Epiphany

Druid take over the Town Hall Theatre for their premiere of a transatlantic offering for the Galway International Arts Festival.

Morkan (Marie Mullen) is hosting a dinner party with the assistance of Loren (Julia McDermott).  The perpetually drunken Freddy (Aaron Monaghan) is the first to arrive, to the disappointment of Morkan who is awaiting her celebrated nephew Gabriel Conroy, a critic for the Review, who has promised to make a speech. Her old friend Ames (Bill Irwin) slips and slides in from the snow, as do Marty Rea and Jude Akuwudike’ musicians, and the supercilious couple of Rory Nolan’s marketer Rory Nolan and Kate Kennedy’s psychiatrist. It quickly becomes clear that nobody has read the attachments to the invitation, or indeed done more than scan the invitation, and all Morkan’s plans for elaborate festivities will come to naught. And then Aran (Grace Byers) unexpectedly arrives, bearing the news that her partner Gabriel will not be joining them. And so the party begins…

Director Garry Hynes stages proceedings deliberately chaotically, so much so that at a few points I thought of all the guests roaring about the mansion after Tim Curry in Clue. There are some comic tours-de-force: Rea’s attempt to get Mullen to feed him the words and music of a song he is pretending to know, his brilliantly performed piano piece that to paraphrase John McGahern at every moment has as much reason to stop as to go on (to the consternation of Nolan’s attempts to applaud it out of existence), Irwin’s injury with a carving knife which leads him to decline coffee beans being applied to the wound because he’d be up all night, and Kennedy’s 11 probing questions that Akuwudike furiously claims to have permanently shattered Rea’s mind by making him ask of his remaining lifespan – is it enough?

But these frivolities sit uneasily beside the fact that Brooklyn playwright Brian Watkins is clearly meditating on James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, not that that was highlighted in publicity. Francis O’Connor’s impressive set with its multiple staircases creates a sense of a beloved brownstone with snow constantly seen falling thru the windows, and, in the end, of course, thru the strange black hole in the roof of the living room; that the snow might fall on all the living and the dead. Watkins has borrowed from Joyce occasion, character names and traits, and, rather astonishingly, the singing of the ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ for an epiphanic moment. And these are characters badly in need of an epiphany as they struggle sans schmartphones to remember just what Epiphany is meant to celebrate, and flail around confusedly trying to create a secular celebration.

Epiphany has a number of memorable set-pieces, its muted ending with old friends Irwin and Mullen seeing out the night is affecting, but it’s not as revelatory as hoped.

3.5/5

Epiphany continues its run at the Galway Town Hall Theatre until the 27^th of June.

My Own Personal Theatre Awards 2017

“Then the greatness of our city brings it about that all the good things from all over the world flow in to us, so that to us it seems just as natural to enjoy foreign goods as our own local products” – Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War.

Best Production

Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey)

The Effect (Project Arts Centre)

The Dumb Waiter (The Gate)

The Pillowman (The Gaiety)

I Hear You and Rejoice (The Pavilion)

The Man in the Woman’s Shoes (The Pavilion)

Tribes (The Gate)

 

Best New Play

The Effect by Lucy Prebble (Project Arts Centre)

I Hear You and Rejoice by Mikel Murfi (The Pavilion)

Tribes by Nina Raine (The Gate)

Autumn Royal by Kevin Barry (Project Arts Centre)

Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn (Project Arts Centre)

This isn’t my Desk by Kate Cosgrove (Smock Alley)

 

Best Director

Garry Hynes – Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey)

Ronan Phelan – The Effect/Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play (Project Arts Centre)

Joe Dowling – The Dumb Waiter (The Gate)

Andrew Flynn –  The Pillowman (The Gaiety)

Geoff O’Keefe – King Lear (The Mill Theatre)

Catriona McLaughlin – Autumn Royal (Project Arts Centre)

Best Actor

Mikel Murfi – The Man in the Woman’s Shoes/I Hear You and Rejoice (The Pavilion)

Marty Rea – Waiting for Godot/The Great Gatsby (Druid/The Abbey & The Gate)

Aaron Monaghan – Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey & The Gate)

Garrett Lombard – The Dumb Waiter (The Gate)

Lorcan Cranitch – The Dumb Waiter (The Gate)

Peter Gowen – The Pillowman (The Gaiety)

Philip Judge – King Lear (The Mill Theatre)

