Blood Upon the Rose – an ambitious, well-produced though uncritical retelling of the Easter Rising (Grand Opera House until 28 September)

Blood Upon the Rose is an ambitious piece of musical theatre by the River Tall Community Theatre that picks out the love story between Grace Gifford and Joseph Plunkett from a wider retelling of the 1916 Easter Rising.

Starting with the immediate aftermath of Plunkett’s execution, the production goes back to the secret planning for the rebellion, the organisational and situational barriers, scenes of battle, surrender and the repercussions. Along the way we watch as Plunkett flirts with Gifford, mansplaining until it is briefly established that she’s an intellectual match, kindling romance though relegating her to the role of silent partner as the Rising becomes his mistress.

Daniel Donnelly plays Plunkett and captures well the contradictions at the heart of this central character: a strong faith, living with debilitating tuberculosis, yet deliberately hiding both his health and his involvement with the uprising from his future wife. His voice blends well with the powerful sound from mezzo-soprano Lauren McCrory (playing Gifford) who embodies the confidence of an artist walking away from the dominant politics and religion of her parents, strong enough to free her fiancé to take action and accepting of the likely brevity of their relationship.

At times the love story, and particularly the life of Grace Gifford, disappears from view for long periods, though the staging of Frank and Seán O'Meara’s song Grace is soaked in emotion as the couple marry in the prison chapel on the eve of Plunkett’s execution.

Scenes with the Irish Republican Brotherhood negotiating with he Irish Citizen Army’s James Connolly to unify disparate campaigns trigger flashbacks to the failed attempts to get Vote Leave and Leave.EU to cooperate during the EU Referendum. Given the secular feel to the expression of modern-day Sinn Féin republicanism, it’s fascinating to watch the thread of strong faith running through many of the major players in the Rising.

“My religion is my essence” says Plunkett, “without faith I am nothing”. Though the contradiction of knowingly “planning a blood sacrifice to awaken a nation” and condemning young men to death is never tackled or challenged in the show.

Dermy McCann delivers a particularly intense performance as Thomas Clarke, the charismatic proponent of armed revolution. Sinead Willox is striking as the forthright and outspoken Countess Markieviez, and along with Roisin Mc Aliskey’s Winifred Carney the pair finally raise women’s voices in the history of the Rising.

Michael Collins’ speech to the volunteers in the thick of battle lacks impact, though the combination of music from the six-piece band, pyrotechnics and stabs of light bring to life the confusion and stress of the battle scenes.

Kevin O’Kane’s static set supports numerous locations with minimal props, though the newspaper clipping panels are stylistically at odds with the brick panelling and architectural features on the remaining elements.

The lighting design gives Blood Upon the Rose a real boost, taking full advantage of the height above the Grand Opera House stage and the depth of the auditorium to add atmosphere to the action. Green, white and orange beams create a dramatic tricolour flag at appropriate moments, far more impressive than smaller flags carried on stage.

A video screen behind the set is very effective as a vivid stained-glass window in St Mary’s Pro Cathedral and shows black and white archive footage of the Rising and eventual surrender. However, it is unfortunate that some captioned graphics are used that are wider than the visible area of the screen.

Writer/director Gerry Cunningham has created an Evita-like version of history, using the very talented Conor Begley as the priestly narrator to walk through scenes – though with much less analytical commentary than Webber/Rice’s Che. Donaghy’s It’s Nearly Over Now in the second act is a beautiful moment after a tense Easter Monday.

Blood Upon the Rose is a very unquestioning and uncritical retelling, that makes little effort to expose the real contradictions and likely failings of some of those who signed the Proclamation. (Pádraig Pearse gets away particularly lightly.) There is a brief acknowledgement that civilians and British forces died as well as volunteers during the Rising.

There’s room for partisan and even patriotic theatre, but with past events that continue to shape the politics and people of this island today, Blood Upon the Rose veers dangerously close to reducing a bloody piece of important history to a sham folktale, a simple retelling without any benefit of hindsight. It’s unsettling to see audience members swaying their arms in the air like a pop concert and waving banners during the finale while Plunkett lies dead on the stage.

In terms of production values and on-stage talent, Blood Upon the Rose is a spectacular triumph for an amateur company. And it was certainly the most unexpected example of rollerskating in a theatre production for years! However, the difficulty in stretching out the romance to better fill the two and a half hour runtime gives the historical re-enactment top billing and demotes what could have been more engaging human elements between the interestingly-drawn characters.

Blood Upon the Rose finishes its sold out run at the Grand Opera House on Saturday 28 September after a tour that has taken the show to London, Glasgow and Dublin.

Photo credit: River Tall Community Theatre

The Goldfinch – protracted, poorly-plotted adaptation of Donna Tartt’s novel with some fine performances (in UK and Irish cinemas from 27 September)

Young Theo survives an explosion at a New York art museum. Seemingly orphaned, Theo stays with well-to-do family friends – who thankfully switch from being downright begrudging to very loving – until his birth father shows up and whisks him off to the outer reaches of Las Vegas. Meanwhile, we see older Theo back in New York, selling antiques, finding comfort by hugging a souvenir that he picked up at the museum in the chaos following the explosion, forging an engagement with a childhood friend, recovering stolen property, and failing to come to terms with the fakery which surrounds nearly every aspect of his life.

Oakes Fegley (who played Samaritan’s human avatar in Person of Interest) plays young, Theo, a nerdy fellow with a maternally-inspired interest in fine art. Fegley’s acting in The Goldfinch is at its strongest when verbally sparring with a school-friends (played by Ryan Foust and Finn Wolfhard). Theo’s rarefied lifestyle in New York is interrupted by the arrival of loud-mouthed, vice-laden father Larry (Luke Wilson) and his rather wonderfully louche girlfriend Xandra (Sarah Paulson). Ansel Elgort elegantly picks up the character of Theo eight years later, with a number of mirrored mannerisms that make the transformation very easy to swallow.

