• Stirrings Still @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 3, 2015 - By 

    Rain pours steadily and the water lies in pools on the road, shooting up like silver ribbons as the bus moves through the Fermanagh countryside. The hills of Donegal flank the route to the left. They say that Lough Erne lies in Fermanagh half the year, while Fermanagh lies in Lough Erne the other half; no matter, the wet July weather can’t dampen the enthusiasm of the Samuel Beckett fans heading to a secret destination to see a theatrical performance of the playwright’s final prose piece, Stirrings Still. The secret locations for performances have become a popular facet of the…

  • Lisa Dwan @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    July 28, 2015 - By 

    Talks related to Samuel Beckett are an integral feature of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival. This year, the inaugural Billie Whitelaw Memorial Lecture in the Southwest College commemorated the late Beckett actress who passed away in December 2014. Lisa Dwan, in a very real sense the heir to Whitelaw, had the honour of delivering the first Billie Whitelaw Memorial Lecture and gave a talk every bit as captivating as the interpretations of Beckett’s plays that have won her unreserved international acclaim. In introducing Dwan, the festival’s Deputy Artistic Director Liam Browne quoted a New York Times review of…

  • May B @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    July 27, 2015 - By 

    Ten spectral figures, white-faced, in white night-clothes come slowly onto the stage. They stand stock-still and silent in the dim half-light. Minutes pass. Schubert’s plaintive Deer Leiermann from the Winterreise song circle accompanies their numb vigil. A shrill whistle-blast signals slow shuffling. Another, more urgent, commands greater synchronized movement. The figures draw into a circle and grunt in unison. A tighter circle, more grunting. Walking mechanically to and fro in step, panting as one. Walking, panting and grunting rhythmically as one. Suddenly as one they face the audience. The one staring at the other in powerful symbiosis.  “Fini, c’est fini,”…

  • Joanna MacGregor @ The Market Place Theatre, Armagh

    April 9, 2015 - By 

    Many of the world’s greatest classical pianists are content to spend the entirety of decades-long careers playing the same scores. Joanna MacGregor, however, is cut from a very different cloth. The British pianist, conductor and curator’s journey has been marked by adventure and an open-minded approach to music that has seen collaborations with artists as diverse as Talvin Singh, Django Bates, Dhafer Youssef, Andy Sheppard and Brian Eno. MacGregor may be world-renowned for her interpretations of Bach, but interdisciplinary projects like 2002’s Crossborder, which fused Chinese traditional music, contemporary dance, film and computer technology prove that, to borrow from jazz parlance,…

  • Snowpoet @ The Little Museum of Dublin

    March 3, 2015 - By 

    “Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence”, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp once observed when the poetic muse had taken hold. Or perhaps it was the wine. Regardless, Fripp would doubtless have approved as music, wine and silence, in various combinations, were all in good supply at Snowpoet’s Dublin concert. The concert was part of music production company and record label Ergodos’ series of specially curated concerts sponsored by Santa Rita, the legendary Chilean wine makers, whose stunning red and white wines on offer at the reception teased loose the tongues and gently flushed the cheeks of the…

  • Salome @ Grand Opera House, Belfast

    February 11, 2015 - By 

    Macabre, provocative, sexually-charged, unrelentingly intense; Northern Ireland Opera’s visceral interpretation of Richard Strauss’s opera Salomewas all these things and more. And few who were present are ever likely to forget the sight of soprano Giselle Allen’s Salome, drenched in John the Baptist’s blood and pleasuring herself, in paroxysms of ecstasy, with his decapitated head. This matinee performance was undoubtedly a stimulating alternative to church and Sunday lunch. As one well-heeled septuagenarian lady commented at the end of this very rock ‘n’ roll show: “I’ve never spent a Sunday afternoon quite like that before.” Nor Allen, as like as not. In…

  • Israel Galvan @ The MAC, Belfast

    October 20, 2014 - By 

    La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), the title of flamenco dancer Israel Galván’s programme suggests an evening of nostalgia. Certainly, there’s a human tendency to idiolize the past and this is true also of music. The Golden Age of Jazz is a much used term to refer to the period between the 1920s and 1940s, despite the racial discrimination against black jazz musicians. Flamenco purists too, point to the times when a singer, guitarist and dancer defined the art form, despite the fact that flamenco in its earliest incarnation was just a singer accompanied by rudimentary rhythm.  Memories can…

  • Not I, Footfalls & Rockaby @ The Mac

    September 10, 2014 - By 

    In theatrical terms, Lisa Dwan’s trilogy of playwright Samuel Beckett’s celebrated short plays at The MAC represented a significant first, and in all likelihood, a last. The actress’s stated intention to retire from performing ‘Not I’ by the end of 2015 means that these handful of Belfast shows had an added spice. It’s hardly surprising that Dwan can see the finishing line for her role as Mouth, as the emotional, technical and psychological demands must surely exact a price. Head strapped to a board, eyes and ears covered, arms immobilized, enveloped in total darkness – this is sensory deprivation taken…

  • 100 Years of Irish Women Artists 1870-1970

    August 21, 2014 - By 

    Irish Women Artists 1870–1970 at The Ava Gallery is one of the most significant exhibitions of its kind for many years. The seventy five paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures represent some of the most important artists in the history of modern Irish art and have been gathered from privately owned collections  throughout Ireland. This doesn’t happen every day. In fact, the last time historical Irish women artists were accorded such an honor was back in the 1980s. “I do think it’s very significant,” says Claire Dalton, co-manager of the exhibition. “So much happened in that time period that still resonates…

  • Happy Days Festival: Catastrophe

    August 12, 2014 - By 

    It seemed certain that somebody would let the cat out of the bag. A tongue would slip and the secret would surely be out. The mystery surrounding the location of the Ceithleann Island Theatre Company’s performances of Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe was an imaginative programming touch of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival and a great publicity generator. Despite two performances every day bar one throughout the marathon eleven-day festival, nobody spilled the beans. On this day, the bus routinely picks up about fifty people from Enniskillen Castle and heads out into the wilds of the Fermanagh countryside – destination…