Donal Gallery – The Effect (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Actress

Siobhan Cullen – The Effect/Crestfall (Project Arts Centre/The Abbey)

Rachel O’Byrne – The Great Gatsby (The Gate)

Clare Dunne – Tribes (The Gate)

Charlie Murphy – Arlington (Landmark/The Abbey)

Seana Kerslake – King of the Castle (Druid/The Gaiety)

Karen McCartney – Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play (Project Arts Centre)

Rebecca O’Mara – Private Lives (The Gate)

 

Best Supporting Actor

Mark Huberman – The Great Gatsby (The Gate)

Nick Dunning – Tribes (The Gate)

Rory Nolan – Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey)

Marty Rea – King of the Castle (Druid/The Gaiety)

Garrett Lombard – Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey)

Gary Lydon – The Pillowman (The Gaiety)

Conor O’Riordan – Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play (Project Arts Centre)

Michael David McKernan – King Lear (The Mill Theatre)

Gavin Drea – Tribes (The Gate)

Ronan Leahy – The Effect (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Supporting Actress

Aoibheann McCann – The Great Gatsby (The Gate)

Fiona Bell – Tribes (The Gate)

Ali White – The Effect (Project Arts Centre)

Sharon McCoy – King Lear (The Mill Theatre)

Maureen Rabbitt – This isn’t my Desk (Smock Alley)

Liz Fitzgibbon  – A Statue for Bill Clinton (Belvedere College)

Nessa Matthews – Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play (Project Arts Centre)

Best Set Design

Francis O’Connor – Waiting for Godot/Private Lives/King of the Castle/The Dumb Waiter/ (Druid/The Abbey & The Gate & Druid/The Gaiety & The Gate)

Owen MacCarthaigh – The Pillowman (Gaiety Theatre)

Ciaran Bagnall – The Great Gatsby (The Gate)

Molly O’Cathain – Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play (Project Arts Centre)

Conor Murphy – Tribes (The Gate)

Jamie Vartan – Arlington (Landmark/The Abbey)

 

Best Lighting Design

James F. Ingalls – Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey)

Ciaran Bagnall – The Pillowman (The Gaiety)

Jason Taylor – The Dumb Waiter (The Gate)

Kris Mooney – King Lear (The Mill Theatre)

Adam Silverman – Arlington (Landmark/The Abbey)

 

Best Sound Design

Carl Kennedy – The Pillowman (The Gaiety)

Greg Clarke – Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey)

Declan Brennan – King Lear (The Mill Theatre)

Helen Atkinson – Arlington (Landmark/The Abbey)

Ivan Birthistle – Tribes (The Gate)

 

Best Costume Design

Peter O’Brien – Private Lives/The Great Gatsby (The Gate & The Gate)

Francis O’Connor – Waiting for Godot (Druid/The Abbey)

Joan O’Clery – The Dumb Waiter (The Gate)

The Costume Room – King Lear (The Mill Theatre)

Special Mention

Bryan Cranston – Network (National Theatre)

Well here we go again, including London in these awards, but an exception must again be made.

Cranston’s multi-faceted turn was a performance that made this play better than its cinematic precursor.

 

The Dumb Waiter

Artistic director Michael Colgan bade a sentimental (and almost self-parodic) farewell to the Gate Theatre with a festival of Beckett, Friel, and Pinter one-act plays.

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Gus (Garrett Lombard) and Ben (Lorcan Cranitch) are waiting to go to work. Mind you, the nature of that work is not exactly specified. But Gus, the young partner, is impatient, and critical of falling standards in their accommodation for such waiting gigs. Ben, the older partner, is tired of his job, and possibly of Gus. So he tries to ignore Gus’ gripes about being stuck in a basement in Birmingham with tea bags but no gas to light up to boil water. But his attempts to read the newspaper are foiled by arguments about whether Aston Villa are playing at home, whether everyone is always playing away no matter where they get sent, and who really killed a cat in the news. And that’s before the antique dumb waiter in the basement starts acting up, leading to more aggro…

I’ve haven’t seen The Dumb Waiter since the UCD Dramsoc production directed by my friend Priscilla Ni Cheallaigh in 2000, starring Patrick Fitzgerald. Pinter done at anything but the right pace can drag to deathliness, even the Gate’s 2015 The Caretaker wobbled, but director Joe Dowling gets the pace here spot on; drawing out comedy. Cranitch’s raised eyebrows and shuffling newspaper at Lombard’s antics, including business with spare matches and shoes, bring out a level of slapstick that is amped up further when he starts howling “The larder is bare!” at the dumb waiter after they’ve loaded it with odds and ends of food. Oddly enough Cranitch and Lombard’s mania at satiating the unknown operator above actually reminded me of John Olohan and Eamon Morrissey’s ludicrous struggles with a mysterious telephone call in Druid’s 2010 production of The Silver Tassie.

