Previewing Belfast Film Festival – a programme stuffed full of home-grown and international treats (2-11 November) #bff23

We’re now into peak festival season in Belfast.

Belfast International Arts Festival is into its last week (finishing on Sunday 5 November), local events in the ESCR Festival of Social Science are ongoing (last one on Saturday 11), Belfast Film Festival is about to start (Thursday 2–Saturday 11), and Outburst Queer Arts Festival is just around the corner (Thursday 9–Saturday 18).

Belfast Film Festival is squeezing in an early spooky screening tonight for Halloween (Tuesday 31 October), with Haunted Ulster Live in the QFT at 21:00. Then the main festival begins on Thursday 2 November with the (sold out) opening film All Of Us Strangers in Cineworld at 19:30. Paul Mescal is back with a fantasy about love.

The first of eight movies from emerging filmmakers in the International Competition is being screened on Thursday night at 20:45 in the QFT with the non-preachy, non-judgemental end-of-school holiday in the sun film How To Have Sex [reviewed] (Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature) which exposes the teenage hurt and angst that lies beneath the carefully curated exterior. A story of loneliness in a crowd, of predatory behaviour, of coerced consent.

Also in the competition is Tótem, a Mexican family drama with a party steeped in tragedy seen through the eyes of a seven year old girl. Lila Avilés’ second feature is in the QFT on Friday 3 at 18:15. One last competition film to mention is Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry [reviewed] from Georgian director Elene Naveriani (QFT at 18:00 on Monday 6) about a middle-aged woman’s near-death experience which kick starts a drole journey of longing and loneliness.

You can pretend you’re a member of the jury in the tense French courtroom drama when a man falls to his death in Anatomy of a Fall [reviewed] on Friday 3 at 20:30.

Mark Cousins lit up many a Belfast Film Festival for me with his off-the-wall documentaries like What is this Film Called Love? and Here be Dragons which were filmed on days off while on overseas trips. He’s back in the 2023 festival with Cinema Has Been My True Love (QFT at 12:45 on Saturday 4) which promises to be a candid and inspirational portrait of film festival programmer, author and producer Lynda Myles who championed the early work of directors who would go on to become ‘the movie brats’ (a phrase that she coined). Also on Saturday 4 you can catch new Irish horror film and Ian Hunt Duffy debut Double Blind [reviewed] where young volunteers hopes of earning easy money from participating in a medical drug trial are dashed.

The Delinquents is an Argentinian bank heist with an unusually moral motivation. QFT at noon on Sunday 5. A series of sub-half hour films from Northern Ireland directors is being screened in Strand Arts Centre that afternoon. Viva (15:00, Marie Claire Cushinan) [reviewed], Communion (15:40, Séan Coyle) [reviewed], Desideratum (16:20, KC Connolly), Three Way Mirror (17:00, Kevin J Mc Corry) and Heaven Scent (18:00, Michael McNulty).

Monday 6 is a day stuffed full of treats: The Secret of Ronan Irish (The Avenue at 19:00) is a family-friendly Celtic mystery, part of the festival’s John Sayles retrospective; a preview of the Fine Point Films’ origin story of the West Belfast hip hop artists Kneecap who are rarely out of the headlines (Black Box at 20:00); and Silent Roar (20:30 at QFT) [reviewed], a Hebridean tale of grief, tradition and teenage discover.

You can bring your pouch to a screening of Whose Dog Am I? in the Black Box at 19:00 … as long as you and your pet can promise to be well-behaved in a room full of other canines. No pets required at Monster [reviewed] (QFT at 21:00), a Japanese tale of family, childhood and generational alienation from director Hirokazu Kore-eda.

The greatest spectacle on Wednesday 8 might well be the screening of Joel Coen’s Barton Fink (The Avenue at 19:00) which picks up awards like a giant magnet.

John Sayles’ Lone Star (1996) is being screened in Strand Arts Centre at 18:00 on Thursday 9. And you can check out Pierce Brosnan’s accent in the gala screening of Terry Loane’s The Last Rifleman [reviewed] in the Cineworld at 19:00.

