Summer Theatre Festivals and Holidays (specifically mine)

Off to party in America. Much like these gangsters in Drum Belly. Photo: Julien Bhal/PA Wire

A few things:

Philadelphia Portland, Here I Come!

I won't be writing here for the next two weeks as I will in the U.S. for a friend's wedding. But loads of things to look forward to when I get back ...

Cork Midsummer Festival

Tom Creed programmed a dynamic line-up for this year's Cork Midsummer, with much faith invested in local acts. A primetime spot is given to Raymond Scannell whose acting skills boast credits with Druid and Rough Magic, and whose wizardly intermingling of music with dramatic text was seen in Mimic and Alice in Funderland. His new play Deep is the story of a Deep House Junkie and Cork's first generation of ravers, and is directed by ANU's Louise Lowe (Question: has anyone ever seen anything Lowe has directed in an actual theatre and not site-specific?). 

Dancer Ruairí Donovan's Witches wakes us up at 4am for a "ritual exploring the forgotten female". Carmel Winter's new play Best Man, starring Derbhle Crotty and Bryan Murray, seems to be about a modern Irish family and how their relationships change in the years between economic boom to bust. Someone tell Fintan O'Toole, his Power Play might be here.

Lastly: one Cork company I am excited about is Conflicted Theatre. Their show last year, 18-35, had a strong visual flare and their adaptation of The Scarlet Letter in this year's festival could be truly something.

Galway Arts Festival

This year's line-up is spearheaded by Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre. Choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan re-imagines his Olivier-nominated The Rite of Spring, which is presented alongside a new interpretation of another Stravinsky number - Petrushka. A success at last year's festival, the U.S.A's Northlight Theatre Company are back with Bruce Graham's new play Stella and Lou. And the sublime Olwen Fouéré unveils her new work Riverrun celebrating the elemental journey of Anna Livia Plurabelle in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. 

New Director at Galway Theatre Festival

Producer Kate Costello has been announced as the new director of Galway Theatre Festival. The festival has been seen through its five years in existence by previous director Róisín Stack, who has given this integral platform to rising companies such as Mephisto, Moonfish, Fregoli, and Bluepatch Productions. Costello was the producer of the West End Cool season of work by Galway-based companies at last year's ABSOLUT Fringe, and produces for WillFredd and Moonfish. 

That's it from me folks. See you in two weeks for my review of HOWIE THE ROOKIE!!! (Did I mention that I'm excited it's back?)

The Corn Exchange, 'Man of Valour': Commedia dell' Action Hero

Project Arts Centre, Dublin
May 28-Jun 8

I think everyone has that story - where they arrive early at a sold-out performance to put their name on a waiting list and pray that some seat will become available. Man of Valour sold out its run at the Samuel Beckett Theatre during ABSOLUT Fringe 2011, and a couple of nights I spent haunting the place, hoping that some ticket-holder would refuse to show and abdicate their seat to me. It didn't happen, and considering I was commuting from Galway at the time to review the festival, I spent those nights on the long bus journey home, dejected and thwarted.

It was with satisfaction then that I finally got to see the show this week! My review coming up just as soon as I'm reminded of a young Ian Lloyd Anderson ...

CoisCéim, 'Missing': Come Home

Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin Dance Festival
May 23-26

My review of Missing by David Bolger coming up just as soon as I hold your hand ...

Zoe Ní Riordáin, 'The Lesson': You Can't Handle the Tooth

Photo: Dara Munnis

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

May 14-18

My review of Zoe Ní Riordáin's production of The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco coming up just as soon as I'd like nothing better than some arithmetic ...

HotForTheatre, 'Eternal Rising of the Sun': Fighting For Your Life Inside a Killer Thriller Tonight

Pavillion Theatre, Dun Laoighre
May 9


My review of The Eternal Rising of the Sun by Amy Conroy coming up just as soon as I wait after the credits for a secret message ...

