The Night Before Christmas – cast of six talented actor-musos in a quest to make books great again (The MAC until Sunday 7 January)

It may be The Night Before Christmas, but after a rousing opening number – Happy Christmas to All – it’s soon apparent that not all is well in Queen Talia’s land. The books are disappearing, the storyteller can’t remember her stories, and a bureaucrat is more set on making ‘his’ kingdom great again through citizens’ hard graft and suppressing creativity than fulfilling his role as the young monarch’s advisor.

Allison Harding excels as Noelle, bringing hard stares, raised eyebrows, charm, bewilderment and an infectious enthusiasm as others attempt to thwart her plans to give a Christmas treat to Talia who used to sit at her feet listening to stories. She has a great voice to deliver Garth McConaghie’s rich set of songs. The seriously officious science-loving Commissioner of the kingdom is played by Sean Kearns (not his first role as a commissioner this year). Aside from the apparatchik, watch out for Kearns bringing out a more playful side, dancing in a baby doll dress high above an utterly fabulous duckling just before the interval.

Nuala McGowan, Daniel Rivers, Katie Shortt and Jack Watson bring to life the remaining characters and also play instruments on stage (including a percussive coat stand that provides cartoonish special effects to accompany comedic moments of Adam Ashford’s choreography).

Three fairy tales are woven into Noelle’s quest to restore literary order. Stephen Beggs and Simon Magill retell them with gratifying speed and in a manner that anyone adapting Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol could learn from. The final story delivers a show highlight with the appearance of the Three Little Pigs who sing the barbershop number Piggy Power – which must surely be the best song on stage this Christmas – alongside a wolfish official from council building control who doesn’t conform to lazy judgements about his character.

It’s good to see that a liberal dose of literary fairy dust has been sprinkled over Christmas shows in Belfast this year. The Night Before Christmas takes place on Diana Ennis’ two-level set faced with shelving stuffed full of books, hiding doors and other treasures. Lines from the script festoon some of her costumes.

Fergus Wachala-Kelly’s white-on-black animations are regularly projected across elements of the set, amplifying the narrative on top of McConaghie’s soundscape. Director Lisa May never allows the energy to drop and makes good use of the talented cast across the bookish set.

Adults will soon catch on to a smart, subversive, almost satirical, commentary about Brexit and government behaviour that is laced through the script and songs. While the venue pitches the show at five-year-olds and over, talk of being “bound together in gossamer strands”, Inchworm, and the tale of the Little Match Girl (which passed me by as a child and an adult) may fly over the head of younger audience members. It’s quite a loud show, with lots of music and words being pushed out towards the audience. But fear not: the run includes a handful of relaxed performances.

The Night Before Christmas makes a plea to face the uncertain future together. It’s a show that will put a smile on your face and keep it there. Performances continue in The MAC until Sunday 7 January.

Photo credit: Melissa Gordon

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Hansel & Gretel – ambitious oven-ready show delivers a modern sugary Christmas spectacle (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 6 January)

Hansel & Gretel gets off to a cracking pace, and keeps it up for most of the performance. It’s aimed at children and families, and it confidently throws a rake of characters at the young audience in the manner of children’s television or a cartoon. The songs are accompanied with catchy choreography that wouldn’t feel out of place on TikTok. The costumes have incredible detailing, drawing us into the brown bookish world that has been built on the Lyric Theatre stage. And the dialogue has enough cheeky nods to knowing adults to give the older folk sitting in the stalls something to giggle at while the younger eyes feast on what is before them.

Tara Lynne O’Neill has built a wider drama around Grimm’s story. Friendless Monty is being bullied at school. While hiding from Bugs, Slugger and Split he is transported into the world of the central fairy tale. In this version, the Woodcutter remains true to his children and it’s an evil aunt and uncle who place the twins at risk. A mousey Monty persistently highlights dangers and creates avenue of rescue as the pages are turned and they head towards the sugar-rich house. Along the way we meet talking trees, a brilliant Beaver Scout leader, a bookworm, and many, many, more. Monty must piece together the advice he’s given and learn to look at problems and tackle them from a different perspective.

The language is rich and triggers the imagination. We can play along with the evil aunt (Christina Nelson) as she struggles not to make everything she says rhyme. We can wonder at the diverse musical styles that Katie Richardson has conjured up. Bertie Jones’ Turn It Upside Down is a favourite, performed with distinction and panache by Mark Dugdale who gets the best rail of Gillian Lennox-designed costumes in the show. The twins (Catriona McFeely and Odhrán McNulty) unfussily harmonise with Monty (Conor Quinn) while Orla Gormley cooks up a storm as the sickly saccharine hostess they meet in the woods. They’ve been well drilled in their dance moves by Paula O’Reilly.

Shaving five minutes off each act might help the concentration of the youngest audience members, but with a production that needs to cater for wains and owl bucks, a perfect duration is impossible to achieve.

There’s an astonishing richness across the elements of design. Books drop in over Stuart Marshall’s set to form a literary roof. Gretel’s Glaswegian twang when she’s fooling around with Hansel is but one of the gorgeous regional accents that flavour the dialogue. Mary Tumelty makes children’s heads turn with a mesmerising constellation of light over the audience during Look Up To The Stars. Richardson allows percussive melodies to play in the background of scenes. All the while, director Patrick J O’Reilly steers the characters’ movements and gestures and pulls the different departments together to create a thoroughly modern telling of an old tale. It’s great to see an ambitious Christmas show that delivers a spectacle. Children deserve excellence.

Hansel & Gretel continues at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 6 January.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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The Eternal Daughter – a study in grief, guilt and childlessness (QFT from Friday 24 November)

Julie returns to a sprawling country hall her Mum used to visit. She’s there to write a screenplay about the mother-daughter relationship and mark her Mum’s birthday. Tilda Swinton plays both Julie and elderly mother Rosalind. The former struggles to sleep and is in a constant state of distraction that prevents progress on the new script. The distant latter pops sleeping tables like mints and when she’s not dozing, dredges up fateful memories of previous stays in the venue.

