The Festival organises a range of Outings throughout the year. Below are reviews from Friends of the Festival on this year's Outings.

NT LIVE
London Assurance
Irish Film Institute
June 28, 2010
This was another in the fine series relayed live by the National Theatre (previous ones were Phedre and The Habit of Art) in which the National is following in the successful footsteps of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which has been similarly relaying live performances for the last five years. It played to a packed and most appreciative house in the IFI.

Dion Bouccicault was born in Dublin in 1820. He was a profilic playwright with a great record of commercial success. In his time the New York Times described him as "...the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century" - leaving us to wonder whether "conspicuous" is a compliment. More briskly, Nicholas Hynter, producer of this NT revival described Bouccicault as a "Dublin chancer" - no doubt with some truth, judging from what we know of his career.

London Assurance was Bouccicault's second play and was and continues to be a great success. It is a comic romp through English high - highish, perhaps - society, with a city-and-country theme and a wonderful set of comic charachters, most of whom sound like the precursors of the Oscar Wilde charachters who emerged fifty years later. The stars of the cast were Simon Russell Beale as Sir Harcourt Courtly, a vain, overweight and overconfident fop in a frantic search for an heiress; Fiona Shaw as Lady Gay Spanker (sic), a huntin', shootin', fishin' country squiress, and Richard Briers as her witless husband. The lesser charachters were equally entertaining and Bouccicault loses no opportunity or twist of plot to draw out the comedy.

A most enjoyable piece which the London audience clearly loved and took in a holiday atmosphere. And the Dublin "live" audience were equally appreciative.
Vincent O'Doherty

NT LIVE
The Habit of Art
Irish Film Institute
April 22, 2010
The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett recently screened by the Irish Film Institute in conjunction with the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival was a live broadcast from the National Theatre, London. Based on an imagined meeting between W H Auden and Benjamin Britten after a period of estrangement, this play was engaging in that it had a play within the play as the key actors played actors rehearsing their roles as the poet and composer respectively. The performance of Richard Griffiths as the actor playing Auden and as Auden himself was in my view most riveting and the play itself thought-provoking on a range of issues. I certainly look forward to future broadcasts in this series with the caveat that it does not really measure up to the pleasure of good live theatre.
Dearbhail Shannon

Rough Magic in association with The Emergency Room
Sodome, My Love
Project Arts Centre
March 18, 2010
This was a curiosity, a piece of rather literary French translated by Olwen Fouéré and given life by her intense physical and vocal performance against the amazing visual effects achieved by John Comiskey’s design. The sole character encased salt in ancient Sodom(e), although not quite as the Bible told the story.  Now we saw her being brought back to life in modern times, with an enormous projected image of her face as the salt was washed away. The video sequences kept reminding us that even as she recounted the fall of Sodom she was intended to be seen alongside contemporary traffic, urban trains and graphics.  The destruction of Sodom seemed to have been caused by an infiltrated infection that called HIV/Aids to mind.  In the final scene, Fouéré brought her femininity right up to date, with highly sexualised entertainers performing on the screen walls behind her.  We could conclude that the licentiousness for which Sodom was condemned was now the norm in social behaviour.

This was an evening that was greatly enhanced by the post-show discussion arranged as part of the DTF Outing. We had the chance to listen to and then to quiz both Olwen Fouéré and the much-lauded designer, John Comiskey.  The descriptions of how the walls of the set were created to be both mirrors and screens for back projection gave us a real appreciation of how technology and new materials are creating exciting possibilities for live performance.  But we were not convinced that the play itself was worth the great artistic efforts that had been made in presenting it to us.
Andrew Parkes

RAW
Off Plan
Project Arts Centre
February 24,2010

Off Plan is an ambitious adaptation of the three plays of Aeschylus's Oresteia - Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and Eumenides. The Oresteia deals with revenge writ extremely large, telling the story of Agememnon who sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia to the Gods for fair winds to sail to Troy and is subsequently murdered by his wife Clytemnestra on his return ten years later. In due course their banished son Orestes returns from exile and plots with his sister Electra to murder their mother and her lover Aegisthus. Orestes is then plagued by various demons but after trial and tribulation peace is restored. The transposition of these mythic Greek tales to a modern saga of family life on a failed Irish housing development site named "Trojan Falls" presented many challenges. Different acting styles were used for the three stories and there was inventive use of space with some of the action relayed by video, while speeches were frequently delivered via microphone and speakers.  The after show talk with writer and principal actor, Emma McIvor, clarified the collaborative process from which this production emanated. The aim was to find a contemporary relevance in the sorry state in which this nation finds itself, with the after affects of the Trojan War over two thousand years ago. I am not sure the Company quite succeeded but they did provide a thought provoking evening of theatre.
Dympna Murray


The Ark, A Cultural Centre for Children in association with Theatre Lovett
The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly
February 20,2010

Gemma’s invitation for the Friends’ Outing followed The Ark’s description of this piece as “suitable for children of 7+ and their families”. I took my 5+ granddaughter along, a bit apprehensive as she had been scared out of her seat by the roaring giant in the Gaiety panto, but she loved it, as did her 7-year-old brother. Louis Lovett was immediately disarming, telling the children what was going to happen, including one death and a lot of blood (which they greeted with whoops of delight). Of course we never saw any of that, it was all recounted in a wonderful hour of solo storytelling.  

This is how the grandchildren remember it:
“They [the family] were packers – they packed boxes.  The girl found out that her Mum and Dad had gone. All the people were gone. She went outside in freezing cold. She went in a door and met a mouse. She heard a mean man, who caught her. She found a note. The man had caught her Mum & Dad and put them on a boat. It was going to crash into rocks. She got out and went to the water. The mouse fell in and drowned (Aah). She sang loudly to help the boat find the way to land. Everyone was saved.”

Louis Lovett played all the parts. The young audience particularly loved the instant changes in character as he switched from storyteller to girl to villain with the merest of costume adjustments, including stripey swimming togs for the girl (great giggles). The set by Paul O’Mahony was brilliant, using a collection of packing crates that could be rearranged from scene to scene and that revealed fresh surprises as they were opened. Lovett, currently the Theatre-Maker in Residence at The Ark, has said that the key to children’s theatre is knowing how to handle their energy in performance. He achieved this with great skill, encouraging interaction and firing off comical ad-libs, but controlling the telling of the tale with his own exuberant energy.

Afterwards he came out front to chat with the children and sign programmes. Overall, this was a delightful way of starting young people towards a love of theatre-going.
Andrew Parkes