The Souvenir – a naive dreamer meets a manipulative bully in director Joanna Hogg’s self-portrait (QFT from Friday 30 August)

The Souvenir is a portrait of an aspiring young filmmaker, Julie, who lives in a duplex apartment in Knightsbridge. It’s the early 1980s and she’s a dreamer, who listens to opera, and has lofty notions of making a film about a boy in Sunderland who fears being separated from his mother. Her own parents are remote: living in the country and, beyond funding her bills, relatively disinterested in her life.

Into her orbit comes a somewhat shadowy man, Anthony, who wears a wide pin stripe suit (in itself a huge giveaway that he’s a baddie) and claims to work at the Foreign Office. His secrecy turns to deception and manipulation, while her naivety and generosity morphs into compassion and dependence even when she finally figures out his game. Will her time at film school grant her liberation from this controlling bully, or will be rein in his talented muse?

Newcomer, Honor Swinton Byrne is terrific throughout, balancing Julie’s calm and reserved nature (her character prefers to stand at the back of a room observing what’s going on) with a quiet determination once she has grasped the facts of her situation (though she then intentionally ignores most of the healthy options she could choose). Amazingly for a film studies student, Julie can deconstruct a Hitchcock movie, but struggles to piece together the obvious clues until they are delivered on a plate in a beautifully blunt cameo performance by Richard Ayoade.

Opposite Julie stands Anthony, played by Tom Burke, a master of never giving proper eye contact and communicating shiftiness without having to scream “I’m a bastard” in every shot. Any criticism directed towards Anthony is pivoted right back at Julie with the skill of a seasoned liar. Every supposed compliment is a barbed insult – “you’re lost … you’ll always be lost” – yet Burke steers clear of becoming an out-and-out pantomime villain and some of the romance is believable.

Julie’s mum (played by Byrne’s actual mother, Tilda Swinton) portrays the standoffish parent who just perhaps has more insight into her daughter’s position that she lets on. That she is only present in a small number of scenes amplifies her early diffidence and shift to ultimate wholehearted involvement.

For screenwriter/director Joanna Hogg, the story of The Souvenir is deliberately autobiographical, with her goddaughter Byrne playing a version of her young self that fell in love with a man supposedly working at the Foreign Office who took her on a date to see ‘The Souvenir’ painting at the Wallace Collection in London.

Hogg’s love of improvisation contributes to the brooding hesitancy of scenes and turns The Souvenir into a study of awkwardness, with anxiety-inducing conversations around dinner tables and huge clouds of sadness that sit above the entire story (assisted by the primary set’s décor that drains the colour out of the location). The drug misuse is much more believable than another recent release, Pain and Glory.

Stylistically, Hogg creates a film that doesn’t provide all the answers. In fact, it regularly cuts away mid-scene and jumps to another incident or encounter without feeling the need to join the dots. Like its central character – who is rarely not on screen – the plot staggers around in a sometimes romantic (but often depressed) daze, coping with each day rather than planning too far in advance.

The Souvenir is sinister and at times distressing watch. Its two-hour run time emphasises the deep hole into which a young woman is being coerced into digging. The unusual style and the compelling non-carbon copy characters make it very watchable. The news that The Souvenir: Part II has completed filming over the summer fills me with joy as it promises to pick up the story a few days after the end of Julie’s harrowing experience and follows the artist for the next decade or so. It could hardly be any more harrowing that this first episode, but Joanna Hogg may yet have other disturbing tales up her sleeve.

The Souvenir opens in the Queen’s Film Theatre on Friday 30 August.

Skyroam Solis – a hotspot that takes the hassle out of international mobile data access (130 countries)

As a freelancer, a lot of my work is done at odd hours in odd places. The one constant is that most of it requires online access to contact clients, upload edited video, publish written content and push out social media updates at events.

Coffeeshop wifi is, for the most part, shockingly unreliable – particularly if the venue is using a domestic router – and is sometimes insecure without a VPN. Wireless access in hotels and airports is very patchy. And while many conference centres have invested heavily in flooding their spaces with robust wifi, spending a day in some spaces can feel like travelling back in time to the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Mobile phone networks are often more stable, and can be a lot faster for download, than broadband. They’re usually much faster for upload in my experience as someone who needs to share edited video files that can be more than a couple of gigabytes in size. But it can also be a lot more expensive, though an unlimited data SIM can be sourced for £20/month in the UK.

In years gone by, I carried an unlocked Huawei mifi hotspot (branded as Three) with me wherever I went. One of the first things I’d do in a new country was to buy a Pay As You Go SIM card and slot it in. (Easier said than done in the US where I first needed to buy a prepaid credit card in order to satisfy – or bypass – the identity rules to buy the SIM card as cash and foreign credit cards weren’t allowed.)

The elimination of mobile roaming charges across EU countries has been a godsend for travellers, both business and pleasure. But stray outside the magic list of ‘free’ countries and you’ll be paying a fixed daily fee for data and calls if you’re lucky, or an arm and a leg every few emails if you’re not.

On a recent work trip to Cape Town to attend Global Fact 6, the International Fact Checking Network annual meetup, with a colleague from FactCheckNI, I brought along a Skyroam Solis (loaded to me by their PR team) to see how it would work.

Not much larger or heavier than an ice hockey puck, the distinctive round orange hotspot will hook into mobile networks across 130 countries and allow up to five of your devices to connect over secure wifi. There are sizeable batteries inside – 6,200mAh (about four times the capacity of my Huawei mifi) – which can both power the Solis for hours on end, but also top up your phone’s battery with the provided cable.

