The Monkey – a brilliantly gory comedy with horror origins and a wind-up monkey that dispatches a large proportion of the cast (in UK and Ireland cinemas from 21 February)

More than a day after watching a screening of The Monkey, I still break out into a grin when I think back to the film. Often puerile, entirely gratuitous, and very funny. And no, this isn’t the (excellent) Robbie Williams film Monkey Man. It’s a new release, out in the UK and Ireland on Friday. The BBFC warning at the beginning mentions “strong gore”. But boy oh boy, it’s brutal, bloody, and intensely comic gore.

The premise is that twin brothers Hal and Bill – both played by Christian Convery in childhood and then Theo James as adults – inherit from their father a wind-up monkey that plays a drum. But turning the key to see what happens inevitably concludes with yet another funeral in a litany of gruesome deaths. The awkward celebrant at one of the first memorial service (played by Nicco Del Rio) deserves his own spin off. Tatiana Maslany makes an on-screen impact that’s greater than the script must have suggested in her small role as the twin’s mum.

Osgood Perkins’ screenplay is based on Stephen King’s short story, but rather than making a worthy movie full of fear, it dials the absurd up to eleven and has fun with the serious business of pruning the cast. (Perkins’ own parents died of Aids and on one of the September 11 passenger planes, so he has a personal connection to the trauma of death.)

As someone who can’t abide the tension being ratcheted up with angry strings and jump scares, The Monkey is a horror film that I can stomach. But other than nods to the genre – like a spot of teen bullying and some self-denial for the benefit of others – this isn’t really horror.

Yes, in the first few minutes someone’s intestines will fly across the screen like a string of sausages, but the context is always one of escapism and fantasy. Though let’s not dwell on the scene with the hornets: that will make you itch and shiver.

The joyous blood-spattered action calms down halfway through with a big jump forward in time. Suddenly there’s an evil lair with lots of televisions meaninglessly stacked up. Suddenly there’s exposition to slow down the pace of decapitation and accidental loss. The Monkey sags for nearly twenty minutes before stabilising its blood pressure for a wallpaper-splattering finale.

I’ve honestly never laughed out loud at such gore at 11 o’clock in the morning. And I feel a little guilty for doing so. The Monkey’s attempts to philosophise about the inevitability and unpredictability of death fool no one. The film is far from perfect. It’s blokey and would struggle to pass the Bechdel Test. Yet The Monkey’s low-budget gift is its success at being shallow and pleasantly trivial.

The Monkey is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre, Omniplex cinemas, Movie House cinemas, Cineworld and the Odeon from Friday 21 February.

 

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The Gap Year – a trio of women take time out and learn to let go and choose change over stagnation (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 2 March)

The times, they are a-changin’ for three women in their sixties. Kate has just said goodbye to her husband who dropped dead in the bread aisle of the local supermarket. Oonagh’s still vexed about her man walking out twenty years ago to be with Flora the florist, and now he has the temerity to want to get married again. And Roisin has been the one caring for everyone else in her family for decades but now realises that she doesn’t have long left before her health close in on her freedom.

The trio head off on a holiday for a spot of collective me-time ... that turns into a year-long pilgrimage around every county in Ireland. It’s a story about facing up to loss, making choices, and opening your arms wide to whatever life throws at you.

Carol Moore’s fearsome performance anchors this restaging of The Gap Year. Her Kate can be a sullen, stubborn, withdrawn and crabby curmudgeon. But when she lowers her guard, the widow can catch herself on and her empathy bursts through.

Oonagh is the first of the three to truly let her hair down – much to the audience’s delight – and Marion O’Dwyer allows that moment to gradually reform her character’s sense of victimhood and take control of her life’s narrative.

Libby Smyth plays Roisin who at first acts as the buffer between the feistier Kate and Oonagh before Smyth brings her character’s vulnerability to the fore with a health condition that can no longer be hidden or ignored.

It’s great to see Moore, O’Dwyer and Smyth back in the roles they played when The Gap Year first graced the Lyric Theatre’s main stage back in 2022. And it’s a script that had been workshopped through the Lyric’s New Work programme prior to Covid.

Few plays are written – never mind staged – that revolve around the lives of older women. Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine doesn’t even count: its protagonist was only 42 when she jetted off to Greece.

While the three travellers are back, the other three multi-roled parts have been recast. They provide the colour for the three women’s visits to different towns and counties.

Stroke survivor Pat may not have many words to share, his slow and deliberate interactions are another poignant reminder that there are so many gaps the kind of stories that theatre normally depicts.

It’s hard not to connect with this script from Clare McMahon which integrates so many different ways in which changes of identity can be pivotal in people’s lives. We all know about failure, hope for success, have loved and also lost.

Shaun Blaney brings comedy to so many scenes as a diffident campsite activity coordinator (who utters one of the most memorable lines: “we’re all in the queue [for death]”), a savvy campervan salesman who meets his match in Kate (and allows a huge prop – though a good bit more compact than the first run – to be wheeled around the stage), and lothario Fionntan in Dingle who has the audience in almost as much of a flutter as Oonagh. But it’s his portrayal of Ethan in a Dublin club – in some ways quite unconvincing, yet verbally totally packed with emotion – and his sharing of a coming out story with Carol that opens the door for the play’s conclusion.

Playwright Clare McMahon takes on the remaining female characters for this run herself. There’s a nurse who is equally full of kindness and sadness. A new mum who is at the end of her tether with a toddler. A fervent nun who has known huge sadness and loss but hasn’t learned that her pious answer may not fit everyone else’s experience. And a drunk girl whose tear-stained conversation in the women’s toilet provides Kate with another nudge towards self-reflection.

