BWW Reviews: Yeatsian Magic Bubbles AT THE HAWK'S WELL

"I call to the eye of the mind" begins the Musicians' chant in WB. Yeats's dance play, first performed in 1916. The thing about a playwright with the awards of a poet: the audacity to overly describe and paint the stage with words is never far off. If Yeats sought little sparsity in dramatic speech, he certainly did in form, and you don't have to go further than At the Hawk's Well to see the import of minimalist elements, specifically from the classical Japanese theatre of Noh (albeit, from a badly translated text).

Yet, relying on the 'mind's eye' of the audience to sort through a density of poetic detail is not enough, and Blue Raincoat director Niall Henry knows that a particular space is conductive to the imagery of this drama: the legend of an Old Man (John Carty) and hero Cuchulainn (Brian Devaney) seeking drops of immortality at a magic well overlooked by a faerie hawk Guardian (Fiona McGeown).

With the help of designers Barry McKinney and Paul McDonnell, Henry has brought the mythic drama into even more minimalist territory, throwing out the zither and gong instruments mentioned in the stage instructions, as well as the blue cloth to suggest the well. Instead, a crescent of gold-lit sand encompasses the space, with three black-robed Musicians (Nicola MacEvilly, Sandra O'Malley and Ciaran McCauley) perched along it, their haunting melodies setting the scene and the action. Simple projection releases gorgeous images from the text: an ancient white hazel tree; a wicked bird in descent.

When the Old Man enters, his wasted lifetime waiting for the well water is inscribed deep in the long lines of the actor's yellow mask, and felt in Carty's sculpted and weighed movements (indicative of the Blue Raincoat company's discipline for physical theatre practices). Comparatively, the smooth mask of Cuchulainn shows little fear, and while Devaney is less considerable in speech and movement, his robustness sells the part.

McGeown's Guardian may be without wings (Edmund Dulac's hawk costume for the first production is near iconic) but a black vein inked along her body bestows an otherworldly presence. When Cuchulainn approaches the well, the Guardian swoops in McGeown's piercing physicality, her twitching gestures amazingly bird-like, fluttering fingers as if ruffling feathers. Dancing around the hero seems to sap him of his energy and redirect it elsewhere, as projections of a bleak landscape begin to multiply.

Henry's churchly direction brings out the sacredness in Yeats's play, its sense of ritual and omnipresence of the supernatural. The intense intertwining of form and content bespeaks a precursor to Samuel Beckett, while the equal energies of acting, song, physical movement and scenery (a real gust of total theatre) spread the drama's channels of regeneration and decay further than before.

At the Hawk's Well runs at The Factory Performance Space, Sligo until 17 July. For more information and tickets see blueraincoat.com.

To post a comment, you must register and login.