The Little Mermaid Jr – peril awaits an underwater mermaid who follows her heart to dry land (BSPA at Stranmillis College until Sunday 28 July)

While she’s living under the reef of her father, mermaid Ariel isn’t meant to be popping up to the surface to collect human treasures. But what King Triton doesn’t know about one of his many daughters, won’t hurt him. Until Ariel saves the life of capsized Prince Eric, and she falls in love. Will the evil and power-hungry Ursula kill a second of the family? Will Sebastian overcome his imposter syndrome and truly protect Ariel? Or will Chef Louis serve the crab up for dinner? And could little Flounder be any more cute?

The Little Mermaid Jr is one of BSPA’s summer productions, finishing its run on Sunday afternoon at Stranmillis College. The show gets off to an energetic start with Fathoms Below. Soon we’ve been introduced to the court jester Sebastian (Nina Rodrigues), Princess Ariel (Amy Nelson) and guppy Flounder (Sophia Bell).

The merpeople’s nemesis, Sea Queen Ursula (Nicole Craigan) steals scenes with her stage presence, emotional range, and solid vocals, particularly during Poor Unfortunate Souls. She’s ably assisted by Flotsam (Joe Felo Cownie) and Jetsam (Chloe Anderson), henchmen with a great sense of comic timing.

Amy Nelson’s great dynamic range is demonstrated in Ariel’s Part of Your World. Cast members support her on-stage quick-changes as her fish tail swaps for legs and feet. Nina Rodrigues owns the stage performing Under the Sea while the ensemble dance around her, later conducting the audience with the confidence of a much older actor.

Watch out for Craigan, Rodrigues and Nelson picking up principal roles in BSPA’s senior productions in years to come.

There’s clearly been an emphasis in rehearsals on good diction – nearly every line is clear and unrushed. The most junior cast members are effectively used, creating swarm effects and singing their hearts out in ensemble numbers. The set is simple, augmented with Geoff Clarke’s signature lighting effects with an expanded fleet of moving heads. And the choreography of the final tableau – with everyone on stage at the end of the finale and before the curtain call – is uncharacteristically asymmetrical yet incredibly pleasing in its layout.

Given the opening of the Olympics in Paris, Chef Louis (Sophie McEwan-Lyon) adds some timely French cuisine – and peril for a young crab – with an animated performance of Les Poissons. Playing Prince Eric, Joshua Stewart courts a mute Ariel with a sweet charm. Phoebe Martin-Connor’s King Triton wields the giant trident with confidence and valiantly tries to keep everything shipshape and Bristol fashion in the underwater kingdom.   

Throw in some full cast sea shanties after the interval before act two begins, a seagull who is more Sandy Row than sandy beach, and foam bubble guns which enhance the mood lighting, and you have an entertaining, tuneful and well performed musical. Hats off to all the performers, director Peter Corry, musical supremo Ryan Greer (and Seanna Hutchinson who was at the helm this evening) and choreographer Sean O’Neill for shaping this three week summer project into a memorable production.

The Little Mermaid Jr’s final performance is on Sunday afternoon. Just a handful of tickets remain. And BSPA pupils will soon be back on stage at The MAC with their senior project, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Thursday 22 to Saturday 24 August. Tickets always sell quickly.

(The roles of Ariel, Scuttle, Flounder and Chef Louis are split between two cast members across the performances.)

Photo credit: Toby Watson

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Mrs Robinson – a portrait of a world leader with purpose and poise (QFT preview + Q&A on Tuesday 30 July, on general release from Friday 23 August)

Nine years ago, shortly after going freelance, I helped handle the media at a series of events marking an organisation’s 50th anniversary. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby had flown across to deliver a sermon in Belfast Cathedral – minus his hearing aid – and displayed remarkable grace with some impertinent and irrelevant questions from one of the journalists.