The Eternal Daughter begins with a taxi winding its way up rural roads through thick fog that is so ever-present on screen that it might be listed in the credits as a cast member. The film settles into its groove of Gothic ghost story, exploring grief, guilt and childlessness. All the while the wind howls, the windows rattle, the building groans, and Louis the dog (Swinton’s own pet) adds warmth (and whimpers) to the lonely scenes.

Joanna Hogg’s film is the latest in the chain of sparse Covid productions that enjoy small casts rattling around vast locations. At times, the warren of corridors and intimidating central staircase visually nudge the movie towards the horror genre. Carly-Sophia Davies is rather brilliant as the belligerent hotel receptionist who excels at customer disservice and seems to be in the middle of her own off-stage personal drama. In the otherwise empty hotel, the night shift is covered by Bill (Joseph Mydell) who shares his perspectives on loss with the morose Julie.

Swinton revels in the two parts written for her by frequent collaborator Hogg. Long stretches of storytelling are devoid of dialogue, with Swinton able to convincingly convey Julie’s emotion and inner turmoil through gestures and movement. We watch as a middle-aged daughter wakes up to how her parent views and judges her life choices, aware that it is now too late to change the outcome.

The Eternal Daughter is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 24 November. Bring a warm jumper or a fleece: all that fog would chill your soul!

  

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It was Paradise, Unfortunately (No such thing as theatre) – delving into Dionysus and discovering the seeds of surprise (Outburst Festival, until Saturday 18 November) #outburst23

Raphael Khouri takes his audiences on a trip through Berlin, Beirut, Amman, Saudi Arabia, and Los Angeles to Athens and beyond in a performance that was commissioned by Outburst Arts. It’s a mesmerising exploration of the ‘god of theatre’ – Dionysus – which explores their many and varied ancient representations, and traces threads of commonality through history, through countries, and through supposedly different characters.

Transgender playwrights are rare. Arab transgender playwrights are even more rare. Yet the illusive Dionysus turns out to reflect much that is true about self-confessed theatre addict Raphael.

The use of a lecture theatre visualiser allows artefacts to be set down and displayed on screen. It’s a fresh and novel approach, a softer and much more analogue presentation than PowerPoint would allow. There’s a poetry to the rhythm and pace of Raphael’s delivery, with his assistant stacking photographs, positioning books and curating the material that accompanies his talk.

As we hear about the wide-spread worship of Dionysus and ‘his’ alter egos, we learn about the mass participation in festivals that celebrated theatre in his name. Ecstasy and enthusiasm were at the heart of theatre that was associated with a god who was trans (like so many if you check the different representations). So why or where was that history and openness lost? And we find out the link to plants, and leave the venue with something tangible to help us grow, as well as ideas bubbling in our minds about the distant past and how it compares with the present and the potential for the future.

The final performance of It was Paradise, Unfortunately (No such thing as theatre) is at 19:30 on Saturday 18 November. Use the main entrance to the new UU campus building in York Street.

Outburst Festival continues until 18 November. Check out my other recommendations.

2:22 A Ghost Story – a night to remember as two couples stay up late (Grand Opera House until Saturday 18 November)

It’s been a stressful few months. What with the new house and the renovations and starting to redecorate, on top of a new baby, and husband Sam disappearing off the grid to the island of Sark on an astronomy field trip. Jenny’s sleep has been disturbed by a voice at 2:22am for several nights. She’s tired and could do with more of a hand with the asparagus in the kitchen as she’s thrown a dinner party for Sam’s old mate Lauren and her latest boyfriend Ben. It’s going to be a late night.

The clue is in the title. 2:22 A Ghost Story plays out a supernatural tale with just four people and a baby in the house. Sam (Nathaniel Curtis) looks down – physically and intellectually – at everyone, a smart arse with a logical answer for everything and an instinct to share his knowledge along with his supply of jokes about Catholicism. Curtis manages to simultaneously project warmth, smugness, with a dash of ick. Jenny rarely relaxes, and Louisa Lytton plays the new mum like a coiled spring, snapping at Sam and worrying about her unsettled child.

Joe Absolom seems to revel in his role playing the slow burning disruptor, a self-made builder with racist tendencies, who at first seems to be the voice of the working class amongst the four adults, before he steps out to share his own backstory and takes the wind out of Sam’s sails. Lauren (Charlene Boyd) bounces between her fondness for Jenny and her long-time friendship with Sam. Hostess Jenny totters around on platform heels for the guts of six hours, while Lauren slips her shoes off and wanders about barefoot.

Each scene is brought to a premature end – startling many in the audience every time it happens – as the lights flicker and the room’s clocks race forward. Anna Fleischle’s set adds to the unsettled vibe with a kitchen living room exposing its social history and with an out of proportion vaulted ceiling that wouldn’t be out of place in a cathedral. The steel beams supporting the extension and new patio doors are absurdly thick for a domestic property. The kitchen’s island unit is impractically low, adding to the sense of a distorted perspective (though probably a design decision that preserves sightlines around the auditorium).

It’s a good script for actors to get their teeth into. There’s almost a race to get the lines out in the early parts of the play. Pairs of characters neatly talk over each other: the wine has only begun to flow and the couples are already animated. The dynamic range for the characters and directors (Matthew Dunster and Isabel Marr) is quite limited, veering from intense to angry to frantic and then shocked. Instead, the tension is ratcheted up with a candlelit scene and a flambéed toy. Ian Dickinson’s soundtrack is very muted, barely audible even when the characters are discussing a playlist. The cast are neatly reflected in the shiny glass of the doors that lead out to the garden where foxes are fornicating and a thick fog is brewing.

The big reveal near the end provoked audible gasps from around the stalls. Looking back, the clues are there in the earlier dialogue and actions, though there’s a completely unnecessary foreshadowing (though the accusation is pointed at the wrong person) that somehow detracts from the cleverness of Danny Robins’ writing

It’s ambitious to try to sustain an audience over two hours with a domestic drama that turns into a ghost story with only one major twist. There was a loud buzz of conversation between scenes: people were certainly engaged and 2:22 A Ghost Story had some of the Grand Opera House audience on the edge of their seats. Performances continue until Saturday 18 November.

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The Safety Catch – an extraordinary piece of theatre about the legacy and logic of roadracing

The Safety Catch is set up as a fictional confrontation between road racing champion Michael Dunlop and a friend of the family Liam Beckett who asks the rider to think about the possibility of stopping racing.

