Reflections in the wake of the Tall Ships

I’ve a single memory of the Tall Ships being in Belfast the first time. I thought I was younger, but I’ll have to believe everyone who says it was 1991. I remember walking along a quay, in the middle of waste ground in a Belfast harbour I’d never seen before, and there were boats with tall masts tied up. I’ve absolutely no memory of getting on board any of the ships.

I fear that Littl’un’s memory of last Saturday’s visit to the Tall Ships will be strangely similar. She’ll remember walking along in a throng only equalled in density by the pre-Christmas crowds in Marks and Spencer. She’ll remember the mud. And although we were early and didn’t have to queue more than fifteen minutes to get on-board the Tenacious (well named for the characteristic of those waiting on the quayside) I’m not sure that wandering around the deck will have left her with an impression of the size and majesty of the tall ships.

The people that I’ve met with the most vivid experiences of the Tall Ships seemed to be the ones who wandered (or cycled) down to the Odyssey late on Wednesday or Thursday night. No crowds blocked their view of the assembled fleet. And the people who saw the vessels moving on the water, and not just moored.

Coming out of church on Sunday morning (well, a bit after 1pm – the tea and buns are good) and heading up over the M3 to join the M2 for Antrim, I caught a few seconds glance of the flotilla heading out of Belfast Lough. In the distance, ahead of a line of small boats, one of the tall ships was powering its way towards the open water. The hull rose out of the water, half way or more up the height of the yacht’s masts. It was enormous. Its scale was visible. The most impressive view I had of the tall ships.

Much was good about the Maritime Festival. Even with the teething problems of Thursday, the traffic management seemed to work remarkably well given the volumes of visitors. Thousands of people got parked in the three park and ride sites. Hundreds were unsuccessful each day. Keeping the M3 flyover passable for much of the day to get the Boucher Road overflow across to Airport Road was an impressive achievement in itself.

The Odyssey site was a mixed bag of activities. The Expo tent had some interesting stalls, but wasn’t signposted, and was due to the one way entrance/exit system mostly visited by people on the way out rather than the way in. In general, circulation around the site was haphazard. I saw some people carrying leaflets and maps, but have no idea where they found them.

On Saturday morning, the fresh bark was quickly tramped into the mud that had replaced the grass of the Continental Market. Quote of the day came from one perfume salesman to the other:

“Are these people short of money or are they just tight?”

The ten pound bottles of perfume weren’t selling so well. At least Laverys had acres of seating – even if their burgers left something to be desired. (Mostly toilet paper in my case. Too much information?)

We didn’t get into the BBC science tent to see its show but no doubt liquid nitrogen was impressive. The cluster of Headroom tents were surreal – must try and figure out which part of the licence fee (if any) it fell under – and the deck chairs provided a welcome rest while some clay was fashioned into a princess. And nice to catch up with Campbell and the BBC Bus again!

Overall, despite the media build-up (mostly fascinating and well intentioned) and the general hype, I reckon my perception of the Tall Ships was coloured by not seeing them under sail. But if it did take our mind of recent difficulties and provide a focus for fun, food and a bit of queuing, then I’m still glad the Tall Ships came to Northern Ireland.

By the way, there was still one parked moored around the back of the Odyssey at lunchtime. Not sure when it’s due to leave, but worth a wander if you couldn’t get close with the crowds. And an enormous cruise liner had docked on the opposite side. An entirely different species of tall ship.

Update - interesting commentary on the Tall Ships experience over at A Life in Northern Ireland blog.

Alan's 16-point newbie guide to the Belfast Giants

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. But unintentionally, I find myself half way through January 2015 and a theme of “trying new things” is developing without much effort on my part.

Tuesday week ago I found myself at a Belfast Giants ice hockey match for the first time. It was the first leg of two against the Cardiff Devils.

1. Wear a jumper. The Odyssey Arena is a huge venue, and together with the freezing lump of ice in the middle and the not quite packed stands, you’ll feel a chill for the first hour or so. This is obviously why so many spectators wear Belfast Giant’s replica shirts sweaters over their clothes in the arena. (If you want your shirt signed, head up to the bar afterwards and many of the Belfast Giants team and coaching staff will appear dressed in their natty suits.)

2. If you have a ticket, you’ll have a block and a door, row and seat number. There is no reason to turn up early. The evening we attended, doors opened at 6pm for a 7pm start. The match – and the entertainment bits in-between the three 20 minute periods of ice-hockey – will stretch out until at least half past nine. Some other newbies at the match were expecting a fourth period ... clues about the rules are few and far between!

3. There’s no perfect seat to get a close-up view of the ice or a good overview of the action. But there are worse seats. At the east end of the Odyssey arena, round towards Door 3, there’s a small elevated platform with four comfy seats on it all on their own: fonacab’s Front Row Seats. The ‘winners’ may look lonely, and slightly uncomfortable with the Subway mascot sits on their knees.

4. You can easily eat your ticket price in food during the evening. You’ve two and a half hours to fill. Some types of food will be exhausted and run out before the evening is over (for instance, no more cheese for the nachos, no more sausages for the hotdogs). That fact shouldn’t encourage you to over-eat too early in proceedings, since you’ll only get hungry again and buy more. Don’t you’re your food down: you’ll sit a long time with your indigestion. But eating is one of the few comforts possible during the moments of tedium while items of food from Subway, Boojum and Pizza hut are thrown at the crowd. Your chances of catching food are increased by sitting near the front and having a small cute child on your shoulders.

5. The music before the game starts will be deafening. A rule forbids music while the game is in progress so you will get some relief … until the referee spots something and stops play. Then the music will crank back up and it feels like the referee waits until the sting finishes before starting play again. At times it will feel like there’s a tune for every kind of foul.

6. If the Belfast Giants score a goal there will be a blast of Belle of Belfast City fiddledeedee music and the crowd will go wild. If the opposition score, the electronic scoreboard will silently increment their goal count and the game will continue without any ceremony. It’s quite possible to miss the opposition scoring a goal: it looks and sounds just like normal play. The Giants’ supporters don’t even boo. How can there be sport without booing?