Inside this film there’s a well-told story struggling to get out. It’s hard to believe that Donna Tartt’s source material could inspire such insipid dialogue. In one scene, an older friend Hobie (Jeffrey Wright) questions young Theo like a post-screening interview to reveal his family’s broken backstory. In another, his one-time foster mother (whose deep grief is brilliantly captured by Nicole Kidman) asks him “You must tell me what you’re doing with your life?”. That might work in a novel, but for a film it’s a definite case of ‘tell not show’ being clumsily written over The Goldfinch in bright red neon letters.

Golden hour light is complemented by a palette of duck egg blue and some rich greens. The Goldfinch is strangely filmed with a very televisual aspect ratio which reduces the normal cinematic anamorphic widescreen wonder. Saying that, Roger Deakins produces some great cinematography, particularly with his capture of night scenes. If you take shelter on a wet afternoon and invest in this film, you may leave the screen wondering whether Theo’s yellow satchel was fashioned from a raincoat left over from IT Chapter One!

A huge MacGuffin in introduced when his Ukrainian buddy Boris from Las Vegas (who first introduced him to substance abuse) turns up eight years later by complete chance in a New York bar he’s visiting to score some drugs. Theo admits he studied Conversational Russian at college, yet utters nyet a word to his Russian-speaking friend.

Badly braided twin timelines are burdened with a storytelling chronology that feels like someone laid it out in a sensible order before sneezing and jumbling up the sequence. Coming in at a very indulgent two and a half hours long – that’s three hours, if you turn up in time for the adverts – a late scene with Theo being dragged through the snow reminded me of 2016’s unbearably long The Revenant. The Goldfinch becomes a slog, long before the end, and I can forgive the other people heard talking during the screening given the on-screen baloney.

A story based around the survival of the titular piece of art by Rembrandt’s pupil Carel Fabritius, which may have been one of his few works to escape a 1654 explosion, should surely be as delicate as the bird depicted? Chained down, the finch can’t escape, though the characters in this film have a much greater freedom, perhaps only shackled to parental pursuits and failings. The idea of art being immortal and human much more limited is repeated throughout, but totally ignores the legacy of human actions.

Between the constant flicking back and forth in time, and the poor plot exposition, it feels like the director John Crowley has built a car with a manual gearbox and no clutch, crunching his way up and down the gears to move the story forward. Not even the appearance – and unexplained disappearance – of a cute dog can save the audience from the feeling that Tartt’s Pulitzer prize-winning story deserved a better treatment.

The Goldfinch is released in UK and Irish cinemas (including Queen’s Film Theatre and Movie House Cinemas) on Friday 27 September. Also out this week, and more strongly recommended, Ready or Not and The Last Tree.

The Last Tree – a complex, personal and moving piece of storytelling (QFT from Friday 4 October)

Is the first rule of parenting not to mess up your kids? Or is it keeping them alive? Maybe the two are linked. They’re the kind of questions that jump out from writer/director Shola Amoo’s extraordinary film The Last Tree which follows a young Nigerian lad, Femi, now living in the UK, as he comes of age and tries to break free from the clingy, spidery webs that others assume to weave around him.

The action begins in a loving foster home in rural Lincolnshire (with Denise Black playing Mary), before a culture shift to a more draconian environment living with his fiery birth mother in inner London and a final, brief but revelatory, visit to meet his kith and kin in Lagos.

It’s as much a film about clashing cultures and community assumptions as it is about clashing sets of aspirations. There are neat repeated riffs across the three locations and two actors (first Tai Golding, then Sam Adewunmi) who play Femi aged 11 and 16. Knocking a football about is a great way to judge the lad’s mood and impulse. Being knocked about by his mother and a local gang leader is another way of visualising the power dynamics at play.

The cinematography develops a language for each location, rural fields, urban jungle and a busy Nigerian streetscape, all coloured with mellow oranges and golden hour shots.

Gbemisola Ikumelo keeps up a mask as a scary and domineering mother Yinka, an active advocate of a sharp tongue and corporal punishment, yet her third act reveal about what has shaped her character is grippingly understood by up-to-now angry Femi and within the audience’s likely bounds of acceptance.

Adewunmi captures the impression that 16-year-old Femi is being pulled along by a rip tide and struggling to find a way to get purchase on the sandy seabed to escape. His longing but hesitant encounters with a fellow pupil (Ruthxjiah Bellenea) offer a fleeting glimpse at a softer side to his sullen and toughened character.

The opulence of the final scenes brings a whole new perspective to the previous hour and a half, a new set of filters through which to view motivations and methods.

It’s easy to make comparisons between Moonlight and The Last Tree. Yet the Britishness of the locations and early 2000’s culture give this film a much greater sense of urgency. The systemic failure to support children – and parents – resonates loudly more than a decade after the Nokia-wielding, Sony Discman-listening teenage character.

The Last Tree is a battle between the traps being laid by the local gangsters (Demmy Ladipo portrays a particularly brutal and handsoff mobster), Femi’s unempathetic single parent mother, and the persevering school principal (Nicholas Pinnock) who never gives up. Every decision by every major character is seen to have a cost. But the decision to attend a screening is well rewarded.

Shola Amoo has created a complex piece of storytelling, that’s moving, personal and yet hints at the universal nature of what drives people to act in questionable ways. There aren’t many films that make me want to applaud at the end of a screening.

The Last Tree will be shown at the Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 4 October.

Ready or Not (18) – bonkers, macabre, gorefest that will have you rolling in the aisle (cinemas from Wednesday 25 September)

“Ready or not, here I come” is the traditional shout that follows counting to ten or a hundred in the few games of hide I seek I played as a child. In the case of new movie, Ready or Not tells the barbaric tale of a troubled family’s initiation ceremony for people marrying into the household.

The set-up is that a long-dead benefactor Mr Le Bail helped create the Le Domas family fortune built around a boardgame business. However, at midnight on the day of any wedding, his wishes are that the family must gather in a spooky candlelit mansion, and Le Bail’s box reveals a single playing card indicating which game the relatives must play. Snakes and Ladders would be fairly benign, and not a million miles away from a plot that Downton Abbey could execute. However, if the Hide and Seek card comes out, the external doors are locked, and the newest member of the family must be hunted down using a variety of weapons and sacrificed before dawn. Or else, misfortune will wipe out the Le Domas dynasty.