But the guest who really stands out was former Irish President, Mary Robinson. She delivered pin-sharp answers to the waiting journalists’ questions, pivoting their attention to the issues that mattered to her, and focussing on specific aspects she wanted to shine light on. Professional, with purpose and poise, and an easy manner that belied her status on this island and beyond.

Directed by Aoife Kelleher, a new film Mrs Robinson presents a portrait of Ireland’s seventh president, making good use of family cine footage of the young Mary Bourke and her four brothers. It’s an affectionate documentary that examines her journey from shy law student to equality campaigner and Irish President, from United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to climate justice advocate and her role as Chair of The Elders.

A year spent at Harvard in the late 1960s after graduating from Trinity coincided with student protests against US military action in Vietnam and the assassination of Martin Luther King. Robinson’s sense of searching for justice seems profound. Time and again, her practice of seeking out youthful voices is highlighted – “young people taking responsibility and making a difference [without] waiting their turn” – in a bid to make issues intergenerational. Whether at home or abroad, she’s portrayed as a keen listener and a problem solver.

While largely uncritical, the film does briefly pause to consider Robinson’s brief visit in late 2018 to Dubai to see her (then) friend Princess Haya and witness that her daughter Sheikha Latifa was still alive. Her involvement and subsequent testimony was less than astute. Robinson refers to being “tricked”, notes that supposedly private photographs from the day-long visit were made public, regrets what she said in a BBC interview following the visit, and admits not taking better advice at the time.

Earlier in her career, serving as an Irish Senator for nearly 20 years, Robinson is seen to be more canny, making legal arguments and lobbying to reform Ireland’s laws on contraception but not joining the ‘contraceptive train’ that drew attention to the issue. Whether challenging public attitudes and legal reform around contraception, divorce or homosexuality, Robinson was at the heart of Ireland’s social change. With a light left shining in the window of Áras an Uachtaráin, her presidency also brought a focus on remembering the diaspora and the reasons they had for leaving the island.

Robinson is also open about regretting her premature departure from the presidency to become UN High Commissioner rather than seek a second term of office. Early in the film we hear how Robinson’s parents disapproved of her marriage to protestant lawyer and cartoonist Nicholas. She explains why she took her husband’s surname rather than staying Bourke. Her concern for or deference to the wishes of her husband seems to underpin her decision to leave the Áras in 1997, one of few occasions he didn’t stay three steps behind.

Underpinned by a beautiful score, Mrs Robinson is a fond portrait of a force of nature, an advocate who is not afraid of emotion, and who aims for a high standard of moral leadership amongst public representatives (and admits at least one personal failure).

There’s a preview screening of Mrs Robinson followed by a Q&A with the film’s subject, chaired by Kathy Clugston, in Queen’s Film Theatre on Tuesday 30 July at 18:30. The film goes on general release on Friday 23 August.

 

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Whisk(e)y Wars – blending family treachery, religious hypocrisy, community secrets and the distilling of fine Irish whiskey (Eastside Arts Festival)

The water of life is can be earthy, elitist and trades of being finite. But it’s also the inspiration for Joyce Greenaway’s one-woman play about eight generations of the Tully family at the Kingdom of Mourne Distillery in Newcastle, County Down.

After generations of quiet success, the business faces infrastructural, financial, reputational and existential challenges. And on top of that, Covid is frustrating plans for recovery.

Tam Tully is the modern-day narrator of Whisk(e)y Wars, a self-confessed ‘difficult woman’ from a Brethren family who opens up the Tully’s whited sepulchre to reveal disappearing relatives, children born out of wedlock, and the story behind her name. The family tree is littered with Biblical names, and Biblical levels of betrayal and deceit. It’s only in recent years that women have taken back control of the family’s story, making the decisions, living up to the consequences of other people’s sins, and keeping the stills running.