7. There are drums: it is Northern Ireland after all. You can take the sectarianism out of one local sport, but you can’t get rid of the drums. Thump. Thump. Thump. Go Gi-ants. If the drums are to stay, a bigger repertoire of chants and rhythms are needed. At least reintroduce 2 4 6 8 Who Do We Appreciate? [insert name of sponsor]

8. Irritatingly, while the PA system in the Odyssey Arena seems perfectly tuned for music and adverts, the occasional announcement to tell you that “player mumble has been fowled by mumble and there will now be mumble” are very indistinct. Yet these are the bits of audio newbies desperately want to hear.

9. It’s not obvious which team is which. Take the night – my first time – I was there. The four Cardiff Devil fans sat in their own half of a stand wearing red team shirts. There was a red-shirted team on the ice. (And as the players hunch over with their sticks you can’t see the logo on the front of their shirts.) The local fans – boosted by blow-ins from sponsors and youth organisations offered several hundred freebie tickets – wore shirts (see above) with a white background. And there was a team wearing a white background shirt on the ice. Fooled you. The Belfast Giants were wearing red; the Cardiff Devils white. Go figure.

10. The puck is small and moves fast. You may not see it. The players probably don’t see it a lot of the time either. The puck is either hidden behind the legs and sticks of the biggest bunch of players on the ice, or that is where it used to be.

11. If a local breakfast radio presenter like Citybeat’s Stephen Clements comes onto the ice at half time during one of the intervals and asks spectators to throw their pucks into the centre of the ice, don’t throw a real one in case he hasn’t heeded the warnings on every wall and noticeboard in the Odyssey Arena that “it’s your responsibility to watch out for flying pucks”. He’s only expecting the numbered foam ones that have been handed out, not the odd real one that’s lying under your seat.

12. A blue semicircle sits in front of the goal net. I’m told it’s called the “goal crease”. The goalkeeper often stands in it. But not always. It’s not clear whether the blue semicircle is intended to keep the goalkeeper in, or other players out. It’ll not be the only mystery.

13. Players enjoy a bit of rough and tumble. Not quite full Saturday afternoon wrestling play acting, but not far off at time. Sometimes one of the referees will decide to take action. Often they don’t. If the spectators had voting buttons they could bet on whether particular incidents would be spotted by referees.

14. Despite being played on ice, the players stay upright for a surprising amount of the time. However, they could learn a thing or two about speed from figure skaters. If any camogie or hurling players could adapt to the ice they would speed the game up and give the Canadians a run for their money.

15. Sadly Google Glass has been shelved (in its current incarnation). Apart from the risk of being smashed by an incoming puck that’s flown over the Perspex safety barrier, an augmented reality app to tell you which player is which (you can’t read the back of the shirts at a distance), who’s on the subs bench and random factoids would be incredibly useful. In the meantime, bring an ice hockey nerd with you to the match, or adopt one nearby in the stadium.

16. It was a really friendly experience. The EventSec guys who show you to your seat were a delight and full of information. Long time fans were happy to answer ignorant questions and fill in gaps in our knowledge. The atmosphere was good. The cheering wasn’t that feverish, and the mid-week sides seemed to be playing at less than full power. The score was 4-3 to the Devils, but that’s nearly immaterial.

So how was my first Belfast Giants game?

It’s sport. And quite like the last sporting event I attended, which was a Warriors NBA match in Oakland, San Francisco about eight years ago. [My memories are of foul tasting cheese in the hot dogs, 45 minutes play spread over 3 hours, and a very poor shot-to-basket ratio that amazed me given my notion that they’d be like the Harlem Globetrotters.]

So despite very low expectations, I enjoyed the Giants more than I thought I would.

I think I’d go back – occasionally – armed with a jumper, a printout of the rules, and a flask of hot milky tea. Perhaps even a flask of sausages: you could make a killing selling black market hot dogs when the concession stands run out!

£17m shot in arm to make The Odyssey into a family-friendly leisure destination

The Odyssey venue will be redeveloped over the coming months.

Right on the stroke of the Brexit announcement this morning, Guy Hollis from Matagorda 2 announced his £17m intention to “bring The Odyssey in line with some of the best one site leisure destinations in the world”.

The focus is on providing a family entertainment destination with nine or ten restaurants and a single bar, sitting alongside direct access to the SSE Arena on both ground and first floors. The front door will double in width, creating a more obvious entrance. The existing mezzanine level will be gutted. Cineworld will take over the cinema. Hollywood Bowl will refit the current facility to offer 20 lanes of ten-pin bowling.

The Odyssey’s makeover will be complete by June 2020, tying in with W5’s existing £4.5m plans to transform its second and fourth floor science galleries.

New temporary entrances will allow the cinema and W5 to remain open during the work, with the bowling alley staying open until Christmas. The last remnant of Belfast’s IMAX cinema will probably disappear during the refit unless Cineworld’s success with the high-resolution tall-screen format in Dublin brings it back.

The grand opening will coincide with The Odyssey’s 20th anniversary. On a flight back from London, someone involved with the original plans told me how the site would attract families from as far away as Ballymena – just 30 minutes away and without any need to drive through the city centre – with somewhere to come at the weekends.

But the wind off the lough was as cold and uninviting as the mix of clubs and dowdy eateries that ended up competing with the dazzling Victoria Square and its upmarket boutiques and American food outlets.

Hopefully this investment will increase the warmth of the welcome and the footfall in this corner of Titanic Quarter.

Turandot (Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour) - watching the other side of the planet from a cosy Odyssey Cinemas seat

I’m a relatively recent convert to the notion that opera can be an accessible art form. NI Opera’s invitation to review some of their larger works, with their trademark outlandish modern sets and interpretations of the operatic repertoire.

While Salome’s beheading of John the Baptist [spoiler alert!] and dance of the seven veils was certainly memorable, the performance that sticks with me is Turandot. Puccini’s last – and unfinished – opera that combines an emperor, a set of challenges for worker Calaf to overcome to win the hand of Turandot, the emperor’s despotic daughter, wrapped up in a tale of class divides and family reunion as Calaf recognises his blind father Timur.

Director Calixto Bieito was behind NI Opera’s version – in conjunction with Théâtre Du Capitole and Staatstheater Nuremberg – and set the story in a factory manufacturing plastic dolls. Workers slaved away, while the owner looked down from his vantage point high above the factory floor. And all sung in English, which massively helps understanding the plot (though ruins the rendition of Nessun dorma).