Steeped in the lore and drama of road racing, Nick Snow’s play also looks at the mentality and logic of the riders. As an examination of the human condition that drives people to take extreme risks, it finds universal drama that can appeal to a non-sporting audience. A tussle between a friend who has lost too much and a rider who might not know how to stop.

Beckett (Fra Gunn) establishes that he was a close friend of Robert Dunlop, brother of Joey, and father to William and Michael. Joey, Robert and William all died in road racing accidents. In a bold move for a play about sport, Beckett’s dialogue often has the rhythm and style of an extended Shakespearean monologue, rather than a contemporary play. Lashings of Greek mythology are thrown in, with Trojan prince Hector in combat with Achilles. This kind of overwriting would often be a step too far, but describing a sport which so readily uses the language of the battlefield, it works and adds another rich layer to the story.

Andrew McCracken brilliantly conjures up the gruff and taciturn biker who doesn’t need words when communing with his machine. Michael carries not only the family name but also the legacy of their tragedy. This weight is almost tangible in the way McCracken holds himself. Michael is brusque, occasionally wry, and always deadly serious about his ability and success. McCracken shows great throttle control, shifting gears from being quiet and dismissive to almost exploding with fervour in a post-interval monologue that describes Michael’s fight with the bike.

I’m not a fan of road-racing, but The Safety Catch engages and informs, and a week later it’s still vivid in my thinking. I’ve witnessed the spectacle of road racing just once in my life. As a family we headed up to Dundrod. I remember the intense sound as the bikes went past. But other than the long, straight empty roads, I’ve no actual memory of what the bikes racing past looked like, probably too small and too far back to catch much of the blur of man and machine.

A couple of years ago, I interviewed a minister who is chaplain to the road-racing community. He’d conducted the funerals of more than 20 motorcyclists. Did the ethic of a sport that kills so many participants bother him? “Yes it does, but while they make that choice I’d like to be available for them and their families. I’m not an apologist for road racing… But I respect their wish to do so … I’m not there to start the race, and I’m not there to make their bikes go quick. I’m there for them as people.”

Just as the house is victorious in the long run in a casino, we’re told that that the road wins in racing. Against those odds, Beckett asks what some in the audience are wondering: how can a rider sit on the start line knowing that to be competitive, to go that little bit faster, they will be creeping closer to the mechanical limits of their bike and the road conditions. The better you become, the more risk you carry.

In the wake of a death, radio phone-in discussions rarely get any further than “it’s in the blood” when explaining why young men – and it only seems to be men on the road with women sticking to track-racing – knowingly put themselves in such danger.

But Snow’s play provides a range of deeper answers. Michael talks about sitting on the grid, believing he won’t die this time. Weighing up the odds, one race at a time, feeling confident that he can beat the road. That’s sufficient to rev up the engine and start.

The sporting commentator deliberately pulled back from covering road racing five years ago and now focuses on football. Beckett pushes back on Michael, asking whether he’s too much of a coward to consider stopping.

For the men at the top of the sport, they’re not racing against the other competitors. The real race is between man and machine. Whereas his uncle Joey is described as a beautiful rider, at one with his bikes, Michael is more brutal, taming his machine like a wild horse.

Racing enthusiasts dominated the audience at the performance I attended in the Lyric Theatre. Many that I talked to hadn’t been to a theatre before except for a family pantomime. People in the know said they recognised the portrayal of Michael Dunlop’s manner that they saw at races, they admitted that the theatrical version was necessarily far too loquacious.

Dee Armstrong has created a corrugated iron and wooden panelled set, a shed in which Michael spends most of the production servicing a bike. Director Joe O’Byrne allows The Safety Catch to pay tribute to the achievements and death of the Dunlop riders in a way that is unvarnished and never overly fawning. The scenes that open up a wooden box containing three family helmets are packed with emotion and unspoken sentiment.

While the play relies on real events, the confrontation is a work of fiction. It’s been written with the knowledge but not the active cooperation of Michael Dunlop who shuns the limelight and lets his recording of winning do the talking.

A nostalgic or uncritical conversation might have been turgid. But that’s not what the creatives and cast have produced. The Safety Catch is an extraordinary piece of theatre: intelligent, deep, funny, moving, unapologetic and very realistic about the sport and the competitors it’s describing. Hopefully the play will return with a longer run that can not only capture the enthusiasm of the racing community but also those of us for whom the need for speed is hard to fathom but the human story is completely absorbing.

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The Headless Soldier (The Belfast Ensemble & Outburst Arts at Lyric Theatre as part of Outburst Queer Arts Festival until Saturday 11 November) #outburst23

The Belfast Ensemble premiered their first version of Abomination in the Lyric Theatre as part of Outburst Festival five years ago. It was a thrilling bonus, tacked on the end of a restaging of The Doppler Effect.

At this year’s festival, they’re performing The Headless Soldier, an opera in three parts that began when Afghanistan was in the news, and would have played against the continuing news reports from Ukraine if it hadn’t been for Gaza and Israel taking over the top slot for international conflict reporting in bulletins. This post is more of a response than a formal review.

Future students will probably write essays that remark on the opening line: “This is a mixture of raspberries and cranberries.” It’s mundane, and one end of the continuum presented over the next hour and a bit that stretches from home to more traditional war zones. Though home can also be a war zone, which is partly the point. Is there a point of discontinuity between a parent’s aggressive thoughts, words and deeds and the violent thoughts, words and deeds of a soldier or mercenary? Or the repercussions of any number of inequalities, acts of prejudice, bias and discrimination that we experience in life?

Helen (Sarah Richmond) says sings that she is intolerant of caffeine; but that turns out just to be the tip of her iceberg of irritation and hate. Acupuncture. Therapy. She’s tried it all to manage her issues, and perhaps wanted to take matters into her own hands too. The second act properly introduces her husband Thomas (Ed Lyon) and son Zach (Shea McDonnell) and we discover that while personal conflict consumes Helen, Thomas is torn apart by global concerns. Meanwhile young Zach has been drawing pictures of a soldier with no head.

