Lies Where It Falls – upsetting and uplifting (Fresh and Well Productions in the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 1 October)

Lies Where It Falls is a theatrical memoire, an incredibly personal retelling of a set of moments in Ruairi Conaghan’s life and career. We hear about the highs and lows of sharing his name with his uncle, Judge Rory Conaghan who was shot by the IRA and died when Ruairi was just eight years old. And the highs and lows of the acting profession which can bring about remarkable opportunities, not all of which Ruairi felt he could rise to.

Ruairi is an expressive actor, one of the best. One moment, he can be nimble with his glances; the next, he’s throwing his full body into a shape to explode into another point. While he riffs about what it means to be ‘authentic’ during this one man show, the performance undoubtedly reeks of authenticity. The set is uncluttered, though the ambience is a little overcomplicated by the frequency of the lighting mood changes. The pre-show musak featuring Ennio Morricone is a hint of what is to come.

The waves from his uncle’s murder have long rippled through Ruairi’s life. He was asked to play the role of Patrick Magee (who planted the bomb in the Brighton Grand Hotel that targeted prime minister Margaret Thatcher) in a stage production examining Magee’s relationship with Jo Berry (whose father, Conservative MP and deputy chief whip Sir Anthony Berry, was one of the five people killed when the bomb exploded).

Was Ruairi betraying his family and its tragic history by portraying and giving voice and truth to Magee who describes his actions as those of “a soldier”? He explains the awkward and almost dysfunctional meetings between cast, Magee and Berry. (A few years ago, I witnessed an extended conversation between Magee and Berry. They’ve met a lot over the years since their first encounter after his release from prison. Coming from a very different place and with less weighty baggage, I too felt troubled … mostly around the power dynamics and Magee’s demeanour while participating in this oft-repeated conversation of reconciliation that at times felt more like penance or a guilt-offering than something he benefitted from. I should really read his book to find out more.)

Patrick O’Kane’s direction has shaped Ruairi’s writing into a coherent and compelling performance. It’s not all about IRA killings, though dying in state of grace is a recurring theme. Amid interruptions from his ‘lovely’ agent Mark, other losses are explored during the 70-minute show along with the effect of Ruairi’s anxiety and depression on his health and career. Interleaving the words of an earlier trauma into his delivery of a speech from The Player King in Hamlet is beautiful and enchanting.

Ruairi Conaghan is a proud son of Magherafelt. And Mid Ulster/South Derry should be proud of Ruairi. Lies Where It Falls is a dark, solemn and comedic piece of personal story-telling that upsets and uplifts. A study of whether an actor – who is just a human after all – can be reconciled with themselves. You can catch the final performance in this run in the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 1 October at 3pm.

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The Old Oak – exploring why empathy has been replaced with self-interest and whether communities have more to gain together than lose apart (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 29 September)

Screenwriter Paul Laverty and director Ken Loach are back with The Old Oak, the completion of a trilogy of films based in the north-east of England (I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You). The film’s title refers to the one remaining pub in a coastal village near Durham. The area is run down. Public services are strained. Richer councils in the south of England are buying up cheap properties in the area and bussing people seeking asylum to live there. The local NHS is struggling. Long term residents are non-plussed with the changes. New arrivals feel unwelcome and misunderstood. Everyone feels disenfranchised and unloved.

A family that fled the conflict in Syria and has spent years living in a refugee camp moves into the village. Their arrival is accompanied by confrontation. Pub landlord TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) uses his van to help newcomers settle into the area. Ebla Mari plays Yara, the eldest daughter of a Syrian family and a young woman whose experiences of life and loss have given her a confidence that jars with the regulars in TJ’s bar who are spoiling for a fight.

Driving into Belfast, on the way to the cinema I passed the Donegall Road grocers that was set on fire in a suspected hate crime last weekend ahead of its opening. Graffiti on the shutters reads: “Local Houses An[d] Shops Only!!” Sentiment that is studied in Loach’s latest film.

Against this backdrop of despair and frustration, The Old Oak finds parallels from the miners’ strike (1984/5) and asks whether everyone has more to gain from acts of solidarity than attacking and further fragmenting a dying community. Have the lessons of the past been forgotten? Do the lessons of the past apply to the future?

