• St. Vincent @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    October 23, 2017 - By 

    We heard it here first. St. Vincent is 80% Irish. She tells us this in a rare glimpse into a personal moment, the stage persona briefly dropped to let the audience in. So, here we all are in the middle of a meticulously constructed piece of musical theatre, and Annie Clark is talking about the first two Irish potato famines. Not even the Great Famine – the rockstar famine – but the first two. “It was always family lore that we were Irish” she smiles, and cynicism be damned, it’s actually believable when she claims Irish crowds are her favourite.…

  • Joshua Burnside w/ Ports & Little Rivers @ Studio2, Liverpool

    October 6, 2017 - By 

    Liverpool’s Studio2 is an odd sort of a place. It’s on the backstreet of a backstreet, far away from Concert Square, the main strip and the horror of the bottled Beatles, 80s bars and fake paddywhackery of Matthew St. For the non-scousers among you, don’t Google Concert Square – it’s not what you think it is. In fact, if you ever get to Liverpool avoid the place like the bloody plague. And yet here we are, among the carparks, mechanics and those kinds of places that can just afford the rent around here. This little oasis in the middle of…

  • My Dad Wrote a Porno @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    September 25, 2017 - By 

    There’s a sense of giddy anticipation in the air as Vicar Street fills up to the brim with die-hard fans and casuals alike. On the third night of Dublin’s inaugural podcast festival one of the biggest hitters in the world of podcasts is in town to debut a brand new chapter in the erotic adventures of Belinda Blumenthal. I am, of course, talking about My Dad Wrote a Porno, the smash hit comedy which has been downloaded over 50 million times and has been given the seal of approval by celebrity guests such as Elijah Wood and Michael Sheen. Jaime…

  • 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…

  • From An Abandoned Work @ Happy Days Beckett Festival

    September 13, 2017 - By 

    For all the grim reality associated with much of Samuel Beckett’s work there is also, frequently enough, a silver lining of humour. This duality is perfectly illustrated in From an Abandoned Work, a prose piece from 1954/5 intended as part of novel that never materialized – hence the title. It took new life as a ‘meditation for radio’ and was first broadcast by the BBC in 1957. Here, it is presented in a secret location as a staged reading, something of an experiment by Director Netia Jones, whose production of Stirrings Still featuring Ian McElhinney proved to be one of…

  • Ryan Adams @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    September 13, 2017 - By 

    Walking into the main room of The Olympia Theatre, you would almost feel as if you are on the set of a 1980s Sci-fi movie as enormous Fender guitar amps, stacks of old cathode Ray TVs and stuffed tigers occupy the stage. As the no doubt Neil Young Rust Never Sleeps-inspired props loom over the audience it makes the room feel really small. This cranks up the excitement levels about being in such an intimate setting with Ryan Adams. Karen Elson opens the proceeding this evening. Touring with Adams on the back of her sophomore LP Double Roses, Elson and…

  • Eh Joe @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    September 7, 2017 - By 

    One of the most satisfying aspects of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival has been its embrace of Beckett in all his diversity – from his emblematic plays to short dramatic works, poetry, and performances written specifically for radio and television. Eh Joe, Beckett’s first play for television, was written for Jack MacGowaran in 1965, though the version on the big screen in Enniskillen’s Ardhowen Theatre comes from a 1986 adaptation by Director Alan Gilsenan, starring Tom Hickey and Siobhan McKenna (as the Woman’s voice). The stark opening scene sees Joe, a middle-aged man in worn, soiled clothes, sat…

  • Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden, Garry O’Briain & ConTempo Quartet @ The Ulster Museum

    September 6, 2017 - By 

    The metaphoric symbolism of traditional musicians performing inside a museum wasn’t lost on button accordionist Máirtín O’Connor, fiddler Cathal Hayden and bouzouki player Garry O’Briain. “Someone will put a friggin’ glass case over us – fossils of folk,” quips O’Connor, the former De Danana and Boys of the Lough alumnus, to much laughter. “We’ll sit here for the rest of our days.” In such an unlikely event, the Ulster Museum would be exhibiting the wrong musicians, for despite deep roots in Irish folk music, O’Connor, Hayden and O’Briain have, over the course of forty plus years, embraced all manner of…

  • Dr Kathryn White: ‘Teaching’ Beckett @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    September 6, 2017 - By 

    Can we teach Samuel Beckett, or is the process more about simply exposing people to The Nobel Prize-winning author and letting his words work their magic on the individual in highly personal ways? This is the main theme of the introductory talk in the Town Hall at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival by Dr. Kathryn White, Lecturer in English in the School of Arts and Humanities at Ulster University. Yes, Beckett is back in Enniskillen after a gap year in 2016, during which the festival successfully upped sticks to Paris. Sagely rebranded as part of the brand spanking…

  • Holly Macve w/ Alana Henderson @ Studio 1A, Bangor

    August 23, 2017 - By 

    Far beyond providing mere entertainment, a festival has the capacity to animate everyday spaces and nudge people to perhaps see their habitual surroundings in a new light. Now in its fifth year, Open House Festival has brought Bangor’s spaces – small and large, public and private, mundane and magical – to life, via the arts in their broadest possible spectrum. The transformative nature of Open House Festival is evident in the concert of Holly Macve, the first concert held in the century-long history of the former The Good Templar Hall, re-baptized Studio 1A in April 2017, after extensive renovations and…