When the New York Met’s more traditional version – with dragon heads, bridges, and everything pretty much at ground level – was beamed into a local cinema I went along. Sung in Italian, it was a very formal presentation on a set that had been brought out of storage from the last revival of the show. The sound was noticeably out of sync with the singers’ mouths which rather ruined the big screen effect.

But a couple of weeks ago there was a performance of Turandot by Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour with the Opera Australia chorus. The outdoor performance was being shown in cinemas – pre-recorded with no sync problems – and complete with a soundtrack of crickets gently rubbing their wings that was faded up during quiet moments to add to the atmosphere.

Bringing theatre and opera performances to audiences sitting remote from the venue has become common place. Many large world class venues and producers now extend their audiences (and increase their box office takings to fund these expensive productions) and most cinemas in Northern Ireland are showing a selection of plays and operas throughout the year.

The ‘stage’ in Sydney Harbour included a huge fire-breathing dragon and a 18 metre pagoda. The Emperor didn’t enter stage left or stage right, but instead was craned into view above the chorus, sitting in a huge wooden throne. (He remained up there throughout, strapped into his floating stage, unable to take a bow with the rest of the cast at the end.) Projections behind and across the cast completed the visual imagery.

An up and over garage door opened high up in the towering pagoda to reveal Turandot, level with her floating father. Over twenty minutes she was gradually lowered towards the mere mortals at ground level. Having won her hand, Turandot and Calaf were raised up before the tower revealed one last party piece and its top hinging open like a flower (bad analogy) to reveal the happy couple. A level of heightened symbolism not possible on a traditional indoors stage. In all three performances of Turandot I’ve seen, blind Timur’s slave girl Liù steals the show with her singing and compassion for the old man she cares for.

And all the while in the background were Sydney skyscrapers, the arch of the famous bridge and the curves of the Opera House on the far shore. The elevated action and wide stage inevitably meant that those of us watching in cinemas must have better sightlines than the ‘live’ audience sitting outdoors in raked seating. Our sound mix was crisp and clear, and unaffected by wind and, temperature and humidity. Though quite odd to be watching 16:9 aspect ration images on the enormous cinema screen, accentuating the tall set, rather than the normal thin envelope aspect ratio of modern films. (The National Theatre’s As You Like It also used height to good effect on the silver screen.)

The performance I watched in Odyssey Cinemas had no subtitles. That’s fairly unusual and normally performances will be shown with English subtitles over the original language. [Update - Future screenings will show the subtitled versions.] In terms of aiding audience comprehension – at least for those of us fairly unfamiliar with the plot of operas – the more clues the better to help interpret the subtleties of the stage acting and choreography. (The antics of Pong, Ping and Pang with their individually ridiculous headgear make no sense without explanation or prior knowledge!)

Odyssey Cinemas at Titanic Quarter have a programme of live events, international cinema and even satellite Q&As with actors and directors. Over the next few weeks you can see Australian Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty (4 October) the Royal Shakespeare Company’s King Lear, the 25th anniversary West End version of Miss Saigon, Kenneth Branagh playing The Entertainer, Royal Opera House’s Così Fan Tutte [NI Opera’s Oliver Mears is heading off to become Director of Opera at ROH in February] as well as 1960’s Batman and Japanese steampunk classic Steamboy. And their regular anime screenings are back on 16 November with Your Name.

Going to the theatre … at a cinema: National Theatre’s "As You Like It" at Odyssey Cinemas

Multiplex cinemas are branching out beyond films. Their large screens and comfy chairs allow new audiences to experience vast theatrical and operatic productions that would never be able to travel outside capital city venues.

Last week I watched the National Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It in Odyssey Cinemas in Titanic Quarter. Hundreds of people in the London theatre were joined by thousands sitting around the UK and beyond in cinemas at the end of a live satellite feed.

The point of view is a little different from the experience in a theatre. It’s like the difference between attending a sporting event and choosing where to focus your gaze and sitting at home following the action through the lens of the TV director. Five or six cameras dotted around the theatre along with a sweeping jib vary the viewing angles. Close-ups are rare. Frequently the picture drops back to a full stage view, letting the height of the set fill the cinema screen.

While you don’t have a glossy theatre programme in your hand, a photocopied leaflet details the cast and gives you an idea about how they relate to each other. For Shakespeare with his ridiculous number of characters, that’s quite important.

Any night of the week you could walk into at least a couple of Belfast theatres and find good quality drama on stage. There’s an active theatre scene in Derry too, and many indigenous productions tour around council-owned and privately run venues outside of the main cities.

But there’s nowhere that you could expect to see a set like the one designed by Lizzie Clachan with its busy (both in terms of activity and splashes of colour) low ceilinged office environment magically transformed after the first few scenes into a dark forest of tables for the remainder of the play. It’s mesmerising and beautiful to watch.

While there were a few times I’d like to have been able to see what was happening elsewhere on the stage, on balance it was a better view (and a nicer seat) than I’d have had in the National Theatre itself. I sat in the back row of the 'gods' for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time from where I could see all the action but none of the facial expressions, so getting a little closer to the action is appreciated.

This version of As You Like It transposes the early political and family machinations to a family business. It took me a while to pick out the key characters from the enormous cast during the wordy opening scenes. An ill-balanced wresting match is surreally engineered around a scene (the head locks were unlikely to be stage directions written by the great bard) before it’s time for cat pyjamas and furry animal slippers.

Once in the forest, a cappella singing adds music to Shakespeare’s verse, a chorus suspended up in the trees tweet like birds – and wail on occasion – while clowns and shepherds add to the humour of cross-dressing, a herd of (human) sheep, and unrequited love. The stars of the show were Rosalie Craig (playing Rosalind) and Patsy Ferran (Celia) … and the Norn Iron lad who lost his accent when he began to sing.

Unlike a New York Met Opera live stream of Turandot – a more traditional performance to compare with NI Opera’s interpretation during Belfast International Arts Festival – that I caught in different Belfast cinema last month where the video was noticeably ahead of the audio (a fault of the feed rather than the cinema) the sound from the National Theatre was beautifully mixed (probably 5.1 rather than just stereo).