The orange puck is small and robust enough to survive being thrown into my backpack and carted around airports, hotels and a conference for a week. A bus from Belfast (UK) to Dublin (Ireland), flight to Istanbul (Turkey) and another to Cape Town (South Africa) were all good tests for the Solis. There’s no physical SIM inside, only a virtual one, leaving Skyroam free to do deals with mobile operators around the world.

Holding the small power button in turns on the hotspot and the lights begins to flash as it figures out where in the world it is and how to get online. So no despite the fact every time I switched it on it was in a new country with a new set of mobile networks to choose from, the Solis figured it out every time without any intervention on my part.

A companion app (available for iOS and Android devices) uses a QR code on the base of the unit to pair up a phone to its wifi (finally a practical use for QR codes!) and lets you see details about the connection and your data usage. You can also connect to the Solis by typing in the wifi password printed on the base by hand.

In the last month, Skyroam have announced a new model, the Solis X which is marginally smaller, has a slightly smaller battery, but allows 10 devices to connect and includes a built-in camera, bluetooth microphone/speaker and can act as a smart assistant.

What does it cost?

One of the immutable rules of the universe is that data is never free! (The corollary is that any free data should assumed to be insecure, limited in bandwidth, and very frustrating to use.) So it should be no surprise that Skyroam offer a number of different ways to prepay for data on the Solis unit which can be bought outright or just rented for the duration of your travel.

Daypass – £7/day ($9) provides 24 hours of unlimited wifi in 130 or so countries. Outside of the friendly roam-free countries, this price point compares well with my current provider who charge £6/day to use my UK tariff’s existing data in an additional 58 countries outside ‘Europe’.

GoData – £7/month ($9) for 1GB of data that can be used over a month, with additional data available by top-up for £7/GB. While the subscription is set to roll over every month, there’s no contract period and as long as you cancel 4 days before the end of your current period. So you can subscribe for a single trip, then cancel and pick it up again a few months later and re-subscribe. I notice that there’s currently a deal to pay up front for 12 months of GoData and get a third off the price of the hotspot (£165 total for Solis+wifi).

Unlimited monthly subscription – £79/month (£99) for unlimited global data over 30 days. Again it rolls over, but there’s no contract and you can cancel up to 4 days before the end of any month. I reckon you’d need to be quite the road warrior doing a lot of international travel and a consuming a lot of data (video) for the Unlimited subscription to cost in. But having spent a month or so working in Macedonia this time last year – outside the EU roaming scheme – the Solis would have been quite competitive and less hassle than hours on the phone to Vodafone trying to rectify a problem with my ‘old’ tariff that wasn’t behaving internationally as their customer service had advised before I travelled.

Using it in anger

The Solis worked well on the bus down to Dublin airport and was a boon when the Cape Town hotel wanted to charge for wifi access. (Turns out that hotels charging for internet access is still a thing in 2019 … madness.)

Sitting at two o’clock in the morning in Istabul’s brand spanking new airport waiting for my flight home to Dublin, I was able to pull the Solis out of my backpack and get online within less than a minute. Dropbox synced up the changes I’d made on the previous flight and I spent a couple of hours editing Google Docs and dissecting people’s Twitter and Facebook usage for social media healthchecks I was running the next week.

Solis’ strength is that it’s hassle free, and given the colour, you’ll unlikely to leave it behind.

Saving an image badged as 1.2Mb on a website, I was surprised that the filesize turned out to be only a few kilobytes, and the picture seemed grainy when I opened it on my laptop. A similar problem can happen on any mobile network, with carriers offering some APNs that push traffic through invisible proxies that compress image sizes to reduce bandwidth (and data usage, often a good thing) as well as APNs that don’t tamper with the content being browsed. A quick conversation with Skyroam online chat resolved the issue and following their instruction to turn the Solis off and on again, it picked up a less restrictive configuration and the internet went back to normal. (Impressive support at 2am on a Sunday morning!)

The Solis is charged by USB-C, so there’s no chance of damaging the unit by trying to plug the charging cable in the wrong way around. It’s slightly annoying that the Solis refuses to be charged by my rather powerful 61W Apple MacBook charger (which would reduce the need to bring a separate charger plug), though it will happily charge off the laptop directly.

The larger the access point, the (potentially) larger the antennae that will be built in. Battery-powered hotspots from Huawei and Netgear (whose Nighthawk M1 is very effective if you have a physical SIM) tend to have small ports that allow a larger external antenna to be attached. I’ve one that comes with suckers that allows it to be stuck to an external window and typically boosts mobile signal strength by 25-40%. However, for air travellers, the lack of the option of an external antenna on the Solis won’t be a big minus.

Livestreaming

As someone who regularly records and livestream conferences, lectures and events using wifi-connected cameras (iPhones on remote gimbals) and Switcher Studio’s software, I’m always on the lookout for flexible connectivity solutions, particularly if working overseas and wanting to slim down the amount of kit that needs to travel.

Recording would just use its ability to connect up to five devices together (with the traffic between the devices staying within the room and none of it going out over mobile network). The Solis wouldn’t quite have the sensitivity of the larger Google Wi-Fi access point I trail around in my case which has multiple internal antennae. But in small venues with good line of sight between devices, the Solis could be a good option.

Streaming would not only rely on the five devices connecting together via wireless, but would take advantage of Solis’ 4G connectivity. It would be cost restrictive at home. And for streamers, Skyroam’s Fair Use Policy warns about bandwidth being reduced if a user consumes a disproportionately high amount of data, which makes this hotspot less attractive as a streaming solution, given the likelihood that an hour or more of an HD stream to Facebook Live or YouTube could trigger a service-restricting action.