There’s nothing one dimensional about this portrayal of English nationalism, working class communities, or people seeking asylum and safety. A lot of time is given to getting under the surface of the hurts that have long been carried since the strike. Backstories are explored across key cast members. The on-screen racism stems from both acts of commission and omission. For a variety of reasons, empathy has been replaced with self-interest. Layers of hurry and poverty abound like the rings in the trunk of an old tree.

The dialogue is rich and uncompromising. At a Q&A following a Queen’s Film Theatre screening, Paul Laverty explained his research process. Casting local voices adds to the feeling of authenticity. At times, the delivery of lines is less smooth than a Hollywood blockbuster. But it works in this film’s favour as a reminder that while the plot is fictional, its genesis is in the communities being portrayed.

Hugh Odling-Smee remarked at the Q&A, there’s a complete absence of the state in the film. Authority figures are nowhere to be seen. They have retracted. We see people trying to live with hope rather than die in despair. We see women who realise that they are all hanging on by their fingertips and have more to gain together than lose apart.

No film by Loach is an easy watch. The multiple tragedies that drive the central cast are heartbreaking to watch. Recent government decisions on the fate of the HS2 railway that would have brought high speed rail services as far north as Leeds – still 80 miles short of Durham – must also be seen to play into the disconnect between London and the English regions. I suspect that Ken Loach’s film may be dismissed by some as simple moralising or as a do-gooders charter for letsgetalongism in the face of local pressures. But the realism of the voices in The Old Oak makes it hard to pretend that this is just a fictional fairytale that shouldn’t challenge how the dis-United Kingdom is operating and behaving, locally and nationally.

The Old Oak is being screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 29 September.

 

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The Bodyguard – breaking conventions to create a rich musical adaptation of the 1992 film (Grand Opera House until Saturday 30 September)

The Bodyguard builds on some great musical theatre performances with a set dripping with style and panache and a lighting rig that stands out from most touring productions to create a worthy adaptation of the 1992 film. The production is packed with familiar hits. The focus is switched from the muscly protector Frank Farmer to the successful singer Rachel Marron who is at risk. While men stand admiring Rachel’s talent, her sister Nicki is left seething with jealousy, though how this rivalry plays out in the stage show differs from the movie.

Emily Williams (Australian Idol) took over the main role in the UK tour a couple of weeks ago and performs two thirds of the show’s songs. She makes it seem effortless as she demonstrates a huge vocal range and a variety of dynamics. Her Rachel is at first a carefree and confident diva before shrinking into herself as she acknowledges some of the danger she faces from a stalker. The pre-interval performance of I Have Nothing is sublime.

While it feels like Ayden Callaghan might not get a chance to sing at all, before the end of act one he trashes the first verse of Dolly Parton’s version of I Will Always Love You before coming out of his shell and nailing the second verse. Unfortunately, there’s no room for his vocals to be squeezed into the (nearly) all-singing all-dancing I Wanna Dance With Somebody finale.

Rachel’s son Fletcher (played last night by Kaylen Luke) has great presence, stealing nearly every scene the nine-year-old appears in with strong dialogue and singing. Emily-Mae plays Nicki Marron, Rachel’s overlooked sister, and impresses with her first act Saving All My Love For You and an emotional rendition of All At Once later in the show. (No surprise that she’s a cover for the role of Rachel.)

For what should be a big emotional turning point in the story, the plot doesn’t linger at all when one character dies in the second act: the show must go on, but the speed of mood change is pretty callous and breakneck.

Part of the charm of this production is that it plays up to its filmic roots rather than hiding them. Film/stage crossover rules are broken to good effect. There’s selective use of video (Duncan McLean) to amplify the sense of noir and switch the audience between Rachel’s public appearances and home life. The sound effects and soundscape from the six performers in the pit are cinematic. Tim Hatley’s exquisite set services so many different locations while Mark Henderson’s lighting design shifts the mood within scenes.

The heat is immediately turned up in the opening concert number Queen of the Night before the pyrotechnics withdraw and the high energy set morphs into a less hectic rehearsal room. The transitions between scenes in musical shows are usually either full of energy sapping nothingness covered by the house band finishing one song and starting the next, or incredibly complex and graceful choreography as cast members push and carry props on stage as if starring in a ballet. The Bodyguard instead uses slow-moving scrims, brick patterned flats and moving sectional curtains to divert your gaze and repaint the stage, never rushing to complete their moves. It’s unusual but very elegant.