Circus master and serial filmmaker Ken Fanning is hosting Out of the Big Top Onto the Screen, a selection of circus shorts and exploring the many ways his world can be presented on screen. Friday 10 November at 20:00 in Circusful (the new name for Belfast Community Circus School). Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway star in William Oldroyd’s subversive noir Eileen in the QFT at 21:15.

Saturday 11 November is the final day of the festival. ReVision sees what young people and students of filmmaking have been able to create from Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive (QFT at 10:00). And in the same venue at noon, one of the films being digitally restored by the archive will be screened: Brian’ Drysdale’s The Boxer (1979). The Shadowless Tower (Strand Arts Centre at 14:00) is a tribute to Beijing though the eyes of a failed poet and restaurant critic who is going through a midlife crisis.

Belfast Film Festival closes its curtain and powers down its projector with Oscar-tipped Poor Things (Cineworld at 19:30) from director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Favourite) starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo.

And if none of those picks is to your taste, the full programme is available on the Belfast Film Festival website!

GUTTER – a nuanced dissection of populist news, celebrity culture, and reducing everything to the level of gossip (Off The Rails Dance at The MAC until Sunday 29 October) #biaf23

Some of the strongest work featured at Belfast International Arts Festival has been that (like Rhino) which embraced the imagination and creative power of an ensemble to produce something that was greater than the sum of the already talented individuals involved.

Off The Rails’ GUTTER follows this trend with its takedown of modern journalistic excess and audience bias towards news and commentary that fits their own agenda. It looks at the collision point between populist journalism and the celebrity status endowed upon and enjoyed by some presenters. What happens when you’re surfing along the wave of likes and the crest collapses and you tumble into the deep waters of cancellation? Are the viewers and readers and social platform users as complicit in this madness as the producers of the news who kowtow to the desire to gain shock-jock approval ratings? Have we created a world of gossip-mongers?

GUTTER does this very accessibly through the medium of dance. In a series of scenes that eventually come round full circle, Kevin Coquelard takes on the role of presenter, taking instructions from an unseen director to learn how to stand out, work an audience, and have presence on screen. At first diffident, he embraces the need to be a showman.

Soon he turns into a stage manager and we realise that even the adjustment of the studio furniture can be a non-neutral act of performance. Cameras are positioned and Conan McIvor’s live and recorded video mastery adds another dimension.

Recognisable classical themes are appropriated and pleasingly subverted with social media sound effects by Garth McConaghie. Sound from above the heads and behind the audience keeps our skin in the dangerous game being acted out in front of us. One incredibly powerful scene sees a robust debate (real audio from recognisable voices) being conducted as if the speakers (represented by pairs of shoes using Sarah Jane Sheils’ precision spotlighting to animate their voices) were instruments in an orchestra.

Artistic director and choreographer Eileen McClory introduces nuance through repetition which exposes how what plausibly starts out as good technique can quickly get twisted and hyped out of hand, leading to instability and catastrophe. Raising the tempo of a repeating routine is another device that underlines how easily the intelligibility of the message can be lost as something spins out of control. News is breaking in more than one way.

GUTTER suggests that some journalism and some audiences no longer value facts and integrity over performance and approval. Coquelard’s intimate dance with a camera hints at narcissism and the neediness of some Instagram/TikTok reels. As an audience, we’re never allowed to stray far from our own involvement in the vicious circle though both unwilling and quite knowing manipulation.

There’s a coherence to the multi-disciplinary storytelling of GUTTER that uses just 50 minutes to make its pitch. Hats off to dramaturg Hanna Slättne who’s helped keep the performance sharp and to the point. Coquelard’s relentless movement and lipsyncing is a delight to watch. But his on-stage antics are significantly enhanced by the quality of the beautiful sound, light and video work with which he interacts.

Just two performances of GUTTER remain at The MAC on Sunday 29 October (14:30 and 19:45) as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. It’s another example of international quality work that has been made in Northern Ireland but is not constrained to speaking to local audiences. The physicality, the video clips of news output, and the lure of gossip over impartiality is universal. 

Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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work.txt – clock on for a 60 minute shift, there’s no show if no one turns up to work (The MAC until Wednesday 25 October) #BIAF23

work.txt is an ensemble piece of theatre. With a difference. The audience are the ensemble. A set is built. One member will unwittingly be written into the whole evening’s dialogue and become a recurring central character. The rest of us will say a line when prompted by the words on the black backdrop: people who hate Mondays, Geminis (we’d all sat in one corner of the stalls), ushers, the stage manager, people who meet all kinds of criteria. Printed pages of lines may also be provided … and if the stage office printer breaks down, there’s a contingency plan. The work must continue. This is the gig economy. There’s no switching off, you’re always on.

Over 60 minutes – it’s quite a short shift! – you’ll learn about labour (and withdrawing it); about bosses, leaders, mindless tasks and robots; about reward and compensation; about respect (and the lack of it); about what makes work enjoyable (and what makes nice moments in an otherwise frustrating day). And you’ll get to clear your lungs and sing. It’s okay – you’ll be among friends fellow workers.

Writer Nathan Ellis and his team of dramaturgs, creatives and tech wizards have crafted a funny, somewhat self-aware, tour through a working day. One scene contrasts the skills and daily routine of a gallery attendant and the artistic curator. Totally different perspectives on what is normal. The central use of audience participation is very much in keeping with Roger Bernat’s Pending Vote which wowed in the 2013 festival.

work.txt is both whimsical and profound. Is anyone in charge? Do we have agency in our workplaces? Does attendance count as consent to participate in work (as well as theatre)? Are we trapped by our own choices? Is it about money? Or satisfaction? Or wellbeing? Well worth catching the final performance on Wednesday 25 October at 19:45 in The MAC as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. It’ll only be a play with no actors of no one turns up!

Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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Monster – tongues are sharper than knives as secrets spill over the dinner table at this family reunion (Dark Forest Theatre at Sanctuary Theatre until Sunday 29 October)

Prodigal son Gabriel returns to the home lived in by his grieving mother and twin brother Michael. It’s an awkward welcome given his two years of globetrotting following the tragic deaths of his father and sister-in-law.

Dark Forest Theatre specialises in tales of the unexpected, and Nathan D Martin’s latest play Monster unlocks a succession of family secrets that spill out over the dinner table in the isolated, rural home.

There’s not a lot of love to be found. Festering sores have clearly broken any fraternal bonds, while Mother’s lack of maternal feelings have stretched from her children’s birth right up to their adulthood.

Things go from bad to worse, and the opportunity for making up and healing is illusive. Then comes an enormous firework of a revelation that throws new light on the tragic events a few years before, before a further twist – and a great evil grin – to round off the 75-minute one-act play.

What starts out as a family melodrama becomes a gruesome tale that Eastenders would struggle to screen as a Christmas Day special. The mood definitely fits the Halloween vibe at this time of year.

Gabriel (played by writer/director Martin) is suave but neither sophisticated nor an angel. Brother Michael (Glenn McGivern) is weary and downtrodden. But it’s when Mother (Marina Hampton) enters the room that the gloves come off and the verbal knives come out. Even when she’s not there, Mother has a presence. A framed photograph on the sideboard hints that she’s always listening. The prop is a nice nod to the domineering character who uses her sharp tongue to coerce her boys into doing her bidding, and respects no one while demanding everyone defer to her. Hampton has great fun building up the caustic and dismissive atmosphere.   

The overall structure works, with the cast confidently exploring the different pairings who get a chance to spar with each other, though some of the dialogue could be tweaked to be less formal in how they move the plot forward. When Gabriel explains his extreme role in a pivotal family event, would the normally not lost for words Michael and Mother really not interrupt? The heavy use of voiced inner monologues sometimes gives Monster the feel of being a radio play that has been dramatised for stage. Those are all things that can be revised if or when the play gets a second run.

Monster uses the extreme actions of a family to ask whether we’re all capable of violent acts motivated by love and anger borne out of loyalty. The development process is a key part of building capability and confidence in writers, directors, actors and back of house roles. So it’s good to see new work like this along with scratch theatre (this Thursday in Accidental Theatre) coming back to local stages after the pandemic. Performances of Monster continue at the Sanctuary Theatre in east Belfast until Sunday 29 October.

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Foe – what will a government enforced breakup and a replacement spouse do for this tetchy marriage?