The interval allows the themes to settle. The man off the TV news report visits – there’s a beautiful reveal of Christopher Cull’s character – and disturbs Zach’s reverie in his bedroom. Zach’s torch shines a light; the man’s brightly coloured toy rifle extinguishes what light is left on his battlezone. It’s a dark final act with well-directed movements that are made to look so much more disturbing because there’s a child on stage.

If a mother loses her head over seemingly small things, is she just fighting in a different battleground to those protesting at housing provision, or the soldiers in khaki who are fighting for freedom and democracy? But whose freedom and whose democracy? And maybe what seems like adult behaviour actually starts with us as children railing against what aggravates and annoys Maybe Zach is no more innocent that his parents or the headless soldier? Is it futile to fighting against all this?

There’s a 15-strong orchestra under the stage, a teak platform that provides a number of domestic spaces, a plastic box full of Lego bricks that find their way to the floor, and some harsh blinders from lighting designer Mary Tumelty who switches mood in time with the music. Gavin Peden’s two-layer projections add contemporary context to the universal. Projecting some of the lyrics onto the back wall – made to look like chalk on a blackboard – is effective. Every singer’s diction is excellent, but there’s an extra playfulness and sense of poetry when the words are in vision. And there’s plenty of good acting in this opera.

Theatre allows lines to be drawn between unusual dots. The act of sitting in a seat for an hour or more gives space to recognise yourself in the story, or to question whether what you’re seeing and hearing is universal or just applicable in some situations. The Headless Soldier plays with that freedom to stir up settled thoughts. And it proves that swear words were surely made for opera!

The fact that this work has been co-produced and programmed as part of Outburst festival also raises unspoken questions of how the conflict experienced by queer communities – and not forgetting the conflict between queer communities – fits into the human tendency towards intolerance, fear, misery, war and peace.

With music (and direction) by Conor Mitchell and the libretto by Mark Ravenhill, The Headless Soldier is a provocative operatic triptych. The final performance as part of Outburst Queer Arts Festival is on Saturday 11 November ... assuming the blood can be washed out of the costumes in time!

You can find some other recommendations in my preview of Outburst festival.

The Last Rifleman – emotionally pitch-perfect with a strong backstory and filled with the kindness of strangers (Sky Cinema) #bff23

In 2004, a patient absconded from his English nursing home and travelled across to attend the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations in Normandy. Bernard Jordan’s escapade inspired a number of screenplays. One was the debut feature script by Kevin Fitzpatrick which has recently been released as The Last Rifleman.

This fictionalised reimagining transports the action to Northern Ireland where Artie Crawford (Pierce Brosnan) lives in a care home. When his wife Maggie (Stella McCusker) dies, he decides to take care of some unfinished business and travels to Normandy for the first time to pay his respect to the fallen 2nd Battalion Royal Ulster Rifles.

There are many reasons why this should not work as a film.

It could be something akin to a travelling home for Christmas travel disaster movie … of which there are many and I despise them all. It could be relying on stiff-upper lip patriotism – of which I’m not a huge fan – to stimulate emotion. It could be laced with schmaltz and ridicule the actions and difficulties of a plucky nonagenarian. It could resort to pulling emotional heartstrings like a horror film engineering a series of jump scares.

Despite all those fears, The Last Rifleman works, and works well.

The script very slowly reveals a devastating backstory that explains Artie’s motivation for travelling. The kindness of strangers – in particular, a series of intergenerational accomplices – rescue him every time he stumbles in his journey. Artie’s confusion at not being able to locate anyone else from his old regiment makes sense like a punch in the gut (he didn’t have the advantage of the film’s title ahead of time). A significant act of remembrance is very sensitively shot.

And in amongst the seriousness of his quest, there’s a lot of humour with another care home resident (Ian McElhinney) turning into a PR supremo and Tara Lynne O’Neill giving a lot of side-eye, pursed lips, and under-the-breath insults as a member of staff. Clémence Poésy is super as the French mother on the ferry who still has some esprit de la Résistance in her blood.

To be honest, I struggle to place Brosnan’s accent. Born in Drogheda, he also lived in Meath, but playing 92-year-old Artie, he sounds like he’s somewhere between the US, Scotland with a touch of Dublin, delivering lines that are very Bell-fast, so he is. The saving grace is that for long periods, he doesn’t have to say a lot, so instead we learn to track Artie by groans and heavy breathing. (Mamma Mia fans will want to know that at one point Brosnan sings … and it’s not awful this time.)

I cry easily in the cinema, but last night I wept buckets. It was of considerable relief that the person in the next seat had also developed a bit of a sniffle and the lights stayed off during the credits. Early on, Terry Loane’s skillful direction conveys a powerful feeling of grief in Artie’s last moments with his darling Maggie. It defines the measure of the film’s lead character and brands Artie into audience hearts from that point on.

Watching the gala screening of The Last Rifleman last night as part of Belfast Film Festival and just a few days ahead of Armistice Day, my mind quickly wandered to thinking about war, the conflict in Gaza and Israel, and in Ukraine. At this time of year, I tend to wear a red and a white poppy. It a conversation starter rather than instantly offending people. I want to remember all those who died in wars. I’m not ideological enough to be a pacifist. But I’m never going to be drawn into labelling so-called sides as all good or all bad, morally upright or totally wrong. There are at least some regrettable actions on all sides. There are good people trapped in circumstances from which they cannot or will not escape. Innocent people suffer everywhere. Artie meets a German soldier along the way who says: “It’s a shock to learn you’ve lost the war. It’s a greater shock to discover you’ve been on the wrong side.” For a few minutes, the film pauses and considers that war isn’t simple in a beautifully awkward encounter.

If I could change one thing, I would drop the final scene which includes real veterans along with the cast. I don’t think I needed to know what happened next after Normandy, though it does allow the pipes to play!

The Last Rifleman is currently showing on Sky Movies Premiere. It looks great on a big cinema screen and it’s a shame there doesn’t seem to be an opportunity for even a limited local release.

 

Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which finishes on Saturday 11 November.

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How To Have Sex – lonely in a crowd, with friends but vulnerable, consent that isn’t freely given (Queen’s Film Theatre until 9 November) #bff23

Three young women celebrate the end of school and distract themselves from looming exam results with a boozy holiday in Malia, Crete. Will it be a rite of passage into adulthood for Tara, Skye and Em? Will it make memories and friendships that will last a lifetime? Or will it be a week with nights that can’t be remembered and encounters that can never be forgotten?