As You Like It was just one of a whole series of shows being screened in Odyssey Cinemas over coming weeks and months. The National Theatre’s Hangmen (written by Martin McDonagh of The Pillowman fame) is being shown on Thursday 3 March at 7pm along with Royal Opera House shows Boris Godunov (21 March), Giselle (6 April), Frankenstein (18 May) and Royal Shakespeare Company performances of Hamlet (8 June), Cymbeline (28 September) and King Lear (12 October).

Tall Ships Belfast (2-5 July)

I’ve a single memory of the Tall Ships being in Belfast the first time. I thought I was younger, but I’ll have to believe everyone who says it was 1991. I remember walking along a quay, in the middle of waste ground in a Belfast harbour I’d never seen before, and there were boats with tall masts tied up. I’ve absolutely no memory of getting on board any of the ships.

That’s what I wrote in a blog post in 2009 when the Tall Ships returned to Belfast. The land around Belfast harbour was mid-way through its transformation for the second visit of the vessels whose masts reach up to the clouds. Chip vans had been replaced with a Continental market. It was my turn to drag my daughter around the Tenacious.

They're back! Belfast Titanic Maritime Festival – otherwise known as “the Tall Ships” – runs from noon on Thursday 2 July until 4pm on Sunday 5 July. The best tip from 2009:

The people that I’ve met with the most vivid experiences of the Tall Ships seemed to be the ones who wandered or cycled down to the Odyssey late on Wednesday or Thursday night. No crowds blocked their view of the assembled fleet.

This year 50 vessels of different sizes and classes are expected to berth in the various docks. The Guayas is already over in Pollock Dock beside the BBC Experience and will host The One Show on Friday evening. (You can also catch Hugo Duncan broadcasting his afternoon radio show from the Odyssey car park on Thursday and Friday.)

There are markets and fairgrounds on both sides of the river. Hot air balloon displays, kite workshops, Victorian games and … tall ships too. And the Dock Cafe is sure to be open. The Brazilian Cisne Branco is moored right beside the Odyssey and boasts the largest flag in Northern Ireland!

There’ll be fireworks at 10.20pm on Saturday evening. But perhaps the most spectacular part of the whole event will be the Tall Ships Parade on Sunday, when the whole fleet set sail from Belfast at 11am (preceded by a flypast by the Red Arrows who’ll go on to do a full display over Carrickfergus) and head around the coast as they head up to the Causeway Coast and the start line of the race for Monday morning.

Two Park and Ride sites are operating, one in Boucher Road playing fields, the other Airport Road West (Ikea exit).

A free shuttle bus can take you from Wellington Place (near Belfast Visitors Centre) down to Pollock Dock. Lots more details on the Tall Ships Belfast website.

Out on the water on Wednesday afternoon, the sheer scale of the event was obvious as we manoeuvred in and out of docks and followed a couple of smaller vessels up the lough and into their berths.

The four masted 100m long barque Statsraad Lehmkuhl [that must be close to the length of the City Hall?] will dwarf everything else when it arrives since the Royal Princess cruise ship will have long gone!

The Dock - free coffee and a chat in Titanic Quarter this afternoon 4pm-7pm

I've mentioned the Dock on the blog before. Chris Bennett - chaplain to Titanic Quarter - explains:

The vision for The Dock is simply this: to be the Chaplaincy sofa. To be the hub where the community meets the ministry of the churches, in an informal, inclusive, but intentionally spiritual setting.

The informal faith community regularly meets up on a Sunday afternoon, grabs a takeaway coffee at the Odyssey (to keep their hands warm!) and walks around the Titanic Quarter area reflecting, praying and talking to people they meet. There's a growing community of people building, working, living and visiting TQ.

This afternoon between 4pm and 7pm, if you're in the area, you'll find Chris and Harvey the VW campervan parked near the Kit sculpture (at the base of the apartments out behind the Odyssey Arena), handing out "steaming mugs of mulled wine (tipsy and non-tipsy versions)" and nibbles alongside his “deckchair cafe” in one of the shop units at the Abercorn basin.

While (Rev) Chris Bennett has a Church of Ireland background, the Dock is deliberately non-denominational.

"I’ve tried not to rush to plant a church on an existing model, or to do what is familiar or recognisable. Instead I began a process of meeting with people working in the Titanic Quarter, and those from elsewhere in the city who had an interest in the area. They joined me for coffee in the Odyssey Arena or in the Pump House Cafe at the Titanic Dock, and we brainstormed the ideas, hopes, values and purposes that the church could pursue in the Titanic Quarter. We called the process CoffeeStorming ...

Shared Future is not just a politically-correct buzzword. As we’ve talked over coffee I’ve come to understand just how deeply it is the longing and desire of so many people in this nation – to move on from decades of division and sectarianism, a time when Northern Ireland was world-famous only for violence, to build a future we truly can share and be proud of.

And so in the Titanic Quarter, this neutral ground – which one person described to me as ‘the best blank page the church has had in Ireland since St Patrick stepped off the boat’ – it’s our challenge and a core value of the Dock to find out what it means to share the ministry in this place."

Ultimately, the Dock have a vision of creating a chaplaincy space within a boat moored in the area.

The Dock café opens in Titanic Quarter

Embedding a chaplaincy in Titanic Quarter is the mission of Chris Bennett, Karen Spence and The Dock helpers and supporters.

Hundreds of apartments have sprung up over the past few years behind the Odyssey. Thousands of people work in the white/glass buildings that stretch from Citi, past PRONI, past the Paint Hall and down to the NI Science Park. Thousands work and study at the new Belfast Met campus. And thousands of tourists (and locals) will shortly embark on a pilgrimage to the Titanic Belfast building to find out about the boat that was all right when it left here.

In the midst of this, a team of Christians representing a wide range of denominations (and none) are working hard to make sure that Titanic Quarter is more about people than buildings.

A weekly Dock Walk (starts at 3.33pm every Sunday afternoon outside the Streat in the Odyssey) and Meet the Neighbours events are some of the first tangible signs.

While the ultimate plan is to be based on a boat moored in behind the Odyssey, The Dock recently got the keys for one of the vacant shop units under the ARC apartments under a 'meanwhile lease' and have opened it as a café. (A meanwhile lease allows a charitable organisation to have the use of a vacant space until a permanent paying tenant can be found.)

The café sources everything as much as possible everything locally. A milk float delivers glass milk bottles. The tea and coffee are manufactured in the city. The buns are from a local bakery. The art on the walls are from a local gallery. Much of the furniture is second hand (with just a little help from Sweden).

