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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Kinds of Kindness – Yorgos Lanthimos’ fantasy triptych where the overall effect is less than the sum of its parts

Kinds of Kindness is a comedy/fantasy triptych, with thematic connections, shared cast members, and some pretty absurb goings on. It’s the latest release from director Yorgos Lanthimos (co-written by Efthimis Filippou) and it’s a disappointment.

The Lobster was absurd and satirical. The Killing of a Sacred Deer was long and unsettling. The Favourite allowed a young Emma Stone to barge into the strong womance between characters played by Olivia Colman and Lady Sarah. Poor Things was full of extraordinary performances, an astonishing piece of world-building that sought to be liberating but raised questions about male control, gaze and abuse.

Kinds of Kindness is simpler and much less over the top.

In part one, Robert Fletcher (Jesse Plemons) is given precise instructions by his boss (Willem Dafoe) to direct his day. Robert follows every order bar one to violently crash into a car and kill its driver. The full extent of the spider’s web of coercive control is revealed. The busted tennis racquet prop is exquisite. The ending of this section is violent but terribly satisfying. The opening track –Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics – is very well chosen: “… / Everybody's lookin' for something / Some of them want to use you / Some of them want to get used by you / Some of them want to abuse you / Some of them want to be abused / …”

The second story picks up a recurring ideas of hurt limbs, weight and food, and copious quantities of controlling behaviour. A missing woman (Emma Stone) returns home but she’s not the woman her husband (Jesse Plemons) remembered. Despite the conclusion, it’s a thumbs down from me.

The final part – by far the longest –imagines a couple of cult members (Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons) on a mission to find a woman with healing powers that can resurrect the dead. The cult leader, Omi (Willem Dafoe) is incredibly creepy. Margaret Qualley is great playing twin sisters Ruth and Rebecca. There’s an extreme close-up of snogging which would make a great video art exhibition. And Emma Stone’s final dance is nearly worth the ticket price alone.

Weaving the themes together and reusing the same cast is clever. But the overall effect is less than the sum of its parts. Jesse Plemons shows off his versatility. Emma Stone is an intriguing presence on screen. But there’s too much thinking and not enough entertainment.

Kinds of Kindness is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre, Odeon, Cineworld and some Movie House and Omniplex cinemas.

  

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Five Year Stand – Twinbrook meets Malone Road in a coming-of-age play that eschews stereotypes (Brunswick Productions at Grand Opera House until Saturday 29 June)

This week has been a bit of a treat with two great shows to review at the Grand Opera House. One a well-established award-winning musical, Come From Away.  The other, Five Year Stand, is a new piece of writing with gripping performances and a lot of potential. Both wore their emotion very much on their sleeves.

When Shane collides with Úna in a nightclub, it launches an avalanche of spilt drink, spilt tears, and spilt home truths that stretch over their five-year relationship. Sarah Reid and Matthew Blaney play the two protagonists: an abrupt, feisty, straight-talking daughter of west Belfast, and a middle class, academically minded, south Belfast boy. At first the couple are delightfully awkward, with wind-up merchant Úna taking the lead before agreeing to give a long distance romance a try when Shane flies off to study law in London.

The audience first meet the couple who are in a pensive and reflective mood – as well as a tad sleepy and hungover – after a reunion that reeks of uncertainty. Episodic flashbacks fill in details of their earlier courtship, before and after Covid, as well as before and after Úna’s loss of a close family member. While socially loud, Úna is – at least at first – emotionally self-sufficient. But Covid and caring responsibilities flip that on its head. And then jealousy enters via a fissure in the friendship.

Director Ewan McGowan-Gregg (The 4 Worst Things I’ve Ever Done) creates a believable intimacy between the characters – and the performers – even though they barely ever touch. Devised by the cast and creative team in the rehearsal room (assistant director Beth Strahan, Rory Gray and Rosie McWilliams are credited along with the director and actors), the show conjures up a very neat ‘full circle’ ending that looks great on stage. However, it requires some agile jumping up and down the couple’s timeline to fit the parts together and that slightly distracted me from the action on stage.

Rory Gray’s bifurcated lighting design can split neatly the two sides of Shane’s sofa into light and shade, heralding flashbacks and scene changes in an instant. Reid acts with her fingertips and her shoulders, signalling confidence as well as anxiety and distress, and is forever catching the eye of audience members as she opens up Úna’s heart rather than simply staring through them.

The fulcrum of the whole play comes about 60 minutes in when Shane makes the speech of his life, heartfelt and finally in tune with the woman standing in front of him. It’s a powerful moment that Blaney nails with a striking intensity and a sense of understanding Úna’s vulnerability.