Dowling and set designer Francis O’Connor utilise the full space of the Gate to create as much distance as possible between Gus and Ben, and make the stage very spare; almost a visual equivalent of how silence lingers between them, pregnant with tension and absurdity dependent on how Pinter’s dots on the page work. And Lombard continues to show a real flair for delivering Pinter’s absurdist speeches. Joan O’Clery’s costumes look down-at-heel until they’ve properly dressed; but even still these two are more Harry Palmer than James Bond. For the first time, instead of thinking of these characters as hit-men out of Pulp Fiction, as was inevitable back in 2000, I wondered – what if they’re cleaners? What if they’re plugging MI5 leaks MI5 with extreme prejudice, taking out the Burgesses and Macleans of the world; morose from that squalid task.

Lombard and Cranitch make a formidable double act, bringing Pinter’s early classic to humorous and doom-laden life. Oh, to see them as Mugsy and Stephen in Dealer’s Choice here.

4/5

Dublin Theatre Festival: 5 Plays

This is the 60^th anniversary of the Dublin Theatre Festival, but this year’s programme is not very good; in fact it’s the weakest I can remember since I started paying attention back in 2007 and the 50^th anniversary iteration when Druid presented James Cromwell in Long Day’s Journey into Night.

Tribes 28^th September – October 14^th Gate

English playwright Nina Raine’s acclaimed work about a deaf youngster’s emotional battles with his highly-strung family gets a puzzling relocation from Hampstead to Foxrock, as if Hampstead was in a faraway country of whose people we knew little. Fiona Bell, Clare Dunne, Nick Dunning, and Gavin Drea are among the familiar faces throwing around hyper-articulate insults while director Oonagh Murphy makes her Gate debut.

Melt 28^th September – October 8^th Smock Alley Theatre

Lynne Parker directs a new script by Shane Mac an Bhaird which has attracted an impressive cast of Owen Roe, Rebecca O’Mara, Roxanna Nic Liam, and Charlie Maher. Set in Antarctica it follows rogue Irish ecologist Boylan, his young colleague Cook, his love interest Dr Hansen (ex-wife of Boylan), and their discovery from a sub-glacial lake – Veba. Rough Magic promise a fairytale!

The Second Violinist October 2^nd – October 8^th O’Reilly Theatre

Composer Donnacha Dennehy and writer/director Enda Walsh reunite following their opera The Last Hotel with Crash Ensemble again providing the music, while the chorus of Wide Open Opera and actor Aaron Monaghan join the fun. Jamie Vartan again provides a set on which for 75 minutes physical madness of a presumably ineffable nature can play out, to a Renaissance choral backdrop.

Her Voice October 10^th – October 11^th Samuel Beckett Theatre

A Japanese riff on Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days sees Keiko Takeya and Togo Igawa directed by Makoto Sato; who has also designed the set and stripped away all the words from Beckett’s scripts save his numerous stage directions to get to a new kernel of the piece as Takeya conveys Winnie’s rambling monologues of memory purely through gesture and facial expression.

King of the Castle October 11^th – October 15^th Gaiety

Director Garry Hynes and frequent collaborators designer Francis O’Connor and lighting maestro James F. Ingalls tackle Eugene McCabe’s 1964 tale of rural jealousy. Sean McGinley’s Scober MacAdam lives in a Big House in Leitrim, with a large farm and young wife, played by Seana Kerslake. But their childless marriage sees rumours swirl amidst neighbours Marty Rea, John Olohan, and Bosco Hogan.

Waiting for Godot

The Abbey, in its new baffling role of an Irish Wyndham’s Theatre, hosts Druid’s hit 2016 production of Samuel Beckett’s debut; and it’s incredibly impressive.

