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A CurtainUp
Feature
Dublin International Theatre Festival 2000
"Theatre is our strength," Tony O'Dalaigh, for ten years director of the Dublin International Theatre Festival, told our group, TheaTours, at a Welcome Reception. He went on to explain that because Ireland doesn't have such diverse performance groups as a national ballet and words are their national treasure, the Festival founders decided to focus on what they do best.
Second only to the Edinburgh Festival in size, the Dublin Festival is always held the first two weeks in October. It soaks up every venue in Dublin, from large performance spaces like the National Concert Hall and the Abbey Theatre to all the smaller theatres ending up (no pun intended) in crypts, pubs, cafes, and street corners where the lively Fringe Festival which also includes international theatre holds forth.
Spilling out of the theatres into the streets where performance artists (including a silver-painted mime from Santa Barbara, California) entertain, the Festival also uses such spots as the venerable Gaiety Theatre's Bar for a series of Conversations with artists. This year these included: actors Geoffrey Rush and Simon Russell Beale; composer Philip Glass; critic and author of A Traitor's Kiss (the definitive biography of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan) Fintan O'Toole; andLynne Parker, artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company.
Dublin is a small city made for walking. Its many bridges span the Liffey River which divides the Gate and Abbey Theatres on the north side from Temple Bar on the river's south bank which the rock band U-2 and its Clarence Hotel turned into a happening for the youth and music oriented.
Most Festival events take place in the evening with some matinee and luncheon performances. On Sunday most theatres are dark.
Our group was there for the first week of the Festival, split by a week-end on Ireland's west coast. We scheduled an assortment of three plays, chosen for quality and diversity. Our trio included:, Geoffrey Rush and his prestigious Australian group, Company B Belvoir, in Small Poppies at the Tivoli Theatre; a musical, The Well, at the Vicar Street Theatre; and Olivier award-winner Conor McPherson's new play Dublin Carol at the Gate Theatre. (CurtainUp's review of the London production).
Small Poppies, an improvisatory script by David Holman, was spearheaded by the brilliant performance of Rush (Oscar-winner for Shine). Company members play their childhood selves in portraying the pain of the first day of school, divorce, dislocation, bullying, as well as the joys of finding a first friend. Some of the jokes and riddles were hokey and the production longer than necessary. The Well, which we saw the next night was also overly long. Devised by Tony MacMahon and John Comiskey this , hopes to do for traditional Irish music what Riverdance did for their foot dancing. Using harp, bagpipes, eagle and cow bone flutes, songs and poems, the talented cast weaves these ancient fragments into a narrative of the tragedy of Ireland's plantation and oppression. In addition to seeming over long, the piece has a dirge-like quality that could be alleviated by more dramatic choices. However, musicians in our group loved it.
Plays individual TheaTour members saw and enjoyed included such Fringe events as Foley, Michael West's one-man play about one of the last Protestants in Ireland, and Wallace Shawn's two plays Marie and Bruce and The Appendix to Aunt Dan and Lemon.
As a group, we went to a Fringe lunchtime performance at Bewley's Café of Couches, a slice-of-lifer illuminated by the vivid two-character performance of its director David Wilmot.
The west coast where we spent the weekend is filled with traditional Irish music and crafts. It's also the setting of The Beauty Queen of Leenane which was discovered in a slush pile (ed.note: a trade term for manuscripts by unknown writers) in Galway City's Druid Theatre. Since most theatres send their troupes to Dublin for the Festival, the major stage event advertised at Galway City's Town Hall Theatre was a translation of Ibsen's The Doll's House by acclaimed Irish playwright Frank McGuinness. Although we didn't see any plays, visiting the searing beauty of Connemara which inspired artists from Yeats to McDonagh gave us a richer insight into their work and the traditional Irish songs and dances some of us heard at the An Pucan Bar and Restaurant embellished that source material.
On our return to Dublin two actors took us to pubs favored by James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and others, performing scenes from their plays along the way. We ended our tour at Dublin's small Georgian gem, the Gate Theatre where, as already mentioned, we saw Conor McPherson's, Dublin Carol. McPherson is fast becoming one of my favorite new writers, even though this new play is not my favorite example for his work.
Naturally we didn't have time to see everything, but there's always next year.
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