Hen feels trapped in her seven-year-old marriage. Yet it’s her partner, Junior, who is getting out: the human Hen married will soon be swapped out for a sentient clone while Junior spends a year in space. The chicken processing plant worker has been chosen – mainly due to his very ordinariness – to be part of an off-planet living experiment ahead of a possible evacuation of civilisation.

Foe depicts the American Midwest as also being on the brink of collapse. Rain is scarce, the crops are failing, the ground is dusty, and the climate is hostile. Inside the couple’s home, government agent Terrance arrives to size up Junior’s character and motivations. The outsider’s interactions with Hen simultaneously irritate Junior and encourage her wanderlust.

If Junior is about to become faux, who in this spartan production will be the foe? The clone? The remaining partner? The agent of the state? Or some other unseen force?

Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal are moody, sweaty, distant, intimate, and full of different types of longing. There’s a strength to Ronan’s character that never stops growing though the story. When a black horse appears in a film like this, you sense that famine and death – and maybe even Ingmar Bergman – might be just around the corner. Junior is clearly internally conflicted, ill at ease with his life, and Mescal captures this tension. Aaron Pierre portrays Terrance with a brazen knack of sticking his nose into the most personal of subjects to supposedly aid his work.

In this sci-fi adaptation of Iain Reid’s book by director Garth Davis, audiences are being taken on 110-minute journey (though it feels shorter) that has a number of sleights of hands and gaps in the timeline. To say more would spoil the film. Yet the production lets itself down and spoils its offering.

Set in 2065, Hen and Junior’s homestead is like a heritage site in a museum. Their truck is a relic. The tech in the house is ancient even by today’s standards. There’s a complete sense of isolation including a lack of communication with the outside world. All of this is at odds with the sophisticated chicken rearing vertical factory and the brief glimpses of shiny silver aircraft and the new world up in the sky. But there’s never any hint of an explanation for the old tech.

The build-up to the film’s major twist allows a number of hares to run part way around the race course, including moments when the whole space endeavour might turn out to be a spoof on the scale of Channel 4’s 2005 Space Cadets with the consequence that Terrance is going to turn into a master manipulator and sinister coercer. But then this – and other more alien possibilities – are totally discarded when the reveal arrives and we can move into Foe’s second act. By the time the second twist comes, the audience have fully caught up and it’s nearly signposted too clearly.

The couple’s love life is depicted with some regularity as a barometer of their unspoken inner feelings. The relationship portrayed by Ronan and Mescal is very believable and their on-screen chemistry is electric. About an hour into the film, the first big plot revelation also marks the pivot point when the lust, passion and enjoyment that were so well conveyed in the first half of the film now seem to require flashing more flesh. I’m no cinematic prude, but it seems like the holes in the storytelling are covered over by a needless display of bums and boobs in another example of lazy male movie industry gaze?

Towards the end, there’s very little enquiry into Junior lack of new perspective on his life upon his return from being away: for someone unexplained reason he’s even more wedded to his patch of dying land.

Foe promises science fiction and identifies a concept around which it could have crystalised a solid drama. Instead, the three strong central performances rescue the script’s incoherence and deliver a brooding psychodrama in which identity and what it means to be alive are under-explored. Foe is being screened in most local cinemas.

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Fiq! – what happens when circus meets gymnastics and tumbles into a DJ set: it’s magnificent or rather magni-Fiq! (Grand Opera House until Saturday 21 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #biaf23

Take 15 acrobatic bodies that bounce and flip and spin, one DJ who provides a constant live soundtrack, a circling motorbike, 48 or more red Coca Cola crates, and a dance floor and billowing backdrop that rips apart, than add gymnastic talent, circus skills, passion and energy and you have something magnificent … magnifique … or just Fiq!

That’s the name of the energetic, tumbling and breath-taking show by Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger from north Africa (though troupe member Jemma joins via Scotland!) who are performing for two nights in the Grand Opera House as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. ‘Fiq’ translates as ‘wake up’.

I can close my eyes and imagine being able to do a cartwheel. However, during Fiq! I see performers effortlessly cartwheel on the spot, spinning themselves around in almost a blur. My imagination has nothing on their reality.

