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In Concert
21 March 2010 Reviewed by Andrew Lynch
An Appointment with Mr Yeats
Performed by The Waterboys
Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1, March 15
Rating: ****
Mike Scott sang that ‘‘Dublin is a city full of ghosts’’ on his first solo album in 1995.
Last Monday night, the spirit hovering over the Abbey Theatre must have been that of its co-founder, William Butler Yeats, presumably as curious as the rest of us to see if Scott’s latest version of The Waterboys really could breathe new life into his poems by setting them to rock music.
There was a tangible air of anticipation, along with the distinct feeling that this experiment could just as easily fall flat on its face.
Thankfully, within minutes, it became clear that this was going to work - not as an exercise in reverence or nostalgia, but as an old fashioned rock gig with distinctly superior lyrics and band coordination as slick as any stage performance.
Sure, it’s easy to pick holes in the entire concept - adapting poems without choruses into conventional song structures feels a little artificial, while anyone unfamiliar with Yeats’s work may find that the words fly by too quickly to take them in. But it was all done with such panache, soul and creative energy that only academic purists could have felt like complaining.
Elegantly dressed in a shiny silver shirt and striped trousers, the shaggy-haired Scott is as energetic and compelling a frontman as ever.
Any accusations of bandwagon jumping were dispelled by his betweensong introductions, which were wryly humorous and transparently sincere.
Behind him the superb ten-piece band, including virtuoso fiddler Steve Wickham, Dublin singer songwriter Joe Chester and emerging young vocalist Katie Kim, brewed up a powerful musical storm with the suitably Yeatsian qualities of romance, drama and more than a hint of mysticism.
Highlights included a stripped down blues take on The Lake Isle of Innisfree, a genuinely angry rocked-up rendition of September 1913 and A Song of the Rosy-Cross, which turned into a wild, celebratory Irish jig.
A haunting encore of The Stolen Child, which Scott first performed on the album Fisherman’s Blues more than 20 years ago, felt like a fitting end to the evening.
To general astonishment and delight, however, the band returned for a stirring version of the classic Waterboys track, Don’t Bang the Drum, inevitably followed by their signature song, The Whole of the Moon.
The theatre audience, which had been suitably restrained for most of the evening, were suddenly transformed into a whooping rock crowd, culminating in a series of standing ovations which everyone on stage thoroughly deserved.
An Appointment with Mr Yeats will return to Ireland on November 7 at the Grand Canal Theatre (www.grandcanaltheatre.ie), Docklands,Dublin 2
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