Ireland
Boyd Tonkin
The giraffe still baffles me. This model beast appeared stage right at the Royal Albert Hall during Jennifer Walshe’s The Site of an Investigation, only to be loudly wrapped by a pair of percussionists and then removed. A critique of mindless consumerism, a satire on the destructive domination of nature (both among this work’s sprawl of themes), or a little absurdist interlude of the kind Walshe evidently enjoys? Never mind: we soon moved on to another mind-scrambling stunt in the genre-busting performance for voice and orchestra that the Irish composer staged for the Proms with the BBC Read more ...
peter.quinn
An artist with a myriad of strings to his bow – gifted wordsmith, multi-instrumentalist, captivating storyteller – what enables James Vincent McMorrow’s singularly personal songs to take flight is the fact that he’s also a supreme melodist.The Less I Knew is chock full of killer chorus hooks, with album opener “Hurricane”, in which McMorrow’s gloriously harmonised vocal line is supported by the additional ear candy of Alex Borwick's horn parts, being a case in point. Borwick also supplies some driving mandolin work on “Heads Look Like Drums”, as well as engineering and mixing the Read more ...
Maria Stuarda, Irish National Opera review – two queens sing for the crown, with spectacular results
David Nice
You don’t plan a production of a Donizetti opera without having top voices in mind. For what, after all, is his simplification of Schiller’s Mary Stuart but bel canto business as usual with a bit of high drama attached? Internationally celebrated Irish singers Tara Erraught and Anna Devin (Amy Ní Fhearraigh at some performances) are the royal cousins at deadly loggerheads. They don’t disappoint; nor do the rest of the cast, orchestra and chorus.If director Tom Creed and designer Katie Davenport throw in more than a dash of camp around the central conflict, that’s mostly par for the course. Read more ...
David Nice
"Elysian" is the best way to describe the dream gardens of Ireland's Lismore Castle in early June: lupins, alliums and peonies rampant in endless herbaceous borders, supernatural perspectives towards the main building on various levels. This year’s Blackwater Valley Opera Festival production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, not so much: easily adjustable circumstances worked too often against talented performers in the converted stables space pressed into service once a year.Let’s start with the placement of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, so phenomenal under conductor Peter Whelan playing for the Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
The Quiet Girl is adapted faithfully from Claire Keegan’s wonderful short story, Foster, first published in the New Yorker magazine in 2010 and then expanded into a novella.Much of the dialogue in Colm Bairéad’s beautiful, mainly Irish-language film, which is in many ways about the power of silence, is reproduced unchanged from Keegan's book.Set in 1981, the first scenes present nine-year-old Cáit (the marvellous Catherine Clinch, a 12-year-old newcomer) as more obviously unfortunate than in the book, perhaps to build up back-story.She’s bullied and slow at school and wets the bed at home, Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Incanting, declaiming, and growling, as if actual singing might prettify the Fontaines DC’s post-punk dirges, Grian Chatten has never sounded more aggrieved than he does on the Irish combo’s third album. Disarmingly, he also sounds younger on Skinty Fia than he did on the group’s brash debut, Dogrel (2019), and its startlingly seasoned follow-up, A Hero’s Death (2020). It’s as if the man can no longer shield the boy. There’s a logical reason for this, and it applies not just to the frontman but to the Fontaines as a collective and the places they find themselves in, musically Read more ...
graham.rickson
Ealing Studios’ output encompassed much more than comedy, though a viewing of 1952’s The Gentle Gunman suggests that political drama wasn't one of their strengths.Based on a play by Alexander McKendrick’s cousin Roger MacDougall, and directed by Ealing stalwart Basil Dearden, The Gentle Gunman’s problems start with its casting. Dirk Bogarde and John Mills rarely convince as brothers serving in the IRA during the early years of World War II, both actors struggling to maintain convincing Irish accents for more than a few seconds.There’s a fascinating film to be made about Ireland’s shady Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The terrain Holding occupies is well travelled, but this new ITV four-part drama travels over it really well. The landmarks are familiar: a quiet rural community, a cop with an unhealthy lifestyle and a secret sorrow, a feud between rival lovers of the local lothario, a long-buried trauma that’s suddenly unearthed. We could be in any rural location in the primetime drama of the past half-century.But as soon as elderly Mrs Meany (Brenda Fricker, pictured below) comes into shot on her mobility scooter, riding into town like a lone gunslinger with a perm, it’s clear this drama will be having its Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Irish teenager Saoirse Murphy has a dirty mouth. And she’s not afraid to use it when talking to the nuns at her convent school. But it soon emerges that her feistiness is a cover for some very disturbing problems in Sarah Hanly’s energetic debut monologue, Purple Snowflakes and Titty Wanks, which was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin last year and now visits London’s Royal Court for a short run. And although much of the material is familiar, it’s thrillingly performed by the playwright herself.Beginning with Saoirse explaining her discovery of the joys of masturbation to her best Read more ...
David Nice
One thing’s clear from Irish National Opera’s bold championship of Vivaldi: he’s his own man when it comes to the stage, not some baroque generic, even if Bajazet is a pasticcio incorporating other composers’ music. He doesn’t characterize through arias as keenly as Handel, but his string writing is unique, and what a revelation to have Peter Whelan’s inspirational guidance from the harpsichord of 10 other players in the Irish Baroque Orchestra.Visually, there's much to admire. Molly O'Cathain's tarnished gold-and-wood set helps the singers to project - it's perfect for touring - and works Read more ...
graham.rickson
Malcolm Arnold: Complete Symphonies and Dances National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Queensland Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Penny (Naxos)Working through these nine symphonies in chronological order is a fascinating and disturbing experience, the giddy peaks and deep troughs of Sir Malcolm Arnold’s personal life mirrored in sound. If you’ve only ever encountered Arnold’s lighter output, you’re in for a surprise. There’s plenty of sardonic humour and a lengthy string of improbably memorable tunes, but the prevailing impression is one of deep seriousness. Arnold often wrote for large Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
“You can’t kick a cow in Leenane without some bastard holding a grudge for 20 years,” sighs Pato Dooley (Adam Best) prophetically; he has already started making his escape from that particular Galway village, doing lonely stints on London building sites. For 40-year-old unmarried Maureen Folan (Orla Fitzgerald), the woman Pato had dubbed "the beauty queen of Leenane" in her youth, departure is a national pastime: Ireland, in this 25th anniversary revival of Martin McDonagh's breakout play, means “always someone leaving”, she suggests. For her conniving mother Mag (Ingrid Craigie), Read more ...