What begins like a dreaded school gym beep test, quickly becomes a playful dance exploration of how running back and forward in a straight line can be distorted and made a lot more fun. But the sight of the fifteen performers, dressed in blank, darting back and forth across the stage is only the start of the strenuous activity. Soon the long drapes are being pulled down, the dance floor is being ripped up, the costumes are becoming more colourful, performers are being flung in the air with a human trampoline, and we’re hearing about and watching expressions of freedom, strength in numbers, a fair distribution of wealth, and what happens when you give people autonomy over their bodies.

This is the kind of show that puts a grin on your face that lasts for the whole hour and a half of the performance. Magical Apple AirPlay allows us to see a performer eye view of being tossed around in the air. Even DJ Dino is taken for a spin and elevated out of the way like a magic carpet on the rise when the dancers take back control.

Fiq! is multi-disciplinary, multi-talented, and multi-lingual (with English surtitles conveniently projected above the performers for those moments when you want to check that you’re picking up the right message from the movement). It’s a very accessible expression of dance. Children and adults spontaneously applaud and cheer encouragement. Circus is a great gateway to dance. It emphasises the strength of performers and the remarkable repeatability of their movements.

Due to due to the conflict and the closing of borders, Palestinian circus performer Esam Sultan wasn’t able to travel to Belfast to open the show with his In Between. Festival hope that he can be part of next year’s programme. In his place, local circus supremos, Tumble Circus, have stepped in to perform before Fiq! takes to the stage.

At the end of a long day, Fiq! was a treat. You can catch the final show tomorrow, Saturday 21 October at 7.30pm in the Grand Opera House. Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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Rhino – online gaming meets theatre in this dazzling adaptation of Ionesco’s classic (Tinderbox at Lyric Theatre until Saturday 28 October) #biaf23

It’s as if this was the definitive staging Eugène Ionesco had intended when he wrote Rhinoceros in 1959. Notionally it’s a story about rhinoceroses arriving in a small village and the conformity, paranoia and false logic that follows as people become entangled in all that the rhinoceroses begin to stand for. Everyman Bérenger must decide whether to join the masses or whether to resist the metamorphosis. It’s generally accepted that Ionesco was reflecting on how Fascism and Nazism rose in the build-up to the Second World War.

Tinderbox’s production of Rhino maps the characters into avatars in a multiplayer video game. Each demonstrates a very individual – and comedic – range of movements that are maintained all the way through to the final curtain call and walking off stage. Being virtual characters in an online game, they can’t touch. But that doesn’t stop them interacting with fighting moves straight out of the Way of the Exploding Fist that 8-bit ZX Spectrum and arcade game kids will remember.

While the physical movement is trademark Patrick J O’Reilly, the director also delivers an all-embracing concept to the production that absorbs the audience. You can nearly forget that you’re in a theatre, perhaps transported to watching a Twitch stream of these six players.

Set designer Tracey Lindsay provides portable walls on castors that double up as windows and smart phone screens as we navigate between the three levels/locations. Some of the spoken dialogue also appears in the form of a chain of instant messages. The younger and more hip audience members laugh in time with the writing on the screen, while the less smartphone addicted guffaw in sync with the spoken words.

Garth McConaghie’s score is akin to the sophisticated rolling music that underpins a modern video game with themes emerging for particular characters, and lots of game reward and bonus sound effects keeping the audience plugged into the gaming metaphor. LED light ropes define the character charging/resting zones while Mary Tumelty’s simple moving heads add dramatic red and green tunnels of light at key moments in the gameplay. The distinctly patterned black and white costumes by Rosie McClelland are like those you’d select when customising your character in a game, albeit it with a commedia dell'arte twist. All the while Eoin Robinson animates the screens and backdrop with computer graphics that are integral to the storytelling and never flashy distractions.

O’Reilly has helpfully taken a red pen to the original script and shortened it down to create a 90-minute no interval performance. Richard Clements encapsulates the vulnerability of the central character Bérenger, surrounded by enticing performances from Daniel Cunningham, Mary McGurk, Nicky Harley, Shaun Blaney and Vicky Allen who manage to interact with projected versions of themselves as well as each other without ever breaking character.

The racism present in the original script – one whole section riffs off Asian vs African rhinoceroses – results in characters receiving warnings and one being suspended for a period. Yet that doesn’t stop more and more people throwing their lot in with the new tribe of animals who have appeared and disrupted life in the town.