Greenaway is quite the storyteller, holding the audience in the palm of her hand – like a glass of her precious elixir – as she weaves through the past and the present, in a tale that blends family treachery, religious hypocrisy, community secrets and the distilling of fine Irish whiskey. Other than a series of Brexit digs whose initial humour quickly becomes diluted, it’s a gripping performance that particularly suited last night’s venue, Titanic Distillers at Thompson Dock.

Whisk(e)y Wars was performed last night as part of Eastside Arts Festival. You can catch Whisk(e)y Wars in The Andersontown Social Club at 8pm on Thursday 1 August as part of Féile an Phobail as well as The Court House in Bangor at 7pm on Friday 2 (sold out) as part of Open House Festival.

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I Saw The TV Glow – a film about fandom and retrospection ... or maybe something deeper? (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 1 August)

Is there a series of books or a TV show that really gripped you as a child? It didn’t just entertain you, but it fuelled your imagination. You connected with a character and dreamt of being them. You imagined being dropped into the world that unfolded on the page or on the screen, able to interact with the people and situations.

As a child, I loved the character of Bruno Martelli in the television series FAME. The virtuoso keyboard player with an impatience to experiment with electronic forms over the classical repertoire preferred by the oft-frustrated Professor Shorofsky. The series’ accompanying magazines at the time expanded Bruno’s fictional world with their introduction to the real-life talent of actor Lee Curreri, who had composing credits on some of the songs like Be My Music, and whose own life experience had parallels with his character. (Is there any better commendation than this quote from Hans Zimmer: “Lee Curreri is the reason I got my first keyboard”!)

We didn’t have a video recorder at home until the 1990s. (The remote control for the TV was deemed to be an unnecessary and frivolous accessory, deliberately consigned to a cupboard and without batteries.) So I taped the shows by setting a cassette recorder – the one would ultimately load games onto my ZX Spectrum – under the TV. Later, I could listen back to the episodes, recalling the visuals on top of the poor recording of the music and dialogue. I remember being discouraged from continuing this practice on the basis that it verged on obsession. But that’s precisely what it was. A window into another world where a nerdy creator was valued as part of a diverse bunch who weren’t so under the thumb of their school system that they couldn’t break out and impress the world with their talent before tripping up on their difficult home circumstances and poverty.

Having been somewhat disappointed with stage versions of the musical loosely based on the original 1980 film, I revisited the first two series of the TV show a few years ago. Much of it had aged well. Nearly 40 years on, parts of the drama felt juvenile. Yet away from the classroom, the pressures faced by the characters were much darker than I’d appreciated – or remembered – as a child. Acting student Doris Schwartz (played by Valerie Landsburg) no longer felt like a background character but stood out as one of the most diverse perspectives in the series. And the teachers’ backstories felt much more interesting than back in the 1980s.

All of that is a long introduction to the new film I Saw The TV Glow which is released today. Two students, who are a couple of years apart in school, bond over their late-night viewing of a young adult supernatural show The Pink Opaque with its monsters of the week and Mr. Melancholy up in the Moon. When Owen isn’t able to sneak around to Maddy’s house to be able to see the show live – telling his parents that’s he’s on a sleepover with a more boring classmate – Maddy lends him VHS recordings, allowing him to catch up on all the episodes he missed out before becoming obsessed.

Justice Smith plays Owen, a quiet, introverted and hesitant seventh grader. Later Smith impresses with his depiction of Owen’s declining health. Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) is an intense ninth grader who is completely unphased by her platonic relationship with a lad who she allows to sleep on her living room floor as long as he’s up and away before dawn. Both Owen and Maddy have oppressive home lives, ranging from the need to escape outright abuse to ill-tempered parenting, disrespect, neglect and disinterest.