Going into the theatre, I wondered whether stage version of The Bodyguard would feel like a tribute to Whitney Houston, the powerful singer whose performance dominated the original feature film. I caught a screening of the documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me in Glasgow Film Theatre one afternoon in 2017 while waiting for the sleeper train back to London. It was a devastating portrayal of the singer’s life and the influence – often negative – of those who entered her inner circle. Some 24 and a bit years after I watched The Bodyguard in the soon to be defunct Cannon cinema in Belfast, comparisons and parallels between the life of Houston and the fictional Rachel Marron were hard to miss. But the musical manages to honour the film rather than the actress.

Director Thea Sharrock takes the essence of the popular film, retains the jump scares, and transforms it into a high energy story of ambition, lust and loss. The Bodyguard is gracing the stage of the Grand Opera House until Saturday 30 September.

Photo credit: Paul Coltas

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Belfast International Arts Festival – some theatre, circus, dance, music, film and conversation highlights (12 October–5 November 2023) #BIAF23

Some highlights to look out for in the Belfast International Arts Festival, which runs for the 61st time from 12 October–5 November 2023.

THEATRE

Gary Mitchell’s new black comedy Burnt Out [reviewed] about a couple who move into a new home opposite a bonfire. That situation never ends well in any local plays! // Lyric Theatre // Wednesday 11 October–Saturday 4 November

Tinderbox Theatre’s Patrick J O’Reilly’s adaptation Rhino [reviewed]– which I last saw in a bi-lingual performance at Belfast Festival a decade ago – uses physical theatre and multimedia design in a performance that promises to add a Black Mirror vibe to Eugène Ionesco’s classic and problematic absurdist comedy. // Lyric Theatre // Wednesday 18–Sunday 29 October at 20:00

Welcome to the gig economy. The audience at work.txt [reviewed] will clock in, get short breaks, work in a team under their own initiative, and learn about financial instability in the absence of a performer. // The MAC // Tuesday 24–Wednesday 25 October at 19:45

Celebrated playwright, director and producer Jo Egan used community theatre to bring authentic voices and marginalised stories onto stages across Ireland. Along with Fionnuala Kennedy, Jo founded MACHA Productions, to ‘democratise cultural expression’. As part of a two-day Lay Up Your Ends at 40 celebrating the anniversary of Charabanc Theatre Company, The Linen Hall will be paying tribute to Jo Egan who died last Christmas with an evening of performances and reflections. // The Linen Hall // Thursday 26 October at 18:00

Pat Kinevane and Fishamble are regular collaborators at the festival. King explores prejudice, privilege and resistance through the eyes of an agoraphobic Elvis impersonator who lives in Cork and was named after the civil rights leader. // The MAC // Friday 27–Saturday 28 October at 19:45

Find out what happens to the minor characters at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller Rear Window in Big Telly’s online performance. Based on digital and physical assets, music and scripts developed through public engagement workshops. Big Telly were world leaders discovering how theatre could stretch and adapt performances to best exploit online platforms like Zoom during the pandemic. Rear Windows [reviewed] builds on that and takes it further. // Saturday 4–Sunday 5 November

CIRCUS & DANCE

Expect a mix of parkour and circus comedy in Taroo & the Cabinet of Curatrocities as Said Mouhssine fuses acrobatics, pole work and urban street moves. // CS Lewis Square // Saturday 14 October 13:30 and 15:30 // Free

Group Acrobatique de Tanger are cart-wheeling onto the stage with Fiq! [reviewed], their colourful and magical acrobatic routines, breakdancing and freestyle football, all to the beats of DJ Dino. Also featuring Palestinian circus performer Esam Sultan. // Grand Opera House // Friday 20–Saturday 21 October

Craving gossip and fed by tabloid journalism where free speech, false news and integrity collide. GUTTER [reviewed] is a new dance piece created and choreographed by Eileen McCrory and brought to life by Kevin Coquelard exploring the reader’s role in the war for attention and ratings. Sound design by Garth McConaghie and dramaturgy by Hanna Slattne. // The MAC // Saturday 28–Sunday 29 October

Drop into Queen Street Studios and catch Maiden Voyage Dance’s new performance installation Good Times Never Seemed by Vasiliki Stasinaki and Sarah Gordon. Skate boarding. Jumping into puddles. Getting trapped inside bubble wrap. Experiments in collaboration. // Thursday 2 November (15:00–2000), Friday 3 and Saturday 4 (12:00–17:00)