Stuart Marshall’s two-level set brings out the richness of Irish countryside, and Rosie McClelland’s sharp costumes match the earthy hues and the provide a sense of the passing seasons. As well as crafting a motif that acts as a theme tune for the play, Garth McConaghie’s soundscape plays with reverberation (the funeral mass and visit to New Grange particularly atmospheric) and the off-stage sound of wildlife and flushing toilets.

The long first half is rewarded with a much brisker second act. Streamlined storytelling often applies the mantra of ‘start late, leave early’ and many scenes in The Gap Year practice the former but might benefit from dropping the last line or two of dialogue and not reinforcing what the audience have already learned. Given the inescapable sense of loss that surrounds the story, director Benjamin Gould serves up lots of moments of levity – not least fulsome osculation – and keeps everyone in character as they push elements of the set off into the wings. But the tears are never far away from the next heart-wrenching act of kindness or moment of human frailty.

Having seen and reviewed the play back in 2022, I do miss the original cast. It’s a sign of the quality of what they achieved that their stamp on the colourful characters is hard to erase. But there’s much to admire in Doran, Blaney and McMahon’s reinterpretation of the mannerisms and energy that knits together the people and the situations that the travelling troika need to encounter to make it back home.

You can catch The Gap Year at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 2 March.

Photo credit: Ciaran Bagnall

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Guy Mitchell’s Dog’s Dead – Pass It On … a child’s quite innocent understanding of growing up in 1970’s Ballybeen estate (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 2 February)

At the start of Guy Mitchell’s Dog’s Dead – Pass It On, a wiry figure bounces onto the stage, giving a goofy wave to the audience. Sammy’s a real chatterbox, and he’s got lots of stories to share about his perspectives on living in the Ballybeen housing estate in Dundonald.

We hear about life through a ten-year old’s eyes, sometimes accurately picking up the vibe of what’s happening, sometimes seeing serious matters (like the men walking around the estate looking for people to play baseball) through the naïve eyes of a youngster who’s at risk of growing up too fast.

Over the course of two hours, we hear how Sammy discovers death, paramilitaries, hormones – he’s at that age when the hairless thing between his legs is of growing interest – as well as an actual snake, Blondie, homophobia, sectarianism … and yes, the circumstances around the death of Guy Mitchelldog.

It’s a gymnastic performance that oozes nervous energy as Kealan McAllister hunkers down, jumps around, and manages to race around the stage while still delivering lines in a calm voice. Just over two and a half years ago, McAllister was on the same stage as part of the Lyric Drama Studio’s great production of Blue Stockings. Now he’s getting a well-deserved break and owning this one man show.

McAllister brings to life an enormous cast of local characters, including his best mate Space Bucket who provides a left-field angle to events (a lad too young to even know about smoking weed but still sounds part mellow part confused).

We laugh a lot. But we laugh along with Sammy rather than at him, and while ‘the Been’ and loyalism provide much to tickle us, Sam Robinson’s script never asks us to be judgemental.

Several things raise the performance beyond cheap laughs. The juvenile characterisation is never broken: the nose-picking is childish but brilliant. Trevor Gill’s direction allows wee Sammy to look puzzled, pause and then change the subject when he comes across something he can’t quite explain: like his description of what adults would recognise as the sounds of domestic abuse and likely sexual assault leaking out of an upstairs flat.

From just a few minutes into the play, the audience instinctively join in with song snippets and answering questions that aren’t allowed to remain rhetorical, enthusiastically engaging with the lone performer and showing a lot of love. And McAllister then milks this generous spirit into a frenzy as he related a tales of dromedary turds, animal liberation, and sectarian crisps.

McAllister’s piano skills add live music to proceedings when he’s visiting his Granny Maggie’s house and bashes out some Elton John on the ivories: I’d a great aunt who also defied the laws of physics and geometry by squeezing an upright piano into a front room when her front door and hallway clearly wouldn’t allow it.

There’s no shortage of Troubles’ drama. But little has been written from the perspective of a child of such a tender ago who hasn’t yet grown up: most is framed as retrospective.

Dundonald and Ballybeen are no strangers to comedy and theatre. The Dundonald Liberation Army are bringing Lockdown DLA back to The MAC this June. That’s a sitcom with a couple of man children trapped in a flat, whereas Robinson’s play gives voice to an actual child roaming around the whole estate delivering what is almost a one boy stand-up comedy routine.

While Tony Macaulay’s books (three of which have been converted into musicals) tell of his upbringing in the Upper Shankill/West Belfast, Sam Robinson’s is a wise man who came from the East. Essays could be written comparing Macaulay’s clean-cut approach with Robinson’s very earthy recollections. And it’s also interesting to contrast the style and patter of Leesa Harker’s loyalist Maggie (whose ‘trilogy’ in four parts is still running in The MAC) with the cussing and as yet sexually immature Sammy.

Guy Mitchell’s Dog’s Dead – Pass It On is full of snatters, innocence and misadventure. Sam Robinson is a fine writer and the forthcoming teenage tales of Sammy are much anticipated. It’s a Cock & Hens Productions in association with Bright Umbrella. The run finishes on Sunday 2 February in the Lyric Theatre and at the time of writing there are a just a handful of single seats left. Don’t let them go to waste.

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Bring Them Down – shepherding in a grisly addition to the cinematic ovine oeuvre (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 7 February)

It’s all kicking off on the farm. Though truth be told, there’s been a lot of death and killing on hill over the years. Bring Them Down sees Michael (played by Christopher Abbott) is carrying on the tradition of sheep farming, living with his ailing father (a chair-bound Colm Meaney). A fatal incident from Michael’s past just compounds the vexed reaction to a locked gate and begins to stir up ever-increasing conflict as Gary (Paul Ready) and his son Jack (Barry Keoghan) at the neighbouring farm – financially and maritally on its last legs – take extreme action.

Sheep are rustled and butchered. Vehicles are driven recklessly. Pen knives are wielded. Guns are toted. And blood – animal and human – flows. Ultimately it will become a tussle between the maimed and the angry.