Guess which game the family relish the random opportunity to play when the gorgeous Grace (Samara Weaving) marries the equally gorgeous Alex (Mark O'Brien)? He’s been self-estranged from the rest of his madcap family for some years, and quite rightly so.

Andie MacDowell plays the at-first-welcoming later-menacing mother-in-law. Nicky Guadagni is magnificent as axe-wielding Aunt Helene whose own marriage was tragically – but understandably, to Le Domas way of thinking – unable to be consummated due to the death of her new husband. Henry Czerny reprises his role as Conrad Grayson (Revenge) and conjures up an evil father-in-law.

But the plaudits rightfully lie in the injured hands of Samara Weaving who takes Grace from being a giddy, loved-up bride to show her inner steel that could easily match Die Hard’s John McClane for tenacity and physical drive.

Ready or Not is my kind of horror movie. (‘Finally!’, say movie preview organisers with a collective sign of relief.) There is no underlying moral. This is not about taking risks for love, or putting family before everything else. It’s a slightly bonkers, macabre, gorefest which doesn’t take its premise too seriously, and even allows the characters to question why they adhere to certain rules which appear traditional but stand up to even less scrutiny than the premise of the film.

The area of gameplay slowly expands and Grace’s wedding dress endures ever more collateral damage. There were moments which took me back to the surprisingly mirthful Game Night, but this is a very different beast.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett pull off the trick of planting a grin on audience faces right at the moment something grotesque happens. The accidental dispatch of members of the household staff never fails to be comical. (Being “crushed by the dumb waiter” is particularly fun.) You’ll duck in your seat when trigger-happy sister-in-law Emilie (Melanie Scrofano) takes hold of any weapon. And towards the end, technology gets a chance to play its frustrating part in this game of Capture the Bride.

Ready or Not (18) is being screened in UK and Irish cinemas from Wednesday 25 September.

For Sama (18) – a heartbreaking record of the ordinary and extraordinary in under-siege Aleppo (QFT until 2 October)

I defy you not to let a salty tear escape down your cheek as a nine-month pregnant woman injured in a shell attack is wheeled into a makeshift Aleppo hospital operating room and her baby son is quickly delivered by caesarean, pulled out floppy and limp with no discernible pulse and the staff vigorously attempt to revive the lifeless soul.

It’s just one shocking scene of many throughout journalist Waad al-Kateab’s love letter For Sama to her daughter, born in the conflict.

Waad studied at Aleppo’s university. The city was her home. Back in 2012 in the fourth year of her economics degree, she sensed that the revolution was peaceful and nearly complete, an uprising against President Assad that united Christians and Muslims. But her footage shows the security forces brutally beating protesters, the beginning of a long and bloody war of attrition. (Her footage was broadcast by Channel 4 News as part of their reports about Syria and Aleppo.)

She films the ever calm, always cheerful Dr Hazma who chooses Aleppo over his partner who has already fled and stays to run one of the nine hospitals in the east of the city. Several years later, it’s the last to be destroyed by Russian air raids. Indefatigable, he sets out to scour the city for a replacement building that won’t be on the military maps and starts over again. A credit to his calling and profession.

Waad and Hazma are at once both ordinary and extraordinary. Footage of the executed bodies lying on the ground and the concrete frame of buildings remaining once the walls and roofs have been bombed away are interspersed with more intimate moments. Waad and Hazma wed amidst confetti, red balloons, a gorgeous white dress, and dance to Julio Iglesias’ Crazy. The sweet gift of a persimmon to take away and ripen is as precious as gold.

“What a life I’ve brought you into? … You didn’t choose this … Will you ever forgive me?”

When little Soma is born, their baby daughter grows up like so many infants that don’t know that air raids and exploding shells aren’t normal, that windows covered with sandbags aren’t normal, that school classrooms in basement rooms aren’t normal.

But their working vocabulary also includes words like ‘clusterbomb’, and their playground can be a burnt out frame of a bus. One child cries that a schoolmate didn’t show up in class: their family had fled overnight. It’s anything but normal. Another child voices the feeling of home that is so central to Waad’s film: “I want to be an architect so I can rebuild Aleppo”.

Hazma saves people that are injured by the conflict that Waad documents. All the while, Sama continues to feed no matter what happens around her.

Nainita Desai’s score is gentle and non-invasive. The timeline jumps around, cushioning the audience from the stress of the continuing bombardment of Aleppo. Yet the new life also accentuates the feeling of loss.

Their decision back in 2012 to remain in Aleppo involved sacrifice. As Russian forces close in on the hospital compound, will their sacrifices have been for nothing?

“Sama, will you remember Aleppo? Will you blame me for staying? Will you blame me for leaving now?”

This love letter to Sama is also a love letter to the city of Aleppo. It documents the best of humanity that flourished amidst the death and destruction.

It contrasts the cowards dropping bombs and threatening medics with messages passed via the UN with the heroes on the ground tending to the injured while having no time to mourn the death of their hospital colleagues.

For Sama (18) is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre until 2 October. It’s a powerful film that deserves a wide audience.

The Kitchen – female Irish mobsters pack heat and show the men how things should be run (from Friday 20 September)

For the first ten minutes The Kitchen felt like it would be a remake of Widows. But these three women are not taking over a heist from their dead partners. It’s 1978 and when three Irish mobsters are arrested, tried and imprisoned, their wives need to make ends meet and set about delivering a better quality of service to the community from which they collect protection money.

If the abusive, bulling, wife-beating opening scenes aren’t sufficient, the soundtrack of “This is a man's world … but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl” still ringing in your ears is another reminder of the film’s premise. Each woman carries a different demon on their shoulder, and each is looking for a different outcome. But together they seem to form a formidable team.