Open Tuesday to Friday from 11am to 7pm, and on Saturday from 11am to 5pm. A place to meet, to talk, to work, to think.

Call in and Tegan the barista will brew you up a hot cup and select one of the very fine buns. Given The Dock's lease, there is no price list and no charge. Instead you can show your appreciation by dropping something into the honesty box.

As you can see from the silent video above, the café officially opened on Thursday afternoon with a packed crowd. You can also catch The Dock in Sunday night’s Songs of Praise from Belfast which is celebrating the Titanic.

Les Misérables - teenagers wow in BSPA senior youth performance at The MAC

It’s an audacious undertaking to rehearse and stage Les Misérables with children aged 12–18 over a three- or four-week period. As a sung-through musical, it’s not the most forgiving of shows for the cast, even with the cuts made to the newly available official School Edition. There are a lot of emotional beats to hit. And there are a lot of time shifts that require characters to quickly show signs of aging. Yet BSPA’s Saturday matinee performance at The MAC was a triumph.

Released from prison into an unforgiving world where he can’t quite shake off the long arm of the law, years later Jean Valjean takes founding Cosette under his wings when her mother Fantine dies. The action switches to the student barricades on the eve of revolution. Cosette is now caught up in a love triangle, unwittingly battling with her former guardians’ daughter Éponine for the affections of student leader Marius. All the while police inspector Javert doggedly pursues Valjean to bring him to book, and Éponine’s pantomime parents keep popping up to demonstrate that they are among the true villains of the story.

Over the three hours of the show (including the interval) the pace rarely slowed. Large scale scene changes – with tables and chairs being carried on and off the stage – must have looked messy in the bright light of the rehearsal room but disappeared into the dim behind spotlighted actors singing out front. Strategic colour in costumes popped characters into the foreground. The bluish lighting reflected the troubled times. The two-level set was versatile … although the ladders looked nearly as perilous as the steps up and down the barricade! The choreography constantly propelled scenes and lines of actors forwards (mere centimetres away from the first row of audience members) and suited the relatively shallow stage.

But the magic didn’t come from the intelligent light or the set design. It was from the quality of the performances that director Peter Corry, musical director Ashley Fulton and choreographer Sean O’Neill had drilled into the talented cast. Jack Cairns shone as the central Jean Valjean, striding around the stage with purpose, conveying his character’s growing sense of justice and mercy, despite the best efforts of Javert (Michael Nevin) to shut him down. Bring Him Home had real presence and demanded the sold-out audience’s full attention.

Jackson Allen and Grace Conroy (at Saturday afternoon’s performance) played the musical’s comedy sidekicks – the Thénardier family – a kind of Mr and Mrs Fagin, delightfully over-the-top at all times, and particularly superb in Master of the House. (Their wit and jesting behaviour also underlines the English language version’s Cockneyfication of the truly French story.)

Rebekah Devlin impressed as the impoverished Fantine, as did Grace Woodward who played Éponine at Saturday’s matinee, looking truly heartbroken by the end of Act One when she realised she’d become the third wheel to Marius (Sean Carron) and Cosette (Blanaid Hughes). Éponine’s death and the singing of A Little Fall of Rain with Marius was eye-wateringly emotional.

There was a maturity to performances right across the cast. Everyone in the ensemble was in the moment, concentrating on their part in the scene and no one looked lost. The eyes of the actors told the story of their characters’ feelings and motivations. Some solo singing was occasionally a bit pitchy at key moments, but overall the musicality was excellent. The slow-motion death scene at the barricades worked well, and the simple staging of the Valjean’s death was very effective. Such is the talent at BSPA’s disposal that four girls shared the roles of young Cosette and Éponine, while four boys played Gavroche and there were two Madame Thénardiers across the six performances.

While the cast motioned towards backstage during the bows, it wasn’t clear to me until afterwards that a 14-piece band had been hidden behind the black backdrop. A real shame they hadn’t been able to rush out with instruments in hand to be seen by the audience at the end. While the cast may have found being on stage quite intense, the rich music never stopped with one song often running straight into the next. Bravo to the band.

Les Misérables is familiar territory to director Peter Corry who spent three years performing Javert on the West End and UK Tour, and staged a concert version – the show’s Northern Ireland premiere – in The Odyssey Arena back in 2001. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, when the wealth gap seems to be widening and social disadvantage deepening, the themes of social justice and redemption and looking out for the vulnerable seem very apt in 2023.

Photo credit: Neil Harrison

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BCC's proposed £20m conferencing investment in the Waterfront, knocking down the Studio in the process

When Belfast City Council’s Investment Programme was launched earlier this year, it included a reference to expending the conference/exhibition space at the Belfast Waterfront.

Along with colleagues, I idly wondered where the additional space would be found. Would they build a glass covered bridge across to the unfinished building sitting in front of the Waterfront? Could the ugly carbuncle (Lanyon Quay Building) between the Waterfront and the new Laganside Courts building be used?

It turns out that the option being recommended to the council’s Strategic Policy and Resources Committee is to knock down the Waterfront Studio and build the conferencing centre in its footprint and over the yard in behind.

The Waterfront Hall – now known as the Belfast Waterfront – was built at a total cost of £37 million and opened in 1997. The Arts Theatre had long been closed, and the Waterfront Studio theatre provided a council-owned space that drama groups could use at reasonable rates, as well as providing a small city-centre theatre venue for newly launched plays. These were the days before the Baby Grand, the rebuilt Lyric and the Belfast MAC.

The Group Theatre on Bedford Street (attached to the Ulster Hall) didn’t survive the Grand Dame’s renovations, and although community theatre groups were at the time reassured that the access policy for the Waterfront Studio would fill that space, the days of Belfast Council running a theatre space suitable for community groups may be numbered.

A total of 63 opportunities have been lost in the City [Belfast] and by the Waterfront directly over the period 2008-2011 with the key reason given the lack of appropriate integrated conferencing facilities.

While a 2011 business case recommended linking the Waterfront with the empty level 0 and 1 floors in the Lanyon Quay Building, a more fulsome Economic Appraisal evaluated a long list of ten options came back with a more ambitious plan.

