Nestled away in the middle of the Waterford Imagine Festival was a little gem. We arrived just in time to get the last available tickets on the Friday night of the run. Noel Kelly is well known to local theatre-goers and his latest offering is a fine piece. End Of Term is a short play about a middle-aged man who wonders 'have you ever asked yourself, is that all there is to life?'. It's a two-hander with Brendan Payne playing the part of Michael and Lorraine Murphy as Maura. The production group is the local Stagemad
The play is lightly-rooted in Waterford with a nod to the high water (1959) and low water (2008) points in local sport. It is recalled that the couple's first date was to the Granville where she drank Stag.The format of the early part of the work is a series of monologues as we see their marriage gradually break up. There's a fling for Michael with his fellow teacher and the impact of the recession on the Maura's business. Payne delivered an outstanding performance and wonderfully traced the lead up to the mid life crisis he faced. Murphy was a perfect foil and wholly convincing as the wife at a loss as her husband reassessed his life.
The final scene from Payne was powerful and memorable. The play was directed by James Power with Liam Fitzpatrick as stage manager and Richard Collins subtlety looking after the sound and light. Well done to all involved!
Venue Notes The Central Hall venue is a wonderful addition to the city's theatre space and plaudits to Red Kettle for its efforts to do this. Friendly and helpful staff added to the occasion. We look forward to return visits.
Jordan's American Bar Study Hall, De La Salle College The Church- United Presbyterian and Methodist Churc, Patrick St. Theatre Royal
Power White, & Dower at Jordon's
What's rare is wonderful and a Francie White gig is a rarity ocurring once a year like some unusual arrangement of stars . The performance by this well known local artist was one of the highlights of Imagine 2010 and we looked forward to a repeat performance. On this occasion he was accompanied by Dunmore East based guitar player Gerry Power and bass player Michael Dower. There was quite a mellow vibe to the evening with the audience willingly crooning along with Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and John Martyn numbers with Piaf's Autumn Leaves a real hit with the audience and good dollops of blues to shake it up a bit. There was much to enjoy both in the vocals and the skillful guitar accompaniment of Power who sang a John Prine number himself. Jordan's is a tight venue as less than twenty gig goers can occupy the space where you can see the performers and it was the smallest of the destinations I attended over the weekend.
De La Salle Entrance
Eibhear Walshe
The lofty study hall of De La Salle College was chosen particularly for its resonance with the past for former student Éibhear Walshe who read from his memoir, Cissie's Abbatoir, a rare account of growing up in Waterford in the 60's and 70's. The Saturday morning audience audience included family members, teachers and old school pals who took the opportunity to search the walls for photographs oftheir images from the past. Eibhear spoke about the buildings as the starting point for constructing his memoir where most of his locations are visible form the spot where we were assembled.
The best thing about the Katie Kim gig at The Church in Patrick St was the venue. The subdued lighting created a late night feel for perfomances by Burrows and Katie Kim's band. The fairy lights all along the sides were a nice touch and the enormous window must surely be one of the most impressive in the town's many fine buildings. and venue was well filled with an enthusiastic audience with admission attractively priced at €10. I felt the amplification robbed her voice of it's best qualities and reverb effects were overdone. Leaving aside the considerable technical problems that beset the performance, my impression was that that the artist was wrestling with her equipment and not always winning, diverting her energy away from conveying the message in her songs.
Gateway to The Church at Patrick St
The striking backdrop of the newly exposed city walls in the Theatre Royal set the stage for Penguin Café the reconstitution of legendary ground breaking ensemble Penguin Cafe Orchestra and quite a coup for the organising committee to have brought them to Waterford for the Imagine Festival this year. Most people in the audience were card carrying fans with well worn recordings of PCO in their collection.
Arthur Jeffe has assembled a diverse multi-instrumental ensemble to recreate the work of his late father Simon Jeffe who created a quirky style of purely instrumental music that borrowed inspiration from many diverse genres and the principles of physics alluded to with references to mathematicians Fibonacci and Pythagoras. Music for aFound Harmonium had particular appeal for Irish musicians and Sharon Shannon and Frankie Gavin are among the artists to cover it.
Formby
The two musical figures that came to my mind throughout both sets were the unlikely pairing of George Formby and Michael Nyman. (who played in Waterford earlier this year). Both halves opened with ukulele solos and at least four members of the group played ukulele at some part of the performance. George Formby who will be forever associated with the ukulele would have felt quite at home in this Victorian theatre space. He took to the music hall stage to recreate his own father's stage routines and there is a resonance surely with Arthur Jeffe recreating the sound of the iconic instrumental ensemble which had hits in the 80's and 90's. As with the Nyman, there is a minimalist approach with an emphasis on patterns and textures rather than melody and there are similarities in the playing techniques used by the string players who number high profile stars Nigel Kennedy and violist Roger Chase amongst the roll call of former members. We enjoyed chatting with band member Tom Chichester Clarke who kindly spent some time with audience goers following the gig.
Penguin Café (The dog sadly didn't appear)
Theatre Royal
Congratulations and thanks to the Imagine Festival organisers. There was much to brighten these late October days of gathering gloom. I am conscious returning to Waterford of the confluence of architectural elegance in the town and the excellent ongoing work in restoring and enhancing the many lovely buildings. Rather than choose an artistic highlight I have chosen the venues as the focus for this post. Our only complaint is that there were too many events and we couldn't get to all of them. We missed the imaginative programming of the silent movie Vampyr with organist Morgan Cooke at Christchurch Cathedral another of Waterford's architectural gems. Looking forward to next year already.