But for short bursts while travelling, it could still be very effective.

Conclusion

Frequent travellers will enjoy the wide coverage and no-nonsense price plans that Skyroam offer. I found the loaned Solis unit to be robust and the technical support was speedy and, importantly, available when I needed it. The Skyroam Solis is a big time saver that avoids the hassle of buying a local SIM card if your mobile tariff back at home is going to prove too expensive. And the ability to go away for a few weeks outside Europe with a few GB of data loaded through GoData and know that it’ll work across a family is a very attractive option for regular travellers needing data on the move.

Thanks to Skyroam PR team for the loan of the hotspot.

The Informer – battling to survive when the chips are down and old friends leave you in the clink (UK and Ireland cinemas from Friday 30 August)

Whether an informer or a tout depends on your perspective on the individual, but people in Northern Ireland are familiar with the concept and sympathetic to the notion that the person who is supplying the information and the person to whom it is being supplied are in a very unequal power relationship with the latter having significant coercive leverage over the former.

The Informer follows the tribulations facing an informer in a New York drug gang. When the operation to expose the top man goes south, Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) and his steely family (Ana de Armas and Karma Meyer) are at the mercy of his gang, his FBI handlers, a vengeful NYPD organised crime officer and his former place of incarceration.

This is a tale of not knowing who to trust, pitting a master tactician (with the resourcefulness of Die Hard’s John McClane) against a sympathetic Federal agent (Rosamund Pike), her nervous boss (Clive Owen) and a gung-ho policeman (played by Common) who eschews the protection a flak jacket would provide. He also carelessly loses his police partner (Ruth Bradley) who completely disappears from screen for the mother of all long breakfasts on the edit room floor immediately after making an inconsequential personal revelation!

Wiretapping, brutally violent scenes inside prison (filmed in Gloucester), the accidental state murder of yet another crooked law enforcement officer, and a fabulous jail break sequence, The Informer isn’t for the feint-hearted. For the most part it follows a well-constructed plot and is edited to maximise the sense of Pete’s isolation and the audience’s distrust of each of the major criminal justice agents.

While never looking scared – a particular problem in some of the early set-up scenes – Kinnaman combines brains and brawn to create a character who the audience can firmly get behind. De Armas òozes maternal protection and Owen creates a very slippery character, a lot of the other characters felt totally subservient to the storyline with Pike in particular playing her FBI role with a low key coolness throughout and Common flipflopping between pushy and threatening. There won’t be many Oscars nominations on the back of the acting in this film.

Adapted from the Swedish thriller Three Seconds by screenwriters Rowan Joffe, Matt Cook and director Andrea Di Stefano (who have swapped the focus from the police detective to the inside man), the unfinished feel to the ending suggests that we may see Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström’s literary sequel Three Minutes translated to the silver screen in a couple of years’ time.

The Informer hits cinema screens in the UK and Ireland – including Movie House Cinemas – from Friday 30 August, four months ahead of its US release.

The Big Meeting – telling some of the stories of the annual Durham Miners’ Gala (from 6 September)

Every year on the second Saturday in July, thousands of activists converge in the north east of England for the Durham Miners’ Gala. At the peak of coal industry there were over 100 pits in Country Durham; today none are still in operation.

A new documentary from Shut Out the Light Films about the gala is being screened in some English and Scottish cinemas from Friday 6 September, marking the 150th anniversary of the gala. The Big Meeting provides an immersive insight into the 2018 event (which was blessed with glorious sunshine), following various participants across the day and sewing their individual dramas into a colourful patchwork quilt.

Coming from Northern Ireland, I can’t help but compare the gala with a Twelfth of July Orange parade. People marching behind an ornate banner accompanied by a band and congregating in a field for speeches and a grockle around some stalls seems terribly familiar!

The sequence on miners’ art was one of the most distinctive and satisfying in the film, while the scenes inside Durham Cathedral were spine-tingling as Highland Cathedral echoed around the stone walls.

The event clearly means different things to different people. Some are commemorating family connections with coal-mining; some are upholding the work of trade unions; some are protesting for socialist causes; some see it as a way of celebrating working class Britain; some very definitely see it as a way of marking their support for the Labour Party, and, in particular, Jeremy Corbyn’s style of politics (he pops up in person at the 38 minute mark).

Talking heads voice their perspectives over a mix of archive and contemporary footage. Split screen is used to effectively convey the size and breadth of the occasion. While I’d expect the pace to vary across the 90-minute documentary, there are a lot of wistful shots that probably evoke strong emotion in participants but merely slow down the telling of the gala’s story to newbies.

The final line of the film’s narration observes: “You realise it’s a little more than you expect”. But as an outside watching the film and finding out about the gala for the first time, I overwhelmed by the melange of ideas being spread and the varying rationale for involvement. People are coming together, but not really for one collective purpose that they’d agree on.

The documentary doesn’t address this scope creep amongst participants. Instead it notes the Labour grandees with drinks and cigars up on the balcony of the Country Hotel without commenting that these elite leaders may be perceived to be 15 feet above contradiction and certainly not ‘down with the people’ as they watch from this elevated position above the working class beginnings of the gala.

As a film that documents that colour, vibrancy and history of the Durham Miner’s Gala, The Big Meeting delivers a balance of people, stories and perspectives. However, director Daniel Draper very much paints an insider’s view of the gala, an enthusiastic and unchallenging celebration of the event. His target audience seems to be the easy pickings of existing socialist activists rather than selling the event to a wider and perhaps more sceptical audience who wonder how this annual rage against capitalism by the energy centres of the 19th century apply in the 21st.