Yet, unlike Widows, there’s little to like or warm to about these characters. Other than your relief that their husbands are behind bars, they offer few opportunities for empathy as they step into their husbands’ threatening shoes.

“I want you to teach me how to do it”

Elisabeth Moss produces a mesmerising performance as Claire, a battered wife who will no longer cower to any man. She shimmers on-screen as her character gets her hands dirty with “the noisy stuff” – Zoey Bartlet goes full Frank Underwood! – and glows as a seemingly decent man (Domhnall Gleeson) steps into her life to be by her side without wanting to take it over.

Marrying into the mob against some people’s wishes, Ruby knows about being an outsider. Tiffany Haddish plays the character that is most remote and ambiguous, and least well developed. While Ruby ends up as the one to do a deal with the Brooklyn mafia, whose boss Alfonso Coretti (Bill Camp) can’t avoid delivering the awful line: “If we have a dick-measuring contest, I’m going to win”. An FBI subplot is set up only to be dismissed with one sultry scene. Ruby’s mother-in-law (Margo Martindale) is scary but dispatchable like everyone else who gets in the new gang’s way.

“You’re way worse than we were”

As Kathy Brennan, Melissa McCarthy shifts from being a protective mother to a manipulative mobster who prefers securing jobs for the local community over cleaning up the streets – and her gang – from the fellow lowlifes she disagrees with. The death toll mounts up at an alarming rate. (Watch out for Kathy’s father making a very unbelievable U-turn.)

Adapted by writer/director Andrea Berloff from the eponymous DC Vertico comic book story, The Kitchen is a tale that only just deserves to be told. Elisabeth Moss is what saves it: her cold and calculating performance is worth the ticket price alone.

The Kitchen is released in UK and Irish cinemas from Friday 20 September.

A Bump Along the Way – a mother and daughter do a bit of growing up in a female-centred drama that celebrates ochre and Derry’s scenery (from 11 October)

A Bump Along the Way is a brooding film written by Tess McGowan about the trials of a mother and daughter, neither of whom have yet grown up. Fifteen-year-old Allegra is overwhelmed by the teenage struggle to be popular, her feelings for an older fella who won’t give her the time of day, the absence of her Dad who ran off to Belfast, and her somewhat carefree Mum.

Forty something, single parent Pamela has a part time job in a bakery. She finds herself back in the family way after a careless one-night stand with a plumber whose sperm overcomes medical opinion that has written off Pamela’s fertility years before.

Lola Petticrew really captures the moody, artistic teenager – vegan for good measure – whose self-obsessed world is interrupted by her mother’s unexpected news. Classroom cattiness turns into bullying as her Mum’s condition becomes scandalous ammunition to add to her scholastic misery. Petticrew ably swings Allegra’s character between happy-go-lucky and morose, tipped over the edge into banging doors with the slightest push.

Bronagh Gallagher gets to take Pamela on a journey from being a doormat to standing up and being assertive. Yet it’s a very laid-back performance, never hysterical, always thoughtful. Pamela’s wing-woman Sinead is played by Mary Moulds, with plenty of comic timing and hushed knowing looks.

Dan Gordon makes a fabulous baker, the only good guy in a cast full of disappointing men. Ex-husband Kieran is played by Gerard Jordan as a hypocrite Pamela is well shot of, while Barry the plumber (Andy Doherty) is a sign of her past repeating itself.

Filmed entirely in Derry, A Bump Along the Way showcases the city and its environs with verdant grass and menacing clouds. It’s a triumph of cinematography, with a gorgeously executed rich theme of ochre that very deliberately brings sunlight into scenes through a t-shirt, a bag, a nursery wall.

Dramatically, the film wobbles slightly and skips a few beats – and features some overly-curt dialogue – during the climatic struggle between the heavily-pregnant mother and absent daughter before the gritty realism of agony in a hospital ward pulls it back, charges up with emotion and allows an hour and half of tension to be released.

Director Shelly Love and the creative team must have fought hard against the urge to play Chumbawamba’s I Get Knocked Down over the closing credits … though I Get Knocked Up could have been more apt.

For me, the film’s focus is somewhat uncomfortably split between mother and daughter. Both clearly have some growing up to do. The story of the ‘geriatric pregnancy’ is well told; the scenes of labour will bring back some people’s memories of gas and air. The incidents of offline and online bullying and alcohol experimentation are well drawn. But I’d love to see an edit of the film that allowed either Petticrew or Gallagher to get the screen time they deserve, and while I feel torn about making the decision on whom to focus, it may have made the story stronger.

A Bump Along The Way is a good female-centred character study about making the most of what life throws at you, valuing good friendships over popularity, and the perils of parenting. In cinemas from 11 October 2019.

Ad Astra – seeking the things that are above, an emotional vacuum-fuelled distant family reunion

Ad Astra is a story about a son searching to understand his father as much as to find him and stop surges of anti-matter radiating across the universe and threatening life on Earth and other colonised moons and planets. And a story that challenges our cosy view that space is an environment which has grown up from the ‘space race’ and instead encourages international cooperation.

The opening credits explain that Ad Astra is set in “the near future” in a time experiencing both “hope and conflict”. But this isn’t a parable about Brexit.

Technology allows regular commercial flights to the moon; but human nature means that the moon’s riches are contested and if you go outside set areas you’re entering a low-gravity Wild West of bandits and space cowboys. Society is patriarchal – or is that the fault of the director James Gray and his co-writer Ethan Gross? – with rocket pilots and co-pilots exclusively male, and women are all portrayed as weak and second class. Ad Astra is unlikely to pass the Bechdel Test!

Space cinema is often as much about the psychology and the inner mind as the vistas and the risky travel. Ad Astra delivers both. For the first hour or more it’s a well-paced journey from Earth to the moon and beyond, set in even-sized chapters, with various threats along the way to spice it up.

Brad Pitt navigates corridors, drives buggies, pilots rockets and makes do and mends like a seasoned and unpanicked astronaut Major in the Army Corps of Engineers. Externally he’s rugged with a stubble that never grows; internally, he’s empty, an emotional vacuum. Basically, he plays Jason Bourne in space, making everything look almost casual rather than extraordinary.