The hectic holiday makers have little time for reflection or relaxation. It’s full-on screaming, smoking and boozing. Drink shots, vomit, more drink, puke, the cycle is unending. When the teenagers’ energy levels eventually wilt, a quick nap and they’re ready to head out for another day of boozy shenanigans. It’s like Skins on vacation, but with a lot more naivety, fewer jokes and even more troubled drama. (Though I was the only person at my screening to laugh out loud at Tara’s gag about the pigs hiding in trees.)

Mia McKenna-Bruce’s Tara wears an ‘angel’ necklace with more than a whiff of irony. It’s a constant visual reminder that external appearances don’t tell the whole story and there’s more to Tara than the cinema audience and the other holidaymakers realise. Tara’s friends (played by Lara Peake and Enva Lewis) will want her hot take if she hooks up with a boy, but don’t really have her back when it matters.

The fellas in the next-door apartment are like wolves. They demand attention, shouting and whistling over from one balcony to another. Badger (Shaun Thomas) is extrovert, up for anything, in your face, and unashamed. But it’s the quieter Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) who is the real predator, the kind of guy who has a bedpost that could collapse at any moment due to the notches he’ll have carved in it to record his ghosted ‘conquests’.

Molly Manning Walker’s feature debut How To Have Sex is assured and deeply raw. She holds no punches in exposing the complexity of teenage emotions, desires and anxieties. Despite the film’s title – and Skye and Em impelling Tara to have sex for the first time – Walker doesn’t need to expose bits and bobs to tell her story. What she does reveal is even more sensitive. While Tara is sweet on Badger, it’s Paddy who presents an opportunity and a quiet venue. What follows is a case study in how coercion and alcohol affect informed consent. 

How To Have Sex starts out with the girls going on holiday to find freedom. But they quickly discover that other people seem to be the ones free to criticise their looks and take advantage of their vulnerability. Despite the swimware, the unspoken demons of body image insecurities are visible. The holiday is stuffed full of moments when characters feel lonely in a crowd. They don’t want to stand out but are uncomfortable just fitting in. Their freedom includes not noticing when a girl doesn’t come back the apartment one evening, left behind on their night out. Petty rivalries emerge even amongst friends. It’s turning into a holiday where they’re free to experience hurt and disappointment, and worse.

As Tara wanders alone and begins to process what’s happened, a stranger – a Scottish girl staying in a villa – intervenes and looks out for her. It’s a moment of hope and compassion, but also a potentially worrying development in case she too takes advantage of Tara’s situation. Can anyone be trusted in a resort? Faith in humanity is stretched thin by this tale.

Walker’s film is fictional but very familiar. It is slow to glamorise. While being made to watch How To Have Sex might make parents of teenagers lock away their passports or forget to renew them, screening it to 17 and 18 year – it has a 15 certificate – might jolt them into realising that the dangers their parents and teachers speak of are real. And it might put them on their guard for any preying Paddys out there.

How To Have Sex was screened at Belfast Film Festival and is on release at Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 9 November.

Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.

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Anatomy of a Fall – Did he fall or was he pushed? A jury decides, but so too can the audience. #bff23 (returning to Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 10 November)

Samuel (Samuel Theis) plunges to his death from the attic window of a snowy chalet. The police identify his wife, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), as their chief suspect, the only person known to be in the house when he fell. The first act of Anatomy of a Fall – the shortest – covers the lead-up to the fall and the discovery of the body by Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), their blind son, who was out walking the aforementioned dog, Snoop. We then move onto the investigation, with Sandra employing a one-time flame, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), as her lawyer. He tries to prepare her to defend herself: innocence won’t be enough to overcome the case the police will build.

The third and longest act is set in the courtroom. The camera work becomes much more fluid, with single shots focussed on the witness stand the change point of view as the questions swing from prosecutor to defence lawyer. We see only the important parts, but get a real sense of the difference between hoe UK courts operate and the process in a French court (which it feels much more emotional, and the suspect can be interrogated in the middle of questioning a witness).

Anatomy of a Fall revels in complexity. Sandra is originally German, though lived in London before returning to Grenoble. She speaks English at home with her French husband and multi-lingual son as a compromise, so no one gets to use their home tongue. The dialogue – even courtroom scenes – very naturally flicks between languages as characters reach for the best words to express themselves and answer questions.

While the plot is trundling towards finding a resolution to the question of whether Samuel fell on his own or was pushed, the real drama comes from the drip drip revelations about the state of Samuel and Sandra’s relationship. A recording from Samuel’s phone is played to the courtroom and we get to jump back in time to watch all but the crucial disputed final seconds acted out.

Young Daniel and his testimony are being supposedly being protected from any tampering from his mother. Yet the lad, who insists on sitting in court each day, is getting a crash course in many previously unknown elements of his parents’ dysfunction, and he becomes a crucial determinant in the case’s resolution.

Director Justine Triet makes Hüller play Sandra as an intensely unlikeable woman. She interrupts, dismisses, undermines, takes what people say and throws it back in their face rather than internalise their criticism. She lacks honesty. And her twisted ways may be infecting the next generation.

One of the central tenets of Anatomy of a Fall is the question of whether a small number of specific incidents – like those that are delved into in great detail during a court case – can totally misrepresent the wider context of someone’s behaviour and actions. This partly explains why the trial dominates the action.

As the Anatomy of a Fall credits roll, it’s hard to know whether the trial result was just. Like the jury – and son Daniel – each audience member needs to make their own mind up. The inclusion of a dog as a full member of the family ultimately doesn’t compensate for the two and a half run time that felt like two and a half years by the end of Anatomy of a Fall. Is the 151-minute investment in the characters worth it? I’m not sure I learned anything about Sandra in the final three quarters of an hour that hadn’t already been thoroughly hammered out.

Anatomy of a Fall was screened as part of Belfast Film Festival and will be coming back to the Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 10 November.

Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.