Pain and Glory – great storytelling, much pain, little glory (QFT from Friday 23 August)

Despite the title, there’s definitely more pain that glory in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest Spanish-language film. The sustaining plot line in Pain and Glory (15) follows a film director who has been torn away from the camera by his aching body. Salvador (Antonio Banderas) spends much of his autumn years indoors, in low light, taking pills to ease the agony, and unable to push forward with new projects. Through flashbacks to his childhood, we discover that his pain is also psychological and tied up with aspects of his closeted identity.

While the pain is very real, the glory is mostly projected. Salvador didn’t like his old film which has just been restored and is going to be screened once again. But when he takes the opportunity to reconnect with caustic Alberto (Asier Etxeandia), an actor he has long held a grudge against, they spend longer chasing the dragon than truly burying the hatchet.

Having been brought up in a cave with whitewashed walls, the fictional director now lives surrounded by opulent art and rich objects. Director of photography José Luis Alcaine picks up on the patterns in his framing of non-art-based shots, drawing a vivid thread through the 113-minute film.

The scenes were shot in Almodóvar’s Madrid apartment. Pain and Glory turns out to be an incredibly personal piece, drawing on some of his own experiences.

If you get the opportunity to attend a screening followed by a Q&A with Almodóvar, jump at the opportunity. If he detests them as much as he allows his fictional director to avoid them, it’ll certainly be a memorable evening.

Banderas is a convincing old man, hobbling about each scene. He bears the burden of his character’s ailments, yet no matter how well he performed, the heroin usage plot point sat awkwardly on the journey of self-discovery, only really there to pass the time with Alberto and set up the discovery of an autobiographical manuscript. (Another hint to the autobiographical nature of the story.)

Some of the flashbacks are more rewarding than the contemporary scenes. Penélope Cruz plays his mother Jacinta in a handful of sweet and warm scenes that paint a picture of the poverty and simplicity of his youth. Julieta Serrano rather brilliantly takes over the role of Jacinta in old age, picking at another unhealed scab in Salvador’s festering sore. With so many old memories unearthed and explored, can his creative block be lifted?

The narrative is neither linear nor predictable, though each scene neatly connects to the next. Almodóvar leaves a hint of ambiguity in many of his vignettes that adds a frisson of uncertainty to the viewing experience. (I was convinced that young Salvador would fall into the river in the opening scene, yet he doesn’t.) While women are important to his survival, they’re somewhat subservient in the narrative.

In the end, while the storytelling was exceptional, and there was no end of heartache in the broken relationships that surrounded Salvador, the film left me rather unmoved, emotionless even when presented with its most precious scenes. 

Pain and Glory is released in the UK and Ireland on Friday 23 August and is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre.

Fame - some beautiful moments of song and dance in this 30th Anniversary production (Grand Opera House until Saturday 24 August)

Bruno, the keyboard player, was my hero in the TV series of Fame that followed on from the 1980 Alan Parker film. I used to audio tape episodes and then listen back to them. (No VCR in our house in those days.) My emotional anchor is missing from the stage version which has now been (mostly) in and out of theatres for 30 years. Also missing are most of the classic songs from that era which still haunt my iPod playlists. But all is not lost …

The musical version of Fame knowingly follows on from the film (and even references it) with the new intake of students in 1982 warned that it’s not going to be all about dancing on top of cars on 42nd Street! Three stories from dance, music and theatre majors are woven together as classical forms once again tussle against modern expression.

Tyrone (Jamal Kane Crawford) faces up to the illiteracy that undermines his grades; Carmen’s drug misuse (Stephanie Rojas) and quest for “instance fame” (still apt in this Instagram generation) threaten her progress; and Serena (Molly McGuire) and Nick (Keith Jack) struggle to find their true selves in the scenes they must act out. Throw in “seafood diet” Mabel (Hayley Johnston), ribald Joe (Morgan Jackson covering for Albey Brookes) with his comedy codpiece, and insecure but so delicately graceful Iris (Jorgie Porter), and you have quite a cast.

The feeling of live performance is  enhanced by three cast members (Tom Mussell, Alexander Zane and Louisa Beadel) who prove they can act, dance, sing and also play saxophone, trumpet and drums/aggressive triangle/soprano saxophone on stage. Dance-wise, the choreography seems to have lost most of the iconic splits in the middle of the air (and a lot of the legwarmers), but last night the talented cast kept up the energy even when some of the lights failed throughout Act Two and left more then a few faces in the shade.

With so much story to knit together, there are a lot of snatched scenes before the interval, with some painfully-truncated ballroom dancing between Iris and Tyrone that seemed to promise to much more before being snatched away, and a quick verse from Schlomo (Simon Anthony) and Carmen whose voices deserved a lot more exposure. After the break, Mabel’s Prayer is a treat, and Mica Paris’ soul talent is showcased (playing Miss Sherman, the strict English teacher) with a powerful These Are My Children, finally hinting at the show’s real potential. Paris and Rojas also rock the finale reprise of the title song like a battle round on The Voice (they’d both go through).

Morgan Large’s very effective set deserves special mention: tiled walls of yearbook pictures of past students (including some of the current cast) combined with Prema Mehta’s lighting design provides an interesting and flexible backdrop to the drama (though its VU Meter mode could be a little more realistic).