Tommy Lee Jones adds to the emotional distance with his chillingly cold portrayal of McBride senior. The plug for Virgin Atlantic and their expensive in-flight pillows is tacky.

The storytelling takes a wobble at the point Major Roy McBride nears his furthest destination and the distance takes a toll on his physical and health. An awkward yet revealing reunion is rushed, and one particular extravehicular scene flying across a long distance with an improvised shield defies relative velocity, mechanics and physics, never mind believability.

While its final chapters lack the assuredness of the brilliant start, Ad Astra delivers a very watchable science fiction treat: a treatise on internal solitude, pain, anger, ambivalent loyalties, distance, driven-ness, distance, being lost and staying lost … and baboons!

Ad Astra lands in local cinemas from Wednesday 18 September.

Die Fledermaus – revenge served as chilled as the champagne fuelling this updated duplicitous farce (NI Opera at Grand Opera House until Saturday 21 September)

Falke is seeking revenge for an incident years ago that he cannot forget or forgive. Becoming inebriated at a fancy dress party, he was abandoned by his companion, and became a figure of ridicule. So he sets up Gabriel von Eisenstein on the eve of a short spell in prison, luring him to a party with the promise of fit ballerinas. Cue lots of disguises, swapping identities, costumes and genders, with familiar faces turning up in unexpected venues alongside very familiar Johann Strauss melodies as the story Die Fledermaus unfolds in Northern Ireland Opera’s latest production.

Eisenstein is portrayed by Northern Irish baritone Ben McAteer as a Harvey Weinstein-style libidinous figure with a wandering eye to match his wandering hands and, we presume, wandering penis. Batman to his Robin is Stephan Loges’ Falke, played as a deceptively upright and decent fellow, until his revengeful plan is revealed.

NI Opera Studio alumnus Maria McGrann has great fun with her role as the Eisenstein family’s maid Adele who is the first – but my no means the last – fraud to be uncovered by the plot. While her voice isn’t quite as strong as the principals – a problem also for Conor Breen’s Blind and Mark Pancek’s prison governor Frank (with a mop of Boris Johnson hair) in a number of – her shrugs and asides cut through busy scenes and catch your eye over some of the more experiences on-stage talent. No such problem for Alexandra Lubchansky, in whose solid soprano hands rests Eisenstein’s compromised but savvy wife Rosalinde who is courted by Donegal tenor John Porter playing Alfred. Duplicity runs in the family.

Andrea Kaempf’s set looks like the cargo bay of a space freighter. The perspective-busting space is remarkably simple when compared with some previous NI Opera productions, yet it is flexible and easily decorated with light and video as it morphs from posh marbled house, to the scene of a party and finally, the local prison. Kevin Smith shines precision beams through the windows in the roof, and creates some rich vignettes with the principal cast in vivid colour contrasted against the monochrome set.

A very modern English translation of Karl Haffner’s libretto by Meredithg Oakes and director Walter Sutcliffe gives this production of Die Fledermaus a real contemporary feel, and creates a firm foundation for some of the more whacky creative decisions (like a roller-blading waiters, filling the mezzo-trouser role of Prince Orlofsky with the fabulous and shimmering counter-tenor Denis Lakey in drag, letting Falke acknowledge the drama he was directing during the scene change between Acts 2 and 3, and allowing some characters to keep their local accents despite their Germanic names).

John Linehan gets into quite the stupor playing jailer Frosch and despite the comic dialogue-only role, manages to squeeze in a few bars of a crowd-pleasing Nessun Dorma and enough McFettridgisms to connect this operetta with the adult pantomime it so quickly could become.   

Despite being sung in English throughout, the surtitles at each side of the stage offer a useful safety net for the audience. I’m a big fan and being able to quickly take in the last three lines turns what looks like a complicated plot into an easily understood operetta.

The Ulster Orchestra are to be applauded for their flowing waltzes and polkas, as well as their necessary restraint at never allowing the orchestra pit to overpower the unamplified singers above the musicians’ heads. The acting chorus add colour and constant movement to their scenes (as well as singing their hearts out).

NI Opera continues to improve. While the ambition of previous productions like Turandot was sky high, its recent autumn shows are becoming ever more accessible, and the farcical nature of Die Fledermaus together with the modern-day resonance and over-the-top characters make it a fun night out and a good unrarefied introduction to opera.

If there’s one sticking point, it’s the ending which allows both Eisenstein infidels to forgive each other and live happily ever after. Having taken back control, how could Rosalinde ever trust the “snake in human skin” she married? And the ginger lover seems to have been quickly forgotten. Ditching the last page of the manuscript and leaving everything up in the air, or adding a slap or two in the face or an exchange of ‘Manwhore!’ and ‘Hussy!’ would have better suited the mood set up by the rest of the show.

Die Fledermaus continues at the Grand Opera House with performances on Tuesday 17, Thursday 19 and Saturday 21 September at 7.30pm.

Photo credit: Bradley Quinn

Spud – restrained comedy respectfully set against the backdrop of the Great Famine (Lyric Theatre until 14 September)

Spud is a dark comedy set against the backdrop of the Great Famine– though never making jokes at its expense – that watches the prodigal thespian son Felix return home from treading the boards in England to stay with his brother Robert in the Story family home. With barely any food and the town closing down around them, can they survive?

While the Lyric main stage has Shirley Valentine pacing around her kitchen talking to the walls, next door in the Naughton Studio, it’s 1847 and Robert is conversing with his prize potato while audience members’ phones ping and buzz across the stalls, and one man further up my row sends a text message and the woman sitting behind begins to colourfully narrate her reactions to the on-stage revelations.

Kevin McAleer utters Robert’s lines with trademark drôle delivery, accentuating a dry sense of humour that is bound up in the desperation – and at times delusion – that accompanies not being able to eat. That he’s the only sibling left alive in Ireland says something of his resilience and stamina, as well as the “period of deep personal reflection” he went through after eating the household mirror.

