Celtic Extravaganzas a Mixed Bag

Welcome to the post-Riverdance Celtic world. Riverdance has toured the world, done a stint at Radio City Music Hall, and its rebroadcasts have been a staple for PBS fundraisers for over a decade. It’s done more to revitalize interest in music from the Celtic lands than anything since the 1961 debut of the Clancy Brothers on the Ed Sullivan Show. Riverdance has also spawned a cottage industry of smug critics, their complaints over the show’s more garish moments fueled in no small part by lead step dancer Michael Flatley’s flamboyant--some would say egotistical--personality. Riverdance begat Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames, and Celtic Tiger. Those who like these shows use adjectives such as “theatrical” and “sensational” as compliments; those who don’t use the same terms pejoratively.

I have come neither to praise nor bury Riverdance, rather to offer a few thoughts on a recent viewing of another Irish-themed stage show, A Christmas Celtic Sojourn. In my view, all of the so-called “Celtic” stage shows have similar virtues and demerits. Let’s start with this: the purists don’t have a leg to dance on when they slam such shows an “inauthentic.” Celtic music, as scholar June Skinner Sawyers wisely observed, is at core a “marketing term” that has little connection to music’s origins. Very, very little of what is called “traditional” music actually is, and most of what we think of as “Irish” or “Scottish” music is a post-1970s reinterpretation of songs and tunes that were canonized during the nineteenth-century after the Victorians cleaned them up. And, as every musician and fan of music knows, traditions that don’t change wither and die. So let’s just judge these things on their own merit, not some romantic (and mythical) standard.

I caught A Christmas Celtic Sojourn in Northampton, MA at a nearly full Calvin Theatre on December 12. This show is the brainchild of Cork-born Brian O’Donovan, now a mainstay of WGBH (public) radio in Boston. O’Donovan emceed a show that was one-part Riverdance and several parts A Prairie Home Companion--a sprawling night of music, dance, and storytelling loosely structured around Yule themes. O’Donovan is witty and charming--think Garrison Keillor with a brogue. Throughout the evening he acted as the interlude between musical numbers as he read poems and told stories. His Irish fruitcake tale was a delight that found the seam between a cultural education and a shaggy dog tale.

Like Riverdance, Sojourn also featured lots of step dancing. The principle dancer, Donegal-based Caitlín Nic Gabhann, is a veteran of Riverdance, which means there is actually some upper body movement. She has clearly mastered all of the technical aspects of step dancing, but her gestures and arm movements are classically post-Riverdance in that they are informed as much by modern dance as Dublin’s misty past. As good as Nic Gabhann is, she was upstaged by the pint-sized Harney Academy of Irish Dancing troupe of Walpole, MA. These kids--including an Asian-American lad who’s as short as a New York minute--are so good it’s scary. Their precision is such that they conjure visions of vaudeville stage parents pushing them to precocious heights. Crowd pleasures for sure!

The music itself was decidedly mixed. Seamus Egan of Solas served as musical director, but the evening’s low lights were none of his doing. There were some fabulous performances, and how could it be otherwise with fourteen of Celtic music’s brightest and best on stage? The set done by Orkney fiddler Chris Stout and harper Catrionia McKay (from Dundee, Scotland) was nothing short of brilliant--edgy, experimental, dynamic, and wistful one moment, and shot through with energy the next. Many of the group tunes were wonderful, especially when Stout’s bowing was supplemented by the other fiddlers on stage: Hanneke Cassel and Amanda Cavanaugh. Toss in McKay, nonpareil cellist Natalie Haas, squeeze box artist Seán Óg Graham, bass player Chico Huff, and percussionist Eamon Murray and they can light up even a big barn like the Calvin.

The low spots? They occurred mostly when the forced Yule theme emerged. I love Celtic music (whatever it might be) but I’m just bored, bored, bored with Christmas carols and I doubt many of us paid to hear “Joy to the World” and “Oh, Holy Night.” Heck, we’ve been hearing those at the mall since mid-October. I also confess that I am not a fan of Heidi Talbot, the Irish-born lass who crooned most of the carols. Many people think she has a lovely voice, which I’d not dispute, but her whispery little-girl intonation wears thin, which is also an adjective I’d use to describe tones that are mostly upper-range and have little bottom or grit. The vocal star of the evening was actually Robbie O’Connell, a graying vet who was in fabulous voice. His rendition of John McCutcheon’s “Christmas in the Trenches” was a poignant moment. It also served to remind that Celtic extravaganzas generally work best when they do the unexpected. A Christmas Celtic Sojourn is now in its eighth year and one hopes that as it evolves that it will choose to accentuate what is unique and leave the canned seasonal jollity in the mall.