No weak links in a dazzling double act
A WEEK with two inspired presentations of supremely high quality with dazzling production values is a rarity. But last week was one of those weeks,with Brecht at the Abbey, and Gogol from Performance Corporation at the Project.
Brecht can be visually and verbally heavy going; it's as though directors are in such awe of his gloomily savage message that they fear a light touch. Not in Jimmy Fay's case: his production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a riot in several senses of the word: colourful, pacy, hilariously funny in places, but relentlessly uncompromising in its condemnation of Europe's servile capitulation to the vileness of fascism.
Fay's superb concept reeks of danger, violence, isolation and treachery as double bluff and betrayal stalk the rise to dictatorship of the twisted, psychotic Hitler/Ui, from the Bronx through the Chicago shipyards to the peaceful verdancies of Cicero (Austria). The culminating moment comes when Ui, having had Cicero's leading newspaper publisher murdered, reduces his widow to compliance by raping her young daughter in front of her, in a sickening reminder that Hitler is reputed to have raped his own niece whom he "worshipped".
It is eerily apposite that it all begins seemingly innocently: a decent businessman merely bends the rules by issuing a loan from his own company to another he has just acquired, starting a pattern of unethical behaviour which leaves the way open for Ui's dark presence. Fay is soaringly well served by a cast without a weak link in performance or characterisation. The standard is set by Tom Vaughan Lawlor's inspired portrayal of the lead role: physically rubberised, verbally running through the octaves, spiritually swooping through the depths of any hell he can find to impose on others; and all achieved on the perfection of a Chaplin-esque underlay. This is acting of extraordinary quality.
Aidan Kelly, Karl Shiels and Malcolm Adams are the three leading contenders for brutal horror, with Kate Brennan as one of the blood-spattered innocent casualties and Eamonn Morrissey as the gullible Dogsborough, both superb at the two ends of the emotional spectrum of despair, and Jane Brennan as the dignified and terrified Betty Dullfeet. But they are merely the larger stars: there are no weak links.
Conor Murphy's design and Paul Keogan's lighting are chillingly superb, as is Denis Clohessy's music. There's no credit for the excellent choreography, but Paul Burke is responsible for the terrific fight sequences.
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IF I recall Gogol's story The Nose, Tom Swift's adaptation is fairly free. But its spirit is a perfect rendition of what that master of the absurd seemed to be getting at long before either Beckett or Camus was even a gloomy twinkle in the eye. It's a glorious, ludicrous romp, full of hysteria, and full also of hard-hitting moral points about decency, kindness, malice and greed.
The ambitious civil servant Kovalyov has wasted his inheritance, so "employs" his senile father as his servant. He loves the lovely and impecunious Olga, but courts the Governor's sexually ambivalent daughter and her considerable fortune.
Then his nose goes walkabout, with hilarious consequences. Its first leap is into the breakfast sandwich of the local barber with speedy progress into the office of the State Counsellor. Swift has never been a slave to dialogue when pantomime will make his point more effectively, and the piece is full of comic set pieces which display an insouciant disregard for period, or for that matter, for relevance, there to serve the overall message and provide entertainment of high quality. And boy, does it succeed! He throws a blackmailing putative mother-in-law with an instamatic camera into Tsarist St Petersburg, and adds an oddly familiar self-obsessed award-winning television reporter, along with a self-absolving surgeon calling for his theatre sister's P45 when things go wrong.
Jo Mangan directs this delicious piece of froth in a design by Ciaran Bagnall. As is usual with Performance Corporation productions, the roles are doubled and sometimes trebled (save for the lead.) In this case, the lead is Aonghus Og McAnally, stentorianly impressive as the sly but oddly likable Kovalyov. Lisa Lambe is Olga, but her high moment is as the TV reporter, while Conan Sweeney is the bearded Governor's daughter, and Sonya Kelly is the blackmailing Mama, with Alan Howley touchingly pathetic as the senile father, and the cast completed by Stephen Swift. Sinead Cuthbert's costumes are a delight, and choreography is by Nanette Kincaid.