As well as underscoring that their friendship revolves around their love of The Pink Opaque’s surreal plotlines, mood and world building, the pair’s stilted conversations reveal that to different degrees they are uncomfortable in their own skin, or at least in the skin that almost everyone around wants them to wear. “I don't even have my learner's permit yet; how can I have a destiny?” remarks Maddy in the most quotable line of the film. Maddy tells Owen that she’s a lesbian. His hesitation to define his sexuality when asked – Do you like girls? / I don’t know / Boys? / I (stutters) I think that, I like TV shows – feels like it’s coming out of an ignorance there’s anything to discuss rather than knowledge of his inner self.

Maddy’s disappearance and a series of time jumps gives Owen opportunity to revisit his childhood love of The Pink Opaque. The monsters have lost any semblance of believability and the acting seems childish. But the show proves to have a deeper connection to both Owen and a reappearing Maddy.

I Saw The TV Glow has a lot to say about fandom, the experience of mutual fandom – not sure I knew anyone who admitted being as ‘into’ FAME as I was, but there must have been many of them about given the dearth of TV channels back in the 1980s! – and how places and people and cultural icons of our youth change with time. The moment of magic as the teenage pair fall asleep on the floor (for the last time) hints at something supernatural … but what happens over the rest of the film feels very different.

There’s a reading of I Saw The TV Glow that views Maddy’s experiences and engagement with The Pink Opaque through a trans lens. Screenwriter and director Jane Schoenbrun talks about being born into one existence and feeling like you should be living a different one. Watching the film on a Tuesday morning, that didn’t jump out of the screen at me. The notions of cultural ageing and retrospection felt much stronger. Though the trans angle makes (some) more sense of the blurring between Maddy and Owen’s teenage lives and the characters that might be playing inside the TV series, so I introduce it here as a useful spoiler!

The film has a great soundtrack: watch out for the appearance of Phoebe Bridgers. I Saw The TV Glow is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 1 August.

 

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Sunset Boulevard – a failing screenwriter meets a forgotten star (Grand Opera House Trust Summer Youth Production until Saturday 20 July)

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical adaptation of Billy Wilder’s 1950 film – with Don Black and Christopher Hampton on lyrics and dialogue – may not have that many tunes that jumped off the stage and into musical playlists, but Sunset Boulevard’s tale of Norma Desmond and her need for audience validation still rings true in 2024 world filled with social media influencers wanting to be liked.

The Grand Opera House Trust’s annual summer youth production is a slightly slimmed down affair this year with only 71 actors on stage and an orchestra of 20 in the pit under the direction of Tony Finnegan and the baton of Wilson Shields.

For anyone not familiar with the outline of the plot ... Joe Gillis is a budding but bruised screenwriter whose star is waning and whose car is under threat of repossession. To evade the chasing bailiffs following him on the way home from the studio, he pulls into the driveway of a large property on Sunset Boulevard and finds himself in the once sumptuous home of a silent film star Norma Desmond who is firmly in the sunset of her career. (“I am big: it’s the pictures that got small!” is the best line in the script.) Drawn into her fragile and forlorn world, Joe is persuaded to edit her opus maximum, a script for a silent movie version of Salome, in which Norma will play the lead role, despite being twice the character’s age. Meanwhile back at the studio, a talented script editor Miss Betty Schaefer thinks there’s merit in one of Joe’s ideas, and behind Norma’s back, the pair begin to shape the script. Inevitably, the love triangle of Betty–Joe–Norma must confront each other to create the dramatic denouement.

While a little under-powered in the duets, Conor Cox brings his fine voice and good stage presence to his lead role as Joe Gillis. He’s surrounded on stage by veterans of previous summer productions. Caroline McMichael ably fills the shoes of delusional Norma Desmond, delivering a stunning With One Look – the best-known song from the show – and a haunting As If We Never Said Goodbye. Norma’s difficulty in processing her loss of public support – somewhat disguised by loyal Max – picks up a theme familiar from Lloyd Webber’s Evita where Eva Perón faces a similar challenge: the absolute need to be adored by others.

