My favourite theatre moments of the year: Hansel and Gretel, Our New Girl, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Will I See You There.
How do you look back on a shock to the system, one that brought many people in touch with their mortality and security? This was the question on the mind for Musings In Intermissions’ year-end “Best theatre” list. Beginning with something about survival felt appropriate, and I decided to go to the source.
In recent years, it has been reassuring to clear up that common misunderstanding about Charles Darwin and evolutionary biology. Many think that the “survival of the fittest,” a central phrase in the theory of natural selection, is about the ruthless killing the weak. What caught Darwin’s eye was the ability to adjust, to better live in your environment. Those who adapt are the ones to survive.
Yes, productions were postponed and a season was lost but, in the strange world brought on by the pandemic, plays were still staged. These were no small miracles. This year’s list attempts to reflect some of those Darwinian changes, including the migration to streamed theatre and to live plays staged under the physical restrictions of public health advice. You will see productions from earlier in the year coming up repeatedly, which may make things seem lop-sided towards the months before the pandemic, when making plays was easier. Not enough has been said about how this was the strongest start to a theatre year in quite a while.
I’ve embraced the opportunity to highlight some newcomers who in an ordinary year I mightn’t have spotted as easily. The numbers end up showing the funding hierarchy though. The Abbey Theatre has eight mentions, for co-productions in which the national theatre resembles more a backer than a catalyst. The runner-up is Irish National Opera with six citations.
Finally, there was no category to put Bewley’s Café Theatre who, when the future of their home seemed uncertain, almost single-handedly gave the capital a metropolitan flare again during those luminous weeks in August.
BEST DIRECTOR
The only one who’s been here before is Annabelle Comyn, who did a Tobe Hooper on the thriller-satire Our New Girl, filling its modern setting with the spooky, light-flickering chill of Gothic supernatural horror. Andrew Flynn rebounded from last year’s bloodless The Cripple of Inishmaan with a knockout, risk-taking revival of the dark comedy The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Muireann Ahern and Louis Lovett did their best work to date with Hansel and Gretel, sharpening the edges of Engelbert Humperdinck's opera with references to the homelessness crisis. It felt like a whole other year by the time we got to Will I See You There, a socially distanced play-installation eavesdropping on friends who are privately struggling, but John King’s meticulous production reminded us that good theatre remains to be about the details.
Andrew Flynn - The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a Gaiety production
Annabelle Comyn - Our New Girl, a Gate Theatre production
John King - Will I See You There, a Murmuration production
Muireann Ahern and Louis Lovett - Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production
BEST SET DESIGN
To Be a Machine (Version 1.0).
Jamie Vartan traded on the same romantically doomed Ruritania of Hergé’s Tintin and Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel in Hansel and Gretel. While these may be references to a largely imaginary Europe, the decision to cut the forest and move the children into an unsecure, labyrinthine hotel evoked scandals closer to home. Owen MacCarthaigh dared to get specific about the Northern Irish scenery in the Troubles satire The Lieutenant of Inishmore, recreating the Free Derry mural for one memorable torture scene. Who can forget the reverse-shot in To Be a Machine (Version 1.0), a streamed play about entrepreneurs enhancing their bodies through technology, when we realised Andrew Clancy had built stalls for an audience of iPads, all displaying our faces. We were watching at home alone but we were also in the theatre together.
Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production - Jamie Vartan
The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a Gaiety production - Owen MacCarthaigh
To Be a Machine (Version 1.0), a Dead Centre and Dublin Theatre Festival co-production - Andrew Clancy
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN
DruidGregory.
DruidGregory, a Druid production - Barry O’Brien
Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production - Sarah-Jane Shiels
Transmission, a Little Wolf production - Sarah-Jane Shiels
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Mamafesta Memorialising.
No garments told as epic a story as Emily Ní Bhrion’s for Philip Connaughton’s superb dance about hereditary dementia, beginning with couture suits made up of home furnishings of curtain tassels and wallpaper florals, and stripping to a spooky nightmare of science-fictional hospital gowns. The powerful anachronism of Vartan’s costuming comes to mind, when two lost children in modern raincoats interrupted the fairy-tale world of Hansel and Gretel. Sinéad Cuthbert did great work on Martin McDonagh’s junk-culture, the discarded pop cultural memorabilia of mullets and Looney Tunes t-shirts, but it was the La Femme Nikita pixie cut given to Aisling Kearns’s violent gunslinger that pushed it over the line.
Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production - Jamie Vartan
Mamafesta Memorialising, a Company Philip Connaughton, KLAP- Maison pour le Danse and Cork Opera House co-production - Emily Ní Bhrion
The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a Gaiety production - Sinéad Cuthbert
BEST SOUNDSCAPE
Will I See You There.
