• Purgatorio: Walking For Waiting For Godot @ Happy Days Enniskillen Beckett Festival

    August 31, 2018 - By 

    “We are all born mad. Some remain so.” It’s been a wait alright. Six years, in fact, for the first English presentation of Waiting for Godot at the Happy Days International Enniskillen Beckett Festival. Had Vladimir and Estragon – Samuel Beckett’s beloved vagabonds from his landmark play – had to wait six years in vain for Godot to arrive, they surely would have hanged themselves from that famous tree. Previous editions of the festival have seen renditions in Yiddish, German and French – the language of the original manuscript – and now, like buses, two performances in English by different…

  • The Old Tune @ Happy Days Enniskillen Beckett Festival

    August 27, 2018 - By 

      One of the great things about the Happy Days Enniskillen Beckett Festival – and there are many – is the opportunity to experience rarely performed Samuel Beckett plays. The Old Tune, for one, doesn’t get too many run outs. Perhaps that’s because it’s comedic portrayal of two elderly men struggling with memory and the onslaught of modernity is considered too light for serious Beckett actors and directors – anxious to sink their teeth into the meatier existential stuff. However, in the hands of nuanced actors Barry McGovern and Eamon Morrisey, and with the subtle guidance of Director Conall Morrison,…

  • What Where @ Happy Days Enniskillen Beckett Festival

    August 16, 2018 - By 

    Even before the passengers disembark at a secret destination in the Fermanagh countryside, the drama has begun. Franz Schubert’s Winterreise provides the soundtrack en route before the bus stops. The door opens. A woman in green overalls gets on. Megaphone in hand, a bandana masking her face, though oddly, with an opening for the mouth. She walks silently down the aisle, scrutinizing the faces as though searching for the guilty party. Silence descends amongst the passengers. Search over, the woman gets off the bus, as do the passengers, who find themselves in front of a green cattle shed or some…

  • Eugene Onegin @ The Grand Opera House

    July 11, 2018 - By 

    ‘Where are they now, those golden days of my youth?’ The past hangs over the characters in Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin like a veil. The folly of youth and the burning shame of costly pride are not dimmed by the passage of time, but are instead, only magnified. Early in Scottish Opera’s vibrant production there is a potent sign that the bucolic surroundings of harvest time and the budding spirit of spring love might soon be dispelled.  As Madame Larina (Alison Kettlewell} and Nurse Filipyevna (Anne-Marie Owens) reminisce about the courtships of their youth, and as the matriarch’s daughters…

  • Snowpoet – Thought You Knew

    June 22, 2018 - By 

    Two years on from its well-received eponymous debut on Two Rivers Records, Snowpoet returns with a sumptuous offering of sweet melodies, meditative textures and poetic lyricism. Snowpoet is now part of Dave Stapleton’s Edition Records – one of the UK’s most progressive labels, and one with for big ears for some of the most adventurous music currently produced in Europe. Essentially the song-writing vehicle for vocalist Lauren Kinsella and bassist Chris Hyson, Snowpoet has played in everything from a duo to a quintet setting, though here the duo is joined by core Snowpoet collaborators Josh Arcoleo on tenor saxophone, Nick…

  • Metá Metá @ Black Box, Belfast

    June 11, 2018 - By 

    Two years have passed since Metá Metá’s memorable gig at the Crescent Arts Centre as part of Moving On Music’s Beat Root festival. The São Paulo band’s incendiary performance that evening was all the more remarkable given the absence of saxophonist Thiago  França  forced to spend the night in a Belfast hospital due to a virus. Without him, vocalist Juçara Marçal, guitarist/vocalist Kiko Dinucci, electric bassist Marcelo Cabral and drummer Sergio Machada served up a heady brew of indie rock laced with Afro-Brazilian and psychedelic colors. Back to full strength for its return trip to Belfast, Metá Metá greets Black…

  • Xylouris White @ Black Box, Belfast

    June 2, 2018 - By 

    A lute and drum kit doesn’t sound like a combination that should really work, but in this post-genre age almost anything goes. And, when the musicians in question are veritable virtuosos, as is the case with Cretan laouto player George Xylouris and Australian-born, New York-based drummer Jim White, then the results are nothing short of spectacular. This duo already had a dozen European gigs under its belt in support of its third album, Mother (Bella Union, 2017), which was just as well, as the late arrival of the lute-like lauto-temporarily lost in transit-meant there was no time for a sound-check.…

  • Cosi Fan Tutte @ Grand Opera House, Belfast

    November 26, 2017 - By 

    Who is immune to a little flattery? Who, if anyone, cannot be seduced? Who, if we’re honest, is not tempted by forbidden fruits? As Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte would have it, nobody – least of all women. All Women Do It translates the title of Mozart’s opera, written in the prolific period before he died. Near-full houses for three nights in The Grand Opera House for this Northern Ireland Opera production was proof that Cosi Fan Tutte remains one of the most popular operas in the world. It wasn’t always so. In fact, it wasn’t until the twentieth…

  • Interview: Pat Metheny

    November 9, 2017 - By 

    It’s taken a while, but the wait for the many Irish fans of twenty-time Grammy-winning guitarist and composer Pat Metheny will finally be over when he plays his first ever gigs in Ireland, in Dublin on 13 November and in Belfast on 14 November. Given Metheny’s extensive, globe-trotting tours since the mid-1970s it seems odd that the Missouri guitar legend has never previously made it to Ireland, a curious fact that’s not lost on him. “I have been wanting to play here for forty plus years now,” says Metheny, “and for one reason or another, it has never happened. I…

  • Quad @ Happy Days Samuel Beckett Festival

    September 13, 2017 - By 

    “Imagine you have no objects, well, all I can do with no objects is pick up none of them.” It sounds like a teasing philosophical line from Waiting for Godot but in fact, it’s part of the logic used by Bristol University mathematician Conor Houghton to explain the inner workings of Samuel Beckett’s 1981 play for television, Quad – Beckett’s only play to be inspired by dance. Houghton’s entertaining lecture in Enniskillen’s Ardhowen Theatre is the prelude to a rare performance of Quad, in a joint production by Pan Pan Theatre and Irish Modern Dance Theatre. Houghton’s lecture, however, begins…