Back on the film studio lot, Lucia McLaughlin demonstrates her strong vocals as Miss Schaefer, shifting her character from an unfiltered underling in act one to an emerging talent with confidence in her own ideas after the interval. Familiar to audiences for his ability to take on comic roles, Jackson Allen shows his versatility in this year’s role of Norma’s butler Max von Mayerling, acting the older part with formidable solemnity. And a nod to Daniel Campbell who plays film producer Cecil B. DeMille with a great performance of Surrender.

The revolving set pieces at each side of the stage serve the storytelling well, although the four-times-larger-than-life keys on the organ played by a Charlie Chaplin lookalike are cartoon-like. There’s something very pleasing about the full height studio doors sliding into place while the wall of the backlot drops down into place. The stage management choreography is strong, gliding beds, tables and a very life-like vehicle on and off with precision and without fuss.

The ensemble is vocally talented, and the individual members are sufficiently animated that they look like they’re in each scene for a reason: though their mass presence towards the front of the stage sometimes makes it difficult to spot from where the lead vocals are emanating. The flotilla of silent, grey starlets who occupy Norma’s drawing room give a sense of her past achievements, but are an awkward if technically invisible presence (although they do pass glasses of alcoholic beverages to Norma) when Joe observes that the house is quiet with “just me and Max and that organ”! Sadly the pet chimp doesn’t get to take a bow at the final curtain call. And the orchestra – a mix of professional and youth players – tend to overpower some of the vocals up on stage above them.

With less than two weeks of rehearsals, it’s a massive achievement to produce a coherent and tuneful production of Sunset Boulevard. This isn’t a musical where belting out a series of well known tunes is enough to carry the audience, and the cast prove themselves up to the challenge. There are still a handful of tickets left for the remaining performances in this short run (Friday evening, Saturday matinee and evening).

Photo credit: Neil Harrison

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Crossings – tales of estrangement and escape (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 19 July)

Ms Lia is trying to track down her niece. A young lad Achi says he has information about her new address over the border from Georgia in Turkey. The ‘Lady’ and the ‘Boy’ (as they frequently refer to each other) make an unlikely couple who travel to Istanbul to search for Tekla. Writer/director Levan Akin of Crossing weaves together their search with the work of a lawyer Evrim who helps the city’s vulnerable trans community, and a young street boy who is looking after an even younger girl. Their stories merge in this tale of estrangement and escape.

Mzia Arabuli plays Ms Lia as a straight-talking woman who occasionally allows her latent empathy to emerge. Achi (played by Lucas Kankava) is opportunistic in finding an excuse to leave home and makes little attempt to temper his behaviour to bridge the generational gap. This clash of cultures is added to by Deniz Dumanli’s portrayal of trans woman Evrim, a human rights warrior in need of a qualification who pieces together Tekla’s likely fate.

As your eye catches the stray cats that are placed in so many of the Istanbul locations – assuming they didn’t just stroll into shot – you soon begin to see the sex workers and the street kids like the young lad (Izzet played by Bunyamin Deger) and the girl he treats like a sister (Gülpembe playted by Sema Sultan Elekci) who bring into view the poverty on the streets of colourful Istanbul.

A subplot between dating-distressed Evrim and taxi driver Ömer (Ziya Sudancikmaz) gives a richness to her sense of self in the city. A scene with the black-clad Ms Lia dancing reminded me – through the enormous contrast in vitality and colour – of the 2023 Pakistani film Joyland.

The edit is peppered with gorgeous long duration shots from cinematographer Lisabi Fridell’s which take their time to scan around locations, introduce the members of a household by catching them moving about a house, or sneaking up a less busy staircase in a ferry to look back on the bustle and finally rest on some live music in the stern.

While the initially-deceptive ending pushes the story beyond its natural elasticity, the film’s depiction of double-crossing, changes of heart, border crossing, and Lia’s journey of her own internal self-acceptance on top of her feelings about her estranged niece are satisfying reasons to make the trip to the cinema to see Crossing.

