Ireland
Heather Neill
In his masterly essay in the programme for Enda Walsh's latest play, Colm Tóibín warns against attempting to pin his work to a particular philosophical position, but simply to read into it a metaphor for humanity's efforts to cope with life while knowing that there is no escape from death. And certainly an attempt at blow-by-blow analysis – even understanding – would be a waste of time. Ballyturk is a thing in and of itself. Having said that, it has recognisable traits of Walsh's previous pieces for the stage and he has himself said that it was inspired by his daughter, then six years Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The traffic warning signs into Limerick City from Shannon Airport told their own story: first “Giant saga in progress”, then “City of Culture giant event”, followed by “Giant’s diversion”. Had Finn McCool made a return visit and started reciting ancient tales? No, but French street theatre company Royal de Luxe had come to town and Grandmother was walking the streets.In July the company took over Liverpool for a few days to tell a deeply moving First World War story based on a Pals' Regiment there. Grandma reappeared to tell a different tale on the streets of Ireland’s first ever City of Read more ...
Marianka Swain
If comedy is tragedy plus time, either too much has elapsed since the fictional events of Jezebel, or not quite enough. Newcomer Mark Cantan's uneven screwball comedy pitting a methodical couple against a scatter-brained opposite with wacky misunderstandings aplenty, lacks the emotional heft to be more than genially inconsequential. And it's too enamoured of the old-fashioned TV sitcoms it references to subvert rather than merely replicate their well-worn tropes. Add a classic living-room set, direct address to camera - sorry, audience - and audible pauses for laugh track, and you get Read more ...
Andy Plaice
They’re calling it Dublin noir and, on first showing, there’s something very stylish about the BBC’s new three-part drama starring Gabriel Byrne. Pubs and cigarette smoke and long, smouldering looks help the cause. There’s plenty of rain too, and a lot of grey and blue in John Alexander’s film, broken up by flashes of colour and arresting, unusual camera angles.Based on the books by John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black), Quirke boasts an impressive cast including Michael Gambon and Geraldine Somerville, with screenwriting duties shared by Andrew Davies, who penned this episode, and Conor Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Not a lot gets spoken in Run and Jump, the gently eloquent first feature from San Francisco-born filmmaker Steph Green, a dramatic strategy that leaves the actors to charge the unsaid with meaning and the audience - not to mention Ireland, ah Ireland - to do the rest. That the result is as finely honed as it is honours not just the unforced beauty of a country that looks especially gorgeous soaked in rain. (The specific locations here are Counties Wicklow and Kerry.) Green to her credit knows how to turn understatement to advantage so that we feel as if we just might be watching life as Read more ...
peter.quinn
Materializing out of London's thriving traditional Irish music scene, this debut recording from new five-piece CrossHarbour presents an 11-track collection whose appeal should go way beyond traditional Irish music initiates. Featuring a judicious mix of tunes and songs, the quintet's musicianship is fabulously impressive.In flute player Órlaith McAuliffe the band has a once-in-a-generation talent, a brilliant, preposterously accomplished musician who has bagged so many All-Ireland titles that her mantelpiece must be groaning under the weight. The band's other melody player, fiddler Sam Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"I don't think it makes a good play, but it's a remarkable one," Sean O'Casey famously remarked of The Silver Tassie, his late-1920s drama about the depredations of war, and how simultaneously right and wrong he was. To be sure, his four-act play set before, during, and after the ravages of World War One isn't "good" if one is referring to something theatrically tidy and manicured and all of a piece.But "remarkable" only begins to describe the affect of a text that peers headlong into the abyss and dares an audience to come along on that traumatic (and, in stage terms, altogether vital) ride Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“You’re great listeners. You have surrendered your ears.” The reverent hush that descended for two hours on the Festival Hall is a new sort of sound at a Christy Moore concert. There was a time when such a gathering would bristle with fervour. Twenty years ago, if not of Irish descent, you could feel distinctly like the odd one out. Things have changed, for any number of factors: the peace dividend in Ulster, the ever-diluting Celtic DNA of the Irish diaspora, while the senior sections of Moore’s audience – and pensioners abounded last night – have grown older and less raucous with him.But Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The ease with which Wallis Bird can flit between genres armed with nothing but a guitar and her warm, raggedly bluesy voice has been apparent since at the very least her 2012 self-titled third album. Even still, those of us who fell for that album’s considerable charms could hardly have expected its architect to celebrate a move to Berlin by going full-on Eurodisco.It’s an acquired taste, the throbbingly incessant disco beat that punctuates “Hardly Hardly”, the opening track - and first single - from Architect from about four bars in, but the multiple Irish Meteor winner Bird has never been Read more ...
emma.simmonds
"I first tasted semen when I was seven-years-old." Those are the first words spoken in Calvary, the superb second film from writer-director John Michael McDonagh. They're delivered by an unseen confessor addressing Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson). The priest's response: "It's certainly a startling opening line." Well, quite. Evidently fucking with us from the off, Calvary wants to shock and is inclined to nod and wink at its own machinations. However, what might at first seem like a movie that's merely incendiary and irreverent in nature gradually reveals itself capable of considerably Read more ...
graham.rickson
Roxanna Panufnik: Tallinn Mass - Dance of Life Patricia Rozario, Jaak Johanson, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra/Mihhail Gerts (Warner)Roxanna Panufnik's Tallinn Mass is an occasional piece, written to celebrate the city's spell as European Capital of Culture in 2011. Panufnik was asked to combine a conventional Latin mass setting with contemporary poems by a pair of leading Estonian poets, their texts inspired by a 15th century painting entitled Dance of Death on display in a Tallinn church. Britten's War Requiem must have been a model, though Panufnik's work is a breezier, less oppressive Read more ...
Veronica Lee
In Irish mythology, a stray sod is an enchanted piece of grass that, if stepped on, leaves a person feeling disorientated and lost, even in familiar surroundings. Although there's no reference to this in Tommy Tiernan's new show, Stray Sod, there's plenty of self-knowing stage Irishness – even, briefly, Oirishness – as he delivers a riveting 80 minutes of comedy that's a sort of state-of-the-nation address about his home country.Tiernan won the 1998 Perrier (now Edinburgh Comedy) award in 1998 for an intricately woven and beautifully delivered tale based on his Irish Catholic childhood; Read more ...