Emotionally, it was only ten minutes from the end when director Nick Winston had pulled together all the character arcs and Schlomo stepped behind his faux piano to pay tribute to Carmen that the show finally got its hooks into me. That’s a function of the rather tame tunes and thinly drawn characters in the book and lyrics rather than any fault of the cast.

In fact, compared with the limp and lacklustre Saturday matinee production of Fame I saw in London’s West End many, many years ago, this 30th Anniversary Tour version is in a different league. This cast work well as an ensemble and squeeze as much life out of the source material as is possible. If only it didn’t make me think back so much more fondly to the original and wistfully “remember, remember, remember”.

Pull on your legwarmers and “tell me what you see” if you head down to the Grand Opera House this week to catch Fame before the students pack up their lockers on Saturday 24 August and head to Bournemouth next week.

31 Hours – tackling masculinity and mental health head on (PintSized Productions touring Belfast until 16 August)

Four men dressed in DayGlo orange hi-vis protective clothing and white helmets bustle through the audience to step onto the pub stage. The men are a Network Rail infrastructure cleaning team who mop up after incidents: chemical and, more often, human.

They’re also the vehicle through which playwright Kieran Knowles chose to examine the issue of male suicide. The title, 31 Hours, is the interval between deaths on British railway tracks. The four become proxies for all those affected by the actions of jumpers, wingers, platform crawlers, bouncers, poppers and cows (of the animal variety). A wobbly tightrope is walked to balance the selfish actions of victims while also engendering empathy.

(At the back of my mind I’m conscious that regulated broadcasters and self-regulated newspapers might well struggle to editorially justify the excessive detail of suicide methods contained in this play in their dramas or news reports that this theatre piece includes.)

There’s a thick lashing of gallows humour in this dark 80-minute drama which shifts across its spectrum of gruesome to … just a bit dark in an instant. The idea of being told to ‘man up’ is dissected. Each man, supposedly tough and able to mop up blood and body parts, also highlights the fragile state of most people’s mental health and the need for intentional intervention to ask people about their feelings.

Knowles doesn’t make it easy for any cast picking up his script. Real team work needed to utter the many sentences that are split across four mouths, piecing together the playwright’s fractured dialogue which is interspersed with rhyming performance poetry and monologues. The very physical style of Nuala Donnelly’s direction picks up on this intimacy, and choreographs the four men into tight cycled movements that squeeze them together onto the tiny upstairs stage of The American Bar as they swap genders and ages to pick up minor parts.

There’s an intensity to Robert Crawford’s performance while Richard McFerren has a particularly powerful gaze and gestures. Jonny Everett evokes the pent-up pressure of the constantly measured and monitored job. Matthew Blaney confidently manages the transition from wet-behind-the-ears newbie to become established in the crew. The masculine cast is balanced by the female creatives behind the scenes.

One of the most powerful scenes comes towards the end as three wives and a young son reflect on the worries and mood that the four men carry with them. They have the knowledge, but will they intervene?

What works less well is the localisation of some place names, mixing the Great-Britain nature of Network Rail’s territory with Northern Irish Translink destinations.

PintSized Productions are demonstrating an ability to tackle head-on the big issues in society. Last November’s production of Wasted was a powerful and timely examination of consent, while 31 Hours tackles masculinity and mental health.

31 Hours continues its short tour with public performances in The American Bar (7.30pm, Monday 12 August), Strand Arts Centre (7.30pm, Thursday 15) and Solitude, Cliftonville FC’s Social Club (7.30pm, Friday 16).

The Miami Showband Story – a promising new piece of musical theatre stuffed full of popular tunes and great live performances (Grand Opera House until 17 August plus Irish tour)

Marie Jones and Martin Lynch’s new project – The Miami Showband Story – is an ambitious musical theatre production that takes audiences on a studious but winding journey from 1950’s skiffle bands to the emergence of better instrumented showbands (omitting the downsizing big bands), explaining about the exciting transfer market between popular groups, the tragedy that tore apart The Miami Showband when their minibus was attacked and three band members killed along with two of the perpetrators, and the impact that had on one of its surviving players.

It’s a lot to squeeze into a couple of hours of theatre, probably too much. After a great improvised skiffle version of Puttin’ on the Style, the story jumps forward to 1963 and we pick up the story of Fran O’Toole (Niall McNamee) in Bray and Des Lee (Gary Crossan) in Belfast. The first half bulges with excerpts from songs (including the hit From the Candy Store on the Corner) that warm up the vocal cords of many in the audience who can’t help themselves but join in. They cheer at mentions of The Orpheus Ballroom, shout “he’s my favourite” when Joe Dolan gets a mention, and the defection of big names from one band to another still garners tutting 50 years on.

What’s really impressive is the live music. Ever-changing subsets of the six young male actors play drums, keyboards, guitars and brass to recreate the 1960’s hits with a strong beat and good harmonies. The wonder of in-ear monitors and wireless mics keep the stage free of cables. A serious concert-level speaker stack means that the music and vocals can be heard clearly across the Grand Opera House.

Chris Mohan makes a great upright Dickie Rock with the stage presence needed for the lead singer of a band. Connor Burnside provides a lot of the heavy lifting on drums during songs, while Gavin Peden nimbly jumps between bass, electric and keyboards. Gary Crossan’s expressive saxophone together with Gareth O’Connor on guitar and Niall McNamee on keys and vocals (great falsetto) make them into a credible band who have clearly practised with musical director Garth McConaghie as rigorously as they have rehearsed their dialogue.