Broken down gentlemen Vladimir (Marty Rea) and Estragon (Aaron Monaghan) find themselves in a desolate landscape, waiting beside a blasted tree for a meeting with possible benefactor Godot. Their attempts to pass the time; or hang themselves, whichever seems more practicable; are aided by the unexpected arrival of the pompous domineering Pozzo (Rory Nolan) and his silently suffering servant Lucky (Garrett Lombard). Vladimir is outraged by Pozzo’s treatment of Lucky, hauled about roughly on a leash, but Lucky’s speech soon puts paid to his sympathy… And then night falls and a small boy appears and tells them Godot will not be coming, but that he will certainly see them the next day; if they would be so good as to wait again. Which they obligingly do, not without grumbling at the futility of their lot; and then nothing happens, again.

Waiting for Godot, like Hamlet, is a play full of quotes; especially if you’ve studied Irish literature. Yet for all our familiarity with this text, this production offers surprises. Director Garry Hynes slows proceedings down to allow Beckett’s comedy take centre stage, with Rea very deliberate over the care of his boots and hat; as proud of his meagre wardrobe as Chaplin’s Little Tramp. There is also some very funny business as three hats circulate with increasing rapidity and exasperation; Beckett as slapstick. Nolan unexpectedly plays Pozzo as first cousin to his Improbable Frequency John Betjeman, and it works incredibly well; the preening behaviour culminating in a self-tickled ‘Managed it again!’ to Rea, on sitting down again, which deservedly brought the house down. Lombard, meanwhile, stands up from his whimpering to achieve a career highlight: delivering Lucky’s insane, fast-paced monologue.

Designer Francis O’Connor displays his recent fascination with presenting action within a monumental white frame having also used that motif for the Gate’s The Father. On the playing stage there is an artfully wretched tree, stones akin to a Zen garden’s denizens, and a comically wonderful moon that suddenly rises when night falls. Indeed James F. Ingalls’ lighting design not only casts the play into night in a manner that is both haunting and subdued, it also makes the very landscape of the set seem to change quality; a properly Zen effect. If Barry McGovern, Johnny Murphy, Stephen Brennan, and Alan Stanford, immortalised in Beckett on Film, represented a company personally endorsed by Beckett, then these Druid repertory players are affirmed by their own passion and soulfulness; Monaghan’s shattered vulnerability and anguish seems to physically embody post-war guilt and questioning.

It is hard not to feel watching this production that something remarkable has happened before your eyes: the torch has passed triumphantly to a new generation of Irish actors.

5/5

Waiting for Godot continues its run at the Abbey until the 20^th of May.

Private Lives

The Gate celebrates its regime change by producing a Noel Coward play. Plus ca change, and all that drivel, darling.

Our man Elyot (Shane O’Reilly) arrives at a spiffy hotel in old Deauville for a second honeymoon, as it were, this being his second marriage. His present wife Sibyl (Lorna Quinn) tediously cannot stop talking about his previous wife Amanda (Rebecca O’Mara) and do you know the damndest thing happens; doesn’t she turn out to be staying in the very next room with her present husband, dear old Victor (Peter Gaynor). Whole thing is most extraordinary… Would you credit that their balconies even adjoin?! Sibyl and Victor make themselves so beastly when Elyot and Amanda both independently try to escape this positively sick-making set-up that it really serves them right when El and Am decide to simply decamp together to their old flat in Paris to avoid all the unpleasantness. But the course of true love never did run smooth…

Coward’s ‘intimate comedy’ is a sight too intimate for its own good here. One misses the variety afforded by recent hilarious outings by waspish ensembles for Hay Fever and The Vortex at the Gate. Instead we have a four-hander, and for the whole second act largely a two-hander, where you keep wondering if director Patrick Mason was foiled in casting his regular foil Marty Rea by the latter’s touring commitments. Mason and Rea have triumphed with Sheridan, Stoppard, Coward, Wilde, and you feel Rea urgently needs to play Elyot before he ages out. O’Mara and Quinn are patently too old for their parts, and it makes great bosh of Coward’s script if the naive 23 year old that Elyot flees to here is obviously thirtysomething, while instead of seeking the stolidity of an older man Amanda has married a contemporary.

