film’ screenings, including The Commitments, in partnership with access>Cinema and, for the first time, Ballymun Library; who will be making copies of the books available to borrow the month before the film.

Dracula (with short film Suansceal)

Presented by Dublin City Council Arts Office and axis in association with access>Cinema and Ballymun Library

Date: 21st Oct 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members / €4 Non-Members / Membership: €3

October’s ‘Book to Screen’ film is, very appropriately, Hammer Horror’s Dracula starring an enigmatically terse Christopher Lee as Bram Stoker’s vampiric Count and Peter Cushing as his nemesis Van Helsing. Few actors have ever inhabited those parts to such indelible effect, and this is a rare opportunity to see Hammer’s lurid blood-soaked vision on a big screen. This screening will be preceded by Irish short Suanscéal, a visually beautiful, delicately told, tale of a young boy’s need for companionship and an old man’s need to leave his legacy. Director Colm Ó Foghlú will be in attendance on the day to introduce the short as part of Borradh Buan, axis’ Irish language festival; celebrating its 10^th anniversary.

 

A Scare Before Bedtime: Axis Horror Screening

Presented by axis in association with access>Cinema

Date: 30th Oct 9pm

Tickets: €2

This is a chance for audiences to feel the fear at a secret screening of a favourite horror movie! As Halloween approaches, axis will be asking the people of Ballymun to vote for their favourite horror film to show on the big screen. I’d vote for Scream, but with the new Carrie coming out soon that could be a contender. What will win? All will be revealed on the night!

 

The Commitments

Presented by Dublin City Council Arts Office and axis in association with access>Cinema

Date: 25th Nov 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members / €4 Non-Members / Membership: €3

November’s ‘Book to Screen’ film is British director Alan Parker’s celebrated 1991 adaptation of The Commitments, Roddy Doyle’s 1980s novel of recessionary north side Dublin. Only the music scene is rich in this landscape, and so Jimmy Rabbitte envisions combining the raw talent of musicians, including Glen Hansard, Bronagh Gallagher and Maria Doyle Kennedy, with soul music to shake the Hibernian metropolis.

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Presented by axis & Dublin City Council Arts Office in association with access>Cinema and Ballymun Library

Date: 16th Dec 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members/€4 Non-Members / Membership: €3

December’s ‘Book to Screen’ film is Blake Edwards’ 1961 toned-down adaptation of Truman Capote’s scandalous novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn’s most iconic poses, costumes and (dubbed) singing are modelled against a fantasy NYC as Holly Golightly’s naive eccentricity bedazzles George Peppard’s struggling writer when he moves into her apartment building. Try to ignore Mickey Rooney’s outrageously racist Japanese character…

 

Anna Karenina

Presented by axis& Dublin City Council Arts Office in association with access>Cinema and Ballymun Library

Date: 27th Jan 2.30pm

Tickets: €2 Members/€4 Non-Members Membership: €3

January’s ‘Book to Screen’ screening is Joe Wright’s 2012 film of Anna Karenina. Anna (an on-form Keira Knightley) falls uncontrollably in love with Count Vronsky (a callow Aaron Johnson), with tragic consequences when she leaves husband (a surprisingly empathetic Jude Law). Leo Tolstoy’s classic story of doomed love is adapted by the great Tom Stoppard as a determinedly theatrical tour-de-force; to hit-and-miss effect.

 

axis: Ballymun is a creative hub of stage, galleries, workshop spaces and a recording studio. More information at http://axis-ballymun.ie/, and do follow @axisBallymun on Twitter.