When you’re barely facing up to your own reality and other people are squeezing in with their spin on what’s going on. When dealing with your own internal trauma is exacerbated by waves of societal disturbance. How can you keep your head above water and not plunge under and allow yourself to be carried along?

Rhino could have been written and staged to comment on the online discourse around Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and Israel, or any number of other conflicts. And it taps into the spiral of conspiracy nonsense that can take over people’s thinking and their whole lives. And there’s an intelligent acknowledgement that people’s own unseen or unacknowledged demons can contribute to how they traverse the unexpected situations society throws at them.

Grab a ticket to see Rhino at the Lyric Theatre while you can. This run ends on Saturday 28 October. It’s a modern twist that reimagines and enhances a play that still has something to say. Its quality is testament to the power of a really talented ensemble on stage working together with creatives who can translate their imagination into reality (albeit, in this case, virtual reality) to create a dazzling performance. Hopefully Rhino will have a life beyond Belfast International Arts Festival and will return, perhaps even stampede, towards a well-deserved reboot by Tinderbox in Dublin, London, Edinburgh or beyond.

Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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The Macbeth Project – Supernatural predictions, visions, cold-blooded murder and coverup … all before the bell for break! (Bright Umbrella’s school tour + Sanctuary Theatre 19–21 October)

Back when I was young, most of the GCSE English Literature classes in school studied Robert Bolt’s Man For All Seasons (based on the life of Sir Thomas More), leaving just one class – not mine! – getting to grips with the Bard’s Scottish Play. It’s been seven years since I last caught a stripped back production of Macbeth aimed at schools. While purists may hate the removal of many of the smaller characters and the trimming of important but not crucial fat, abridged performances get to the heart of the story and the reasons why the main characters behave the way they do.

Bright Umbrella’s director Trevor Gill addressed the couple of hundred students who had been assembled in the school gym first thing in the morning to watch The Macbeth Project. It’s still on the GCSE curriculum, and half of them were studying it this year for their exams in June, and the rest would be taking it on next September.

Gill took them back to the play’s first run in 1606. Less gentile times for audience members in the Globe Theatre. A black flag would have flown above the theatre, indicating to the approaching punters that they were being served up a tragedy. It was a time when witches weren’t a bit of fun for Halloween; people suspected of witchcraft were rounded up, tried and burnt or drowned. Macbeth was written to be entertainment for the masses, so the students were told to feel free to clap and cheer and react to the on stage drama.

A cast of five take on fourteen or so characters and three witches. Simple adornments – a crown, coloured sashes and cummerbunds, a silver dagger – are used to mark out the characters and where their loyalties lie. The staging is bare except for a wooden box and the black curtains providing side and central entrances for the cast.

Glenn McGivern is the opportunistic Macbeth, aided by his ambitious wife Lady Macbeth (Christine Clark). Neil Heaney steps onto the stage as Duncan and Banquo, while Niomi Liberante and Andrew McNeill mop up many of the other roles.

The short scenes in this 70-minute version keep attention levels high. Sound effects introduce new locations (bird sound indicating that it’s outside) and at times the cast step down off the stage and get closer to the student audience. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s passionate clinch entertains the adolescent audience and reminds them that these two are in lockstep along their path to power.

A porter interrupts proceedings, styled like a school caretaker, noisily moving through the students and up onto the stage, gradually morphing back into his Shakespearean character. As the play heads towards its gory conclusion, we see Macbeth and his troubled soul living with the consequences and anguish of his own bloody actions. As my Mum might have said, “Be sure your sins will find you out”. The Macbeths learn this the hard way. The small cast confidently dart on and off stage, switching roles and keeping the pace up as increasing amounts of blood needs wiped off their hands.

While Shakespeare set his stories in the past, four hundred years later the themes touch on the conflict between Hamas and Israel as well as other contemporary situations. The quest for power, the brutal taking of power, and the terrible consequences play out daily. None of that will come up in the summer exams, but the Bard does provide food for thought. While Bright Umbrella (in association with their sponsor FinTru) would no doubt welcome schools getting in touch to book a performance in front of their students, the general public can also enjoy this current cast who will be appearing in the Sanctuary Theatre in east Belfast for four shows between Thursday 19 and Saturday 21 October.

