DUBLIN BY LAMPLIGHT. To 28 August.

Edinburgh

DUBLIN BY LAMPLIGHT
by Michael West

Traverse Theatre (Traverse 1) To 28 August 2005
Tue-Sun various times
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKERTS: 0131 228 1404
www.traverse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 August

Immaculate, ingenious - but possibly too much of a good thing.Dublin's Corn Exchange brings this spot of Celtic gaslight to the Traverse. Out of all the aspects involved in establishing an mergent nation's identity, a National Theatre is the one that seems essential to theatrical minds. Even if the actuality gets barnacled with grubby realities, the prospect is noble and brave.

And it's sent up mightily in Michael West's new play, already seen across Ireland, which uses the outward form of the 19th century's own grubby theatre style, the melodrama.

Some 30 years ago Tom Stoppard made the point in Travesties that political and artistic revolutionaries rarely share a meeting of minds. West gives the idea a local habitation and a ridiculous name: The Irish National Theatre of Ireland and peoples it with aesthetes and idealists who recall Yeats, Lady Gregory and doubtless others in the various Irish national theatre camps of whom I'm unaware.

There's one dead style-alike for Oscar wilde, only he was making it big in London a lot of the time. Still, there were no doubt plenty more smooth-coiffed, languishing top-pocket handkerchief types around in Dublin.

Set against a brick wall that could be backing either a city alley or a theatre stage, the story involves various literary and political maneouvres, and makes clear the egos that shelter under the banner of political artistic idealism.

Annie Ryan's production creates the sense of events occurring simultaneously or in quick succession and impacting on each other. Characters replace each other, actors switch roles with lightning rapidity.

It's all highly skilled and beautifully entertaining for anything up to 15 minutes ata time. At full-length the melodramatic form, eternal narration and comic pulse can become monotonous, a reminder that cleverness alone has its limitations. It's a show too good to miss but at times effortful to take all in one go.

Jimmy Finnegan: Mike Carbery
Eva St John: Karen Egan
Willy Hayes: Louis Lovett
Frank Hayes: Fergal McElherron
Maggie: Janet Moran
Martyn Wallace: Mark O'Halloran

Director: Annie Ryan
Designer: KrisStone
Lighting: Matt Frey
Music: Conor Linehan
Costume: Sinead Cuthbert

2005-08-19 18:21:15