Ireland
theartsdesk at the Kilkenny Arts Festival 2022 - a safe space to reflect on horrorsThursday, 18 August 2022
Essay-writing can be a great art, at least when executed by Hubert Butler of Kilkenny, on a par - whether you know his writing or not, and you should – with Bacon, Swift and Orwell. The same goes for speechifying. That level I witnessed, at the... Read more... |
Prom 17, Walshe, Tsallagova, Shenyang, NYC, BBCSSO, Volkov review - the sublime and the (enjoyably) ridiculousSaturday, 30 July 2022
The giraffe still baffles me. This model beast appeared stage right at the Royal Albert Hall during Jennifer Walshe’s The Site of an Investigation, only to be loudly wrapped by a pair of percussionists and then removed. A critique of mindless... Read more... |
Album: James Vincent McMorrow - The Less I KnewSaturday, 25 June 2022
An artist with a myriad of strings to his bow – gifted wordsmith, multi-instrumentalist, captivating storyteller – what enables James Vincent McMorrow’s singularly personal songs to take flight is the fact that he’s also a supreme melodist.The Less... Read more... |
Maria Stuarda, Irish National Opera review – two queens sing for the crown, with spectacular resultsMonday, 13 June 2022
You don’t plan a production of a Donizetti opera without having top voices in mind. For what, after all, is his simplification of Schiller’s Mary Stuart but bel canto business as usual with a bit of high drama attached? Internationally celebrated... Read more... |
Orfeo ed Euridice, Blackwater Valley Opera Festival review - heavenly possibilities, devils at work in the detailsTuesday, 07 June 2022
"Elysian" is the best way to describe the dream gardens of Ireland's Lismore Castle in early June: lupins, alliums and peonies rampant in endless herbaceous borders, supernatural perspectives towards the main building on various levels. This year’s... Read more... |
The Quiet Girl review - finding a home away from homeThursday, 12 May 2022
The Quiet Girl is adapted faithfully from Claire Keegan’s wonderful short story, Foster, first published in the New Yorker magazine in 2010 and then expanded into a novella.Much of the dialogue in Colm Bairéad’s beautiful, mainly Irish-language film... Read more... |
Album: Fontaines DC – Skinty FiaSunday, 24 April 2022
Incanting, declaiming, and growling, as if actual singing might prettify the Fontaines DC’s post-punk dirges, Grian Chatten has never sounded more aggrieved than he does on the Irish combo’s third album. Disarmingly, he also sounds younger on Skinty... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Gentle GunmanTuesday, 29 March 2022
Ealing Studios’ output encompassed much more than comedy, though a viewing of 1952’s The Gentle Gunman suggests that political drama wasn't one of their strengths.Based on a play by Alexander McKendrick’s cousin Roger MacDougall, and directed by... Read more... |
Holding, ITV review - Graham Norton’s novel moves seamlessly to the small screenTuesday, 15 March 2022
The terrain Holding occupies is well travelled, but this new ITV four-part drama travels over it really well. The landmarks are familiar: a quiet rural community, a cop with an unhealthy lifestyle and a secret sorrow, a feud between rival lovers of... Read more... |
Purple Snowflakes and Titty Wanks, Royal Court review – fearless, frank and feministMonday, 07 February 2022
Irish teenager Saoirse Murphy has a dirty mouth. And she’s not afraid to use it when talking to the nuns at her convent school. But it soon emerges that her feistiness is a cover for some very disturbing problems in Sarah Hanly’s energetic debut... Read more... |
Bajazet, Irish National Opera, Linbury Theatre review – robust but a bit roughSaturday, 05 February 2022
One thing’s clear from Irish National Opera’s bold championship of Vivaldi: he’s his own man when it comes to the stage, not some baroque generic, even if Bajazet is a pasticcio incorporating other composers’ music. He doesn’t characterize through... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Muesli, mindfulness colouring and a trip to the boulangerieSaturday, 13 November 2021
Malcolm Arnold: Complete Symphonies and Dances National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Queensland Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Penny (Naxos)Working through these nine symphonies in chronological order is a fascinating and disturbing experience,... Read more... |