O’Reilly is nicely abrupt as Elyot, but he and O’Mara never quite reach the heights for which these parts are constructed. But they deliver a wonderfully choreographed fight, chaos so exploding you feel it must topple offstage.  Tellingly the audience reacted with shock when he pushed her, but laughed when she broke an LP over his head… Francis O’Connor’s set design reuses familiar elements (The Father, Waiting for Godot) but its transformation from art deco hotel to primitive chic flat is a marvel and delight. There are also divine musical jokes as Coward’s ‘20th Century Blues’ plays between acts, and Rachmaninov’s 2^nd Piano Concerto (the soul of Coward’s Brief Encounter) mixes with Hitler on the wireless. And did anyone from the Gate see Gaynor in Hedda Gabler? He can do bombast well, but subtle even better; give him a chance!

This, then, is how the Gate Theatre as it was during the Age of Colgan ends, not with a bang but a whimper, and what rough beast slouches towards the Rotunda to be born?

3/5

Private Lives continues its run at the Gate for ever so long.

The Father

The Gate Theatre’s contribution to the Dublin Theatre Festival was the Irish premiere of Florian Zeller’s acclaimed play, in a spare translation by Christopher Hampton.

4/5

Dublin Theatre Festival: 10 Plays

Tickets go on sale for the 2016 Dublin Theatre Festival at 10:00am on Tuesday August 16th. Here are 10 shows to keep an eye on.

Helen & I 27^th September – October 1^st Civic Theatre

The great Annabelle Comyn decamps to Druid to direct an original script by newcomer Meadhbh McHugh. Rebecca O’Mara is the ‘I’, returning home to fence with older sister Helen (Cathy Belton) as their father lies dying. It’s always great when Druid tour, and hopefully this will be a return to form for Comyn after the bafflingly praised debacle of The Wake.

 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream 28^th September – October 1^st Grand Canal

Sean Holmes, responsible for the recent, storming Plough & Stars in the Abbey, returns with co-director Stef O’Driscoll for a Shakespearean rampage. This looks to be very much a ‘This was not Chekhov’ production, but in the best sense, as the text is stripped down to 90 minutes, with live grunge band, nerf gun battle, and an epic food fight.

 

Don Giovanni 29^th September – October 2^nd Gaiety

Roddy Doyle has for some reason decided to update the libretto to Mozart’s opera about the womaniser par excellence. Eyebrows must be raised at the amount of ‘versions’ he’s doing versus original writing in recent years. Pan Pan’s Gavin Quinn will be directing, while Sinead McKenna follows up her acclaimed diabolist lighting design for The Gigli Concert’s finale with some bona fide operatics.

 

The Father 29^th September – October 15^th Gate

Just when Michael Colgan had lurched into self-parody by programming The Constant Wife he conjures an ace from nowhere: a piece of new writing from France that has swept all before it on Broadway and Piccadilly. Ethan McSweeney directs Owen Roe as a man suffering from Alzheimer’s, while the supporting cast includes Peter Gaynor and Charlotte McCurry, and Francis O’Connor is set designer.

 

Guerilla 30^th September – October 2^nd Project Arts Centre

It wouldn’t be a festival without some fellow PIIGS getting bolshy about neo-liberalism, the failure of Europe, and the age of austerity. This year it’s El Conde de Torrefiel company from Spain, presenting the confused inner universe of a group of people inhabiting the same city and collective consciousness, represented by projected text over an electronica concert, Tai Chi class, and conference.

 

Death at Intervals 4^th October – October 8^th Smock Alley

Trailing clouds of glory from its Galway premiere comes an adaptation of Jose Saramango’s novel directed by Kellie Hughes. Olwen Fouere is the grim reaper in retirement, accompanied by her faithful musician Raymond Scannell. Death likes to dance too. A mixture of music, theatre, and dance, with Scannell also co-composing with Alma Kelliher; but he did also compose Alice in Funderland…

 

Alien Documentary 4^th October – October 8^th Project Arts Centre

I’ve read this production’s pitch repeatedly and I’m damned if I can figure out what it is. Director Una McKevitt is apparently mixing transcriptions of real people’s conversations with invented dialogues of her own imagining, so that’s her writing credit sorted. But what exactly is this show? PJ Gallagher, James Scales, and Molly O’Mahony having unconnected deep/comic conversations for 90 minutes?

 

The Seagull 5^th October – 16^th October Gaiety

Writer Michael West and director Annie Ryan together fashion a modern version of Chekhov’s tale of unrequited loves starring the oft-Fassbendering Derbhle Crotty as well as Genevieve Hulme-Beaman who shone in support in the Abbey’s You Never Can Tell. But will this Corn Exchange production be as hit and miss as their version of Desire Under the Elms that severely downsized O’Neill’s ambition?

