Northern Ireland
Helen Hawkins
Michael John O’Neill’s first full-length play, premiering at the Hampstead's studio space downstairs, is a puzzler. There’s the title, to start with, a Hebrew word that means “binding” and is a reference to the story of Abraham preparing his son Isaac, at God’s command, to be sacrificed.Spotting the reworking of this biblical theme in the text can be a challenge, even though O’Neill usefully has one of the characters treasure her toy lamb, Deadsheep, as a clue. The religion that features here, too, isn’t Judaism but a cultish kind of Pentecostalism, including speaking in tongues, led by a Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Three and a half years on from 2019’s False Alarm, Keep On Smiling comes album number five from Northern Ireland trio, Two Door Cinema Club. Known for having more bounce to the ounce than your average band, their brand of guitar-flecked electro pop has won hearts, minds and sales in roughly equal measure.Confounding expectations from the start, the new album is neatly (nearly) bookended by two instrumentals, the brooding “Messenger AD” and its penultimate partner piece “Messenger HD”. The first brings to mind heyday John Carpenter (or Stranger Things depending on your age). Clocking in at Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Ulster Orchestra’s Prom finished early to accommodate a late-night concert by the esteemed Tredegar Band – but by then, we’d already enjoyed one spectacular brass showcase. Under its justly-praised chief conductor Daniele Rustioni (formerly assistant to Antonio Pappano at Covent Garden), the Belfast-based outfit crackled and glowed in every department but especially at the back, where a robust, assured and often lyrical brass team delighted a virtually full house.Four mostly familiar and well-loved works; no interval; a closing time of 8.35pm that left the option of a leisurely supper in Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The mystifying chasm between Van Morrison’s personality and music became total with last year’s Latest Record Project Volume 1, as masterfully sung, textbook R&B rolled under biliously paranoid words. This 28-song more than double-album was loaded with the likes of “The Long Con”, which found Van “targeting individuals” who are “pulling the strings” and “trying to erase me”, as he came out fighting mad at lockdown, and the pandemic’s temerity in keeping him offstage. Despite singing “Why Are You On Facebook?”, Van seemed to have swallowed the social media Kool Aid.Now, here are 15 more Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You generally find that a movie with Andrea Riseborough in it is worth a look, and so it proves here. Written and directed by Belfast-born Stacey Gregg, Here Before is a nicely-focused story which plays echoes of the supernatural off against a taut family drama set in a naturalistic, usually rain-dampened Northern Ireland. Refreshingly refusing to outstay its welcome, it profits from recognising its limitations (ie a small budget) and working within them.Laura (Riseborough) and Brandon (Jonjo O’Neill) are maintaining an even strain, keeping the family home ship-shape while bringing up their Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
For all his achievements as actor and director, Kenneth Branagh isn’t immediately thought of as a screenwriter, despite his multiple Shakespeare adaptations. That may all change with Belfast, because Branagh’s deeply personal account (he’s both writer and director) of a Northern Irish childhood in the early days of the Troubles has a little touch of magic about it.It’s based on Branagh’s own personal history, which he projects through the character of nine-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill, pictured below, inhabiting the role like a natural). He’s the son of Protestant parents (identified only as Ma Read more ...
aleks.sierz
History is a prison. Often, you can’t escape. It imprints its mark on people, environments and language. And nowhere is this more true that in Northern Ireland, where the history of conflict between the Republican Catholic community and the Loyalist Protestant community is both centuries old, and still raw from the legacy of The Troubles. Kate Reid’s new play, which premiered at the VAULT festival in 2020, and now resurfaces in a co-production between Park Theatre and Plain Heroines, gives a meta-theatrical spin – with the cast also including the playwright – on both the legacy of Bloody Read more ...
Conor Mitchell
A mass, in its simplest form, is the order of prayers that are said in a religious service. It is standardised and has been for centuries, in order to create a theatrical journey that takes us through a service. Composers have always been drawn to the mass as a structure because it has an inherent drama. It draws on themes of rebirth, change, redemption.As a gay man, finding myself and being "reborn" as an authentic "me" has always been held in a state of balance with faith-based backgrounds that have been embedded in society from childhood. I reacted against this. Then I embraced it. Then I Read more ...
Ian Julier
At last! The eagerly awaited first opportunity in the new 2021-22 Belfast concert season to catch up with the Ulster Orchestra’s Chief Conductor, Daniele Rustioni has arrived. He took up his appointment for the new autumn season in 2019, but the arrival of the pandemic early in the following year put an untimely cap on building the relationship, so expectations were running high in Ulster Hall. They were more than amply fulfilled by the cracking delivery of a programme featuring Lyadov, Korngold and Rachmaninov.After months of silence from both orchestra and audience, The Enchanted Lake by Read more ...
John Bungey
If you want to understand the psychic harm that prolonged lockdown can do to a man, then take a listen to Van Morrison's new 28-song set. Actually, you don't need to listen, the song titles say enough: “Where Have All the Rebels Gone?”; “Stop Bitching, Do Something”; “Deadbeat Saturday Night”; “They Own the Media”; “Why Are You on Facebook?”While Sir Van's vast catalogue is revered for transcendent love songs and joyous R&B, it also includes a sub-genre of complaint songs (“They Sold Me Out” on Magic Time or “School of Hard Knocks” on Keep it Simple, for example). With the singer stuck at Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Belfast-based thriller Bloodlands comes from the pen of first-time TV writer Chris Brandon, though he may find some of his thunder being stolen by the show’s producer, Line of Duty supremo Jed Mercurio. Line of Duty is filmed in Belfast too, though it doesn’t advertise the fact on screen. Bloodlands, on the other hand, is steeped in its northern Irish locations both rural and urban, as it unravels a dark and twisty tale of the legacy of the Troubles and how the past has an ugly habit of coming back to poison the present.Ballymena’s own James Nesbitt stars as DCI Tom Brannick, a widower with a Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s odd that there’s still no name for the wave of genre-agnostic British bands of the '00s. Not manic enough to be nu rave, way too interesting for the retro-guitar nu rock revolution / landfill indie tsunami, the likes of Hot Chip, Metronomy, Friendly Fires, Simian and the super-louche Wild Beasts between them mapped out a new area of psychedelic pop. And into this in 2009 came the Scottish / Northern Irish / English band Django Django, a perfect fit into this unnamed movement with their winsome melodies and ability to fold everything from psyche-folk to acid house to rockabilly into their Read more ...