What’s less good is the differentiation between the musicians. The second half becomes the story of Des, but there’s little signposting before the interval that he is the one to watch. In retrospect it’s obvious that Des and Fran are the only two with family, but with most cast members playing a couple of different roles across the simplified history of showbands, the script and direction (Ruth Carney) tends to allow the lads to merge into a sea of coloured jackets.

There’s a bit of gear-crunching with some overly-abrupt and functional dialogue and a rather clunky first mention of the politics of the island (the civil rights march in Derry) which becomes important in later scenes. The show’s handbrake turn which switches from musical celebration to response to tragedy of 31 July 1975 (which killed Tony Geraghty, Brian McCoy and Fran O’Toole) and and the immediate grief is sensitively-handled, though an extraordinary and bizarre mashup of Zulu classic The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Paul Brady’s The Island probably works better on paper than on stage as it tries to capture Des Lee’s trauma, years after the loss of his bandmates.

The honesty of telling Des Lee’s story and battle with alcoholism is commendable and adds a real human touch to the story that for so long is about a collective rather than focussed on any individual. The writers wisely steer clear of piecing together the background to the UVF attack and the investigations, allegations and convictions.

The two female actors have the dance moves of the 60s and 70s down to a tee but don’t get much story or dialogue to work with. At times they are left providing backing vocals hidden off-stage, though Fiona Carty’s demonstrates her wonderfully warm voice with Have I the Right? early in the first act, and Aileen Mythen belts out a fabulous R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the final medley. Enda Kilroy completes the cast as the hard-to-trust Miami manager Tom Doherty and UDR patrolman.

The show’s repeated premise is that The Miami Showband “didn’t change the world with our music but we brought people together”. The efficacious recreation of the music and vibe means that The Miami Showband Story is the most musically-ambitious show on a Belfast stage since last summer’s storming Good Vibrations at the Lyric Theatre. As a piece of audience-pleasing nostalgia, the show is a great success; but the music ends up tighter than the dramatic aspects.

The Miami Showband Story runs at the Grand Opera House on Saturday 17 August and will then tour through Armagh, Derry, Killarney, Castlebar, Galway, Drogheda, Limerick, Waterford, Meath and finishing up with a week in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.

The Old Curiosity Show – imagination runs riot in this dark and deathly triptych (Amadan in The Vault as part of EastSide Arts Festival)

John Patrick Higgins writes words. Long ones and shorter ones. But lots of them at a time. They ooze out his pores. Seemingly unstoppable. He speaks with rich simile and a finely-tuned sense of criticism. But his written words are even sharper, loose in the sense that they’re not so honed to be frugal, but paint unanticipated and at times shocking scenes.

A previous script by John Patrick Higgins gave voice to a man whose mental health was in turmoil. His latest work is more upbeat, albeit in a dark and somewhat deathly fashion.

The Old Curiosity Show is a triptych of gothic, somewhat rude, tales of the unexpected. And the free-flowing imagination suits the style of Amadan, an ensemble who revel in edgy and physical theatre that imposes upon the audience’s space and sensibilities, while delighting in the wonder of proper clowning about and their bouffon style of theatre.

The first vignette sees a well-to-do gentleman (played by Jude Quinn like an amalgam of elderly and deceased unionist politicians) step into Sweeney Todd’s barber shop (played by Helen Ashton) for a spot of restyling. While there’s an inevitability to the bloody razorblade action, what leads up to that moment and the reaction of finger-licking Mrs Lovett (Gemma Mae Halligan) provide drama and intrigue.

Amadan’s style invests heavily in posture, glances, and the physicality of performances. This was the first show, after years of attending productions, in which I’ve heard Quinn utter a line on stage. Before this week, mumbles and moans had always been sufficient. But the team wrap Higgins words around their miniature set and simple, reusable props to ramp up the absurdity and milk every line and pun for its laughs. This is the finest of controlled madness.

One melodramatic tableau is quickly threaded into the next and a governess picks up a job from a prickly parent to mind two young charges in a ghostly setting, before a deadly cleaner arrives to clean up a mess, aided by a giant pigeon seagull who had one audience member laughing nearly to the point of laying an egg.

Three actors create 26 characters so when a cast member appears around the side of the backdrop, you’re never quite sure how their base costume will have been accessorised, how their new teeth will affect their facial expression, and what they’ll be carrying. And when they open their mouth, Higgins’ creativity adds another level of mystery.

The Old Curiosity Show was a one-off performance by Amadan in The Vault as part of EastSide Arts Festival. Hopefully it will soon return to delight and surprise further audiences.

Photo credit: Campbell Photography

Gaza – understanding lives that are trapped in a place where change is far from certain (from 8 August)

A new documentary film sets out to show what ordinary life is like in Gaza. What do people do in the 141 square mile strip of land? What are their dreams? What’s it like to live in the third most populated polity in the world, trapped behind controlled crossings on its land border with Israel and Egypt?

Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell’s film Gaza is at its least complicated and most powerful as they begin to shine a spotlight on 18 contributors, giving them a few minutes each to tell their story. A 14-year-old boy lives with a dozen siblings in a three-room home. A young woman practices her cello and longs to play internationally. A taxi driver dips into his passengers’ stories. Slowly the lives and experiences are woven together.

The interviews aren’t totally natural. They’re like the well-shot taster videos that precede hopeful artists auditioning on Saturday night TV shows. But the essence of life going on, dreams dashed, prolonged uncertainty and a lack of hope for a changed situation is clear.