Into this situation strides Conor Grimes wearing a top hat and leather gloves like someone out of a Dickens novel. He rather precisely enunciates each syllable and mispronounces French and Latin phrases in an accent that has lost all hints of his place of birth, his dandy character having stayed away from home for 12 years.

The promotional leaflet describes Spud as “a deep, dark comedy from the moral grey zone”. But the reality is that Grimes and McAleer steer well clear of the kind of very sharp humour that could have taken them much closer to the line of good taste. If anything, the drama is surprisingly muted. When a sense of immediate jeopardy is introduced to the plot, it is allowed to fade as the inescapable hunger takes its physical and mental toll.

Anachronisms are joyfully woven into the script, and amongst the puntastic dialogue are some nice lines that acknowledge the audience’s participation in the pretence: “at least we don’t eat the scenery”. The worst puns are followed by several waves of laughter as people catch on to what has been said at different speeds. The cast have the confidence to wait and not rush on too quickly.

The simple set is much enhanced by the moody and often striking lighting, and the beautiful soundscape that paints pictures of what director Conleth Hill carefully leaves unseen on the stage.

Spud is a restrained anti-melodrama whose comedy is almost overshadowed by the pathos provoked by watching these two daft brothers run out of ways to survive in the face of physical, financial and housing starvation. The boundaries of respect and gentle education are so well set that, while Ireland might not be ready for a full-on Horrible Histories treatment of the Irish Potato Famine, I’d have been happy for Grimes and McAleer’s script to take more risks and reward the audience with more laughs as they explored the devastating subject.

Spud finishes its run at the Lyric Theatre on 14 September.

Extra Ordinary – an escapist supernatural Irish comedy that is well named (cinemas from Friday 13 September)

Rose Dooley turned her back on the family ‘talent’. But the driving instructor is being drawn by the chance of romance into her old world of witchcraft and supernatural abilities as she races around rural Ireland to cast out demons and rescue a teenager from the clutches of a failed and deranged pop artist, not to mention the controlling ghost of her deceased mother.

Extra Ordinary is a blast. And well-named.

The characters are well-drawn, the plot is madcap and escapist, the humour is surreal, visual, and very quirky. Directors Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman manage to neatly combine a strong sense of urgency with a slow pace of action, with gross visual props and unfussy special effects.

Maeve Higgins plays Rose, a somewhat bumbling woman whose accidental patricide knocked her enchanted confidence. The characterisation is warm and well-meaning, with great timing and deadpan delivery. Her potential beau is played by Barry Ward, a convincing widower and a desperate father who would do anything – even something very gross seven times in a row – to protect his daughter.

But we aren’t ask to feel sorry for these characters. Instead, the crazy nature of the plot means that the audience are allowed to simply enjoy the creative team’s imagination running wild as glammed-up evil pop star Christian Winter (played by Will Forte as if Meat Loat had swallowed a bat out of hell) wields his vulgar virgin divining rod and his Aussie partner (Claudia O'Doherty) figures out where her next meal is coming from.

With an ending that takes this potential cult classic into a whole other realm of wonder, it’s hard to fault this stream of imagination that’s been structured into a coherent and comedic film.

Extra Ordinary is being screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre, Movie House and Omniplex cinemas amongst other NI venues from Friday 13 September.

Shirley Valentine – a pithy, physical and very poignant production of a much-loved classic (Lyric Theatre until 5 October)

The Lyric Theatre’s new production of Shirley Valentine creates quite an impression.

Willy Russell’s script asks us to believe that the titular character can not just break free from her prison of a life tending to the needs of her self-centred and burdensome family, but that she can steel herself to risk embarking on a journey of self-discovery and self-care, to travel to Greece and find a place of safety outside the family home. And we’re asked to believe that she won’t just run out the door and never look back, but that she’ll dismantle the shackles that constrain her, push back the barriers and walk free with her shoulders back, like a trapped bird dismantling the bars of her cage before flying away.

The flimsy nature of Paul Keogan’s kitchen set brings to life director Patrick J O’Reilly’s enduring vision that physical storytelling can permeate all aspects of a performance. Deconstructionism is everywhere. The constant gentle movement between the two acts is not only mesmerising, but moves the story on and gives a real sense of time passing. Nearly every prop is reused after the interval, emphasising that Shirley is still capable of engaging with her old life that she now better understands.

The tragic absence of Julie Maxwell adds another layer to the performance. Earlier this year, she very successfully directed Tara Lynne O’Neill in Me, Mum and Dusty in the Baby Grand with a deftness of touch that felt like the start of a very promising directorial career. Co-writer of the Theatre at the Mill’s Christmas shows in recent years, and a star of Soft Border Patrol, the actor will be remembered for many roles, not least her bold playing of emotionally-stripped and complex Marian in Mydidae back in 2015. As a young girl, she débuted on the Lyric stage in a production of Joseph and his Technicolour Dream Coat and memorably played the eldest matriarchal sister in Lucy Caldwell’s adaptation of Three Sisters in 2016. More recently appearing in The Ladykillers and A Streetcar Named Desire, she left her final mark on the Lyric’s stage as assistant director in this production of Shirley Valentine. It seemed like little of Julie’s life was “unused” as Shirley Valentine might have said. But it turned out to be far too short, and the triumph of the final show she worked on is tinged with much sadness and grief, and the opening night tribute was heartfelt and deserved.

“Marriage is like the Middle East: there’s no solution!”

Finally, there’s the impression of O’Neill’s strong performance, wearing a wig that is more Anthea Turner than Pauline Collins, and exploiting her trademark Belfast accent and well-tuned comedy timing. The unexpected impact of the encounters with belittling school friend Marjorie and snooty neighbour Gillian are joyous but never laboured.

O’Neill paces around the triangular kitchen like it’s a cell. Ostensibly talking to the walls of her kitchen – which feels like a dated device on Russell’s part – she offers more than a nod and a wink to the stalls as Shirley recalls at length various conversations and confrontations before turning her head and giving the audience a conspiratorial eyeroll.