Two Story [sic] Extension of the Waterfront over the Service Yard to the rear of the Venue, with further extension over River.

It involves demolishing the existing Studio area, and has the potential to create units to let (or storage space) on the ground floor level in front of the existing Studio.

• Integrated convention centre with clear span exhibition space across one level with minimum of 2,000 sq/m;
• minimum of 5 breakout rooms that can each accommodate 200 plus people;
• banqueting space that can accommodate up to 750 people.

This requires a capital investment of £20 million (a suspiciously round number). It would also benefit from speedy decisions as the Council and Northern Ireland Tourist Board reckon they could tap into £12 million or so of money from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). But the ERDF closes at the end of 2015, and all funding would need to be drawn down by that date (ie, the building work would need to be completed).

Accessing the ERDF also throws up an issue of staffing.

To satisfy the requirements of the DETI and DFP Economists it was necessary to include within the Council’s Economic Appraisal an assessment of the various options for the management and operation of the new facilities. In order to address this two options have been considered:-

a) The Council manages the facility itself

b) A Management Contract is entered into with an established Conference Operator

The assessment concluded that the there was an enormous benefit to having an operator that was “established in the market place with a reputation for delivery” over continuing as a Council-managed facility. Whereas a council-run extended convention facility could see a projected economic benefit of £21m per annum, outsourcing to an external operator would see the projected economic benefit nearly double to £39m per annum.

(The ‘economic benefit’ is the additional money spent in Belfast as a result of conferences being held, including accommodation, food, banners, hiring goods, using local companies and staff as taking into account the ‘Bleisure’ tourism market of increasing the number of business visitors who return on holiday.)

If a professional operator could hope to achieve this level of extra (or better) business, would these figures not suggest that the council – up to now – hasn’t developed a reputation for being good at managing its conferencing venue.

The aim would be to see a six fold increase in the number of National Large Association conferences held in Belfast (from one a year in 2010 to six a year in 2020) and a twelve-fold jump in the number of International/European Association conference held (from one every two years now to six per annum by 2020).

There’s a gotcha in the report to the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee. The report’s figures do not take into account (or even estimate the size) of “any compensatory payment which may be required by the Hilton [Hotel] as part of the extension agreement” nor “any additional costs which may be incurred through the transfer [TUPE] of relevant staff to an external operator”.

The report reckons that extending the conference facilities and running it in-house would net cost the council £215k each year. Whereas outsourcing the operation to an existing supplier would offer a net saving of £911k, equivalent to “a 0.72% reduction in the district rate (2012/13)”.

There’s a second gotcha in the report.

If the new facility is to achieve the projected income set out in the Economic Appraisal the business model for the Waterfront will have to fundamentally change from that of an entertainment venue to that of a conference centre.

Guess which bit of the Waterfront’s business has been increasing over the last few years? Entertainments. Despite the neighbouring Odyssey area, the Waterfront’s main auditorium and smaller Studio have been busy.

And guess which part of the Waterfront’s business has nose-dived over recent years? Conferencing.

With the removal of the Waterfront Studio – the last of the council’s theatre spaces – it is unlikely that community theatre could afford the prices charged to hire the small venues in the Lyric Theatre or Belfast MAC. Both venues received public funding, but are run on a commercial basis. Instead, community-based groups would have to look to Newtownabbey or Lisburn council theatres, well outside their catchment areas.

Running for the guts of two months each year, and attended by bus loads of school children, the Waterfront Studio pantomime would cease to have a venue. [Oh no it wouldn’t? Oh yes it would!]

The question for Belfast City Council is whether they want to demolish part of a building they may still be paying off the mortgage on to remove the community-accessible Waterfront Studio and replace it with a convention centre that may or may not attract more briefcases business to Belfast?

And the question of whether they want to “fundamentally change” the business model of the Waterfront from an entertainment venue to a conference centre? (None of the reports seem to articulate the loss to the local economy of the Waterfront auditorium being less available for concerts and more tied up with conferences.)

Cross-posted from Slugger O'Toole.

Sunshine

There’s a children’s chorus by May Butler that was popular about 30 years ago, but heard less often in churches these days. It starts off ...

Looking upwards every day,
Sunshine on our faces;
Pressing onward every day
Toward heavenly places.

Mixing a review of the film Sunshine and religion seems quite appropriate given elements of the storyline in Danny Boyle’s new work.

“Our sun is dying.Mankind faces extinction.”

The opening dialog feels like the start of an epic poem, and sets Sunshine up to be a more arty, contemplative piece than just a sci-fi action adventure disaster movie. It’s something of a cross between Deep Impact, Armageddon, 2001 Odyssey and Solaris. A strange mix.

The set up is that the previous ICARUS mission failed (seven years ago). We join the crew near the end of their journey. Eight astronauts strapped to the back of a bomb. ICARUS II. Their purpose: “to create a star within a star”, to restart the sun. If they’re successful, eight minutes after they set of the bomb, Earth will be flooded with new light. So it’s a last chance mission to save humanity from a cold, dark death.

Visually the film’s palette consists of bright white, black, orange, slate grey, and tiny optimistic shoots of green. The screen alternates between total darkness, blinding light, and slabs of white on dark backgrounds. Clever face-reflected-in-glass shots. Whenever the ship’s crew aren’t quite sure what’s going on, the action blurs ... and it probably saved a fortune on prosthetics and detailed CGI in the last fifteen minutes of the film! And the soundtrack is a test for your local cinema’s bass bins - it’s all very deeeeeep.

For a ship that was being constructed as the second last ditch attempt to preserve life on earth, ICARUS II has a remarkable build quality. I’d have expected a less than perfect finish. No point painting everything uniformly. Would the crew have minded if a few corners had been cut. Time was of the essence? Or do heroes deserve better?

And before I forget: why do spaceships need external flashing lights? The ICARUS II has floodlit sections all over. It’s a complete waste of energy. There’s no one out there to bump into them as they sail through space towards the sun. Maybe it’s just in case someone on a passing comet wants to film the ship.

There are a couple of sets that form focal points of the film. There are repeated visits to the observation room, where the crew(s) can watch the sun through a filtered window. The fascination with the sun, an encouragement, a depressant, its life-giving light, its all consuming fire. The crew are sun worshippers. From early on in the film, the religious imagery is painted thick.