More horrific than horror, this is a clash that has no justice, only retribution.

“How did we get here?” asks Gary’s wife Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone). It’s a good question.

Cinemagoers watch as director Chris Andrews follows the effect of the deadly dominoes toppling over from the perspective of Michael, before switching (with no notice) to replay events from young Jack’s viewpoint on the other farm. The storytelling technique is a little jarring, though it does help space the gore out quite evenly across the 105 minute movie. It’s a film that would benefit from the final 30 seconds being cut: would have been better to go out with a bang as the ending feels like a total cop out given Michael’s injury and state of mind.

Hannah Peel’s percussive score is excellent, layering sinister sounds under the violent visuals. Nick Cooke makes the west of Ireland landscape look particularly brooding with his sterling cinematography. Keoghan is playing a but younger – and Noone a bit older – than is credible, but the drama quickly overcomes casting insecurities as the blood begins to be spilt.

Shepherding seems to attract screenwriters and directors like flies around a rotting carcass: Icelandic films Rams (dealing with sibling sheep farmers who maintain a frosty relationship) and Lamb (a frosty relationship between María and Ingvar who birth a lambchild), not to mention God’s Own Country (with its queer goings-on in the Yorkshire dales).

However, Bring Them Down is the most grisly addition to this ovine oeuvre. For the price of a few jars of mint sauce, it’s available to watch in the comfort of the blood red seats in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 7 February (with a Baby Pictures screening that morning for strong-stomached parents of little ones aged 12 months and under).

 

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Hard Truths – an explosive performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh’s new film (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 31 January)

Pansy lives in a constant state of agitation. No one and no thing pleases her. The pigeons in the garden threaten to invade her over-cleaned abode. Her immediate family are a burden. Her sister doesn’t appreciate her. And shop assistants get the (wonderfully) sharp edge of her angry tongue for just existing never mind slighting her. Pansy is also in a constant state of fatigue, coping less and less well with her life.

The dialogue in Mike Leigh’s new film Hard Truths is very theatrical, at first feeling somewhat overwritten and longwinded for on-screen delivery. But a growing appreciation of Pansy’s condition makes her lengthy interventions more natural.

“Why are you so angry?” … “Why can’t you enjoy life?”

Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivers an explosive performance playing Pansy with a constant frown. Curtley (David Webber) is her long-suffering and almost-silent husband who escapes to work as a plumber. Meanwhile her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) can either be found playing video games in bed or aimlessly wandering the streets of London.

Director and screenwriter Leigh contrasts the darkness of Pansy’s household with the joy and laughter of her sister’s. Bubbly Chantelle (Michele Austin) runs a hair salon and is single mum to two vivacious daughters Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson). Life doesn’t run smoothly for these three, but they move through life with much lighter spirits.

“I’m not well, Curtley. I’m a sick woman” Pansy exclaims in desperation. Health practitioners fear her appearance, though one locum GP (“a mouse with glasses” played in a brief scene rather pleasingly by Ruby Bentall) has the measure of her exasperating patient. But no one has yet been able to get close enough to diagnose the clinical depression that is clear for the film’s audience to see.

If there’s a weakness with the tableau that Leigh has constructed, it’s that savvy sister Chantelle’s job should make her adept at judging people, but takes so long to pick up on the root of Pansy’s unhappiness. Though Chantelle’s underlying compassion, persistence and patience with her overbearing sister are triumphs of the film’s character development process.

While latter scenes contain moments that could melt your heart – the care of Chantelle’s daughters towards cousin Moses, along with his reaction to an unheard stranger’s conversation – the film is allowed to end with Pansy’s elephant no longer hiding under the carpet yet still not properly addressed. There’s hope, but no firm resolution.

Hard Truths is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 31 January.

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Maggie – a raucous recap of 12 years of debauchery and growing up (The MAC until Sunday 9 February)

This year’s update from the pen of Leesa Harker, simply entitled Maggie, boils down the first four Maggie Muff tales into one narrative. The protagonist is pacing up and down outside the delivery suite waiting for her sparkling daughter Prosecco to make her a granny. She’s facing some big life changes and her mind wanders back to her first meeting with Neville (better known as Mr Red White and Blue) and the shenanigans that ensued. The show is a chance for people who missed the earliest outings, or like me only attended the third one, to get to grips with the full story arc.

The escapades offer erotic escapism peppered with a strong seasoning of feminism, the theatrical equivalent of Mills & Boon. Inspired by the released of the EL James’ novel Fifty Shades of Grey – long before the film adaptations – Maggie Muff (first in book form, then on stage) is aging better and showing stronger signs of continued longevity.

While everything revolves around the life and times of the eponymous Maggie, it’s the wry and brilliantly written observations of best friend Sally-Ann that give it real heart. As the show progresses, Sinead the Greener provides welcome contexts from outside Maggie’s loyalist environs. Before long you’ll have met Freddy Dick-fingers, Igor the Dogger, Sexy Anthony, Greta Grotbags, Craig Diego, Sticky Vicky, Billy Scriven and more. And look out of the leopard skin-decorated bass drum after the interval, one of the few props.

Holding the rapt attention of a gregarious audience for two hours is quite a skill for any actor in a one person show. Granted that many of those attending Maggie are keen lovers of the previous episodes, Caroline Curran has them eating out of her hand, singing along and doing actions unprompted to songs from their long ago clubbing days, but also knowing to hush when the lyrics are tweaked for Maggie’s situation or the story needs to move on. Director Andrea Montgomery keeps the pace up while Harker cements her reputation as being queen of raucous dialogue (with recent Belfast Actually another example of her talent).

Unlike my vivid memory of Maggie’s Feg Run to Benidorm in 2022, the theatre foyer is not full of women wearing Maggie Muff-branded white knickers over the top of their jeans. Perhaps the smalls merch wore out. But the audience has expanded to include groups of men. They snigger and snort – there’s a lot of snorting – at different lines to the women, though a good gag about a penis is sure to have the whole auditorium tittering.