MUSIC

An Evening with the Belfast Ensemble and Marc Almond begins with a concert version of Abomination: A DUP Opera, a verbatim work based on the words of politicians. After the interval, and ten years after his last performance of the work, Marc Almond reprises the intense song cycle Ten Plagues. // Grand Opera House // Tuesday 17 October at 19:30

Friend of the festival and this year’s featured artist Nicholas McCarthy is appearing at Glitter of Waves, playing two stunning piano works for left hand only (Britten’s Diversions and Ravel’s Concerto) along with the Ulster Orchestra. // Ulster Hall // Friday 20 October at 19:45

And Nicholas McCarthy is back a week later for a free performance with the Ulster Orchestra and Acoustronic on Friday 27 October and is in conversation about cultural leadership at Ulster University on Thursday 19 October.

During the festival there are also performances of Canadian country music (Saturday 14 October), Cara Dillon (Wednesday 18 October), Ex-Isles (Thursday 19 October), Squid (Tuesday 24 October) and The Waterboys (Saturday 28 October).

FILM

Films from the creative partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger will be showcased in the Cinema Unbound strand at Queen’s Film Theatre: Black Narcissus (Monday 16 October at 18:15), A Matter of Life and Death (Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19, Sunday 22), I Know Where I’m Going (Friday 20–Thursday 26), Suspiria (Saturday 21 at 20:15), A Canterbury Tale (Friday 27 and Sunday 29 October, Wednesday 1 November), and The Tales of Hoffmann (Saturday 28 at 15:00).

Irish film music and its role telling stories over the last 100 years will be celebrated at From the Quiet Man to the Quiet Girl, an evening of conversation and performance. // Strand Arts Centre // Thursday 16 October at 19:30

A screening of the classic 1922 (silent) film Häxan – a documentary about witches and more – will be accompanied by a commissioned score composed and performed live by Nick Carlisle. // Queen’s Film Theatre // Thursday 2 November at 18:45

TALKS

Journalist and broadcaster Gary Younge will be talking about his new book Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter, a collection of his journalism covering four decades of reporting from Britain, the US, and South Africa. // Ulster University // Tuesday 17 October at 19:00

Mick Herron is author of the Slough House series of spy novels about a washed up team of spies. They have been adapted for by Apple TV+ as Slow Horses. // Crescent Arts Centre // Friday 20 October at 18:00

Technologist Dr Eleanor Dare, artist Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice, and Big Telly Theatre’s artistic director Zoe Seaton explore AI & Creativity. An illusion of novel thinking, or able to exhibit creative behaviour. // Ulster University // Saturday 28 October at 15:00

Lots more in the full festival programme.

Ballywalter – a refreshingly honest exploration of depression with strong performances from a feisty Seána Kerslake and a worn-down Patrick Kielty

Shane is ill at ease with himself. He’s living on his own in a shabby two-up two-down and his sense of wellbeing mirrors his lodgings. Once a week he drags himself out to a comedy class in Belfast. And every week, Eileen picks up the fare in her former boyfriend’s taxi.

If you step into Eileen’s taxi, you better fasten your seatbelt and keep your mouth shut in case you get on the wrong side of the driver. With a single phrase she has the superpower of being able to massively escalate or totally defuse a situation, usually the former, rarely the latter.

Ballywalter is a gentle and rather pleasing story of depression, broken dreams and second chances. The road to recovery is bumpy for both Eileen and Shane. Seána Kerslake fills Eileen with an intensity in every situation, a woman with no time for nonsense, but capable of making Wagon Wheel sound like a disco hit that should be played across the clubs of Belfast. And despite her abrupt front, she listens, and learns.

The film explains whether comedy can be used as therapy, and can emerge out of truth and failure. Shane has the latter and needs to be pushed to investigate the former. Eileen has a better grasp of both, but carries enough demons to fill the back seat of her taxi. Stacey Gregg – who gets a lovely cameo in the film – has written a screenplay that appropriately gives all the zinging one-liners to Seána/Eileen. Patrick Kielty depicts a diffident, damaged and quite exhausted character who has my level of genius for crashlanding a joke in the tumbleweed.