The on-screen question of “What if our families had searched for us?” isn’t directly answered, but there’s a sense from the story that the answer for some of Evrim’s clients and friends would have been love-filled, and for others it might have been deadly. New families have been forged in the sprawling city of 15 million people where it is possible to disappear.

Crossing is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 19 July.

  

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Kneecap – informing, educating and entertaining (Irish cinemas from Thursday 8 August)

Sitting down to watch a film in a dark cinema with just two and a half hours of poor sleep after an all-night election count could have been a recipe for nodding off. But that wasn’t to be the case.

Kneecap is the fictionalised origin story of the eponymous rap group. I’m no expert on the band members’ actual backstories, but I get the feeling the most outlandish elements of the film may turn out to be the parts with the most truth.

Right from the off, Kneecap establishes that it is packed with energy and doesn’t take itself too seriously, with a lot of fun poked at sacred cows across the ideological spectrum. While the film raises questions about how the Irish language is used, promoted, politicised, celebrated, spoken and enjoyed, it does so with so much humour that the slight preachiness that emerges in the final five or ten minutes can be forgiven.

The republican movement and paramilitaries get the hand taken out of them. Next it’s the turn of the police, with a great performance of a heavy-handed office by Marty Maguire. Having got those out of the way, director/cowriter Rich Peppiatt moves onto jokes about the potato famine, the Brighton bombing, Michael Collins and even Bobby Sands. Towards the end, the Irish language rappers outline how their approach – and patience – differs from language activists and lobby groups.

Naoise has been aware of the politics surrounding the Irish language from childhood. His dad (Michael Fassbender, no stranger to republican roles having played Bobby Sands in Hunger) is a presumed dead IRA man. Liam’s kink for sexual encounters with loyalist women is at odds with his sense of Irish patriotism: his passionate bedroom banter with Georgia (Jessica Reynolds, who turned up that same evening on the Lyric Theatre’s outdoor stage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream!) is probably more X-rated than their sex. (While the tendency to only see women through the lens of being sexual objects is true to the tone of the film, this terribly male gaze is the most troubling aspect of Kneecap as a movie.)

JJ is a teacher by day and DJ/ music-maker by night. He puts beats behind the embryonic lyrics of the younger pair. Soon Móglaí Bap (Naoise), Mo Chara (Liam) and balaclava-disguised DJ Próvaí (JJ) are on stage, in grimy pubs and clubs before a gig in the old Belfast Telegraph building.

Neither Kneecap the film nor the band are politically correct. It would be odd if they were. Rap is edgy and controversial, the musical version of what Ben Elton was at the height of his left-wing satirical comedy career. It’s often to be found speeding over the line of general acceptability and even beyond a particular community’s outlook and ideology. You might not like what’s being said, but you’re challenged to respond to the forthright views and the place that they are spoken from. (Watching Kneecap reminded me of the quality of the messaging and intellect of some the NI hip hop artists – like Young Spencer from the Shankill – who appeared at the Sound of Belfast NI’s Finest Mixtape event back in November.)

While I can predict that there will be much outrage from people who haven’t seen the film when it is released, the most offensive element is probably the casual attitude to drugs. There are a lot of drugs – sold, used, and flushed – and the film takes a very neutral attitude towards them, other than condemning paramilitaries who say they’re against them but profit from their distribution.

The production values are high, with beautifully cinematography and editing. Animated hand-writing and graphics accompany many scenes, adding extra joy and amusement as well as bringing lyrics and verbal descriptions to life. It very naturally flits between English and (subtitled) Irish. There are numerous cameos by familiar local actors. Watch out for the loyalist band wearing orange jumpsuits: hopefully something that will be borrowed for the Belfast County return parade next summer.

Produced by Fine Point Films and Mother Tongues Films, news broke last week that producer Trevor Birney and director Rich Peppiatt will be working together again in the future and have formed a new production company Coup d’état Films.