Stones Throw Theatre, 'The Broken Promise Land': I Was a Dancer All Along

Theatre Upstairs, Dublin
Mar 4-16

My review of The Broken Promise Land coming up just as soon as I find a dance job on gumtree ...

CoisCéim, 'Pageant': Waving the Flag

Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Feb 23-Mar 2 

I would have liked the time to do an in-depth review of Pageant - the new show by CoisCéim Dance Theatre - as I did with last year's Touch Me.

What's noticeable (after getting over the absence of Nick McGough *sigh*) is that choreographers David Bolger and Muirne Bloomer place themselves at the centre of things, and as sweeping as they are, I do wish that we got more of Robert Jackson and Jonathan Mitchell, though thankfully we get a very sassy routine from the divine Emma O'Kane. 

It is a struggle with Pageant at times to get meaning out of the action (the individual segments at the desk, in particular, were a head-scratcher), and at other times it frustrated as meanings weren't pushed to a dramatic payoff. Also, the acoustic music was too soft and seemed to slow everything way down.

However, the pros outweigh the cons: the performers are stunning (Bolger himself is particularly witted), and Sinéad McKenna's lighting is glorious. The spectacle promised by the title arrives for a fantastic finale as the company set out in force to achieve their goal: to capture that celebrated sense of being a wonder, blissfully watched, and recipient of applause and ovation. Appropriately, that also describes their curtain call. 

What did everybody else think?

Joss Whedon's 'Much Ado About Nothing': There Was a Star Danced

After having just described my on-again-off-again relationship with Shakespeare, I find myself discussing the Bard again, this time in Joss Whedon's film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, which just screened at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. My review coming up just as soon as I was born under a rhyming planet ...

New York Theatre Workshop, 'Once': On Grafton Street in November

Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
Feb 22-Mar 9

I don't have time to do a full review of the stage adaptation of Glen Hansard's adored film, Once. Fans of the original will probably like it, and hearing the music live is special. But did anyone else find it, em, kinda weird at points?

The decision to bill the story as a "musical" is a challenging one considering the low-key acoustic balladry that comes with it, and director John Tiffany turns to some odd choreography during numbers to fulfill that promise. The appeal of Once in the first place was its love for music and the making of music, and I wish that he would have left us to the musicians and their playing rather than trying to include that interpret-yourself movement.

Enda Walsh's book finds moments of comedy but there are some shockingly corny lines. I think the movie was received so well internationally because of its candid portrayal of Irish culture but, my God, lines in the stage play such as "We can't have a city without music. Dublin needs you" lean dangerously close to a Bord Failte advertisement. Dire.

Still, the rapturous ovation at the end clearly signals that this story resonates strongly with people in Dublin. It's a story that they're proud to claim their own, and the musical hits those same notes as the original.


What did everybody else think?  

Stephen McDermott, Conor Madden and Rob McDermott discuss new play about Christopher Marlowe's demise, 'The Secret Art of Murder'

"Hell hath no limits", writes Christopher Marlowe, "for where we are is hell/And where hell is there must we ever be".

Lines like this must have shot up hairs on the back of necks of audiences for whom, living in the Elizabethan era, God and the teachings of the bible were instilled as definitive truths. His antagonist Mephistopheles goes on to describe God as a "wretched" finding comfort in "companions in misery" (and in latin, to boot).

Marlowe's untimely death - reportedly, a stabbing through the eye in a tavern brawl - came only ten days after an arrest warrant issued by the Privy Council, assumingly on grounds of heresy. Speculation over his murder grew with the revelation of a letter by the Council sent to his university insisting that he receive his Masters degree for he was "working on matters touching the benefit of his country". Was Christopher Marlowe a spy?

This world of Elizabethan espionage has attracted playwright Stephen McDermott, whose new play, The Secret Art of Murder, is not a recreation of the dramatist's death but of the investigation into his death that has haunted the literary consciousness for centuries.