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Monster – sometimes it’s a question of what not who in this somewhat frustrating film #bff23

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s episodic film Monster presents a series of glimpses into the same set of events from different perspectives. First time around, it’s clear who the bad guy is. And the authorities in this Japanese school are dragging their feet dealing with him. Yet in the next cycle, the monster has dropped a generation. Now it’s blindingly obvious who is to blame. Third time round, and it’s clear that the eponymous monster is not necessarily a person. The shortlist has grown to include attitudes, imperfect parenting, rumours, and homophobia.

Young Minato (Soya Kurokawa) lives with his Mum Saori (Sakura Ando). Mr Hori (Eita Nagayami) was once lauded as a great teacher. Now the jury is out, and one parent in particular is out to get him. The elementary school principal (Yûko Tanaka) has just returned to school after the death of a grandchild. A fire rages in a building that allegedly contained a hostess-bar. A typhoon ravages a city and causes a landslide. It’s as if end times were around the corner!

Amidst the mayhem, we see an underground friendship develop outside of the vicious classroom between Minato and another uncool classmate Yori Hoshikawa (Hinata Hiiragi). Yuji Sakamoto’s screenplay exercises control and restraint, leaving few clues early on as to the theme of the film, never mind which aspects of scenes will be important to the plot, or why it will be worth investing 125 minutes in this set of characters.

The payoff eventually arrives in the final half hour. Better late than never, but the delayed gratification did somewhat tarnish my feelings towards the film and leave me frustrated for long periods. (That might also be a product of the late night screening.) Yet there are other bonuses. Sakura Ando’s portrayal of Minato’s mother is a beautiful picture of patience and grace under pressure. There are moments when Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano-based score gently fades in, matching the verdant foliage, and adding hope to what at times is a depressing film.

Tonight’s screening of Monster at Queen’s Film Theatre was sold out. Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.

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Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry – a blooming marvellous Georgian feature #bff23

The first ten minutes of Elene Naveriani’s Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry would make a great short film in their own right. Yet after the opening credits, the exciting narrative expands to fill the guts of two hours with the story of 48-year-old’s coming of age in a rural Georgian village.

Etero (Eka Chavleishvili) runs a shop selling hair and beauty products. She’s a confirmed and notable spinster, comfortable with her solitude, though she’s open negotiate a change to that state if the right person would come along. Her default scowl often communicates more than her words. Just three people freely offer her support and information about life in the outside world: a lesbian couple in a nearby town where she shops for supplies, and a friend’s teenage daughter, Elene. To everyone else, Etero is the uncomfortable butt of their jokes, and condescending women in the village feel free to be rude to her face.

A near-death experience and the arrival of the wholesale delivery man Murman (Temiko Chichinadze) interrupt her solace. Passion and potentially even romance are injected into her life. Though having cared for two other men in the past – family members both now deceased – she’s wary of being taken for granted. And his wedding band is only the first red flag about his emotional and physical availability.

In any year, I can count the number of film screenings that revolve around the life of a middle-aged woman on the fingers of one hand. While the stolid nature of the lead actor contributes to the 112-minute run time, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry keeps delivering a brilliant series of unanticipated scenes which celebrate Etero’s self-reliance and ability to stand on her own two feet.

In her own way, Etero may end up being the most emancipated and liberated women in the village. If the others truly knew her, they might be jealous. Though there’s a surprise just around the corner that might reset everyone’s expectations.

Chavleishvili portrays Etero as a middle-aged woman who is body-positive, never shy, even when intimacy suddenly beckons. Naveriani ensures that those scenes are mesmerising yet never sordid. Introducing the screening, Belfast Film Festival’s international programmer Jessica King reminded the QFT audience that the blackberry is the last berry in the forest to ripen. Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is a sensitive and sweet story, one that questions the assumptions society makes, and critiques the attitudes that insist everyone follows the same path and the same schedule. Hurray for individualism. Hurray for Etero and Georgian cinema.

Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.

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Silent Roar – from where does your hope come? #bff23

This year’s Belfast Film Festival certainly isn’t afraid to explore faith and spirituality. Silent Roar calls out false spirituality and false hope as it explores a young lad’s grief after his father was lost at sea.

Set in the Outer Hebrides, Dondo (Louis McCartney, Hope Street/BBC) is at one with the water, surfing and searching in the waves off the shoreline. He is convinced by an inner belief – and recurring visions – that his father will return. The level of Dondo’s distress is painful to watch; his confidence on the water only matched by his belief that his father isn’t dead. While he’s falling behind at school, classmate Sas (Ella Lily Hyland, Fifteen Love/Prime Video) effortlessly excels at her studies, winding up the staff, and attracting the eye of young men she has no interest in.

McCartney shines with his moody demeanour and consistently expresses an otherworldliness on screen, what one character describes as being ‘touched’. (While McCartney can surf in real life, there are moments when his island’s accent is a little less convincing.) Hyland delivers a bewitching naughtiness, with comic timing, good eyebrow action, and a warm persona.

The new minister played by Mark Lockyer is a wild-haired firebrand with a past, and his waterproof gift encourages Dondo to explore faith with the fervour of a new recruit. Jesus (Swiss) makes an appearance. So do a trio of other-earthly surfers. Silent Roar is both blasphemous and spiritually accurate, though the Virgin Mary statues adorning the home of Sas’ straightlaced mother (Fiona Bell) feels out of place with the Calvinist free church. The unaccompanied Gaelic psalm singing is an unexpected aural treat.

Silent Roar is simultaneously funny and disturbing. That’s a fine line to tread, but writer/director Johnny Barrington mostly manages to keep his debut feature on a secure course amid the absurdity of the plot.

Hannah Peel’s soundtrack with its sustained brass and playful percussion is unexpected but fitting, and the final credit song Let It Go aptly wraps up the emotion of the film. Jon Frank’s underwater shots melds with Ruben Woodin Dechamps’ cinematography in what must have been blustery and challenging conditions. Taff Williamson must surely win an award for the most lurid colour combination for a school uniform: a yellow and pink school tie, twinned with banana-coloured shirts and blouses. (To be honest, it grew on me as the school term progressed.)

Filmed on the Isle of Lewis, I’d love to be a fly on the wall at a local screening. Silent Roar celebrates island life, recognises that piety can be shallow, and acknowledges that grief is unpredictable. And it’s going to further stoke the fire under the career prospects of Hyland and McCartney. One to catch when it gets a wider release next year.

Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.

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VIVA & Communion – two thoughtful short independent films showcased at Belfast Film Festival #bff23

Two of the NI Independents short films caught my eye in the Belfast Film Festival programme. They were screened this afternoon in the Strand Arts Centre.

Marie Clare Cushinan’s VIVA imagines a world twenty years hence where old people trade their life for a final year of holiday, exploring places that were special to them. Nicole and Justin (Kate O’Toole and Lalor Roddy) have made this decision, leaving their house and wealth to daughter Ellie (Sara Dylan) and avoiding its use for care home costs.

A final ‘departure day’ dinner party with Ellie, her husband Jack (Richard Clements) and good friend Tony (Bosco Hogan) reveals that their somewhat clinical last goodbye is a trade-off between certainty and an unpredictable old age. Around the table there is lots of laughter, warmth and love, as well as some regrets and differences of opinion. Nicole and Justin see the environmental benefit of their euthanasia, while Tony sees their unburdening as social suicide. Meanwhile, Ellie’s lip begins to curl, and husband Jack adds a frisson of tetchiness.

While dialogue is mostly absent from the second half, the strong storytelling continues under Michael Mormecha and TRÚ’s beautiful soundtrack. Even without the framing device of the Cards Against Humanity game, VIVA is a warm and intelligent contribution to the growing debate over euthanasia, asking whether we fear an unknown future more than we want to embrace what life throws at us.

Séan Coyle’s Communion weaves together the death of a local man, the last days of a woman in a hospice, and the looming closure of the local Catholic Church. Parish priest Father Owens (Steven Jess) finds parallels between his imperfect home life as a child and thirty-something Aoife’s experience of marriage and death. His sensitive response to her confession opens a door for Aoife (Sadhbh Larkin Coyle) to rebuild her faith.

Meanwhile, his flock may be diminishing in size, but Fr Owens tends to them all with diligence, patiently sitting by the bedside of Grainne (Maria Connolly). Great performances from Coyle, Jess and Connolly enrich the pathos and empathy.

While all around is in decline, Communion demonstrates how faith can heal – even in death – and how God ultimately is bigger than buildings and can overcome any crisis our lives can muster.

Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.

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Rear Windows – smashing windows and creating new theatrical possibilities (Big Telly online until Sunday 5 November) #biaf23

The Rear Windows company are keeping rather too close an eye on how their products are performing in people’s homes. Perhaps looking through them more than they’re looking at them. But when they can’t get to the bottom of why windows are being continually smashed, the new temps – us in the audience – join the regular staff to investigate.

The interactive and immersive experience uses Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 similarly titled thriller Rear Window as its jumping off point. Aficionados may spot some of the minor characters getting an extended life in Big Telly’s new work.

Beginning in Zoom, the audience then click through to a virtual environment where we can wander around the various rooms looking for clues. There’s a shifty creative guy who’s been made redundant as his job has been replaced with AI. Wonder what we’ll find in his flat …

The virtual world is populated with assets that were derived from public engagement workshops. There’s lots to explore once the navigation system has been mastered. Gluing together these different collaborative technologies – Zoom is fairly industrialised, but the virtual environment is a playful platform – is both experimental and bleeding edge. The cast demonstrate good improv skills while compensating for the odd technology fail and dealing with audience members’ random answers to the questions they throw out.

While I’m not sure I grasped every detail of the story, the scripted elements were engaging and the whole thing made me grin. The themes of surveillance and automation were contemporary and well considered. Online theatre has come a long way since the beginning of Covid. It’s great to see that the sector is continuing to innovate and find new ways of exploring old and new stories. Good theatre can overcome a lack of polish and the increased risk that comes from having so many moving parts. And it’s encouraging to see new performers getting experience of how to perform remotely.

The final performances of Rear Windows are on Saturday 4 November at 8pmo and Sunday 5 at 2pm and 4pm as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

Double Blind - new Irish Horror with young lab rats battling against Big Pharma (Queen’s Film Theatre at 20:30 on Saturday 4 November) #bff23

If you go down to the woods Belfast Film Festival today, you’re in for a big surprise.

Double Blind sees seven young people check into a spartan facility to take part in a medical trial. They’re in it for the cash. Many are frequent visitors. All are down on their luck. The cheery announcement “Welcome to Blackwood pharmaceuticals … we hope you enjoy your stay” is ominous.

When a ‘mild’ dose of the drug has unexpected wide effects, the isolated holiday camp becomes more tense. When the first trialist falls asleep, they become rats literally trapped in the lab and the film firmly shifts from psycho-procedural into proper horror.

Millie Brady plays Claire, the newbie in the group, less clubbable than the others, and prone to original thought. As the near-narcoleptic triallists struggle to stave off fatal sleep, they drift into hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, and paranoia.

Darach McGarrigle’s script has no need for zombies when the human mind is already such an effective threat. Double Blind studies small group dynamics, examines what happens when sleeplessness and panic set in. It’s not a spoiler to suggest there are a lot of deaths. Each of the deceased gets a different cause of death.

Director Ian Hunt-Duffy creates a feeling of claustrophobia despite the seven rattling around an expansive underground bunker. Countdown clocks and long corridors all add to the sense of foreboding. The few splashes of solid colours are soon joined by pools of red on the floor.

The baddie is Big Pharma: the powerful rich are bribing the disposable poor. One character speculates that a mouse found in a cage may be more valuable to the company than the human triallists. There are clunky aspects to the plot, and some of the dialogue is a bit too didactic. But overall, the film succeeds in creating a sense of menace and a satisfying dispatch of its characters.

The film’s title is troubling. A double blind trial is usually one in which neither the test subjects nor those administering the experiment have full knowledge of the experiment: often, who is given the drug and who is being given the placebo. In the case of Double Blind, it feels like a stretch since everyone is receiving the same dosage of the drug, and it’s only the ill-effects that are unknown.

If you want a hit of new Irish Horror, check out Double Blind in the Queen’s Film Theatre on Saturday 4 November at 8.30pm as part of Belfast Film Festival.

The festival continues until 11 November with more recommendations in my preview post.

