The Peacock Stage, Ulster Bank Dublin
Theatre Festival
Sept 30-Oct 29
I don’t have
time to write in depth about Marina Carr’s 16 Possible Glimpses. I was
interested in seeing Carr craft a literary response to Chekov but the unfortunate
result is a clumsy exposition-forced soap opera which isn’t particularly
memorable.
Patrick O’Kane,
Cathy Belton, and Caitríona Ní Mhurchú fall victim to the over-stated content
of Carr’s prose here, resulting in cringing and irritating performances from
some of the industry’s finest. As usual, director Wayne Jordan makes the most
of a crowd, inspiring elegant choreography from his blocking and scene changes.
His use of a live video feed though never finds its purpose. Hugh O’Connor’s
footage and Sam Jackson’s music arrangements provide beautiful backdrops to
this very confused piece. When the play
takes to a mediation on writing and ‘the artist’, and Chekov and Tolstoy
exchange portfolios, we wonder if the subject of ‘eloquence’ has flown right
over the head of one of our once most fearless voices.
What did everybody
else think?
I finally saw this last night and it was also my first time in the Peacock theatre itself. I think the space was just physically too small to take on this type of production as there just was a lot going on.
ReplyDeleteI loved Patrick O'Kane in this and the actor playing Tolstoy was more than good but felt that the person playing the monk and Leika were both very weak and they needed to be stronger to help carry this play. The monk was too feminine for my liking and held himself too much like a woman to be any good in this role. He needed to come off as more intimidating than he did.
I agree that it was not a memorable performance as such and I agree also that it did lean a little too far to soap opera type dialogue at times but it was still a wonderful production and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I just think with those changes in the casting and a bigger stage it would have made all the difference.