While the eroticism is constant throughout this curated look back, there’s a growing sense that Maggie is learning to value herself and is demanding more respect from the colourful characters she still willingly encounters. Mr Red White and Blue’s slippery understanding of consent is at first ignored (his notion of BDSM veers over the line into sexual assault on top of coercive control) before Maggie learns to challenge and to set better boundaries. We also see friends gather around and look out for each other: personal empowerment complemented by sisterhood. Maggie’s maturation perhaps mirroring society’s sensibilities and growing concern at strongly engrained patterns of gendered violence.

The final scene hints that Maggie is on the threshold of a new stage of life, and loyal fans will be ecstatic at the possibility that she’ll return to a local stage next year.

Maggie continues its run at The MAC until 9 February.

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Better Man – biopic full of symbolism and panache, even if it is drowning in self-reflection (UK cinemas from 26 December)

Better Man is like a giant apology to the people who were important to Robbie Williams’ life and career but suffered from him treating them shabbily. For much of the film, it also looks like it will be a giant reproach to his father, a figure of great if not sustained influence and profound disappointment.

The people Williams disappointed the most are shown the greatest kindness and remorse: particularly band mate Gary Barlow (played by Jake Simmance) and fiancée Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno).

No love is lost towards Take That’s creator and manager Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman), though what’s said and portrayed is tempered by Williams’ history of losing money to him in legal cases. Tom Budge enjoys some great scenes as the song-writer Guy Chambers who is perhaps the only person in the period covered by the film to ‘tame’ Williams (it stops around 2003).

That Williams is portrayed on-screen as a hairy chimpanzee is almost unnoticeable after a few minutes. While a reference to his self-proclaimed stunted evolution, the novel design decision succeeds on making the central figure recognisable on screen, whether dancing with Take That, or seen in a crowd of people. Yet the audience aren’t asked to process a child actor handing the role onto a teenager. The chimp simply gets larger and older. We’re not asked to compare an actor’s facial features (Jonno Davies) with the original: there’s enough of that going on with the other members of Take That, All Saints, producers, Michael Aspel and the Gallagher brothers. Another side effect of the chimp persona is that it keeps a focus on the actor’s eyes: bright, tearful, scared, high.

Director Michael Gracey adds his trademark panache to the movie, creating a vibrant and voluminous dance scene in Regent Street around the song Rock DJ, a beautifully choreographed dance between Williams and Appleton accompanied by She’s The One, a melancholic introduction to Angels that coincides with the funeral of his much-loved Nan (Alison Steadman), and a performance of Let Me Entertain You at Knebworth that morphs into a fantasy battle scene fighting his demons that could be from a Marvel movie or a gory video game.

Having once subjected a youth fellowship group to an evening picking out theological insights from the lyrics of songs on Williams’ second solo album I’ve Been Expecting You, including the now deleted Jesus in a Camper Van track – a copy of the handout lurks in a cardboard box somewhere in the flat – I was always likely to enjoy this film.

I love the storytelling, the sense of symbolism, the reflection (albeit tempered by the knowledge that the central character’s involvement means that there could be a lot of historical revisionism and some ego-stroking at play), the arc of redemption (even if it is overplayed) and the last four lines of dialogue could have been helpfully dropped from the 145-minute-long bladder-busting film. (I should admit that I haven’t yet enjoyed/endured the four hours of Robbie Williams documentary on Netflix… which might sate my appetite for any further regurgitation of the cabaret artist’s self-loathing and self-reflection. Will the artist’s strong vocals throughout the film lead to an appearance on the ‘legends’ slot at Glastonbury over the next year or two?)

Better Man is about dreams and ambition, tempered and undermined by self-doubt, addiction and depression. The artist has plenty to say, and definitely takes the opportunity to frame his story.

 

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The Magician’s Nephew – a fantasy tale of world-jumping and witnessing the creation of Narnia (Sanctuary Theatre until Saturday 4 January)

Truth be told, The Magician’s Nephew is a rather odd prequel, almost an afterthought to the better known The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which was published five years earlier and forms most people’s gateway to CS Lewis’ Narnia chronicles.

Digory and Polly (who lives next door) have been exploring the shared attic that runs above their terraced houses. A miscalculation of distance means that they find themselves popping up in Uncle Andrew’s normally locked study. The magician (of sorts) tricks Polly into touching a ring with a yellow jewel which transports her to another place. Digory ends up following her, with a pair of green rings in his pocket to help them home. They discover a multiverse of places, awaken an evil queen, who follows them home to Earth from where she goes off in search of jewels and meets the long arm of the law. The process of getting her home sets of a chain of events and discoveries that will change Digory and Polly’s lives forever.

Glyn Robbins’ 1988 stage adaption stays true to the novel’s structure and story. The Sanctuary Theatre’s stage is nearly unrecognisable, covered in a lush forest. Uncle Andrew’s first entrance – played by Fra Gunn (The Safety Catch) – is a glorious jump scare. The malign inventor is played as a selfish coward who lets the children take on the risk of travelling through new worlds using the rings he has created. Nephew Digory (Dylan Breen) is a likeable lad – much less irritating than the character I remember from Lewis’ novel – who quickly overcomes his fear to pursue Polly and bring her hope of rescue.

Polly (Bernadette McKeating) is sparky and full of joy. Elaine Duncan plays a range of roles including Aunt Letitia (who cares for Digory’s sick mother) and a cab driver who gets dragged into the madness after the interval. Colette Lennon Dougal is Queen Jadis, an implacably impatient monarch who has previously wielded absolute power (by uttering the ‘deplorable word’) and brings humour to the scenes when the children return home to Earth and she comes face to face with the ‘magician’ and a chariot that looks awfully like a horse and carriage.