The long coastline is a constant companion. You’re never more than seven miles from the sea in Gaza. The water at first offers respite from the daily power outages and the strain of living under blockade. The shoreline scenes suggest escape before the realisation that the open sea has an invisible border three miles out, beyond which boats must not pass. Sea trade and transit are forbidden. And with fish stocks diminishing, a child’s vision of growing up to helm a boat out at sea turns into a dubious aspiration.

For the first hour, the bricks are laid. Then comes an air raid that knocks them down and introduces the violence that accompanies the constrained living conditions and failing economy in Gaza. The tone changes as a middle-aged woman describes how past actions have stirred in her murderous thoughts.

For a few moments I wonder if the filmmakers didn’t trust the impact of the 18 voices. That they needed to show violence filmed from Gaza looking out across their border. Does it politicise the message? What measure of support is there for the young men that look like Davids slinging stones at the armoured Goliath over the border? How would I expect the story of 1980s Belfast to have been told?

Watching a programme or documentary about Palestine or Israel can be exhausting. There’s an instinctive fear that there’s a political agenda, that someone’s story will be told at the expense of someone else’s narrative which would challenge understanding. By even offering a view on this film, I’ll be accused of being someone’s sympathiser or spreading someone’s propaganda.

The documentary isn’t pro-Hamas and isn’t anti-Israel. As a film, Gaza offers a compelling and compassionate image of a population who have little individual agency to change what’s happening around them.

Its agenda is pro-human, pro-listening, pro-putting yourself in other people’s shoes. It asks how the whole world could know that two million people are trapped but so little is done to change the circumstances. A question that can be repeated for many different conflicted places around the world.

The final words “God help us” are well chosen given the preceding 90 minutes of footage that allow audiences to look through a window at life in the troubled titular region.

There’s a pre-release screening of Gaza on Thursday 8 August followed by a director Q&A at the Kennedy Centre Omniplex as part of Féile an Phobail, before the film goes is released to Irish cinemas from Friday 9, with screenings locally in Omniplex and Queen’s Film Theatre.

Blinded by the Light – music from the Boss ultimately stronger than the storyline (UK/Irish cinemas from 9 August)

There have been a rash of music-driven films in local cinemas over the last two years. Fantasy musical La La Land (I hated it first time round, loved it upon a second viewing), The Greatest Showman (stronger musically than visually), A Star Is Born (with a totally mesmerising Lady Gaga), Bohemian Rhapsody (totally ga ga story), Imagine (which thankfully puts the songs on a pedestal rather than the original artists) and Rocketman (not yet seen).

Blinded by the Light gets under the skin of a family living in Luton. Javed’s parents emigrated from Pakistan to England. The traditional paternalistic attitudes and values in his home are in stark contrast to the influences he bumps up against in sixth form college. It’s 1987, Thatcher is in power, the Vauxhall car plant is laying off workers, and the cool kids carry around ghetto blasters on their shoulders. Javed is an undercover writer – a diarist, a poet, and a lyricist – trying to assert some control on his present and his future.

“In my house, no one’s allowed opinions except my Dad.”

Introduced to the music of Bruce Springsteen, Javed (played by the captivating Viveik Kalra) falls in love with the lyrics which he feels speak directly into his situation. He also falls in love with a left-wing activist friend Eliza (Nell Williams) whose Tory parents provide great comedy value when he goes around for dinner. Clashing against this backdrop of self-discovery and selfish desire are the plummeting financial situation at home as his Dad stops being the primary wage-earner and his Mum’s side-line making clothing becomes essential to the family’s survival.

The parental pressures are somewhat universal. A dancing-in-the-street scene is cut into the action. It’s clunky, because Blinded by the Light isn’t a full-on-musical, but it does manage to gently reinforce the premise that this is a heart-warming coming-of-age story that doesn’t want to stay too serious despite the bonhomie being peppered with explicit and implicit racism at every turn.

Then, drunk on Springsteen, the film’s finale loses the run of itself as writer/director Gurinder Chadha’s plot shelves the emerging romcom and abandons Eliza, instead allowing a blokey trip to the US with Roops (Aaron Phagura) to complete the two-hour movie and squeeze in some more tunes from the Boss.

Blinded by the Light (12A) shows initial promise but throws everything away in the final twenty minutes. Springsteen fans will enjoy its melodies, social anthropologists will appreciate the commentary on Thatcher’s Britain, haters of Luton will revel in the town’s grim portrayal, but I remain unconvinced about the structure of the tale being told.

Released in UK and Irish cinemas from 9 August 2019.

Paperboy – challenging youth musical eschews mere nostalgia to set down challenge about the lack of peace (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 4 August)

Paperboy premiered in the Lyric Theatre last summer. And this weekend the musical is back at the culmination of several packed weeks of rehearsal by the young talent enrolled in the local British Youth Music Theatre summer camp.

I’ve written previously about the outbreak of nostalgic theatre in Belfast over the last couple of years that has often looked back at incidents during the Troubles. Shows have a tendency to nod their heads towards dark moments and then allow audiences to belly laugh at aspects of behaviour and circumstance that should often really still appal us. Specific moments in history are allowed to make universal points about love and the power of music. Sometimes it works; often it’s a bit cheap; very occasionally it’s downright offensive.



Paperboy manages to avoid donning a pair of oversized rose-tinted glasses as it looks back at Tony Macaulay’s memories of living in the upper Shankill in 1975. Yes, it’s full of references popular culture, but it’s authentic and features the bands and science fiction shows that the writer obsessed over. Yes, it’s full of local vernacular, though an English guest at last night’s show confirmed that there were only three occasions when he couldn’t understand why the audience was laughing.