When Shane starts playing hooky from his class – much in the same way I did with voluntary French classes on a Wednesday afternoon at university – the pair begin to open up to each other. But can either steer away from their respective destructive direction of travel?

Prasanna Puwanarajah’s debut feature is a refreshingly honest exploration of despair that puts the village of Ballywalter on the map … though local audiences will need to suspend disbelief as it’s depicted as somewhere nearer Holywood (a short drive from the city centre) rather than its real location down the Ards Peninsula. Well worth catching at local cinemas.

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Five Days – an incredibly personal and unorthodox tale of processing loss (soon to tour through Dublin, Downpatrick and Derry)

In the aftermath of the murder of his father, Joe Nawaz travelled from south Belfast back to Pakistan with his family to piece together what had happened. His one man show Five Days begins with a brief history of Pakistan, a somewhat adult Horrible Histories take with gags that only an Irish-Pakistani performer could hope to carry off. Then, amid the emerging details of how his dad died, we dodge volatile mangos and learn how Rab sold shop-spoiled Fanta to Orange Men on the Twelfth and swept Eileen off her feet (her own backstory deserves a play of its own).

Five Days is a somewhat unorthodox production. While Nawaz is better known as a publicist who specialises in working with Northern Ireland arts organisations and festivals, he’s also a talented writer. Admittedly, he’s probably more at home telling a yarn while propping up the Black Box bar during a festival gig than standing on stage in front of a silent audience. But his nerves and rough-around-the-edges delivery don’t detract from the captivating life experiences he shares in Five Days. The rawness instead has the opposite effect, drawing the audience into the emotional turmoil and grief.

Perhaps paradoxically for a performance taking place in a theatre space, some of the most powerful moments of Five Days are the prerecorded clips when we hear Nawaz narrating an aspect of the tale while the performer moves around the stage, retrieving props from under a very retro Trimphone. There’s such clout in the precanned delivery that I can almost imagine an alternative production with me standing in a darkened gallery in front of a simple spotlit photograph or object listening to his voiceover before moving sideways to see and hear the next exhibit. Or wearing VR goggles and having Nawaz’s voice in my head while I look around a room of virtual artefacts. Nawaz’s voice and eyes are most alive when he has the security of a script in his hand – he’s already an adept a Tenx9 storyteller – so maybe one day it will morph into a radio play (though that would remove some of the great swearing).

But none of those are options for the current touring production. Printed sheets with section titles are used as a device to chapterise the monologue, along with abbreviated seated conversations with his absent father. Swinging from the mundane to the profound, from wisecracks to standing at a grave side, Five Days is about coming-to-terms with and processing loss. (His previous show Fake ID deals with the coming-of-age aspect of his upbringing.) It’s a literal journey of discovery that reveals a lot about the country and culture that Rab didn’t quite prepare his family for, but nonetheless a place and a culture that they found themselves visiting after his passing. A place of contradictions, comedy and condolences to which Nawaz brings his audience in his charmingly disjointed manner to explore cross-continental heritage, identity and belonging.

Five Days has finished its run at the Lyric Theatre, but will be popping up in Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre (Wednesday 25 October), Downpatrick (Friday 24 November) and Derry. 

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Brother – a melancholic masterpiece about identity and brokenness (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 21 September)

Francis might get beaten black and blue and experience prejudice from all and sundry on the street, but the most hurtful attacks are probably from the mouth of his mother. An immigrant from the Caribbean, Ruth has worked hard to bring her two sons up in Scarborough, a district of Toronto.

Clement Virgo’s Brother is no cookie-cutter exploration of identity and insecurity. It flicks between timelines with great confidence that the script and the actors will keep the audience connected with the picture that’s building up of the relationships and lives being portrayed. Switching between younger and older actors playing the same characters is often jarring. The casting and direction in Brother makes it seamless.

Francis (played by young Jacob Williams/older Aaron Pierre) excels as the outwardly confident older sibling. He has the talent to become a music producer, but few of the opportunities. He dotes on his mum (Marsha Stephanie Blake), acts as protector of younger Michael (David Odion/Lamar Johnson), and resents being infantilised at home.

