Classic Stage Ireland is a new initiative, founded to stage world classics in an Irish idiom and to train Irish actors in the skills required to perform non-contemporary work. Based in the gleaming new arts centre on the campus of Dublin City University, The Helix, it does not want for facilities. Nor, from the evidence of this production, does it want for engaging young performers who speak Shakespeare's verse with comprehension and skill.
Artistic director Andy Hinds, who directs here, has created an ensemble who seem at home with the play and with each other. They impressively employ a variety of Irish accents and voice patterns without falling into the predictable and demeaning use of exaggerated country accents for rural characters. Among a strong cast, Emma Colohan as a whip-smart Rosalind, Sean Duggan as a tart Touchstone, Patrick Joseph Byrnes as an elegantly disaffected Jaques and the wonderful discovery Elaine O'Dea as Celia stand out.
What this production desperately needed, however, was a directorial concept: there was little overall sense of why the play had been staged other than as a conduit for the company's mandate. The programme tells us that Arden represents nostalgic images of Ireland, and this is suggested by a few Chieftans posters, the exiles' traditional songs and Hymen in a mummer's costume. But these ideas are not drawn out, nor used in a thorough or critical way: we do not learn what the court represents in respect to this idealised image of Ireland's past.
The production seems trapped by its casting requirements, having actors reappear within minutes as new characters with nary a meta-theatrical wink at the convention. And these days, it seems naive to randomly cross-dress various characters without an apparent point of view about the implied gender politics - and yet we get Audrey and Phebe en travestie for no apparent reason other than to provoke a laugh at big blokes in frocks. These actors have proven themselves well able to tackle a more thorough and challenging directorial approach.
· Until February 26. Box office: 00 353 1 700 7000.