A more modest story would have riffed off Shane’s rugby playing and turned him into a yobbish lad. A cheaper depiction of Úna would have used her ex-boyfriend as a means to seeking forgiveness. A less assured team of writers would have insisted on tying everything up with a saccharine-rich conclusion. Five Year Stand requires none of these old notions and instead crafts a tale where, despite their wonky bond, there’s a deep respect and active demonstration of consent on show. Very modern, and totally flying in the face of most theatre that requires the opposite to be true for dramatic effect.

Five Year Stand’s run in the Grand Opera House upstairs studio continues until Saturday 29 June. I’m so glad I got to see this during its first run. It’s a real treat and the sharpest piece of new writing I’ve seen in the first six months of 2024.

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Come From Away – hospitality, thankfulness and oddles of humanity (Grand Opera House until Saturday 29 June)

It’s as if Come From Away has been soaked in empathy and left to stew. The people of Gander and the passengers who unexpectedly camp out for five days when their transatlantic flights are grounded in Newfoundland in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, bond through friendship, food and faith, despite lingering fears. The population nearly doubles as air traffic controllers issue instructions to ground flights crossing the Atlantic on the first landfall.

As the confusion lifts and the everyday preoccupations dissolve as a town rises to the occasion, and small-scale acts of human kindness combine with community-wide acts of compassion. And there is spirit of thankfulness, not begrudging, but heartfelt as everyone comes to terms with their temporary situation and a world that changed for the worse between take-off and landing.

Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s musical, directed by Christoper Ashley, rarely drops the cracking pace it sets right from the word go: sitting in the stalls you certainly feel that “you’ve at the start of a moment”.

Howell Blinkley’s dense grid of lights over the stage bring a focus to individual chairs before the full beam of the side lights mounted on the tall tree trunks that populate the wings flood the stage for scenes in the local bar.

There’s a real Celtic feel to the production. The accents of Gander have a natural Irish twang. A talented band of eight musicians sit on stage and at times move among the actors with fiddles and whistles and pipes. The audience in Belfast feel at home with the Titanic gag(s).

As the individual character storylines develop, the songs – part sung part spoken – bring coherence back to the narrative. Lead Us Out of the Night is mellow and incredibly moving as passengers and crew see TV footage of the 9/11 attacks for the first time. Later on, the one-act production includes perhaps the most tuneful version of Make Me A Channel of Your Peace, a song that many a school assembly or congregation has killed. It’s melded together with another two religions songs of peace as people of faith reach for familiar words to express their lament.

The show honours humanity (mostly) at its best.

The storyline about a Muslim chef who is seen as threatening, whose offers of help are continually dismissed, is eventually able to be useful, and then reverts to being seem as a threat provides a timely reminder of the racism that 9/11 exacerbated. Hannah’s long wait to hear news about her missing son, a New York fireman, regularly reconnects the audience to the loss and destruction that precipitated the Gander landings.

While the UK touring version of Come From Away doesn’t include the dynamism of the revolving stage in the Broadway production (which can still be enjoyed on Apple TV+) the cast of 12 follow a tight choreography that almost casually – yet incredibly precisely – moves chairs across the stage to create new scenes, delivering jackets lying over the back of them to just the right place to be picked up and transform an actor from a townsperson and an airline employee and back.

Come From Away finishes its run in the Grand Opera House on Saturday 29 June. Get a ticket and bring more than one tissue. It’s well worth stepping onto this emotional roller coaster.

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Pirate Queen – site-specific theatre for all the family (Green Room Productions NI)

While beforehand I always worry about the effect of the weather on outdoor theatre performances, I should be more relaxed as shows like Tinderbox’s Sylvan worked in the drizzle and any number of perambulatory walking tours wearing headphones have survived extreme heat and damp conditions.

Leaving the weather aside, a better concern should be whether there’s an ice cream van near the stage. That was the case in the playpark outside Millisle, but may not be for next week’s sold out production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by the Lyric Theatre.

As we stood around the boat-shaped climbing frame in the playground, a musical intro and some ‘parish announcements’ set the relaxed tone for the 30 minute performance of Pirate Queen.

It’s a child-friendly account of the life and times of Gráinne Ní Mháille (Grace O’Malley, often Anglicised to Granuaile) who was born in 1530 and unlike many of her children and husbands lived to the ripe old age of 73.

She picked up a love of the sea from her father and was initially disappointed to be married off to landlubber Dónal an Chogaidh Ó Flaithbheartaigh: good for building alliances between clans, but not so good for swashbuckling adventures on the high seas.