If the opening 45 minutes set up the portal travelling (with rings and puddle-jumping) and establish the motivation of the characters in an orderly fashion, the second half throws so many other ingredients into the mix that the scenes resemble a hard-to-discern-quite-what-you’re-eating hash. There is a lot to process.

Lewis uses The Magician’s Nephew to tell the genesis story of Narnia, created by the lion Aslan. Queen Jadis brings evil into the pristine world. (She’ll ultimately become the White Witch.) Her early encounter with Aslan brings about the lamppost that will become crucial to later chronicles.

On stage, this means that the talking lion – interestingly voiced as a chorus of cast voices – is soon joined by other talking animals: the cabby’s horse Strawberry, a beaver, a rabbit, … but disappointingly never the guinea pig that Uncle Andrew first sent into the portal with a yellow ring strapped to its back.

The shifting between human and animal roles is messy (and two switched-off mics on stands don’t help with the differentiation of roles). If this was your first and only encounter with Narnia, then a weakness in Robbins’ script – never mind Lewis’ original novel – is that the powerful majesty of Aslan is lost, and the standalone coherence and significance of the animals, the lamppost, Jadis, and the newly crowned human King and Queen is somewhat bewildering.)

The soundscape is rich and detailed and brings a lot of warmth and atmosphere to the production, though could have usefully been looped at a low volume under some scenes to establish an aural signature for the different worlds as an add-on to the thematic lighting. Only Digory’s accent seems cemented in Belfast (that’s where Uncle Andrew’s home has been reset in this production) leaving the others sounding too posh and English for the setting.

Director Patsy Montgomery-Hughes uses the available space well, with under-stage action, short scenes in the raised tech area at the back of the theatre, and an elevated level at the back of the main stage for Aslan’s first entrance.

The line “Can you feel the wind on your cheeks?” made me laugh and I inwardly heckled back “it’s just the draughty theatre”. It’s good to see the architect’s plans for how the theatre space will be refashioned and improved displayed in the foyer. Do wrap up well if you’re attending a show.

The Magician’s Nephew is a quirky choice for an end of year production. It is child-friendly, but quite serious and very old-fashioned, without the seasonal jollity that families might expect to find in a theatre. Glyn Robbins adapted another three of the chronicles – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – so perhaps Bright Umbrella Drama Company will revisit the Belfast-born writer and theologian over the next few years.

The Magician’s Nephew continues in the east Belfast Sanctuary Theatre until Saturday 4 January.

Photo credit: Melissa Gordon, Gorgeous Photography

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Elvis Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – the cruelty of mortality cuts through, laced with levity and tied up in a festive bow (CCurran Productions at The MAC until Tuesday 31 December)

It’s the eve of Christmas Day and Frankie’s big birthday. Played by Rhodri Lewis, Frankie is trying to forget about his troubles while waiting to board a delayed flight from Barra Best Regional Airport to Las Vegas on a pilgrimage to meet ‘the King’. Younger cousin Marty (Patrick Buchanan) is travelling with him, but he’s preoccupied, expecting to hear back about a recent job interview.

As the pair pass the time drinking in the Keep Er Lit lounge – resplendent with Christmas trees, a handy guitar, and benches that look like they were last seen in Great Victoria Street station – a raft of other colourful hallions wander through. Welcome to Elvis Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

Caroline Curran’s skilful character acting brings to life a creepy airport cleaner with a wandering eye and a squeaky mop bucket (the best prop of the night), along with members of a giddy party heading stateside to celebrate Joanne’s recent divorce. There are wigs galore, and mannerisms to match. And let’s not forget the puntastic but somewhat wobbly reindeer who has lost his stressed Santa.

The audience giggle away at the characterisations and the whizzing one-liners. The Elvis fans quickly identify themselves when Frankie/Lewis begins to croon. While there’s a discernible build-up, hinting at Frankie’s in-depth knowledge of Presley’s back catalogue, the first proper song comes quite late in the one-hour show, and I’d have appreciated a burst of the King to snack on in the first half hour.

Health, happiness, employment, relationships, travel. Caroline Curran’s festival show touches on universal issues and stressors that will be familiar to everyone in the audience. So many will know about living with or caring for someone who has OCD or dementia. While laced with levity, the cruelty of mortality cuts through the script and the performances.

The finale features a trio of impersonators with combed back black hair, sunglasses, outlandish outfits, and clap-along hits. The show is a fond reminder of the importance of extended family and friendships, people who can be relied upon when times are tight.

Elvis Yourself A Merry Little Christmas is a CCurran Production and directed by Dominic Montague. The show runs at the MAC until Tuesday 31 December.

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Sleeping Beauty – quality pantomime that packs a punch without burning a hole in your pocket (Brassneck at St Comgall’s until Sunday 22 December)

Brassneck Theatre Company are back with their ‘People’s Panto’ after the success of Cinderella at The Devenish Hotel last year. Ticket prices have remained the same (£8 children/£12 adults) but the venue has switched to St Comgall’s off Divis Street.

Fairy Up-Liquid waves her magic bubble wand and transports us back to The Felons nearly 16 years ago when her niece Our Ora (‘Aurora’) was christened. Horrible sister Mallory put a curse on the wain and a finger prick will lead to death on her 16th birthday unless she’s kissed by her true love. So for more than a decade, Our Ora has been hiding out in Lisburn (well, Poleglass). But now, her potentially fatal birthday party is only around the corner.

Writer Neil Keery has once again rustled up a script that is packed with panto punch and this year tells the story of Sleeping Beauty. Early on we get a sense of the updated tone of the show when the audience are reminded that barely any of them has seen a spinning wheel so that can hardly be the cause of the titular character’s misfortune.

