A review by Barry Grantham for EXTRA! EXTRA!

‘ Dublin by Lamplight’ is a piece of ensemble theatre, and a very good one. One should be wary of attempting to compartmentalize its different components. For example, if I praise the direction by Annie Ryan, and I do as ‘quite brilliant’, I must also acknowledge the receptivity of the entire cast, and their ability to create a unified whole from a style unusual, experimental, and complex. If I commend Michael West’s play, and I do so unreservedly, I am aware of the input by the cast and director which the author acknowledges even on the cover of the printed play. As we see it at the Riverside Studios, it is not an unfledged offering. It was first presented in Dublin November 2004 and there has been time for the production to mature to its present excellence, so that there is not an aspect that does not contribute fully to the whole. This is a melodrama – in the original meaning of the word; a play accompanied by music, so that almost throughout, there is not a word spoken or a move made that hasn’t its accompaniment. Composed by Conor Linehan, and played by Danny Sheridan on a grand piano in a style not at odds with the period (1904) in which the play is set. The costumes, designed by Sinéad Cuthbert (perhaps the only element which conforms to naturalism) are apposite and accurate, (and the changes into them made by the cast achieved with amazing rapidity) The set (Kris Stone), except for a superb red velvet curtain which tells us that we are now in a theatre (theatre within a theatre that is) is minimal, as it should be. The lighting (Matt Frey) is professional and unobtrusive and always exactly on cue. The cast of six present some thirty characters between them – all clever caricatures from the Dublin of the 1900’s. The acting is stylized and physical; the play literate and full of references, For those of you who may not feel inclined to follow me into greater analysis, I will break the usual formula expected of a reviewer and place my assessment and recommendation right here instead of at the end, ***** and if you are not looking for a conventional naturalistic domestic drama, DON’T MISS IT

Photo Courtesy of Riverside studios

STILL WITH ME? Due to a not infrequent problem with the tube network, I arrived with just enough time to get my ticket and enter the auditorium, and no opportunity to consult the programme There was a certain advantage in this, in that I was able to pick up some of the allusions without the aid of the programme notes. For example I soon recognized the horrendous Eva St. John as Lady Gregory, though her playwright partner seemed to have little in common with the factual W.B.Yeats, co-founder the Abbey Theatre. In fact I was irresistibly reminded of Leopold Bloom! A little later there was a ‘quote’ of the shaving scene which opens Joyce’s Ulysses So the likeness to Bloom was intentional. I congratulated myself on the identification. If I was smart, how accurate must Louis Lovett’s portrayal of Willy Hayes (the name given to the Bloom character) have been that I should be able to identify him? So having found a couple of pieces of the jigsaw I settled to enjoy the building up of the picture. The performance opens with Martyn Wallace, played by Tom Jordon Murphy with delicious extravagance, who introduces us to a couple of the conventions which we will have to learn to assimilate. From press releases and photos we were already prepared for the startling make-up, somewhere between circus clown and Kabuki, which we were soon to find wonderfully flexible even when the actor changed character. Then there was the combination of narrative with dramatic dialogue.

“Martyn Wallace awoke in his boarding house, and held his aching head”

The actor then becomes Wallace and holds his head. He says that his room is like ‘Reading Gaol’ and we know we have to look out for the allusions. Another character appears (his landlady) and they use the conventional dramatic form, as she tells him off for coming home drunk. They exit and their place is taken by Eva St John played by Karen Egan as a streak of fork-lightning which illuminates the stage whenever she is on. She introduces the narrative mode again

“Eva St John, actress, benefactress, activist, took her breakfast in the morning room”

And so on - Apart from the musical one, there are further echoes from Melodrama; like the mannerism of giving the line with the head facing the audience, and then turning it with a sharp jerk towards the character to whom the line was ostensibly addressed. The technique was known to have been used in the early years of the 19 th century to cope with the huge auditoriums and possible unruliness of the customers. It was also employed by comic double acts in Music Hall and Vaudeville up until the 1950’s.

I must admit that a moment came, some forty five minutes into the show, when I wondered if these Ừber-marionettes were not just a little too brilliant, a little too brittle, to experience human emotions or elicit them from the audience, but then Jimmy Finnegan, played with rather less stylisation by Paul Reid, gained our sympathy with a little song expressing his unrequited love for the heroine Maggie, and you can understand him, because the Maggie of Janet Moran is cuddly and feminine and warm like Bloom’s wife Molly in Ulysses. Soon after the song, came the joyfully disastrous opening night of the play within the play, exploiting the situation loved by audiences and especially pros, which has been popular since ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Maggie goes on for Eva St John, who escaping police custody returns in time for the last scene. Neither actress will give way and we have the truly Commedia dell’Arte situation of both performers speaking the same lines simultaneously.

I have not done credit to Louis Lovett who adds a skilled Music Hall bravura to his central role and Tadhg Murphy, whom I have left till now. He plays the quintessential working-class partisan hero of Irish drama of Ireland - a revolutionary, both frightened and frightening, selfish in all but his desire to make the great sacrifice. It is a sincere and powerful performance that overrides the stylization and artificiality of the genre

A word about the group’s references to the Commedia dell’Arte in their publicity. The six elements that distinguish this traditional comedy of the Italian Renaissance were: 1: the wearing of masks 2: the telling of the plot using multiple skills. 3: the substitution of mime and imagination, for scenery and props 4: improvisation during the actual performance 5: the direct communication with the audience and 6: the continuity of characters from play to play. ‘ Dublin By Lamplight’ makes profitable use and development of some of the aspects of the Commedia, (and Commedia does not necessarily have to exhibit all of them). The make-ups are a perfect substitute for Masks - in fact traditional, for Pierrot is a Mask, although he doesn’t wear one); there are multiple skills throughout, and props are replaced by mime and imagination. There is, however no ‘instant’ improvisation, no direct communication with the audience, and unless there is to be a ‘Son ofDublin by Lamplight’ the question of permanent characters doesn’t apply!

Finally, praise for the venue where the ambience is welcoming and the staff uniformly friendly and helpful.

Hope you enjoy this Celtic Lamplight as much as I did.

Barry Grantham

Listings informatiom

Dates: Tuesday17 th April –Saturday 5 th May

Venue: Riverside Studios, Crisp Road , Hammersmith, London W6 9RL

Times: Tue to Fri 7.45, Sat matinee 2.30 & evening 7.45 Sunday 6pm

No performance Monday

Box Office: 020 8237 1111 Book on line: www.riversidestudios. co.

Tickets: £10-£25

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