 

Donegal 6^th October – 15^th October Abbey

Frank McGuinness’s new musical/play with music/musical play sounds unfortunately like a pilot for the Irish version of Nashville, as a fading country music star is threatened by a new talent she must curry favour with for her own survival. Director Conall Morrison specialises in exuberance, and grand dames Deirdre Donnelly and Eleanor Methven appear beside Once’s Megan Riordan, but can McGuinness make a comeback?

 

First Love 12^th October – 16^th October O’Reilly Theatre

Reminding us why he was important before the age of austerity Michael Colgan directs Gate stalwart Barry McGovern in a solo Beckett outing. This time they head up the road to Belvedere College for a Beckett novella turned into a one-man show about a rather existentialist-sounding refusal of a man to fall in love with a woman who’s in love with him.

My Own Personal Theatre Awards 2015

All aesthetic judgements are political, but some are more political than others; and if you cannot conceive of great art made by people whose political opinions you do not share, then just maybe you cannot conceive of art at all.

It was ironic that the Irish Times released their Theatre Awards shortlist just after the death of Alan Rickman; whose performance in John Gabriel Borkman the Guardian valorised as one of his great stage achievements; as it drew the mind back to the Irish Times’ magisterial pronouncements on the state of Irish theatre in 2010. John Gabriel Borkman, a co-production between the Abbey and Southbank’s National Theatre, premiered in Dublin before transferring to London, and eventually Broadway. It was seen by around 20,000 people, got rave notices, and received … two nominations from the Irish Times: for costumes and set.

Meanwhile World’s End Lane, which could be seen by 3 people per performance, and so was seen by almost a hundred punters, as opposed to John Gabriel Borkman’s 20,000, received a nod for best production. And of course you ‘couldn’t’ sputter with outrage over this because, inevitably, you hadn’t seen World’s End Lane. Thus has it been lately with the Irish Times Theatre Awards. Such hipster valuations of theatrical worth downgraded the Gate and Abbey, and combined with a persistent boosting of Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, and companies and plays that shared the politico-cultural preoccupations and prejudices of the Irish Times.

But, as with my objections to the Abbey’s 2016 programme, there is little point in speculative grousing. So here are my personal theatre awards for 2015, with the winners in bold. And let me anticipate objections. I did not see DruidShakespeare on tour or The Match Box in Galway. I did not travel up to Belfast to see a single play at the Lyric. But, when you strip out all DruidShakespeare’s nominations, the vast majority of nominations handed out by the Irish Times were for work performed in Dublin. So with more nominees and fewer categories let’s have at it…

Best Production

The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Director

Annabelle Comyn – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

David Grindley – The Gigli Concert (The Gate)

Selina Cartmell – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

Conor McPherson – The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Patrick Mason – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

 

Best Actor

Declan Conlon – The Gigli Concert (The Gate)

Marty Rea – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

James Murphy – The Importance of Being Earnest (Smock Alley)

Brendan Gleeson – The Walworth Farce (The Olympia)

Dylan Coburn Gray – Enjoy (Project Arts Centre)

Best Actress

Catherine McCormack – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Aislin McGuckin – A Month in the Country (The Gate)

Catherine Walker – Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Clare Dunne – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

Lisa Dwyer Hogg – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

 

Best Supporting Actor

Declan Conlon – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Marty Rea – The Caretaker (The Gate)

Peter Gaynor – Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Kevin Shackleton – The Importance of Being Earnest (Smock Alley)

Stijn Van Opstal – The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Domhnall Gleeson – The Walworth Farce (The Olympia)

John Doran – Enjoy (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Supporting Actress

Marion O’Dwyer – By the Bog of Cats (The Abbey)

Minke Kruyver – The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Kate Stanley Brennan – Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Deirdre Donnelly – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

Elodie Devins – By the Bog of Cats (The Abbey)

 

Best New Play

George Brant – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

Conor McPherson – The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Gerard Adlum – The Man in Two Pieces (Theatre Upstairs)

Enda Walsh – The Last Hotel (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Gerard Adlum, Nessa Matthews, Sarah Finlay – Bob and Judy (Theatre Upstairs)

 

Best Set Design

tgSTAN & Damiaan De Schrijver – The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Paul O’Mahony – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Francis O’Connor – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate) & The Caretaker (The Gate)