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Annie – a charming and empathetic trip down memory lane … and there’s also a dog (Grand Opera House until Saturday 4 November)

Annie was the third film I saw in the cinema as a child. ET, followed by War Games, and then Annie. From memory, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the fourth. I’m that old! The musical theatre version of Annie is in the Grand Opera House this week. Here’s ten things you should know.

1. For once, the musical – first staged in 1977 – existed long before the film which lifted the best songs (Maybe, Hard Knock Life, Tomorrow, Little Girls, Easy Street) and replaced a lot of the rest with dialogue.

2. The young cast members are terrific. They carry the first ten minutes of the show out on the stage on their own. And they do so with considerable style. Other than the gin-fuelled Miss Hannigan making an abrupt and ill-tempered appearance, they set the pace for the next couple of hours with great choreography, engaging characterisation, and super singing.

3. The character Annie – a foundling rather than an orphan – is written quite precocious. Older than her years. The product of her aforementioned ‘hard knock life’. The consistency of the portrayal – Sharangi Gnanavarathan played a wonderful Annie in Tuesday evening’s show – means that we grow used to this mini-adult engaging with the older characters as a wise soul whose counsel is worth listening to, and are then further charmed when a moment of childish abandon is thrown in.

4. Miss Hannigan has a whistle and isn’t afraid to use it. It’s as shrill as her ghastly demeanour. Aside from dancing and judging Strictly, Craig Revel Horwood has a long history in musical theatre as a performer, choreographer and director. He has a decade-long association with the role of Miss Hannigan. She’s neither just played for laughs, nor knowingly portrayed as a camp drag performance. We’re never allowed to feel sorry for the alcoholic and abusive orphanage manager. Revel Horwood delivers a beautifully restrained performance, avoids grabbing the spotlight or upstaging the children, and only lets himself go with a series of pirouettes after taking his final bow. (Jodie Prenger plays Miss Hannigan at the Friday and Saturday performances when Revel Horwood nips out to do Strictly.)

5. The Warbucks set with its statement ‘W’ is like something out of Trump Towers. Yet Alex Bourne creates a likeable tycoon, someone who is self-reflective and capable of change. He’s never left to linger in bad guy territory.

6. David Burrows multi-roles as a police officer and a president. It’s as President Franklin D Roosevelt that he shines in a neat piece of fictional history and harmony singing which sees Annie’s optimism inspiring the New Deal. It’s one of my favourite moments from the show, and sets up FDR to sweep in for the Christmas Day finale that secures Annie’s future.

7. Annie isn’t Rocky Horror, but you can still attend in fancy dress. Three generations of Annies with red wigs and distinctive dresses were sitting behind me. They said their companion was Miss Hannigan …. but I was less convinced.

8. Some touring productions feel jaded. The cast seem tired. The set has seen better days. What was once shiny and exciting feels burned-out. There’s none of that with Annie. Their eyes are bright. The entire cast look like they’re living the dream. And it lifts the performances and warms the hearts of the audience.

9 Much of the success of Nikolai Foster’s touring production of Annie is down to the empathetic performances. The characters may be fictional, the coincidences and timing of events may be entirely manufactured. But there’s something in the eyes of the children and adults on stage that reeks of reality. All the way through there are moments that threaten to test the drainage of your tear ducts.

10. There are few shows that would not be improved by allowing a dog to periodically race wing to wing from one side of the stage to the other during scene changes. Sandy (played by Amber) is in it for the treats. That’s her motivation as the canine character. Staying close to Annie and sniffing her pockets to get the next treat. Pity the dog handler who has to deal with mushy poos on two show days which will have double the treats.

Annie’s run at the Grand Opera House continues until Saturday 4 November. It’s very good. 

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Stolen – gifted, sold, starved, neglected, denied, and trafficked (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 3 November)

Stolen will be shown in schools across Ireland in years to come – spread over a couple of periods since the 102 minute film would bust a single lesson – to remind students about a horrible history that so many people overlooked at the time, saying nothing and passing by on the other side of the street, while others were directly complicit in its enabling. The film will be a testament to the parents and children (often one person could be both at the same time) who found themselves in a mother and baby home.

From a playground in Tuam, County Galway to the site of an old home in Roscrea, County Tipperary, Margo Harkin’s documentary has thoughtful contributions from parents, children, academics, journalists, artists, and – very movingly – through the words and voices of poets.

Filmed over a decade, we are reminded about Ireland’s piety and the church’s attitudes to sex (and its sinful policing of it). Around 9,000 children were removed from their birth mothers. Gifted, sold, starved, neglected, denied, and trafficked. If you live on the island, north or south, and you’ll know someone to whom this happened to their extended family. Often it wasn’t – and still isn’t – talked about, but the stories and the pain are there, all around.

There’s the joy in the eyes of one mum’s recollection of the reunion with her son on the eve of his 40th birthday. And there’s deep sadness in the eyes of someone born in a home who only tracked down their mother nine years after she died. It took a long time for the past to come to the surface and be spotted. The film speculates that the fuss and furore might have died out if the story hadn’t pricked international ears. Since then, the imperfect commissions and inquiries – which have tended not to be victim-centred and are seen by contributors to play into some in the Catholic Church’s reluctance to be fully transparent about what happened – have added to the pain. Graves will be exhumed in Tuam. But not elsewhere.

Stolen captures the sense that the process of understanding the mother and baby home ‘scandal’ can today be framed by some as nearly being over, while for many it has only begun. There was a lifelong emotional impact on the mothers and babies. But no shame or responsibility was heaped on the fathers. There’s something rotten about how a society could do that without much challenge. (Pray For Our Sinners was released earlier this year and is a good companion piece with its exploration of people who were allies and offered resistance to the actions of the church and state.)

Questions remain about whether the state is still protecting itself and large institutions? Have commission rules been deliberately set to frustrate those giving evidence, or is that just a hapless bureaucratic accident? How did international medical trials end up using Ireland’s captive population of institutionalised young babies to test new vaccines? Why are medical records so difficult to access? Why did coroners not protest at the infant mortality rate and the causes of death in mother and baby homes?

Stolen is a tough watch but a valuable reminder about what should never be forgotten, individually or collectively. It finds joy among the significant sorrow. It offers some hope, though laced with acknowledgement that too little is being done too late. It’s being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 3 November.

 

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