(If you pop upstairs in the Lyric you can see an exhibition of 1970’s memorabilia, including Macaulay’s certificate for taking part in UTV’s Romper Room!)

The success of Andrew Doyle’s lyrics and book comes from the poignancy of a group of 30 tweens and teens playing back part of Northern Ireland’s history and articulating young Tony’s hope that a time would come when things wouldn’t be like this.

A couple of months ago I might have argued that things were now unrecognisably better than the bad old days. And then I woke up on the 18 April to the 7am Radio Ulster news bulletin explaining that a young female journalist had been shot in Derry. I racked my brain to think who I knew who could have been reporting. Moments later, a live press conference interrupted the programme and a senior police officer named the murdered woman as Lyra McKee and I gasped. I wasn’t supposed to be part of the generation that would wake up to the news that a friend had been killed as part of the conflict. That was for other people, in an earlier time.

Through the idealism of young characters, Paperboy presents a strong challenge about incomplete change and unfulfilled dreams.

There’s some overlap with last year’s cast, so the show has a great foundation. Sam Gibson brings a cheeky charm to the central role as the only pacifist paperboy in Belfast and is pitch-perfect each time he walks through the rest of the cast who are finishing off the previous song while begins his in a new key. His resonant voice cuts through the wider chorus and his well-balanced narration keeps the story moving.

The creative team have improved the flow of the story, and the Peace People finale offers an emotionally powerful peak that captures Macaulay’s heart and ethic right before a toe-tapping medley demonstrates the musical and dancing talent across the cast, and sends the audience out with a spring in their step. Duke Special’s vocal harmonies are well executed by the cast, door and window frame props are combined with Julia Cave’s nifty choreography and patterns, while Natalia Alvarez’s wooden stockade backdrop quietly hints at Belfast landmarks, while it hides Matthew Reeve’s band. Amid the melee and youthful buzz, co-directors Steven Dexter and Dean Johnson give one explosive scene sufficient space to speak out of its silence.

There are plenty of monsters, as seen from the eyes of a young boy: with bossy soldiers, bullying teens, a strutting Cyberman and sea monkeys, not to mention a terrific political puppet who is quickly followed up with a lyrics about “weeping and gnashing of teeth” and a surprisingly contemporary “God doesn’t love you”. But a very fine Mr Tumnus (Karl Johnston) and a useful Doctor Who are on hand to weather the paper round storms.

The classroom rendition of historical The History Lesson is a choral highlight of the first act. After the interval, the dreamy King and Queen of Nowhere World will be special once some pitch issues in hyperspace are sorted, and Honor Brigg (playing Tony’s Mum) delivers some spellbinding moments in the emotional triumph A River Runs Beneath Us.

The short run of Paperboy ends with a matinee performance on Sunday 4 August. Every ticket has been sold, and I’m sure there’s already a long waiting list at the box office. But you’d be a fool not to get your name on it just in case.

Photo credit: Chris Hill

Bugsy Malone – diminutive adolescents aping deadly adults in this classic musical (Grand Opera House until Saturday 3 August)

I counted at least 120 children on stage during the finale of Bugsy Malone. It was like a mob had descended as rival gangs, detectives and the speakeasy girls mingled under the proscenium arch.

Alan Parker’s book and Paul Williams’ music tell the story of a deadly power struggle between Fat Sam and Dandy Dan as witnessed by boxing scout Bugsy Malone. The war of weapons escalates while a flirtatious old flame upsets Bugsy’s new fancy and his chances of running away together. Oh, and this gangster tale is mockingly cast with children, armed with cream pies and splurge guns, making it a spoof on 1929 ‘Nue York’.

This is the second production of the summer by the Grand Opera House Trust who entertained audiences with an ambitious staging of Miss Saigon a couple of weeks ago. The Trust’s shows are a great opportunity for children to get over any stage fright and perform with a professional set, costumes, band and lighting.

Robbie McMinn confidently conducts the story. He’s more animated than most of the rest of the cast, and stands out, catching the audience’s eye, as he weaves his way through crowd scenes. It’s a vocally strong cast, particularly the principals, and none more so than Caroline McMichael who plays actress and singer Blousey Brown and belts out her songs with gusto. Jasmine Mirfield slips into Tallulah’s refined heels and steps between once cagey now romantically-inclined Bugsy and Blousey with some great dancing, backed by Rebecca Leonard’s choreographed ensemble.

There’s clearly been a directorial decision by Tony Finnegan not to milk Fat Sam’s character name and pop Fionntán MacGiolla Cheara into a fat suit to beef up his stage presence alongside his funny sidekick Knuckles (Finn Tyler). The comedy is at its sharpest when we observe diminutive adolescents aping the deadly adults, particularly Jay Lowey who makes an excellent rival gangster Dandy Dan.

Parker and Williams’ stage adaptation of their film has a lot of bitty scenes which could have sapped the life out of the musical if it hadn’t been for the very swift scene changes that at times move busloads of characters through the wings and emergency exits in a manner of seconds while stagehands are kept very busy up in the fly tower dropping in signage to set each new scene. Wilson Shields also helps keep the pace moving with the orchestra down in the pit (which includes some youth players).

The surprising entrance of a vehicle is becoming a motif of the Trust’s youth shows, and tonight’s pedal-powered limousine was an effective prop. With fine flapping and fast footwork throughout, the ginormous cast deliver a strong version of a slightly bonkers show that allows child’s play to innocently paper over the violent story that is being told.

Bugsy Malone continues at the Grand Opera House with a 2pm matinee and 7pm final performance on Saturday 3 August.