Here we have different soundscapes that stand out for different reasons. Philip Stewart’s music for Our New Girl was a wild score of jabbing pianos darting between time signatures. Sound design was central to the play-installation Will I See You There, which gathered its audience in a room above a city square and allowed them to eavesdrop on reunited friends on the ground below. Jennifer O’Malley’s excellent, ambient sonics replaced the everyday grit of the city with the bright fluidity of a dream, braiding the characters’ spoken dialogue with their private thoughts. Some ingenious wizardry saw We’re In Here, John Doran’s sly streamed play about role models and parents, begin with Doran fixing a fuzzy video connection by plugging in a microphone powerful enough to pick up the symphonic birdsong outside his window. Streamed theatre no longer seemed like the shadow of something lost but possibly a field of its own.
Our New Girl, a Gate Theatre production - Philip Stewart
We’re In Here, a John Doran production - John Doran
Will I See You There, a Murmuration production - Jennifer O’Malley
BEST VIDEO DESIGN
Hansel and Gretel.
Special praise is to be given to Jack Phelan, who followed his epic, towering images for 2018’s Bluebeard’s Castle with equally ambitious design this year. The giant arch displays for Hansel and Gretel, resplendent in brush typeface, resembled hotel notices to residents but evolved into cruel wisecracks about home ownership being a distant dream. During the pandemic, Phelan’s video design for To Be a Machine (Version 1.0) was a refreshing break from a lot of streamed theatre that, through its camera-eye storytelling and Zoom-style videotelephony, seemed to be imitating electronic media. Instead, Phelan’s camera made us fall for cunning misdirections and transformations, bringing the classic stuff of stage illusions into the live-stream. How nice to welcome Jason Byrne here too, especially for the beautiful images in Transmission when the Titanic passed beyond a lighthouse beam for the final time.
Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production - Jack Phelan
To Be a Machine (Version 1.0), a Dead Centre and Dublin Theatre Festival co-production - Jack Phelan
Transmission, a Little Wolf production - Jason Byrne
BEST MOVEMENT
What I (Don't) Know About Autism.
Some regulars are in here. Bolger lent galvanising movement to Druid’s cycle of Lady Gregory’s plays, especially the physical comedy required for Hyacinth Halvey, a razor-sharp farce about an agriculture official moved to a joyless town and determined to destroy his good reputation. Connaughton showed nerve pouring his own biography into his epic choreography for Mamafesta Memorialising, whether it was gestures of him strutting like a diva, having sex, or knocking sadly on closed doors. Also, Cindy Cummings’s clever, detailed choreography marshalled the ensemble play What I (Don’t) Know About Autism through its excellent parodies of ableist myths.
DruidGregory, a Druid production - David Bolger
Mamafesta Memorialising, a Company Philip Connaughton, KLAP- Maison pour le Danse and Cork Opera House co-production - Philip Connaughton
What I (Don’t) Know About Autism, a Jody O’Neill and Abbey Theatre co-production - Cindy Cummings
BEST NEW PLAY
We're In Here.
Nothing here fell in with tradition. Jody O’Neill’s What I (Don’t) Know About Autism, which could easily be the title of a straight-up theatre-in-education play, was a sophisticated work of parody and subversion. Written episodically with clever call-back scenes, it wittily undercut psychiatric myths about autism. The switch between spoken dialogue and internal thoughts in James Elliott’s Will I See You There wasn’t as revelatory as the crushing details of its story of how two friends misunderstood each other during one crucial phone call. Ní Mhurchú found the balance between philosophical reference and theatrical conceit in Transmission. Doran, previously the writer of the broad multiple-role comedy The Centre of the Universe, went contemporary with the subtly mingling narratives and intertextual storytelling of We’re In Here.
Caitríona Ní Mhurchú - Transmission, a Little Wolf production
James Elliott - Will I See You There, a Murmuration production
Jody O’Neill - What I (Don’t) Know About Autism, a Jody O’Neill and Abbey Theatre co-production
John Doran - We’re In Here, a John Doran production
BEST PERFORMANCE
Our New Girl.
There are many reasons to celebrate Our New Girl. The comeback story of Catherine Walker, a stylish actor who in the past has been clumsily slotted into roles wedded to underplayed realism (literally Hedda Gabbler), giving a thrilling performance as a mother in a psychological thriller, battling through the gaslighting tactics of her husband and their nanny, was one reason. As said husband, Aidan McArdle, who we’ve seen before playing a shouting man-child as good as anyone could, gave a delicious portrayal of a bad man’s subtler evils. And there was the terrific breakout performance by Bláithín Mac Gabhann, whose creepy ambivalence as their nanny was summed up by a smile just wide enough to vaguely belong in a horror play. Elsewhere, Carolyn Dobbyn gave a tremendous comic performance in Hansel and Gretel, her witch singing about cooking children with the same charming wiles of a beloved celebrity chef. Finbarr Doyle had to play to the upper circle, so to speak, as a man having an excruciating run-in with a friend in Will I See You There, which the audience watched from a viewing gallery high above a city square. It was still the stealthy comic performance of the year, his agonising face-scrunches and stressed teeth-clenches delivered from far away without pulling the subtle play into broader comedy. Finally, there was a superb parody of a Republican terrorist by some guy named Paul Mescal.
