Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
The new storyline behind The Essence of Ireland was written by Ross Mills and premiered in Autumn 2010. The show tells the story of Sean Michael Dempsey, born in Ireland in 1930. He falls in love with an Irish girl called Cora, before moving to New York in the search for work. Sean builds in a life in America, where he lives for 55 years, marries and has children. He then follows his heart back to Ireland at the end of his life, to see his country once more and to dance one more time with Cora.
The show opens with lights shining and dresses glittering, as an energetic dance number introduces the pace of the show; traditional Irish music is fused with a drum kit and an electric guitar giving the whole production a fresh and relevant feel. From this point onwards it’s clear that whilst The Essence of Ireland is following in some pretty big shoes, namely, Riverdance, it doesn’t try to do the same old thing, but has developed its own unique sense of style and pace.
The story is mostly told by Ged Graham (Principle Male Vocalist) and his band and singers. There is also a lovely sounding Irish voiceover, which reads out the letters that Sean sent to Cora throughout his life in America. The dance numbers do very little in terms of helping to tell the story. There is only once dance number that touches on any emotion other than cheery, and even then it is more teenage lovers’ tiff than heart-wrenching separation. The dances mostly just provide an impressive display of technique and capture the energy of traditional Irish dancing. This occasionally gives a feeling of two separate shows that run alongside each other. However, for the most part, the union worked as the dance served as a refreshing refrain between the sections of more emotional music and narrative.
Without being a musical in the most obvious sense, The Essence of Ireland makes a big, well, song and dance over its musicians. Graham encourages a lot of audience participation in the form of clapping and singing along, which may sound uncomfortably cheesy to you, but when a nice cheery Irish man in a bowler hat asks you to clap, you clap. The musicians used the space as much as the dancers did and there was a lot of jolly toe-tapping and even a cheeky moonwalk. The musicians communicated a real sense of companionship, which somehow made the whole event feel even more Irish. At this point it wouldn’t be right not to give a mention to Caroline Regan who moved effortlessly between the tin whistle, the concertina, drums and singing – and all in high heels and a mini dress, hats off to her!
The lack of narrative role played by the dance meant that Aaron James (Dance Director) could really play around with and push the limits of what Irish dancing can do. The most tenuous opportunity in the narrative led to a whole lot of fusion of dance genres: a Spanish wedding led to a brilliant combination of girls doing salsa and guys tapping away with their little Irish feet; Sean’s job in New York gave the opportunity for some Stomp style movement with sound using brooms and dustbin lids; a road trip across America led to Irish dancers in cowboy hats and some rootin’ tootin’ moves; and finally a comment on the modernisation of Irish music resulted in a strange Irish and street dance hybrid, which made a couple of the guys resemble something like a dad dancing at a wedding.
Through the show, the guys really outshone the girls. Each of them projected a real sense of individual personality which was perfect for this show. Daniel Holmes clearly fancies himself a bit of a joker, as he came on stage and managed to split the audience into three to clap a rhythm for him to do some horrific ballet to, all without speaking! This was followed by the other three guys coming on and the four of them doing a nice bit of macho Irish dancing, which they ended in a line, at the front of the stage, in black tank tops, looking like a boy band. Brilliant.
All in all, The Essence of Ireland is an entertaining evening, but falls just short of claiming its place up in the lights with Riverdance and the other giants of Irish dance.
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