Getting there and back means that the ICARUS II needs to produce its own oxygen for the crew. Hurtling towards the sun, with only a massive gold shield (fashioned from all the remaining gold on Earth), photosynthesis is the answer, with the leafy oxygen farm. (It looks like the Eden project, unsurprisingly since that’s where it was filmed!)

Deep down, Sunshine is a disaster movie. One questionable decision leads to another. A litany of mistakes, each making the consequences of the next mistake all the greater. Like one bad throw of the dice causing you to slide down a Snakes and Ladders board. So close to the goal, and then so far away from where you were headed.

Yet in the middle of the bitterness, there are some crew willing to lead, and willing to make sacrifices. And in the middle of the darkness, there are green shoots of hope. One of the crew succinctly sums up the mission’s success criteria in his last message sent to family at home before the ICARUS II enters the radio dead zone near the sun.

“So if you wake up one morning and it’s a particularly beautiful day, you’ll know we made it.”

Dilemmas are faced. Yet they know that getting the bomb to the sun is more important than curiosity or saving lives. The crew are torn.

The closer they get to the sun, the more obsessed they become with it. It dominates their waking and their sleeping. Fascinated by the viewing gallery. Disturbed by fiery nightmares. The religious metaphor continues with morbidity as well as hope as they perhaps approach the end of their lives.

The final stages of the film are where it branches out from traditional middle-of-the-road sci-fi, and joins the Solaris appreciation society. In some ways, it saves having to sit through a disappointing ending with victory snatched from the jaws of defeat (or vice versa). But it mars the integrity of the film, introducing new elements to the film at such a late stage. And then in the final seconds, the action switches from space to Earth for the first time in the closing scene: a snowy field, that lacks the normal bright blinding whiteness.

Some parts of Sunshine are really worth seeing. It's a tremendous achievement for a relatively small investment. But it's not going to be a classic sci-fi that's talked about in twenty years time.

And before I forget, the trailers for 28 Weeks Later, Zodiac and Next (more fully, “Next, from the author of Minority Report”!) all look promising. Though sometimes, as in the case of Sunshine, the trailers are better than the actual film.

Belfast Bikes launch on Monday - what do you need to know?

It’s been 25 years or more since I last rode a bicycle when I was a teenager. Cycling proficiency is a dim memory of riding along a road painted onto the tarmac playground with an arm stuck out to indicate I was about to turn.

It doesn’t take long to walk across Belfast. Yet the ten minutes from the Waterfront Hall to the Cathedral Quarter could be halved if who wheels took the strain. And in dry weather, biking across to the Odyssey would be preferable to the windy walk over the bridges.

Yesterday at lunchtime and I trialled the new Coca Cola Zero Belfast Bikes and discovered the joy of simultaneously sticking my arm out to change lane, looking over your shoulder, steering straight ahead and keeping on this side of the grave … all at the same time.

So what 15 things do you need to know?

1. 300 bikes will be available from 6am on Monday morning (27 April) at 30 docking stations across the city centre. Later phases may widen the reach of the scheme.

2. Registration is online. Visitors to Belfast can pay £5 to access the bikes for 3 days. A yearly subscription is £20 and you’ll be sent a smart card you can swipe at one of the terminals to identify yourself.

3. On Sunday at noon, expect to see a grand peloton of Belfast Bikes streaming out of the City Hall gates and cycling around the block. Customers who’ve already paid up for the year have received invitations to participate.

4. You can hire a bike between 6am and midnight. It’s as simple as …

Swipe your annual card or tap in your mobile number along with the number of the bike you want to hire at the solar-powered rental terminals beside the bike stations and it’ll be unlocked within seconds.

You can also use the nextbike app (iOS or Android) to hire a bike. It’ll show you bike stations near you along with the number of bikes available to hire. Select the bike, tap the buttons and the bike will be released. The Belfast Bikes website also allows you to rent/return a bike within the My Account pages.

If the terminal is down and you don’t have access to the smartphone app there’s a phone number on the back of the bikes 034 3357 1551 you can ring from your mobile to hire them.

5. Once you’ve registered, the first 30 minutes is free. Then it’s 50p for the next half hour and a further £1 for each hour up to 4 hours. After that it gets really expensive to have exclusive access to a specific bike. The scheme is set up to encourage you to make short journeys around the city centre: take a bike, ride somewhere, dock it, and when you’re leaving, hire another bike to make the journey back.

6. To leave a bike back, you wheel it into an empty bike rack (a disc on the left hand side of the front wheel slots into the bike rack's clip) and the light on the rack turns green and the bike is locked in place. If there isn't an empty slot, the terminal will show you the nearest bike rack with a space, or you can use the combination lock to secure the bike somewhere near to the bike rack and use the app or phone number to register it as returned.

What’s it like?

Jeff from Belfast Times and I set off from the City Hall at lunchtime on Wednesday to pay our respects to the Big Fish, navigate the Bin Lane (aka, the bike lane on Upper Arthur Street that is so often blocked by bins or delivery vehicles) and return to the bike station in front of Donegall Square North. You can watch part of our adventure in Geoff’s video.

Having fun on the @Belfastbikes with @alaninbelfast today! pic.twitter.com/5d77MNVF2j
— belfasttimes.co.uk (@Belfasttimes) April 22, 2015

7. The bikes are sturdy. These are not lightweight racers. They’ve got 3 gears and having pedalled furiously for a while I finally figured out how to rotate the gear selector on the right handlebar to get into 2nd gear and cycling became a lot less effort! The bike has lights that activate when you pedal and you can adjust the height of the seat saddle.

8. There’s room on the front for a small bag. You might be able to tie a bag onto the back.

9. Belfast city centre is mercifully flat so you shouldn't get wheely tyred, and lunchtime traffic is quite light

10. From walking and driving around this area of Belfast I thought I knew the streets like the back of my hand. But it was very different riding on two wheels surrounded by faster moving cars and buses, and needing to read signs and look for markings I’d never had to pay attention to before.

11. It’s very confusing where you can cycle and where you can’t. Belfast is full of bus lanes, bus-only streets, streets that have been partially pedestrianised and national bike routes. You’re not allowed to cycle on the footpath. But can you cycle down between Chichester Street between the High Court and Laganside Courts? Can you turn right off Victoria Street at the Albert Clock and take a short cut up the bus lane that runs in front of McHughs? And when you cross the road (using the Toucan crossing with its bike light) at Queens Bridge, can why are there no obvious cycle markings on the other side of the road when you reach the Beacon of Hope?

