Jack Leahy-
Another week, another musical in DU players. This time round, a cohort of toga-clad lads and ladies took on Owen Murphy-directed Hercules for six nights.
My first ever visit to Players’ Theatre came on the final night, finally persuaded by the unavoidable hype which had built up around campus as some fantastic anecdotal reviews came my way. I have to admit that, despite the presence of some good friends on stage, I wish I had waited a little longer before losing my Players’ virginity. Well, not really, but it’s the least graphic ‘virginity’ metaphor I could muster and who knows, kids could read this.
What Murphy managed with Hercules is admirable in a way; it was a good night’s entertainment illuminated by superlative individual performances from Dónal Ó Cinnéide as protagonist Hercules, Iain Mullins as underworld reagent Haedes, and Richard Shaffrey as the light-hearted but assertive Zeus. Their efforts were matched if not bettered by the lead chorus of muses—a gaggle of sassy, flamboyant divas with some of the best voices I’ve heard in quite a while.
But I’ll get to that later, as negatives are much more fun.
At the start we are introduced to the minor male characters, the majority of whom are overbearingly camp. I mean, camp is good; very often it’s charming, endearing, and undeniably hilarious. But too much of it, the likes of which Murphy’s minor characters delivered with gratuity, quickly becomes unnecessary. Then irritating. Then infuriating. Then just a dull noise. Yes, you like Rihanna. We get it.
As we meet the more major characters, we get a very interesting collection of accents; some are American, some are Irish, and two are Italian, although the latter were pretty hilarious despite featuring in a Greek setting for whatever unspecified reason. Like the in-your-face flamboyancy of the camp characters, the American accents seemed forced and before too long bore into your very skull. When the muses did it, it added a lovable, hyperbolic sass to their performance and entertained us (“Yeah he looking mighty fine today!” and the like), but there was no such effect achieved by making some of the actors communicate in such a tongue.
The most aurally displeasing performance award will have to be shared. Stephen and Valery Lynch —whose roles can best be defined as Haedes’ bitches—play a pair of bizarre creatures. In a classical Greek world of togae, tunicae (yeah, I did Latin for the Leaving Cert so I’ll damn well inflect my first declension nouns properly) and sandals. They wear shirts, braces, ties, and knee-socks, and don’t quite fit in as characters.
While they pull off the requirements of the role with yet more flamboyancy, they are a bit over the top, announcing themselves with a very loud nasal sound which by the end tolls ominously like a death-bell. Spotting a recurring theme yet? Why Haedes needs childishly face-painted aides who act so intolerably and generically stupid is a good question.
Lastly, this show once again suffered from the classic Players’ pitfall: a few too many in-jokes. For example, at the start of the second act the female Lynch strays a good bit out of context to declare something along the lines of ‘you’re a slut, like Laura the choreographer! Oh, first row know what I’m talking about!’ Way to disengage the majority of your audience, guys.
General aural displeasure aside, there are a number of positives which, glass-half-full now firmly shattered, I can now get my teeth into. One actor who manages to find a golden mean between camp and tolerable is Mullins, whose speech is pristine and defines him as the bad guy as well as his generally dark demeanour does. His evil is comedic but has a tangible presence – he is an omen hanging over Hercules throughout while offering a bit of light relief here and there.
Shaffrey has great presence in his role as Hercules’ natural father Zeus, commanding the entire stage whenever he’s on it; which, by the way, is not nearly enough. His role is somewhat limited, but the effortless gusto with which he delivered his lines added a Zeusian dimension to the character ironically not afforded to him by the script. Not to mention his charming off-the-cuff humour which, like Mullins, kept the show the right measure of light-hearted throughout.
The title character, played by Junior Freshman Ó Cinnéide, fittingly deserves the most praise as far as individual performances are concerned. Given the ill-considered pace of the exposition of the narrative, Hercules effectively had to grow up, get scarred for life by social exclusion, receive life-changing news, have a moral epiphany and act on it within the space of less than five minutes. Ó Cinnéide’s biggest achievement is endowing the main character with a boyish charm and lovable innocence which alerts the audience to his plight despite the script which would have him rush through the aforementioned motions to the meatier complication and climax.
The enduring effect of this is that we cheered for him throughout and – literally – sat at the edge of our seats as he went in for the kiss with Meg, the femme-fatale turned true loved played by Amanda Martin. Ó Cinnéide’s vocal performance was sound if a tad unspectacular, but he delivered in a style which further tugged on our already surrendering heartstrings.
Jack Toner’s performance as Phil also deserves praise, despite Phil’s generic character which is very stereotypically American for my European taste. He assumes the role of a retired ‘coach’ persuaded back to his work of training heroes because he ‘believes in this kid’. While there is not a lot to like or dislike about the character, Toner is a natural actor with good timing and a strong stage presence.
Last but by no means least are the muses, a collection of about a dozen very talented young girls whose group performance outshone the best of the individual performances. Appearing periodically to narrate or celebrate events in the story of Hercules, the girls really had fun and made sure we did too. Lines were delivered with unadorned aplomb and each girl gave a memorable vocal performance in her own right while engaging in superficial but always funny banter. This is the one area of the musical in which I truly appreciated the heightened performance style overdone by many other characters, with Carrie Leger, Orla Dunne, Laura Lambert and Rachel Ward particularly standing out in a group in which there was a very high musical standard. They could perhaps have been near flawless had they spent an extra week together as a few choreographic errors crept in, but overall they were the show’s shining light.
On the whole, a very entertaining and clever production featuring an impressive number of talented individuals who gelled well together, marred somewhat by a few annoying directorial decisions which would not have affected the lasting perception so much had they appeared less frequently. These are minor faults separate to the music and the excellent performances from the leads and muses so should not take too much from the final rating, but unfortunately they do.
3.8/5