Aidan McArdle - Our New Girl, a Gate Theatre production
Bláithín Mac Gabhann - Our New Girl, a Gate Theatre production
Catherine Walker - Our New Girl, a Gate Theatre production
Carolyn Dobbin - Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production
Finnbar Doyle - Will I See You There, a Murmuration production
Paul Mescal - The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a Gaiety production
BEST ENSEMBLE
Seraglio, the Mini-series.
The category for plays where singling out a single performance is impossible. The cast of Flights, John O’Donovan’s drama about three friends dispossessed in the years since the 2008 economic crash, were funny and sad. Philip Connaughton got help in portraying his subject, himself, from sublime dancers Kévin Coquelard and Tatanka Gomboud. Irish National Opera’s reimagining of The Abduction from the Seraglio into a miniseries set in lockdown Dublin saw a group of friends get lovesick for each other. Despite being recorded in their separate homes, the cast eventually came together in bracing symphony in the series finale.
Flights, a One Duck production
Mamafesta Memorialising, a Company Philip Connaughton, KLAP- Maison pour le Danse and Cork Opera House co-production
Seraglio, the Mini-series, an Irish National Opera production
NOTES
BEST BREAKTHROUGH
The Lieutenant of Inishmore.
I might get some guff for saying any of these are breakthroughs. Mac Gabhann was an ensemble member in Citysong. Kearns was in the second run of Asking For It. Amy Ní Fhearraigh, who played Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, had previously been in The Marriage of Figaro. And Alex Murphy has a lead role in The Young Offenders. But the below performances were breakthroughs that feel significant. If Kearns gave a revelatory performance as a violently deranged gunwoman in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Murphy was just as important as the foil of that play, playing up the wonderful misery of an innocent passer-by who walks into the crosshairs of a sociopath.
Bláithín Mac Gabhann - Our New Girl, a Gate Theatre production
Aisling Kearns - The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a Gaiety production
Amy Ní Fhearraigh - Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production
Alex Murphy - The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a Gaiety production
BEST COMEBACK
Transmission.
Walker’s first stage performance in years was stylish and sincere. You’d be grateful to have Dobbin back, returned to these shores after being long lost to overseas. Ní Mhurchú’s playwriting follow-up to 2014's Eating Seals and Seagulls’ Eggs, a biography of Peig Sayers that said too much too acridly, was an inviting and sentimental play about family and the reassuring power of old communications technology. Most poignant, of course, is looking back on the return of the powerful soprano Miriam Murphy, who aided Muireann Ahern and Louis Lovett as the mother in Hansel and Gretel, and who sadly died this year.
Catherine Walker - Our New Girl, a Gate Theatre production
Miriam Murphy - Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production
Carolyn Dobbin - Hansel and Gretel, an Irish National Opera, Theatre Lovett and Abbey Theatre co-production
Caitríona Ní Mhurchú - Transmission, a Little Wolf production
WORST PRODUCTION
What Happened to Lucrece?
Stream of consciousness must be one of the most difficult literary techniques to adapt for theatre, and in the case of Solar Bones, a tale of a dead man returned to his home on All Souls’ Day, it made for an absurdly random play. The Fall of the Second Republic, a comedy set in an alternative Ireland where a Taoiseach conspires to hold onto power, brought macho-political burlesque to Haughey-era politics, but was lacking in screwball comedy comeuppance. Also missing was the conclusion, no less, to The Party to End All Parties, a streamed play pitting modern-day Dubliners in the shadow of the 1949 celebrations of Ireland becoming a Republic, as director Louise Lowe let the story disappear unfinished into the play’s spectacular cityscape. Andew Synnott’s multiple-ending opera What Happened to Lucrece? started as an experiment in subversion but ended in cliché.
Solar Bones, a Kilkenny Arts Festival production
The Fall of the Second Republic, a Corn Exchange and Abbey Theatre co-production
The Party to End All Parties, an ANU and Dublin Theatre Festival co-production
What Happened to Lucrece?, a Wexford Festival Opera production
WHAT I MISSED WHILE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACE
Contact.
Corcadorca’s Contact, a physical theatre play staged in the dark early days of lockdown, saw two separated lovers reunite on either side of a Perspex screen. The Abbey Theatre adapted Patrick Kavanagh’s poem The Great Hunger into a promenade play. Emma Martin’s dance for young audiences Birdboy was about a boy wishing to be a bird because he doesn’t fit in. I missed Kiss Me, Kate, a revival of Cole Porter’s musical comedy set behind the scenes of a production of The Taming of the Shrew. It’s impossible to see everything.
Birdboy, a United Fall production
Contact, a Corcadorca and Cork Midsummer Festival co-production
Kiss Me, Kate, a Lyric Theatre and Northern Ireland Opera co-production
The Great Hunger, an Abbey Theatre production
Like what you're reading? Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/chrismccormack
No comments:
Post a Comment