12. The Bin Lane on Upper Arthur Street was clear when we cycled through, though on the way to the City Hall it wasn't!

13. The Belfast Bikes Welcome Park has some reminders about bike safety and the cycling-related sections of the Highway Code are worth a scan. But if you’re planning to cycle certain routes frequently, it would be good to take your first ride when it’s not too busy and you’re not in a rush to get your bearings and figure out a plan.

14. With an influx of inexperienced cyclists like myself on the roads over the next weeks and months, hopefully drivers will realise that they need to treat these amateurs with care. Otherwise, increasing the number of cyclists on the streets of Belfast will increase the number of accidents.

15. My backside is sore. Maybe that’ll ease with further cycling. I’m certainly looking forward to being able to scoot across town faster than on foot and a lot cheaper than in the car. Maybe it’ll even count as exercise …

@alaninbelfast @Belfasttimes is this you boys on your bikes here? pic.twitter.com/xuSpEtAANy
— PastieBap.Com (@pastiebap1) April 23, 2015

The Spectacular Aladdin: pantomime, but not like you’ve ever seen it before! (SSE Arena until 27 December)

With only 18 months between inception and the opening night, planning a brand new show using a team of largely local creatives to stage an arena pantomime for the first time in Belfast is a remarkable achievement. Joe Rea and Martin Lynch have shown incredible ambition to pull this off.

Last night’s performance of The Spectacular Aladdin was loud, brash, full of movement, and it seemed to delight many of the youngest members of the audience who could sing along to S Club 7 anthems and dance Gangnam style in the aisles.

It was definitely pantomime, but not as we know it!

The storyline followed the familiar tale of young Aladdin (played by Jake Carter) defying ‘pain of death’ to gaze upon Princess Jasmine (Nadia Forde). His Mum, Widow Twankie (Chris Robinson) runs the local laundry. The evil Abanazer (Rhydian) is on the hunt for Aladdin, believing that he can provide him with a magic lamp to make him rich. Add to this Wishie Washie (Christina Nelson, who inducts the audience into her gang), a Police Chief with a bushy moustache (Marty Maguire), the Empress mother of the princess (Nuala McKeever) along with the Slave of the Ring (Naomi Rocke) and The Genie (Ross Anderson-Doherty).

Packed into the front third of the SSE Arena, the venue presents its own challenges and opportunities. The stage is incredibly wide and director Dan Gordon has done well to fill it with a relatively small cadre of actors, dancers and child performers that bring the action as close as possible to the tiered seating.

At regular intervals cast members paraded through the wide aisles in the ground floor seated area in front of the stage, and at one point the Genie of the Lamp appeared over my left shoulder in row Q to sing a long distance duet with the Slave of the Ring about 40m away on stage!

It’s a strong cast, with Rhydian stepping comfortably into the shoes of Abanazer though it was only in the second half that he got the boos his malicious character deserved. It shouldn’t have been any surprise that Irish pop artist Jake Carter had a great voice (and played guitar on stage for a quick cover of Galway Girl), but he also played Aladdin with a confidence that belied his lack of theatre experience. Nadia Forde couldn’t quite compete with her heart throb’s dulcet tones.

The job of audience participation fell to Widow Twankie and Wishie Washie. Pantomime dame Chris Robinson persevered with his scripted jokes, innuendo and ad libbing and was much more confident and rewarded with audience reaction after the interval. Human dynamo Christina Nelson never stopped moving and delivered a relentlessly energetic and quick-witted performance the whole time she was on stage.

Naomi Rocke as Slave of the Ring carried a lot of the show’s narration, with lots of flourish-ridden poetic lines, and her duets with Ross Anderson-Doherty were amongst my favourite moments from the show. Nuala McKeever’s wit was underused in her small role as Empress.

Other than a few large rotating pieces of set, projections against the back wall of the stage replaced traditional flown backdrops to place each scene in context. Animation was employed successfully, often synchronised with lighting effects, to increase the sense of drama. While the width and height of the SSE Arena could allow performers to be flown in and out on wires, Aladdin’s ‘flying carpet’ relied this year on more basic trickery. There were lots of sound effects to cartoonify the on-stage action and a live band of five accompanied throughout.

The first act of the pantomime ended with a big song – Reach for the Stars – but there was a lack of jeopardy to carry the plot into the interval: for a minute I thought that the show was over and reached into my pocket to fish out the car park ticket. There were gentle nods to the sponsors throughout (though BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan gets more mentions than Q Radio’s Stephen Clements) and eternal favourites like The Time Warp and a Twelve Days of Christmas skit (complete with Super Soaker squirting) are woven into the show.

The size of the auditorium dents the precision of some performances. While the dialogue was quite clear, much of the sung lyrics were lost in the echoey and muffled sound. (It’s a problem I don’t remember from musical On Eagle’s Wing when it played in the Odyssey back in 2004.) Seated much further away from the action than any other stage in Belfast, I leant forward to squint at the characters on stage. Despite Susan Scott’s bold and glittery costumes helping to make the cast stand out, follow-spots were only used sporadically and at times it felt like some of the action was taking place in relative gloom, particularly when characters moved away from the centre of the stage.

While it’s popular to complain about noisy sweet wrappers in theatres, the concession stands remaining open during the performance (just as they would do during an ice hockey match) created the most disturbance with a constant stream of people in our row squeezing past our legs to go out for more fizzy drink, followed up by a run to the toilet.

Taking a pantomime out of the theatre and into a larger, more open arena was a high risk move. The energy of the performance on Saturday night compensated for a lot of the issues caused by the novel venue. I left the SSE Arena a little bewildered about what I had just witnessed, but satisfied that it was both spectacular and a pantomime.

M & J Pantos seemed to be learning to walk before they ran in their first year of operation with relatively straightforward staging and no pyrotechnics. The team plan to return next Christmas with Cinderella and if they build upon this year’s success and learn lessons from their inaugural run, their annual pantomime may present more established competitors (admittedly with more seats during longer runs) with a challenge to improve their offering.

The Spectacular Aladdin continues in The SSE Arena until Wednesday 27 December.