Keery also stars as the dame, barracking the audience to their utter delight. The evil, cackling, catfishing sister Mallory – “like a dirty cold sore, always turning up when you’re not wanted” – is brought to life by an animated Rosie McClelland (who also designed the costumes). Vicky Allen plays a crow, a spaced-out apprentice baddie called Wingnut who gets a lovely second act duet with Ora. Darren Franklin is cast as hunky Sailor Twift, a big pop sensation who Ora (Sharon Duffy) duets with online and later gets to meet.

Directors Fionnuala Kennedy and Tony Devlin have the cast of five bouncing around the stage, popping out of nowhere to emphasise regular moments of political commentary, and singing and dancing their way through Katie Richardson’s boppy playlist of original music and TikTok hits. Adults will pick up on the jokes that sail over the children’s heads (like the new recipe website, OnlyFlans). Youngsters will regularly break loose from their parents’ grip and gather at the front of the stage in awe at the colourful goings on. While chaotic, it’s a sign that the show is reaching its audience.

I attended a Saturday matinee and the audience was full of families, grandparents, residents from a local centre, and there was even a shoutout for 96 year old Rose who got a special chorus of Happy Birthday.

The harsh acoustic properties of the St Comgall’s enclosed courtyard venue, on top of the raucous audience, work against lyrical clarity during the songs, but the dialogue is very clear.

Favourite moments include McClelland’s Scottish accent when Mallory pretends to be a mobile ear piercer from Clure’s Accessories and anytime Allen gets to dance like a crow. The modern take on the ancient tale calls out the ‘prince’ (in this case, pop idol) when he attempts to kiss a sleeping girl without her consent, and another more wholesome solution has to be found to wake narcoleptic Ora.

Sleeping Beauty continues at St Comgall’s until Sunday 22 December.

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The Marian Hotel – so much was unspoken, so much was suspected but not shared (Sole Purpose Productions at the Lyric Theatre)

Caitriona Cunningham’s play begins with the residents of the Marianvale Mother and Baby Home entering the set in shadow. It’s an appropriate visual metaphor for what is to come over the next few months of their lives, events and actions that will cast a shadow over the years and decades to come.

Kitty is from Derry, but she’s going to spend the next few months confined in the home in Newry. She’s introduced to life in the home by Sister Celeste (Maureen Wilkinson), a no-nonsense, standoffish nun, who gives a cursory explanation of the expected routine, before handing the 19-year-old off to existing residents to fill her in on the detail of what’s expected. The quieter Sister Rosanne (Maeve Connelly) stands to one side, distant but showing signs of actual humanity.

The notion of secrecy – not using their real first names and not discussing family details – is stressed from the start. Phone calls from the outside are allowed but discouraged. The idea that “we’re not in jail you know” does little to dispel the feeling that the young women have lost all control of their destiny: they’re now slaves to the home, expected to work in the laundry and follow the rules. It’s spartan: this is no hotel. There are no prenatal classes or preparation. And the only medication handed out is to make the women sleep at night and cause no trouble.

Aoibh Johnson gives Kitty a youthful optimism that never lapses into total naivety. She’s playing a version of the playwright who gave birth to her daughter in the home. Feisty Sarah (Shannon Wilkinson) sees herself fighting for Irish freedom: yet she’s been trapped by the church, the state and society. She wails with pain when she realises her newborn child has been removed without her knowledge or permission. Roma Harvey’s Sinead is a young widow. Now that she is pregnant again, she’s condemned as an unmarried mother who is beyond help and worthy of being shamed. Caroline (Una Morrison) is serious and fervent, almost modelled on wee Clare in Derry Girls. Multi-generational trauma is examined through a parallel story line featuring Jackie (Sorcha Shanahan) who is trying to find her birth mother.

The absence of men on set is startling, reinforcing how there were few to no consequences for the men involved in the babymaking, while the women were shamed, isolated, confined and then robbed of their offspring. Somehow these women are covering up other people’s sins, and being (further) abused in the process.

So much was unspoken. So much was suspected but not shared.

After a slightly unsteady and limbering start, the jigsaw pieces begin to fall into place firmly with the arrival of young pregnant Ellen. She’s not even a teenager. It’s the first moment when the characters step outside their own misery and the scales lift from their eyes. How is she pregnant? And why is someone so young being sent to live here? Rachel Harley injects Ellen with a tangible vulnerability and it’s distressing to realise that her character might be running back into the hands of an abuser. For all Caroline’s uptight manner, she’s the one that gets closest to befriending Ellen, with Una Morrison taking her character on a lovely journey of change.

Robert Attewell’s spartan set serves the touring production well. Two long wooden benches are shifted around the stage by the cast, and even stood up on their ends, to give shape to bedrooms, sitting rooms and a hospital ward. The scene changes are a physical task that echoes their work in the laundry and the lack of concern for the pregnant women.

One character proclaims with hope: “and then we have the whole of our lives in front of us”. But the final what-happens-next scene is beyond heartbreaking.

The Marian Hotel was produced by Sole Purpose Productions and produced and directed by Patricia Byrne. The play together with the associated exhibitions and talks have shone a light and opened up conversations on a shameful period of Irish social history. Hopefully they will form a line in the sand that will never be reached.

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A Christmas Carol – a joyous evening watching Scrooge face up to his demons (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 11 January)

My eyes normally roll when I discover a venue is planning to produce A Christmas Carol. It’s a beast of a book to adapt, with three ghostly visitations, each with numerous scenes to trudge through. Charles Dickens was being paid by the word, and he wrote his serialised stories for a newspaper audience who had to come back each week for another twist in the tale, much like modern day streaming audiences faced with a good show that doesn’t allow for binging.

Marie Jones’ adaptation zips through the story, touching Scrooge with each lesson without waiting around to ram it home. And thankfully the playwright also swerves the temptation to go full tilt and preach against all capitalists, making the story all the more powerful and personal. Switching the action to Belfast could have been a risk, but her skill with writing in the vernacular makes it feel natural rather than a gimmick. We appreciate the reflections that someone is “as dour as a deathwatch drummer”!