Full of small ‘p’ politics, Kneecap is funny and anarchic. It refuses to behave or conform. It definitely entertains. Serious topics are treated with levity: but what other film will you see this year that reminds you that intergenerational trauma has become our biology?

Kneecap will be screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre and most other local cinemas from 8 August.

 

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream – come for a play, stay for the experience and the spectacle (Lyric Theatre, until Sunday 7 July)

The back of Shakespeare’s envelope must have been awash with scribbles and arrows as he wove together the five plots that includes the overriding storyline about an Athenian square of love where no one loves Helena who loves Demetrius who loves Hermia who loves Lysander. There’s a father who must be obeyed, an elopement, a raucous play within the play, a fairy king and queen, and some great death scenes.

While never reaching Inception levels of confusion, I always find that A Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes a bit of a headmelt when I approach it while my brain is already full of other thoughts.

Friday evening was the second time I’ve seen a large community performance on the back of a long stint observing an election count. The first occasion ended prematurely when along with other people sitting in my row we walked back to the car park discussing the unorthodox reworking of the plot and the discombobulating ending that didn’t seem to tie everything together. (Told that there would be a break after the performance that would be followed by a Q&A, we’d all left at what turned out to be the interval, which had been rewarded with a standing ovation to add to the misdirection.)

Last night was a very different affair, albeit on the back of the overnight General Election count in Titanic Exhibition Centre. Staged in the natural amphitheatre to the side of the Lyric Theatre, Midsummer is the first production to make use of the space. And what a treat to behold in this Glastonbury-like field of theatre.

It all begins with a parade of dancers and mechanical floats (ArtsEkta, Chinese Welfare Association and Rogue Encounters) moving along the closed Stranmillis Embankment to music from Beyond Skin’s orchestra. The theatre’s had to submit an 11/1 form to the Parades Commission for each performance! Sean Kearns’ rider will say from now on that he must be dragged on stage while standing inside a dragon. He’s plays Theseus (Duke of Athens) with a whiff of Comrade Poliakoff from Propaganda as well as stepping into the shoes of Oberon (King of the Fairies) with a more panto feel.

Patrick McBrearty throws everything at his roles of Philostrate and Puck, a larger-than-life showman who feels like he’s just have escaped from Alice’s Wonderland in a sequined suit complete with moonwalking, comedic accents, neatly integrated ad libs about the deteriorating weather, and an array of oversized eyewear.

Having left the election count to watch a preview screening of the film Kneecap – out in Irish cinemas on 9 August – I did a double take a few hours later when Jessica Reynolds popped up on stage playing Hermia, the daughter trapped between her own desires and her father’s strong-armed matchmaking.

Neil Keery is domineering as the coercive dastardly Egeus who treats his daughter like a disposable object. Jo Donnelly makes a great director playing the Mechanicals’ Peter Quince.

The characterisation is slightly anarchic. Some characters deliver their lines with the gusto of an RSC performance. Others take a more naturalistic approach with raised eyebrows and vernacular flourishes. An out of breath Helena (played with intensity and verve by Meghan Tyler) puffs on her inhaler. Patrick McBrearty gets to perform some of his lines as a rap.

Coherence comes in the form of each creative discipline being granted the freedom to go wild in the name of exuberance. Scenes take place up trees and inside an old beat-up VW Beetle. Actors arrive on the circular stage on scooters and tandem bicycles. (Some action taking place at ground level in front of the stage had poor sightlines for audience members in the tiered seating stand.) The follow-spot comes into its own in the second half as the light dims and the clouds dull the sky.

No concessions have been made in the stylish costume department (designed by Catherine Kodicek) for the inclement summer weather. The actors commit to their roles, throwing themselves on the wet stage and ignoring the damp that must be seeping under their skin at this stage in the short run.

