Ireland
Hozier, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - sublime voice and a super-sized soundWednesday, 13 December 2023
There was something misleading about the opening of this concert. As Andrew John Hozier-Byrne and his band stepped onstage, the stage was lit up by a single spotlight, focused around the microphone that the singer stepped up to. Yet the following... Read more... |
Christine Tobin, EFG London Jazz Festival, World Heart Beat review - an enchanting ode to homeSaturday, 18 November 2023
This UK premiere of the award-winning, Dublin-born vocalist and composer Christine Tobin’s latest project, Returning Weather, presented an otherworldly ode to finding home – casting multiple perspectives on our yearning for connection and human... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Wexford Festival Opera - four operas and a recital in one crazy dayWednesday, 08 November 2023
Imagine a Glyndebourne season where all those promising young singers in the chorus get to be principals in a series of fringe operas. At Wexford, they already have their work cut out, though this year not so much in the three main rarities – hence... Read more... |
Dance First - the travails of Samuel BeckettSaturday, 04 November 2023
Dance First takes its title from a line in Samuel Beckett’s most famous work Waiting for Godot. “Perhaps he could dance first and think afterwards,” says the tramp Estragon of Pozzo’s slave Lucky, who then proceeds to do both in a typically absurd... Read more... |
Lies We Tell review - fear and gaslighting in 1860s IrelandSaturday, 14 October 2023
It is 1864 and the lush green lawns of Knowl, the stately home in Ireland that Maud Ruthyn (Agnes O’Casey) will inherit when she reaches the age of 21, are beautifully kept. Everything is in its place. Maud expects deference, especially from... Read more... |
The Miracle Club review - unchallenging but enjoyable Irish dramaFriday, 13 October 2023
If I had to condense the Catholic faith of my upbringing in one sentence, I would say that it essentially comes down to two things: we're all sinners, but we are all capable of redemption. (Theological experts may take a different view.) That boiled... Read more... |
The Woman in the Wall, BBC One review - deliciously dark murder mystery with a tragic hinterlandMonday, 04 September 2023
Ruth Wilson possibly hasn’t had as much to get her teeth into on-screen since she vamped it up in Luther. Her performance as Lorna Brady in The Woman in the Wall is an object lesson in the way a performer in demand for her engaging looks and edgy... Read more... |
Apocalypse Clown review - going out with a laughFriday, 01 September 2023
Here we are in rural Ireland and on the other side of bonkers. Apocalypse Clown is billed as an "end-of-the-world road movie with clowns". It’s hilarious, off the wall, beyond the cringe.The protagonists are three washed-up members of the circus... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Heaven / Lie Low / After the ActWednesday, 09 August 2023
Heaven, Traverse Theatre ★★★★★It’s a rare show that combines form and content to quite such devastatingly potent effect. The storyline of two-hander Heaven from Dublin-based Fishamble theatre company might seem simple: a middle-aged couple... Read more... |
'The music business was created for people like me who are not criminal enough to go to jail, and not mad enough to go to the nuthouse'. Sinéad O'Connor, 1966-2023Friday, 28 July 2023
Sinead O’Connor, who has died aged 56, was, the world agrees, a brilliant, unstable, unique talent, a provocateur with an angelic voice. The Mirror’s front page yesterday was a moody black and white picture with the headline “Nothing Compares... Read more... |
Album: Brigid Mae Power - Dream From The Deep WellSaturday, 24 June 2023
The cover versions on Dream From The Deep Well include “I Know Who is Sick,” most familiar from the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Maken interpretation, and “Down by the Glenside,” which The Dubliners incorporated into their repertoire. The first opens... Read more... |
Happy Days, Landmark Productions, Cork Opera House - to the end of the earthMonday, 19 June 2023
Siobhán McSweeney is to be loved as a person for her speech when she received a BAFTA for Best Female Performance in a Comedy Programme earlier this year, bringing up the way Derry people had weathered the “indignities, ignorance and stupidity of... Read more... |