Some production shots may feature previous cast members or understudies.

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Burnt Out – tensions explode as a new bonfire casts a shadow over domestic and community harmony – Lyric Theatre until Saturday 4 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival #BIAF23

It’s the beginning of the summer, and hair stylist Cheryl (Kerri Quinn) and primary school teacher Michael (Terence Keeley) live in a modern and fashionable home opposite a field that has just become a bonfire site. Michael’s brother Donny (Caolán Byrne) has some influence in the loyalist community, though his girlfriend Lesley (Shannen McNeice) is the official bonfire liaison officer. A local resident is known to have complained to the police, but P.C. McGoldrick (Caroline Curran) has her own agenda when she turns up at the couple’s door. Counter complaints are now flying about, and tensions are rising faster than the stack of wooden pallets. Can the area reach the Eleventh Night without community tensions combusting?

Gary Mitchell’s Burnt Out is a play – his first since Smiley – that shows how persistent intimidation can corrode someone’s sense of wellbeing and either drive them down a helter skelter spiralling slide of antagonism, or else persuade them to pay out in a fruitless attempt at final resolution and reconciliation.

At the end of act one, I’d a sense that while this play was teasing out just how powerful the emotion of fear can be in shaping people’s actions, the actual source of community tension – in this case an unwelcome loyalist bonfire – could have been swapped out for any number of issues that could threaten to disrupt the peace in an area. It felt like the bigger message was going to be how people in so many different circumstances can wind up each other – and themselves – into terribly destructive no-win situations that so quickly reach the point of no recovery.

However, the second act waves away any ambivalence about the importance of the setting and immediately delivers a stream of sectarian bile from the mouth of Donny. A joke is cracked about the poor spelling in a piece of loyalist graffiti. Suddenly, it’s all about sectarianism and loyalist bonfire culture. And that’s before Burnt Out eventually jumps a shark or two with Donny’s rant against the dangers of feminism in an out-of-the-blue moment of pure toxic masculinity that suggests that this thug who so often resorts to violence is the character struggling the most to contain the fear pent-up inside.

Quinn and Keeley – reunited on the Lyric stage seven years after playing a fabulous Mary and Joseph in a Christmas show – are portrayed as a somewhat mismatched couple, albeit wearing matching pyjamas. They enjoy a smooch and a cuddle, but disagree on important matters like cats vs dogs, whether to try to have a baby, the importance of her salon business vs his job as a teacher, and importantly, how to deal with the real and existential threat from across the road. There’s an interesting class dynamic, with Cheryl very much grounded with her people-based business, while Michael has unquestionably escaped his working-class roots and is no longer comfortable hanging around in the same circles as his brother. The potential fault lines in this central relationship loom large even before the fissures and fractures appear at the behest of brother Donny, his maltreated partner Lesley, and the gloriously stubborn and unhelpful officer McGoldrick (played to a tee by Curran).

Coercion and threats just drip off Donny. Cheryl is more able for him than his wee brother, but that plays into Donny’s wicked sense of what’s right for him. While sextortion is fleetingly on the table with Lesley trying to lure Michael with her wily charms, she soon switches to the old-fashioned extortion of money to placate the misunderstood youths building the bonfire.

Gary Mitchell’s new play is very well planned, plotted, and constructed. Jimmy Fay translates throwaway quips on the page into on stage zingers that are rewarded with instant gasps and giggles. The audience are lulled into laughing at deeply serious and disturbing moments that in the real world would leave us shocked and appalled rather than full of mirth. Garth McConaghie’s techno soundtrack throws in musical puns with blasts of Insomnia and Bad Guy, while the bass subs dotted along the front of the stage add to the sense of unease and help announce the end of the first act. Conor Murphy’s acoustically-friendly set floats above a black stage, though the small cast rarely feel intimate in the cavernous front room. Neil O’Driscoll’s projections add a sense of what’s happening over the road as well as inside the heads of the protagonists.