Despite 105 minutes of talking across two acts, nothing feels like a monologue. There’s always something to do at the same time, from making egg and chips for tea to mopping the kitchen. Again, the physical supports the verbal with key actions by O’Neill seamlessly echoing definitive moments in her dialogue.

The first act is a bit of a slow cooker as Shirley shifts from depressed housewife to terrified but potentially emancipated woman. The shift is gradual, at times worryingly nearly imperceptible, but it happens and by the interval there was a tear in my eye as Shirley packed her bags and prepared to flee.

When O’Neill next strides on stage, her Shirley is a new woman, with self-respect, self-confidence, a new sense of perspective and a glowing tan that sets off her beachwear and fanny pack.

There were moments in the first half when I found myself wondering just how the words of a male writer could have such a pronounced effect on the audience, with men giggling but so many women laughing heartily at the sharp observations and insight. But then I remembered that Russell worked as a women’s hairdresser and has listened to these confessional stories so often before that he’s perfectly equipped to retell them in his play.

“I think sex is like shopping in Stewarts: overrated.”

At Russell’s suggestion, Shirley Valentine has been relocated from Liverpool to Belfast. Oisín Kearney also adapted the Lyric’s productions of Russell’s Educating Rita, and the localisation – with some local vernacular, and mentions of Botanic, Hillsborough and Donaghadee – feels very natural and not at all forced.

A barely discernible 1980’s soundtrack emanating from the kitchen radio is never allowed to interfere with the dialogue. Keogan’s mood lighting for the walls in the first act baffled me, creating sunset after sunset as if we were on a planet orbiting its sun every 15 minutes, with no obvious tie-in with the script. (And after watching Crocodile Fever on the same stage last week, I was worried about what might come in through the dark kitchen window! On the last night, maybe someone will carry a particular green prop past for badness …)

With O’Reilly’s choreography capturing Shirley’s claustrophobic life in Belfast, and with the portrayal of a real sense of loneliness and vulnerability, O’Neill delivers a memorable performance that makes the wit in Russell’s script sing and connects this 1986 Liverpool script with the 2019 Belfast audience. With stories of gender justice, equal pay and coercive control often in the news, there’s still much of relevance in Shirley’s story.

Shirley Valentine runs at the Lyric Theatre until 5 October.

Photo credit: Johnny Frazer

Crocodile Fever – a dark family reunion on the border of comedy and cold-blooded horror (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 8 September)

Early 1980s in South Armagh and Fianna Devlin appears at the family front door one warm evening after eleven years away. The Crocodile Fever audience quickly discover why the reunion with her older sister Alannah is so awkward, and soon realise that both have been imprisoned: one for arson and murder, the other living on eggshells, caring for their abusive, paralysed father.

The weather’s close outside, but the fever temperature is rocketing inside in this humorous and somewhat surreal horror play. Characters’ personalities are exaggerated, their expression ranging from depressed to hysterical. Packets of cheese and onion Tayto crisps turn out to be crucial to the management of the highly-strung household.

Some of the most exciting yet lowkey theatre events each year in Belfast are the rehearsed readings from new writers in the Lyric Theatre as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival. For the last few years, batches of early work have been performed. (One of my favourites was Vittoria Cafolla’s Bloodlines.) Sometimes they represent finished pieces; other times, they’re a selection of scenes from work in progress return to that make you want to hear the full work when it’s finished and further polished. The economics of production and opportunity mean that very few go on to be staged. I missed Meghan Tyler’s Crocodile Fever last year due to a clash with something else in the festival programme, but I can only imagine the audience’s imaginations going into overdrive when some of the plot twists were casually introduced.

Tickets were snapped up for its Edinburgh run this summer, a word-of-mouth and critical success, commissioned by the Traverse Theatre and developed with the support of the Lyric Theatre. Together they have now brought this dark tale to the south Belfast stage.

While living in ‘bandit country’ with British Army troops dropping in to search the house lays down a foundation of agitation, it’s the upstairs/downstairs relationship between widower father and stay-at-home daughter that provides the dynamite, with Fianna’s reappearance lighting the already-short fuse.

Lucianne McEvoy plays highly-strung Alannah with OCD tendencies that mean, if pushed, she could eat her tea off the floor. Yet this repressed and vulnerable figure, bent over with a secret of which only her sister is aware, will momentarily come alive when the right mood music appears and transform into a carefree bohemian wild child, with the most outlandish of thoughts, before snapping back into her sinister real life. But put a chainsaw in her hand, and McEvoy’s Alannah becomes a beast.

Against this, Lisa Dwyer Hogg plays Fianna as a confident, revolver-packing activist who will not be intimidated by man nor beast. While years of incarceration don’t seem to have taken a physical or obviously mental toll, there’s a street toughness to the character who can seem standoffish but longs for something to fill the family-shaped gap in her life. Sean Kearns and Bhav Joshi also appear, the former pushing at the boundaries of his incapacity, the latter bringing fresh tension into the homestead.

The script is brilliantly barmy, quite off the wall, and takes everything to extremes. The ‘sacrament of toast’ is superb, albeit only a mild suggestion of the mania to come. On paper, it’s set in an outrageous fantasy world that couldn’t easily be staged. But in director Gareth Nicholls’ hands, and with Grace Smart’s flexible set design, Crocodile Fever comes to life.

A repeated croak annoyingly never turned into Chekhov’s frog, while I’m not convinced why the manner of the seemingly much-loved mother’s death is accepted without much question by the sisters. Perhaps, just an indication of the torment she experienced at the hands of her cold-blooded husband. And the sensory-overloaded nature of the ending distracted me a little from some of the dialogue that may have provided better closure. But having jumped the shark, so to speak, Crocodile Fever reminds us that the Troubles drove people to distraction and turned them into monsters.

Horror doesn’t often appear in Belfast theatres: the last time might have been when Martin McDonagh’s crushing The Pillowman came to the Lyric back in March 2015. But when the horror arrives, it tends to be rather effective. (Edit: think I rather overlooked David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue which ended with a lot of blood over the carpet in The MAC in May 2018!)