Liam Doona – You Never Can Tell (The Abbey)

Alice Power – The Walworth Farce (The Olympia)

Alyson Cummins – The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

 

Best Lighting Design

Chahine Yavroyan – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabbler (The Abbey)

Sinead McKenna – The Gigli Concert (The Gate)

Davy Cunningham – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Sound Design

Dennis Clohessy – Through a Glass Darkly (Project Arts Centre) & A View From the Bridge (The Gate)

Mel Mercier – The Shadow of a Gunman (The Abbey)

Conor Linehan – You Never Can Tell (The Abbey)

The Importance of Being Earnest

Director Patrick Mason reunites with Marty Rea and Rory Nolan, the double act from his 2009 production of The Rivals, for an elegant production of Wilde’s comedy of dual identities.

 

Algernon Moncrieff (Rory Nolan) is a confirmed Bunburyist; evading formidable aunt Lady Bracknell (Deirdre Donnelly) by dint of imaginary invalid friend Bunbury, who is at death’s door whenever she issues invitations. Algernon is determined to unmask his friend Ernest Worthing (Marty Rea) as a secret Bunburyist after finding a card revealing him to be Ernest in town, but Jack in the country. Jack insists he is merely maintaining a high moral tone for the benefit of his ward Cecily (Lorna Quinn) by the invention of disreputable brother Ernest, whose outrages necessitate frequent trips to London. But when Jack’s new fiancé, Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen (Lisa Dwyer Hogg), announces she could only love a man named Ernest, and Lady Bracknell declares Jack’s unknown parentage an insurmountable objection, Jack’s engagement seems doomed. And that’s before Algernon helpfully complicates matters with some absurdist Bunburying…

Designer Francis O’Connor spoke in his Gate Lab talk of producing a space of ‘vivid neutrality’ hiding playfulness and tricks; from Oscar’s visage faintly imprinted on the back wall, to a toy train running on tracks laid into the floor for Act 2’s shift to the country, to the startling ejection of rows of champagne or filing cabinets from a side wall when given a push. Panels in the back wall open to reveal Algy’s vases full of perfect green carnations, bucolic countryside impressions, and Jack’s massive portrait of Queen Victoria surrounded by eminent Victorians. O’Connor’s costumes visually cue Mason’s take on the characters: Algy is the perfect aesthete, his blue suit perfectly fitted to his decor, Gwendolen is a chip off the old block, her lavender outfit a variation on her mother’s dress, and Jack is trying too hard to pass as an Establishment worthy, his dark clothes always too sombre. Even Jack’s servant is off. Lane (Bosco Hogan) is in insouciant synch with Algy, but uncertain Merriman (a Fassbendering Des Keogh) is nearly clobbered by filing cabinets, makes heavy weather of clearing away Cecily’s books to lay the table, and runs away whimpering after serving Gwendolen detestable tea-cake.

It’s instructive to note the Rea/Nolan double act’s contrast to Shackleton/Murphy in Smock Alley’s recent Earnest. The business of the last muffin here sees Algy magnificently insouciant and inert, not mischievous and active, with Jack’s despairing throwing of a handkerchief over the muffin tray, rather than engaging in a tug-of-war for it, summarising Rea’s interpretation. This is a man at pains to be respectable but continually thwarted by others. Pushed on to the ground by Miss Prism (a droll Marion O’Dwyer), he attempts to muster an entirely imaginary dignity before asking Lady Bracknell if she’d mind awfully telling him who he is. Rea’s expression when Jack finds his real name in the Army Lists is a comic joy. Donnelly is a wonderful Lady Bracknell, eschewing outright scenery chewing for a forthright indomitability that makes quotable lines fresh putdowns, while Dwyer Hogg, the polar opposite of her Heartbreak House ingénue, vamps it up as Gwendolen, with a Brackenellian imperiousness towards Cecily. Mark Lambert, so rambunctious in that Heartbreak House, seems underused as Canon Chasuble; amusingly rendered a relation of Peter Cook’s Very Impressive Clergyman; but complaining that supporting players have too much star power clearly points to an embarrassment of riches.

Mason had wondered what he could bring to another production of Earnest; the answer was reforming an unbeatable trio of himself, Rea, and Nolan.

5/5

The Importance of Being Earnest continues its run at the Gate until the 30^th of January.