Throughout the performance, there seemed to be heavy hints that Cheryl may be concealing a much more complicated role in the unravelling situation. Yet other than an animated shadows that might look like familiar but assumed lost ‘friends’ at the conclusion, the breadcrumbs of Cheryl deliberately taking back control felt like they turned out to be red herrings. Then the play ends twice. On opening night we spontaneously applauded after a dynamic scene that turned out to be penultimate one, with the action returning for one last check-in with the troubled couple. Like a lot of Bond films, it felt like one ending too many.

Burnt Out is an explosive psychological thriller that certainly adds to the library of loyalist noir, where the mere mention of a bonfire heralds certain death and destruction. Mitchell knows about being on the receiving end of intimidation. He fights with words not baseball bats or petrol bombs. His script emerges from personal experience and is likely to resonate with others who have been bullied, and with those who take on the role of gatekeepers to preserve cultural expression. But I’m not sure the young adults who build bonfires or the grassroots communities who feel that they’ve been left behind by their political representatives will hear or see themselves on stage. Other plays and other playwrights will have the opportunity to address those gaps.

Having opened Belfast International Arts Festival, Burnt Out runs at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 4 November. Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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The Hen Do: Ibiza Here We Come – a weekend of family discovery in the sun (GBL Productions at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 7 October + NI tour)

Becky is heading away to Ibiza for her hen do, accompanied by her mum, sister, and some friends. On a boozy weekend that is meant to be about letting their hair down ahead of Becky’s matrimony, the two sisters are jolted into learning more about their Mum’s past and belatedly realise that she too deserves recognition and happiness. I was in the minority at Monday night’s audience at The Hen Do having never been invited to nor attended a hen party never mind a whole weekend away. But clearly many others could identify with the shenanigans.

Four neon-coloured palm trees and a couple of sun loungers dominate the stage in this stripped-down production. Writer Diona Doherty leads the madcap trip starring as bride Becky. Jo Donnelly plays the mother Sally who works in a supermarket and had her wings clipped from an early age. Niamh McAllister is the more idealistic, younger sister Ciara who is super-organised and yearns to escape her backroom job working in the same shop as her Mum. Keith Singleton’s all-in commitment pays off with his outlandish set of characters including an air steward, a police jailor, the DJ who makes Sally’s heart fizz, and a stripper who’s not afraid to show off his budgie smugglers … though at one point Singleton’s west Belfast accent hinted that Jamie Dornan might have been his vocal coach!

Like working your way through a packet of Wotsits, there’s always another cheesy treat around the corner in The Hen Do, with dance songs, hotel theme tunes replete with actions, and DJ Fizzy’s late night grooves filling the Ibiza dance floor and even getting some of the theatre audience up on their feet. Phone calls home by Becky and Ciara to fiancé Ronnie and girlfriend Natasha fill in some detail of the relationships and provide moments of calm before the next storm. We laugh about body parts, waxing, swearing, and the contradictory baggage that the Northern Irish bring with them on holiday.

At times, the choreography is confusing. The opening scene is set on a plane but uses a lot of lateral movement instead of sticking to more rigid movements walking up and down the aisle. An early quip makes fun of the speed of Michelle O’Neill’s vocal delivery, yet Doherty has Becky talking nineteen to the dozen, sometimes to the point that her lines become indistinct.

Director Seón Simpson crafts a few tender moments that break up the racing around the stage and the screeching. Singleton and Donnelly are electric together as DJ Fizzy and Sally, whether dancing to Aha’s Take On Me, or their extended mimed encounter after the interval. While the first act almost works itself up into a celebration of normal working-class life, a whiplash-inducing emotional curveball near the end of the show stops everyone in their tracks when real life interrupts the weekend away and the focus is pulled onto valuing motherhood and a parent’s needs. (An audience member heckling a message of support suggested that the new storyline resonated.)

Ultimately, The Hen Do entertains without having to be profound. There are decent jokes and some good comedy acting. But the celebration of motherhood is quite flimsy and the fêting of working-class life – which would normally be crass and reductionist for me to mention except, in this case, it’s written into the characters’ dialogue and the show’s themes – lacks a lot of depth and complexity.

The Hen Do has checked in at the Grand Opera House in Belfast until Saturday 7 October, before heading off to Ballymena (Tuesday 10), Omagh (Wednesday 11), Coleraine (Thursday 12 and Friday 13) and Enniskillen (Saturday 14). 

Photo credit: Melissa Gordon

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