Ireland
Demetrios Matheou
The television series Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, along with Robert Atman’s film Gosford Park, notably illustrate the public’s continued fascination with the relation between masters, mistresses and their servants. Yet none of them, not even the Altman, charted that relation with quite as much complexity and ferocity as Strindberg’s Miss Julie, in which no-one emerges well from the class struggle.Written in 1888, the play represented Strindberg’s attempt to bring a new degree of naturalism to theatre. Its style and psychological acuity lend itself well to cinema; though being a Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
For sheer, visceral performances we’ll be lucky if we get anything as strong this year as the central roles from Jack Reynor and Toni Collette in Gerald Barrett’s Glassland. Their mother-son relationship has such an almost unbearable intimacy to it that comparisons to the last chapter of the Terence Davies Trilogy aren’t out of order.In Davies’s film the son was confronting the impending death of his mother, and here Reynor (very different from the confidence of his What Richard Did character) as the long-suffering John is all too aware that’s what faces his mum Jean unless she can battle her Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“A place of ravishing beauty that would completely stop you in your tracks.” So said Christine Bleakley as she introduced the first episode of this six-part series, during which she travels along the Wild Atlantic Way on Ireland's west coast, from County Donegal in the north to County Cork in the south, 15,000 miles of rugged coastline formed over millions of years by the ravages of the Atlantic Ocean.The presenter was speaking about Malin Head, Ireland's most northerly point, but she could have been talking about almost any part of the island of Ireland. It's a tiny country but boy does it Read more ...
Barney Harsent
When a documentary about Irish rock music starts with footage of late-period Bono shuffling about awkwardly dressed in black, my first impulse is to check my iTunes in case he’s surreptitiously shat another album into my computer. The second is to reach for the remote. Thankfully though, this was just a glimpse of what was to come down Ireland's rocky road. I had more than enough time to steel myself as we sped back in time to a point when the fledgling blues scene was first making an impact in the country.In the South during the 1960s, the Church held sway and, with it, a tight grip on the Read more ...
Marianka Swain
How do we respond to a tragedy of infinite mystery? We investigate, we speculate, and we seek to impose meaning, to produce a story that safely contains unfathomable horror. However, those hoping for such reassurance via a traditional theatrical narrative in Bush Moukarzel and Dead Centre’s Lippy will come away disappointed. This darkly absurdist piece floats searching, fundamental questions, but answers came there none.Fifteen years ago, in the small Irish town of Leixlip, police discovered the bodies of 83-three-old Frances Mulrooney (Joanna Banks) and her three nieces, Catherine (Eileen Read more ...
peter.quinn
Taking its title from the opening line of WB Yeats's The Second Coming, this new album from legendary traditional Irish band Altan sees them decamp to Nashville for an imaginative, celebratory exploration of the links between traditional Irish and American roots music. It also allows them to collaborate with many of the musical friends they've made along their 30-plus years journey.Listeners looking for the uniquely driving tune sets that Altan are famous for have plenty to get their teeth into, not least “Buffalo Gals/Leather Britches/Leslie's Reel”, which includes a bracing gear change from Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Watching this edition of Imagine… on Colm Tóibín, it was impossible not to be reminded of Graham Greene’s dictum about childhood being the bank balance of the writer. The key event in Tóibín’s childhood came at the age of eight, when his father’s serious illness saw Colm and his brother sent away to live with an aunt, and a sense of acute abandonment set in that saw him develop a stutter. His most recent novel, Nora Webster, was about just that kind of bewildering silence of a mother after the death of a father.The rivers of grief flow richly through Tóibín’s work. “I’ve never known happiness Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's always an education to see a comic – now a part of the British comedy establishment – performing a gig in his own backyard. And Dara Ó Bríain, at the Royal Theatre in Castlebar, Co Mayo, was just that; he had, as ever, done his homework, immediately throwing in several local references, plus a few more that his Twitter followers would recognise, and told them that returning to his home country on the Irish leg of his Crowd Tickler tour after a few years away from the stage was an education for him too. Ireland is undergoing so much rapid political change at the moment, he said Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Since Gemma Hayes' Mercury nomination in 2003, the Irish singer-songwriter has largely experienced the familar indie fate of meagre commercial returns but increasing cult appeal. How appropriate then, that for her most recent adventures in folk and low-fi, Bones and Longing, she should go down the (increasingly popular) route of crowdfunding. The result is an album that's bound to form an intimate bond with its audience.Bones and Longing kicks off with “Laughter”, a reworking of 2011’s “There’s Only Love” with a more shoe-gazy feel. Its minimal production sets the tone for much of the record Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ireland has had not just an economic meltdown in the past few years, but also a social one. The country that thought it had seen the back of emigration going back several generations has had to deal with its young people once again leaving in droves – albeit this time to staff schools, hospitals and television programmes with teachers, doctors and presenters, rather than men and women to build roads or clean floors, as so many of my parents' generation did.This very painful ending of the Celtic Tiger period of modern Irish history is the starting point for Fiona Doyle's first full-length play Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
All lovers of music have styles they're drawn to and others they loathe. For me the continuing rise of the whiney, vulnerable, male singer-songwriter, his falsetto-flecked voice emoting non-specific but all-encompassing woes, is anathema. Poor old Jeff Buckley, dead these last 17 years, has so much to answer for. The gigantic and continuing public appetite for solipsistic carefully highlighted sensitivity, from Damien Rice to Ben Howard - and way too many more - is apparently and unfortunately endless.The arrival, then, of flop-haired, falsetto-flecked 24-year-old singer-songwriter Andrew Read more ...
Jasper Rees
We think we know the story. As recounted in Philomena, in the 1950s and ‘60s the Irish state and Catholic Church colluded in putting children born out of wedlock up for adoption. A small minority was sent to America, causing a lifetime of trauma and longing in both mothers and children. For portraying one such mother who went in search of her son, Judi Dench was nominated for an Oscar, and the woman she played met Pope Francis. The film’s ending was, if not quite happy, then at least redemptive.Martin Sixsmith, whose book was the source for the film and who was played partly for comedy by Read more ...