Gareth Nicholls takes Meghan Tyler’s script and imagination and delivers 90 minutes of theatre that you’ll not forget. Explicit and very unexpected, the on-stage horror will certainly be a conversation starter on the way home and over days to come. Crocodile Fever runs in the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 8 September.

Photo credit: Lara Capelli

Bait – an unmissable quirky morality tale in which the rich steal what they cannot buy while the displaced locals flail around unable to take back control (QFT from Friday 6 September)

Bait is a beautiful and somewhat quirky tale about the raw interface of new money taking advantage of old in a Cornwall fishing village. Diminishing fishing stocks have combined with the spending power of wealthy folks from the south east of England who buy over property. Tourism and gentrification sits awkwardly with the struggling fishing industry which isn’t universally ready to diversify.

Quirky is normally a word that should set off alarm bells in film reviews. In this case, we’re talking about a 4:3 aspect ratio, 16mm black and white film which has been deliberately aged and scratched to make it look like it’s had a long and happy life being spooled through projectors. The dubbed sound is deliberately tinny, accentuating the sound of boat motors and vehicle engines. Despite the vintage look and sound of the film, and despite the moody, curt dialogue, writer/director Mark Jenkin tells a thoroughly modern story, with some very modern cuts.

The key player is Martin who fishes from the shore rather than join his brother in taking stag parties and tourists out for short sea trips in the family fishing boat. Edward Rowe is gruff, burly and quite menacing, yet with a keen sense of justice (particularly if it’s on his terms). He takes on his nephew Neil (Isaac Woodvine), mostly to wind up his brother. The lad is more interested one of the lasses, Katie (Georgia Ellery) who’s staying in the village for the summer, living in his family’s old home, now tastelessly modernised with nautical trimmings.

This opens up a tectonic plate of disloyalty between the two tribes. The next tension comes when her posh brother Hugo (Jowan Jacobs) cheekily dons a snorkel and tried to find the very fish that the local nets are trying to catch. Add in a poorly parked van, and you end up with a pot-boiler that could cook a lobster until it’s tender.

The sea with its patterned waves and Jenkin’s close-ups almost becomes another character. Barmaid Wenna spouts truth with wonderful turns of phrase: just hope you’re not sipping a glass of chilled prosecco when she utters the line about plums. A real gem amongst a great cast, played by Chloe Endean, Wenna embodies the young heart of the fishing village: feisty, objective, and quite adaptable.

Bait becomes a morality tale – visually similar to something Ingmar Bergman might have directed – that suggests human nature is precarious, and the blow-ins are too rich and slow to realise they’re doing nothing to stop the deadly escalation. The minor and mundane – knotting the net on a lobster pot, or changing the local pub’s pool table rules – become scenes of beauty and acts of conflict.

The fault lines in this village community may well mirror greater fractures in the UK at present. But this film can stand on its own two feet without everything needing to be given a Brexit crutch.

The nearly silent finish befits the novel form that Bait takes. A splendid film that surprises and delights throughout its 89 minutes. Not to be missed when it opens at Queen’s Film Theatre on Friday 6 September.

IT Chapter 2 – the Losers’ Club are recalled to Derry to squash Pennywise and face their own demons (cinemas from Friday 6 September)

After reminding the cinema audience of the Secret Seven’s blood promise to return to Derry if the monster ever reappeared, IT Chapter 2 picks up the story 27 years later when the bat call goes out and the clan are recalled to face their demons and boldly go and revisit sets and locations.

Back in September 2017, I was unimpressed with the “overly long, sweary teen adventure which doesn’t contain the twists and turns to deserve any more than 100 minutes of screen time”. IT Chapter 2 is definitely an improvement, and the older age of the cast makes it a lot less like “watching a live action version of ghost-hunting Scooby Doo, complete with haunted house”.

The children have grown up and moved away, all except Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) who stayed in Derry and has been waiting for a spike in suspicious disappearings and murders. Richie (Bill Hader) who made puerile jokes is now a comedian. The tomboy Bev (Jessica Chastain) with an abusive father now has a violent and coercive husband. Bill (Jay Ryan) hasn’t lost his dysfluency. James Ransone and Andy Bean appear as Eddie and Stanley. The only real surprise is that overweight Ben is now a ripped hunk of an architect (Jay Ryan).

“All these memories … of people I don’t even remember forgetting”

A three-phase mission is concocted, allowing us to watch the Losers’ Club regain their memories, face up to their hurtful past, and battle psychological demons before descending even deeper than before into Pennywise’s watery lair “to finish IT for good” by following some ancient instructions carved on the side of a leather lampshade.

The IT franchise continues to be stylish rather than scary. Sure, there are creepy fortune cookie creatures, an enormous red balloon, ghoulish skin-stretched, tongue-twisting monsters, and a creepy clown who pops up. But the jump scares are gently timed to minimise fright, and Bill Skarsgård’s silly dance adds levity.

Blame, guilt, fear, loyalty, teamwork: the themes are universal. The sets are very impressive, though CGI is playing a huge part in making the world below Derry come alive. There’s lots of mirroring between the two chapters which fans will love. Andy Muschietti directs stylish flashbacks that allow the youngsters to add depth to what could have otherwise become a mediocre horror film. The return of psychopathic Bowers adds some genuine terror.

There’s a dangerous running joke about Bill now being an author who writes bad endings. The eventual means used to squash Pennywise in the final battle is appalling, allowing the Losers to descend to the depths of those who had for so long bullied them. Given the 169-minute run time, it was a pretty second-rate cinematic pay off for the hours invested. The two-parter is wrapped up without much fear that the Losers will have to return as pensioners to battle their nemesis. But a prequel is always possible …

IT Chapter 2 goes on general release in cinemas on Friday 6 September. Movie House are running a double bill on Thursday 5 September. Full marks to the people who remembered to wear yellow macs to the preview screening I attended!