You’ve come for a play, but despite the heaven’s showering the outdoor arena with rain, you stay for the experience and the spectacle. Director Jimmy Fay’s vision of a relaxed and riotous Midsummer might not work as well indoors in a traditional theatre space, but his immersive – and at times immersed  – production creates a riot of colour and sound that entertains and warms your soul. And the provided ponchos will keep you dry, so don't worry about rain!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream proves that outdoor theatre is possible and opens up the dream that before too long Lyric audiences could be enjoying opera, comedy, music and more theatre on Stuart Marshall’s circular stage on the banks of the Lagan. This production ends its run on Sunday 7 July. Part of the Belfast 2024 programme of cultural celebration.

Photo credit: Ciaran Bagnall

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The Sparrow – a Cork coastal drama that hints at a much darker tale (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 5 July)

Accidents don’t always happen in a vacuum: circumstances can conspire. That’s certainly seems to be the case with new film The Sparrow, although the screenwriter and director Michael Kinirons doesn’t choose to maximise the power of what could have been a more compelling narrative.

The first half hour establishes that a rural west Cork family are dealing with loss and grief in very different ways. A overbearing father (David O’Hara) shows signs of being a functioning alcoholic. An older son Robbie (Éanna Hardwicke) looks set to blindly follow the family path into the military. The younger son Kevin (Ollie West) is rebelling against authority, a ‘wild child’ styled in the image of his deceased mother. The youngest child of the house, Sally (Michelle Gleeson) is a sweet daughter but nearly as incidental to the plot as a love interest’s dog (who gets a name, Cosmo, but just one scene).

The final hour switches from loss and grief to the burden of guilt, keeping secrets, distrust, and the risk of confession.

As the family heartbreak unfolds over a week, Kevin takes care of a young sparrow with a broken wing in a shoebox, tending it back to health, but reluctant to let it fly free. A visual metaphor of the seventeen year old lad being broken and being trapped in a cage.

Not everything has to be subtle in a movie, but clumsiness and far too overt signposting can be avoided. See the band, see the name of the band on a t-shirt, then be told what it means in Irish even though the character growing up and being schooled in Cork would know that. It’s the first of many details that dulls the lustre of The Sparrow. Just wait until the breath holding begins and you notice the recurring habit of abandoning vehicles (particularly Robbie’s quad bike) in different locations.

There are some lovely scenes. The film does desperation well: a father clutching at every straw to find a missing child; a child locked away from the last tangible links to his mother. The overhead drone shots of a manhunt searching through a forest and along a coastline are beautiful and evoke reflections on recent news stories about searches for Michael Mosley in Greece and Jay Slater in Tenerife. The editing of a pivotal scene on a boat is very confident.

The Sparrow sets out to be a dark tale of anxiety building as fatal secrets are bottled up. Unfortunately, the audience seem to have a total grasp of the facts all the way along, reducing our role to that of being passengers rather than investigators.

Lots of people are casually villainised – Manny the harmless local who must have been a silent witness, a father who might need to confess his role in a traffic accident important to the plot, flirty local girl Hanna (Isabelle Connolly) is made out to be some kind of coquette – yet (slight spoiler that will save you being annoyed) none end up feeding into the film’s conclusion.

There’s a real sense that lots of people’s behaviour and actions – as well as the tragedies that unfold – really have the father at their heart. We’re being directed to look towards son Kevin, but he’s only living through the sins of his much more troubled father. That’s the story I wanted to see, but it’s not the edit of the film that made it to the big screen.

The performances rescue the film from its plotting. O’Hara is unstable and imperious. Hardwicke is never not lost in his grief. Connolly draws the lads in with her character’s carefree spirit.

The ending fails to draw together enough of the threads that have been left dangling in front of the audience. It’s as if Michael Kinirons didn’t lift the final version of his script on his way to the set … or decided to make a watered-down version of a tale that could have been much deeper and darker. For me, that’s the real mystery of this film.

The Sparrow is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 5 July. Let me know what you think. 

 

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