Dublin
Jenny Gilbert
Sean Holmes is artistic director of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, yet his revival of this seminal Irish play has taken two years to come home to him. The production was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising, the miserably bloody six-day revolt that gave birth to the Republic of Ireland. It has since been seen by more than 50,000 people.Given that Holmes is English (he’s a Sean, not a Seàn as in O’Casey, the author of the play), it was remarkable to be asked to direct such a famous Irish text addressing the issue of national identity. It was Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Colours had meanings for Emil Nolde. “Yellow can depict happiness and also pain. Red can mean fire, blood or roses; blue can mean silver, the sky or a storm.” As the son of a German-Frisian father and a Schleswig-Dane mother, Nolde was raised in a pious household on the windswept flat land on the border on Germany and Denmark that his family farmed. The Bible was practically the only book in the household and had been in the family for nine generations, and his understanding of colour was drawn as if from a chromatic psalter. “Every colour harbours its own soul,” he wrote, "delighting or Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Although he made his name with the generally upbeat grooves and licks of his Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle has often played Irish family and social life as a blues full of sorrow and regret. In his Booker-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a bitter parental break-up shadows the wee hero’s passage through childhood. Domestic violence and the self-medication found in booze fuel The Woman Who Walked into Doors and its sequel, Paula Spencer. Nowhere, however, has Doyle pushed his bantering, motor-mouthed Dubliners further down into darkness than in this latest novel. The results may divide his Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The marvellous National Gallery of Ireland, founded in the 1860s, has opened its doors to its brilliantly revamped, updated and expanded galleries. As a spectacular bonus in its opening summer, Vermeer and Masters of Genre Painting reposes in the enfilade of the newly re-done permanent galleries for temporary exhibitions.After half a dozen years effectively closed for refurbishment, the new National Gallery of Ireland joins a roster of other modernised and expanded institutions. Just a year ago the Switch House opened at Tate Modern, and at the end of June, the V&A will open its massive Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Playwrights have long migrated to the small screen in search of better pay and room to manoeuvre. Most don’t leave it as long as Conor McPherson, who was perhaps cushioned from necessity by the global success of The Weir. A quarter of a century after his stage debut, Paula (BBC Two) is his first go at television drama. In order not to frighten the horses, it features some conventional post-watershed thrillerish tropes: an extramarital affair, a psychopath, a murder, a police investigation.But some things never change: frightening the horses is a McPherson speciality. Tom Hughes plays white Read more ...
Liz Thomson
As Imelda May releases her fifth CD, it can’t but help that Bob Dylan has come out as a fan – it was, she wrote, "like being kissed by Apollo himself". No doubt his buddy T Bone Burnett passed him a copy of the album, for he produced it in Los Angeles, where it was recorded over seven days, with guest appearances from guitarist Jeff Beck and pianist and band leader Jools Holland, on whose TV shows May has guested several times.Life. Love. Flesh. Blood is the fifth studio outing for the girl from Dublin’s Liberties, and it's full of emotion, polished and stylised. May has performed with Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Some artists you'd only ever want to see in a club or a theatre, but if ever there was a group who belonged naturally in stadiums and arenas, it's U2. They have a history of elaborate stage productions, and for this tour, focusing on last year's album Songs of Innocence, they've shown the opposition a clean pair of heels with a remarkable show based around a wall of screens that stretches out towards the back of the auditorium.It's a kind of rock'n'roll IMAX, projecting giant blow-ups of the band in action or dazzling panoramas of imagery to illustrate the songs. Particular attention has been Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Panti Bliss is not a name on many people's lips outside Ireland, but over the past year she has gone from little-known club performer to self-described “accidental activist”, and this utterly charming, funny and touching show tells her story.Panti (aka Rory O'Neill) is a drag artist who runs her own club in Dublin. Early last year she appeared on a chat show on Irish national broadcaster RTE, during which she made some innocuous remarks about people campaigning against equal marriage, calling them homophobic. The parties sued, RTE cravenly gave in and paid damages, but a national debate was Read more ...
Sean Foley
The (pronoun) Walworth (area in South London, near the Elephant and Castle) Farce (a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and improbable: often incomprehensible plot-wise, they are also characterised by physical comedy, the use of deliberate absurdity, and stylised performances).When Enda Walsh asked me out for a coffee in London last summer, little did I know that 18 months later I would be in Dublin coaxing pratfalls from all manner of Gleesons while having in-depth discussions about dysfunctional families... Or should Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Though advertised as a heartfelt and autobiographical work, U2's 13th studio album tells you far more about the state of the music industry than it does about the intimate inner stories of the musicians. Tying the album release to the launch of Apple's iPhone 6 merely reinforced the view that U2 is no longer a band, more an offshore corporation, and was bound to strike many people as a desperate ploy from an outfit struggling to stay meaningful. Humiliatingly, many iTunes users have been so enraged by finding Songs of Innocence landing uninvited in their libraries that Apple have had to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When Amber (****) was shown earlier this year in Ireland, the crime series created by Rob Cawley and Paul Duane for state broadcaster RTE caused a kerfuffle as (giving nothing away) it didn't follow the usual narrative of teenager-goes-missing-police-miss-clues-and-family-implodes drama. But that's all yet to pan out, and last night's opening episode of four started traditionally enough as Amber, the 14-year-old daughter of Ben and Sarah Bailey, lied to her parents about visiting her friend and didn't arrive home when expected.The family implosion was already under way as Ben and Sarah ( Read more ...
Andy Plaice
They’re calling it Dublin noir and, on first showing, there’s something very stylish about the BBC’s new three-part drama starring Gabriel Byrne. Pubs and cigarette smoke and long, smouldering looks help the cause. There’s plenty of rain too, and a lot of grey and blue in John Alexander’s film, broken up by flashes of colour and arresting, unusual camera angles.Based on the books by John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black), Quirke boasts an impressive cast including Michael Gambon and Geraldine Somerville, with screenwriting duties shared by Andrew Davies, who penned this episode, and Conor Read more ...