Reviews

Writer Michael West is best known for his work with Corn Exchange, and particularly for Man of Valour, in 2011. Much was expected of Conservatory, and West delivers. What is extraordinary about this new play is how much it differs from his other work: Man of Valour featured a single character and no dialogue; Conservatory is a conversation between two people, an elderly husband and wife.

Stephen Brennan, as He, and Deirdre Donnelly, as She, are both entirely plausible. He is a drunken know-all, She is the long-suffering spouse who should have left him long ago. Brennan captures both the bravado and vulnerability of a well-bred boor who has never made much of himself, while Donnelly plays with consummate conviction the decent woman stuck in a joyless marriage.

The couple’s relationship is not one of all-out war. They have reared three children, so they share happy memories as well as sad, and there are moments of great tenderness between them, as when She puts He on his knees, so she can untangle a ball of wool by winding it around his outstretched hands.

Their bickering is leavened with humour. The husband’s attempts to locate his glasses, his struggle to remember who attended their wedding, even his discomfort with his piles — all add up to a catalogue of light moments.

But there are hints of a terrible darkness at the heart of their relationship. When He produces a cardboard box, the audience is left in no doubt that it contains some terrible secret, and its revelation proves quietly devastating.

West’s writing is remarkable for its restraint. There is no showboating, just a consistent employment of language as neat and cutting as a surgical implement. This restraint extends to Michael Barker-Caven’s direction, which allows the actors room to breathe and never requires that they exhaust themselves in melodrama.

Star Rating: 4/5

Live music : New Music Dublin

Various venues

By Alan O’Riordan

It’s hard to know how to define new music. The term contemporary classical is an absurd oxymoron while “art music” sounds reductive, and off-puttingly austere.

Whatever it should be called, the director of Dublin’s celebration of this most slippery of genres, Donnacha Dennehy, took a broad definition, with works that included string quartets not two years old, 1980s works of Harrison Birtwistle and Iannis Xenakis, and Gyorgy Ligeti’s 1970 Chamber Concerto.

The Arditti Quartet were the most heralded visitors. They did not disappoint with a taut and mesmerising opening performance of GF Haas’s intricate microtonal first quartet. Haas’s third quartet was less satisfying. Though novel — it calls on the players to sit at four corners of the room in darkness and play from memory — the potentials of the piece felt unexplored.

Late shows were a feature of the festival. Stockhausen’s Oktophonie was relentless and almost inhumane after 11pm, but Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee (Snow), played by the Crash Ensemble, was a late-night wonder: elusive, suggestive and soft as its name suggests.

Among the visiting composers who underscored the living tradition at work was Birtwistle, who introduced and discussed his Earth Dances prior to its performance.

Irish performances included Therese Fahy’s Handprint, a suite of new piano works for players with small hands. Fahy enlisted Siobhán Cleary, Raymond Deane, Benjamin Dwyer, Michael Holohan, Gráinne Murray and Bill Whelan to the task — the range of works was not limited by her stricture.

The discovery of the festival came from close to home in the shape of Jennifer Walshe. Hers was a virtuoso performance of vocal gymnastics, drawing on Dadaist poetry in Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde, Vol 1, and then veering into postmodernity in ALL THE MANY PEOPLS, a schizophrenic work that channels the media overload of our times. Found words from old internet chatrooms, random clips from YouTube and reality TV, catchphrases, video game voiceovers and more blend together at breathless speed. Funny, unnerving and acute, Walsh makes something utterly new from what she finds — the best hope for the postmodern artist and an example of the immediacy of this festival. Roll on next year.

Star Rating: 4/5