The Lyric’s production is framed through the lens that the audience have turned up to watch The Pottinger Players presenting their version of A Christmas Carol. So as we enter the auditorium, the cast are assembling, tying on their aprons, ‘lighting’ the footlights, tuning their instruments, joshing with audience. The two main minstrels engage us with a bit of cringe-free community singing, while another cast member rushes around the stalls and the balconies looking for a missing turkey. One gentleman admitted he didn’t like Christmas, rewarded with the retort that “we’ve got the perfect cure for you”!

Stuart Marshall’s intricate set uses a forced perspective to create a Dickensian space between Pottinger’s Entry and Joy’s Entry. The slim fronts of houses and businesses pivot around to create the internal spaces. Everything seems to glide effortlessly. Each element has two or three purposes. It’s rich, atmospheric and unfussy. Characters appear out of nowhere, peering around corners, squeezing through gaps, popping out of trapdoors.

As the action begins, a polyphonic humming of Silent Night hints that music will be important to the story with Garth McConaghie’s sound design blending recordings, effects and live playing. Katie Shortt (flute, accordion and lots of percussion) and Conor Hinds (a chest-mounted violincello) are joined by other cast members who bring a trumpet, tambourine and more into the mix. There’s even a little dancing (choreographer: Fleur Mellor).

We learn that Jacob Marley is “tatty bread” (dead) and that Ebeneezer Scrooge “carries his own cold with him”. Soon we’ve met bubbly nephew Fred (played by a joyful Richard Clements) whose fulsome invitation to Christmas dinner is not unexpectedly declined. Matthew Forsythe plays Bob Cratchit, loyal to the core, even in the face of his employer’s miserable thriftiness. Jayne Wisener’s Mrs Cratchit is much more cynical and unforgiving, running the household and tending to her three children on Bob’s pittance of a wage. Mary Moulds (wearing great pigtails) plays daughter Martha and Jonny Grogan is Peter. Ellen Whitehead is superb as Tiny Tim, a chip of the father’s block.

As you’d expect, Scrooge has a restless night. A mesmerising performance by Dan Gordon gives the central character a biting force of nature when grumpy (equally so when he turns generous) yet leaves him fearful and totally out of his controlling comfort zone when confronted by the three spirits. Marty Maguire is on top form playing Marley and numerous other roles, standing up to Scrooge and bringing a lot of mirth and physical humour to the production.

The plot of A Christmas Carol is  familiar to most people. Realistically, there can be very few surprises in the direction of travel the story will take with any new production. (Though heading to Rathlin and the appearance of Mummers was nearly a ‘trip’ too far for the lighthouse scene.)

Jones and director Matthew McElhinney manage to construct particularly moving moments each time the Cratchit parents consider whether their Tim will be alive to enjoy many more Christmas seasons. Tim’s pram-wheeled guider was a quare yoke. Jones’ script is helped along by the nearly instantaneous scene changes, removing the pauses that tend to niggle and slow down shows. The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is silent and faceless. By this point, Scrooge is in a position to lead himself through the lessons that need to be learnt.

Parents should note the Lyric’s 8+ age advisory for this production. It’s not aimed at young toddlers, and they’ll understandably soon be bored and distracted. For the older children and adults, there’s always something going on.

McElhinney uses the cast of ten to fill the stage with action. There are some great physical effects. Watch out for faces appearing at (or through) doors, and the neatly constructed sleight of hand near the end when Scrooge is almost in two places at once. Yet there are no deliberate pauses to encourage audience adulation: these are just part of the magical world that has been created for our pleasure.

(The repeated references to Willie Drennan hark back to the son of the First Presbyterian Church (Rosemary Street) manse, a short-lived physician, writer and political activist from the early 1800s, rather than the modern-day musician who is very much alive!)

By the end, Scrooge is bringing joy to the entry in which the action is set. A Christmas Carol is one of Marie Jones’ best scripts. It’s warm, well-paced, pleasingly architected with callbacks to earlier phrases tying the story up into a neat package. The humour is infectious. The cast inhabit the characters with confidence. And the musical elements bolster the playful atmosphere. The Lyric Theatre’s A Christmas Carol is a great festive treat, not to be missed, and continues its run until Saturday 11 January.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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Cinderella – wholesome ‘Ella benefits from overhead eavesdropping on her cussed step-sisters (Yellow Jumper Productions at Theatre At The Mill until 30 December)

Cinderella lives in the shadow of her two self-identifying ‘ugly’ stepsisters, Pimple and Dimple. Having met the tall, lanky, prince of Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough at the town market, Cinderella fully intends to go to the lavish Christmas party he’s throwing to find a wife. Sour Bake Stepma ran off to the sun leaving her household of daughters to fend for themselves. She video calls her children to coach them through a depraved plan to deprive Cinderella of the opportunity, and of daylight, by luring her down to the cellar to make a TikTok dance video and then locking her up. But good buddy Zip – complete with audience callout and actions – is hanging around eavesdropping and overhears their plans. With his help and the guidance of Fairy G, maybe Cinderella’s dreams can come true?

An opening musical number introduces some of the important characters. Lennin McClure plays Zip as well as the prince’s advisor Mucker. He quickly wows us ‘peeps in the seats’ with his acrobatics, before shimmying up to hang above the action listening to the evil plans being concocted. McClure’s aerial antics on the silks are likely to be unique across Christmas pantos in Northern Ireland this year. Joe Springhall plays the cool royal, channelling his inner Prince Harry. Together with Mucker, the pair end up throwing a couple of very different big royal balls.