Into this tight single parent home steps Aisha (Delia Lisette Chambers/Kiana Madeira), the daughter of a local shop owner and the apple of Michael’s eye. She grows up and becomes a peripatetic programmer who escapes the confines of the claustrophobic world of Scarborough and eventually returns to it with an outsider’s perspective. Her patience with Michael is almost serene as he struggles to make sense of loss and shrugs off her love and care. The late arrival of Francis’ boyfriend Jelly (Lovell Adams-Gray) into the narrative adds to the audience’s understanding of what actually matters to the fraught matriarch.

The cinematography is distinctive with a great reveal during the opening scene – don’t try this at home – as the brothers climb up an electric pylon, accompanied with the ominous high voltage hum (an ongoing metaphor for the struggle to rise up and get on in life). It’s quickly followed by a beautifully executed standing on the wrong side of the road waiting for someone to get off a bus shot.

The soundtrack becomes increasingly important to the plot, but songs like Curtis Mayfield’s We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue set the mood and explain the circumstances. The dialogue is stripped back. There are long dramatic silences in the family apartment that work on-screen despite being unnatural and unrealistic. The audience are treated like adults, expected to watch and feel what’s happening and what’s being thought rather than being spoon fed.

Brother is a melancholic masterpiece, upsetting and disturbing, a story of tormented souls that have been broken to such an extent that the warm love of angels like Aisha and Jelly isn’t really sufficient to heal the wounds. The film’s final lament by Nina Simone – Ne me quitte pas / Do not leave me – cements the tragedy.

Brother is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 21 September.

 

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Tosca – a chief of police gets his comeuppance at the hands of an opera diva (NI Opera at Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 September)

Northern Ireland Opera’s autumn production is Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, a tale of illicit love, jealousy, police brutality, murder and suicide set in Rome and running from the afternoon of one day to just after dawn the next in June 1800.

An already jealous opera singer Floria Tosca is further tricked into believing that her lover, painter Mario Cavaradossi, has been unfaithful. Instead he has been sheltering a political prisoner Angelott inside a church undergoing renovation. The corrupt chief of police Baron Scarpia twists everyone’s fear – aided by a spot of old-fashioned torture and sexual coercion – to extract the information he needs to find the on the run convict. By the end of the third act, the body count reaches a suitably operatic high.

Niall McKeever’s sets for each act are surrounded by three floors of modern scaffolding. Cavaradossi is seen to be restoring a huge painting of the Mary Magdalene’s face which stares out at the audience from within a ring of stone. After the first interval, a two-storey villain’s lair sees Scarpia back in his swish office above a prison cell/torture chamber whose walls are replete with bullet holes. All that’s missing is a white cat for him to stroke. And for the final act, we’re up on a rooftop to watch an execution, with the stone eye once again encircling the action and glaring at the audience, as if demanding our response to the on-stage subterfuge.

It’s good to see an increasing number of creatives who regular feature in theatre and opera on this island getting to work behind-the-scenes on NI Opera productions. Ciarán Bagnall’s razor sharp beams back- and side-light much of the action, casting atmospheric shadows and emphasising the black, white and grey set and the many subdued costumes. Designer Gillian Lennox saves the colour for Tosca’s exquisite dresses and cloaks which dazzle throughout.

Svetlana Kasyan brings her powerful soprano voice to the role of Tosca – a celebrated opera diva of her day in Rome – projecting with particular power, though a bit too much wistfully facing the audience rather than towards the other characters. This is operatic theatre and not a concert performance, and Kasyan is not afraid to add a tonal roughness that the character’s emotional state deserves. Her Act II aria Vissi d’arte (I lived for art) is gritty and potent. While the Tosca/Cavaradossi coupling never quite passes the chemistry test between Kasyan and Peter Auty (who looks so much older than his on-stage lover, a late change in NI Opera’s casting of this tenor role), the pair are a brilliant match vocally, particularly in Qual’occhio al mondo (What eyes in the world).

Irish baritone Brendan Collins has strong vocals and conveys a sense of menace from the first moment Scarpia struts on stage. Revealed to be a cop unafraid of using extreme methods – physical and psychological distress – as well as being a sexual predator, Collins digs deep to keep the audience interested in the different sides to villainous Scarpia.

With most musical theatre productions that tour through the Grand Opera House relying on close-miking performers and the use of big PA systems, it’s a treat to hear unamplified singers filling the extensive auditorium over the top of the Ulster Orchestra’s sensitive playing in the pit under the baton of Eduardo Strausser.