The show’s titular character tries hard to stand up for herself. Ellen Hasson makes Cinderella sweet and sassy, a modern girl who takes small steps and guards her privacy rather than being rash and needy. But is wholesome charm a match for the cussed evil stepsisters Pimple (Cheryl O’Dwyer) and Dimple (Eimear O’Neill who double roles as Fairy G with a beautiful singing voice that blends so well with Cinderella/Hasson).

The general atmosphere of this family-friendly show is one of relaxed pandemonium. The noisy stalls are matched by the histrionics on stage, although some of the lyrics get lost under the pumping backing tracks. It’s a pantomime, so the script and sound effects go heavy on crowd-pleasing fart jokes, and given the questions I could overhear during the show, I fully expect one child sitting behind me to finally demand a detailed answer to her question “What’s IBS?” on the way home!

There are some lovely touches. Cinderella’s coach to the ball is very neatly lit and constructed. Light up glasses provide a fun party effect. And it snows, a necessary part of any serious show set at Christmas! The opening of the second act brings the action right into the auditorium and neatly counteracts any disruption from punters returning late from the bar. Later, a few audience members get their feet sized up against the abandoned glittery slipper. The appearance of a bird on stage is momentarily important to the plot but still bewildereds me!

Well-sung cover versions add energy to proceedings, and Raining Tacos was a huge hit with the young audience joining in and singing out without needing to be asked. The kitchen utensil guests at the ball were somewhat surreal but fired up the imagination of junior brains. The script is peppered with lots of local references that delight citizens of the borough, particularly when the lonely prince seeks a relationship that will be full of sparks and fireworks “like Rathcoole on the Eleventh Night”!

The five principle cast members are joined by another three in the ensemble (from a nine-strong rotating community cast). And at my show, the actors were aided during the second act by a good-spirited John in the stalls. Olivia Nash regularly beams in as Sour Bake Stepma from her sunny hotspot.

Cinderella was penned, produced, directed (and more) by Sarah Lyle, whose fingers may also have sewn some of the costumes. It’s a real labour of love, and audience members young and old had a blast when I was there for Saturday’s matinee. Cinderella is a panto with all the trimmings. The Yellow Jumper Productions’ show continues at Theatre at the Mill until Monday 30 December.

Photo credit: Gorgeous Photography (Melissa Gordon)

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The Adventures of Red Riding Hood – familiar fairy story characters lose their identity in a vivid forest (The MAC until 1 January)

There’s a wealth of creative talent on show at the MAC this Christmas: on the stage, in the wings, and behind-the-scenes. The Adventures of Red Riding Hood is the culmination of an array of disciplines working together to craft a distinctive Christmas show.

School’s out for Christmas and rather than picking up her daughter at the gate and whisking her home, Mama Hood sends Red off on a three-day trek to deliver a hamper to her Granny deep in the forest. She implores Red to follow the ‘Right Path’ not the ‘Wrong Path’. However, despite her best efforts to follow her smart phone directions, outside interference from a jealous Goldilocks disrupts her journey, and soon both Red and Granny Hood are in serious trouble.

Naoimh Morgan is a bundle of breathtaking energy in the title role, with her bubbly character capable of splurging out a volcano of ideas. With or without her trademark cape, Morgan commands attention from the audience. Mama Hood and Granny Hood are both played by a versatile and acrobatic Ash Ashton who shows off all manner of accents and even throws in some circus skills.

Writer and director Patrick J O’Reilly merges together different fairy tales and imagines what would happen if normally evil characters lost their well-established identities. What if they got in touch with their sensitive side and became more kind and mindful? Or maybe these sinister figures can’t really change?

What if the Wolf from Little Riding Hood was the same one who blew down the Little Pig’s Dwellings? Albeit he’s now the Well-Toned Wolf (Jay Hutchinson) who has been working on his anger management. What if Little Jack Horner – the pie-loving lad (played by Jack Watson) who pulled out a plum on the end of his thumb – was a serial entrepreneur who’d fleece anyone to make a quick buck?

And what if the homewrecking brat Goldilocks (a sparky Catriona McFeely) got a second chance? Ultimately trust is elusive (and illusive); friendships are slippery in the depths of the forest.

Diana Ennis’s beautifully simple set allows O’Reilly to play with how actors enter and leave the stage (for the second show in a row). Her white arches and doorways also offer a crisp blank canvas onto which Gavin Peden projects beautifully rich designs, delivering an object lesson on how video can enhance a theatre production. Not content with great vivid imagery, Peden bravely introduces live video into scenes, with selfies and live-streaming captured from Red’s smartphone incorporated into the projections. The cast and crew disguise the care needed to accurately position the moveable set, and make the whole enterprise look incredibly simple.

Composer and sound designer Garth McConaghie summons up a raft of character themes and songs to the show. Goldilocks/McFeely has fun with Listen Up Buckaroo/That’s My Story, while Red/Morgan’s Hey Mummy Hood I’m Doing What I Can had small children in the row in front of me picking up and mimicking Paula O’ Reilly’s choreography. I’m Warning You enjoyed a video game vibe with Peden adding mini-Timmy’s (a cyber security officer) dancing along the top of the arch. Not to mention the keychangetastic In The Belly Of The Wolf. The cast are all vocally able for the score, and everything is neatly reprised in snack-sized bites in the finale’s megamix.

The Adventures of Red Riding Hood is ambitious. It takes familiar characters and splices them together in a novel situation. The youngest audience members seem to recognise enough to follow the story – the ones sitting near me thoroughly enjoyed the cartoonish physicality – while the TikTok slang landed better with teenagers and seemed to sail over the older heads. Just shy of two hours long, the MAC has wisely programmed a lot of matinee and teatime performances. The production’s ambition also extends to the technology innovations that bring the show to life. And it’s incredibly pleasing to witness the cast bringing so much of their background and skills to the storytelling: their own identity is never lost.

Produced by the MAC, The Adventures of Red Riding Hood continues its run until Wednesday 1 January 2025.

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