The use of live surtitles at the sides of the stage to translate the Italian libretto into English helps enormously with comprehension. Programming two intervals between the three acts gives time for new audiences to settle the plot in their heads and gives time for the impressive sets to be swapped around. Bolstering the NI Opera Chorus with adult and child singers from the Belfast Philharmonic Choir adds greatly to the sense of occasion for the limited number of scenes requiring a crowd. (Tosca’s plot is quite straightforward for an opera, and the small cast means that there are rarely even a handful of characters on stage at any one time.)

Cameron Menzies has created a Tosca production that has visual flair and vocal forte. Aside from the many pluses, one of Scarpia’s henchmen is noticeably quieter than their peers in certain scenes. While McKeever’s concrete chic is very contemporary, some of the sight lines to the side chapels in Act I and the torture room in Act II are poor for a significant minority of the audience. And Tosca’s final leap was somewhat anticlimactic and might have benefitted from the thud a certain prop allowed in NI Opera’s 2019 production of Sweeney Todd.

While Tosca isn’t blessed with the most hummable of scores, its condensed plot and compact cast of characters makes it a good beginner’s production to try out if you want to dip to dip your toe into the opera bath for the first time. Standing up to applaud the performers during the final curtain call, someone in the row behind me likened Tosca to an episode of EastEnders! A Christmas special, perhaps. Director Menzies is giving a free (ticketed) short pre-show talk at 6.30pm before the Tuesday 12 and Saturday 16 performances. That said, the sold-out performances mean it’s too late for you catch this production in Belfast if you don’t already have a ticket unless you join the box office waiting list.

Photo credit: Neil Harrison & Philip Magowan/PressEye

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Past Lives – scratching a well-observed 24 year itch in another cinematic love triangle (from Friday 8 September)

It seems to be the season for cinematic love triangles. Maybe it’s a consequence of filming during Covid. Maybe it’s just a perpetual theme that paints a canvas for rich drama. In the case of Past Lives, it definitely builds on director and screenwriter Celine Song’s knowledge of making theatre.

A married woman now living in America and having success as a playwright reconnects with a childhood friend with whom she’s twice cut off relations (not always her fault). First we watch 12-year-old Na Young casually say her goodbyes to her South Korean classmates, leaving a heartbroken Hae Sung to silent nurse his pain. Twelve years later, divided by thousands of miles, they reconnect through social media. A further twelve years later, their on/off friendship reaches its climax when they meet up again in real life in New York.

While Passages (review) – still playing at the QFT until 14 September – is all about love and sex, Past Lives deals with a more romantic love. (I’m not sure Pastages or Passlives double bills will catch on!) While Seung Ah Moon is beautifully nonchalant playing young Na Young (opposite Seung Min Yim’s wounded Hae Sung), it’s Greta Lee’s portrayal of Na Young – who has now westernised her name and is called Nora – that lights up the screen. Although she hasn’t lost any of her bluntness or cool ambition, and tends to roll with life’s punches, there is a sense that Nora’s heartbeat quickens when she’s in the virtual or real-world presence of the more idealistic Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), even if he feels the loss of his friend much more keenly than she does. Over 105 minutes we discover whether the friends know each other. Moreover, we watch and judge whether they even know themselves.

Like Owen McCafferty, Celine Song writes good silences. Whether incredibly comfortable or very ill at ease, Seung Ah Moon and Seung Min Yim use the smallest of movements to hint at what Nora and Hae Sung are thinking and feeling. It has the richness of a rehearsed stage play where every eyeroll and imperceptible shrug paints a picture of what’s going on between the lines of dialogue. Getting these little details right is just one of the things well is just that marks Past Lives out as a great film.

The concept of inyeon (subtitled as in-yun) is introduced and underlined throughout the film, but what Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently detective character would have called interconnectedness is nearly a distraction from the interactions between the principal characters.

The third wheel in the triangle is Arthur (John Magaro), Nora’s husband. While he has learned some Korean, there are huge parts of his wife’s experience and personality to which he has no access. A realisation that is hammered home when her childhood friend with only a smattering of English arrives on the scene and Nora has intense conversations with which he cannot engage. You’ll spend a lot of time pondering whether he’s distant and insecure, incredibly relaxed, or even misogynistic.

Past Lives is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre as well as Odeon and Cineworld Belfast from Friday 8 September.

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