However, his death was followed by the opportunity for Granuaile to “defend her people against the English oppressor”, leading to a 1593 audience with Queen Elizabeth and a peaceful if not immediate resolution of hostilities (after a fashion).

The story zips along, never more than a few minutes away from another song – beautiful harmonies from the three actors who also played drums, fiddle, tin whistle and guitar – or the chance to walk around the climbing frame ship to view proceedings from another angle. Lots of interruptions, humorous asides, and very gentle audience participation. And only in a playground can actors ‘exit stage left’ down a plastic slide.

Cat Barter, Adam Dougal and Anna Keenan-Laverty weave in and out of English and Irish names and lyrics with ease, and managed to keep a twinkle in their eyes even as the sun burnt a hole in the bright blue sky and tried to melt them. Full of charm, yet not downplaying the treacherous times in which it’s set. Site-specific work can be challenging to write, perform, finance and produce. However, it can connect audiences with a place – even a wooden ship in a playground – in a way a traditional theatre space will take longer to achieve.

Pirate Queen was written by Clare McMahon, directed by Patsy Montgomery-Hughes and produced by Green Room Productions NI. It was performed in Ballywalter and Millisle, and will hopefully get a chance to set sail again.

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The Dead Don’t Hurt – Viggo Mortensen’s impressive tussle between romance and western (cinemas across UK and Ireland from Friday 7 June)

Shots are fired in a hostelry. Tick. An officer of the law is shot in a dusty town square, falling to the ground and lying face-down motionless. Tick. Someone rides off into the distance on a horse. Tick. The goat joins the townsfolk to watch an innocent man incapable of defending himself being hung. Tick …

The Dead Don’t Hurt initially has all the hallmarks of a western. Until Viggo Mortensen – who is writer, director, actor and composer – splices up the story and stitches it back together in a series of flashbacks and flash forwards, part romance, part western. (The delicate touch of film editor Peder Pedersen should take a lot of the credit for the success of this bold storytelling.) It’s almost like long hair being platted, weaving together the different strands to form a recognisable, neatly constructed pattern of beauty.

Soon we’re seeing a young French-Canadian girl who is fascinated with Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) and grows up into an independent spirited woman Vivienne (Vicky Krieps) who falls in (love) with a Danish immigrant carpenter Olsen (Viggo Mortensen). They set up home on the outskirts of a town in the state of Nevada. She grows flowers and gets a job in the local saloon. The romance builds. “You’re more handy with every passing day” … right up to the moment Olsen decides to go off to fight in the Civil War.

Then the western aspect takes back control. Solly McLeod plays Weston Jeffries, the violent and untamed son of a local businessman. The mayor is crooked. The local judge administers justice through the medium of preaching.

For the period of the war, Olsen is off-screen, fittingly because this is a portrait of Vivienne and a vehicle that shows off Krieps’ character acting. Before and after – that’s not a spoiler given the open five minutes of the film – he’s a man of few words and unsentimental. The couple can almost converse by facial expression. Her smile melts his heart. His loyalty is tested. Violence begets violence. And the western urges finally overcome the film’s romantic notions.

While the runtime is long, the teasing out of the key moments in Vivienne and Olsen’s lives is fulfilling. The Dead Don’t Hurt is being screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre, The Avenue and Cineworld Belfast from Friday 7 June.

 

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Docs Ireland – a 6 day, 108 film, celebration of documentary filmmaking (18-23 June) #docsireland6

Coming up in a few weeks time will be 108 films packed into six days of Docs Ireland, a festival of international documentary film. Local talent from this island will be celebrated along with worldwide examples from a whole range of styles of documentary filmmaking.

Tuesday 18 June

The Flats // The opening night film promises to be a treat. Alessandra Celesia directed The Bookseller of Belfast, a 2012 film centred around John Clancy, a north Belfast man of letters who ran a second-hand bookshop in Smithfield and built a community around his passion for words. Celesia is a fabulous storyteller who can elevate the mundane to the memorable. Twelve years on, the filmmaker is the New Lodge, telling the story of tower-block dwellers whose lives continue to be impacted by how the Troubles devastated their neighbourhood. I’ll be there to find out if the Jolene featured in The Flats is the same Jolene who served up John’s fries in his local greasy spoon.

Wednesday 19 June

Two shorts by acclaimed broadcaster, documentary maker and musician David Hammond are being shown at noon at QUB: the playful Dusty Bluebells and Something to Write Home About (a meditation presented by Seamus Heaney). Another Hammond-directed film The Magic Fiddle is being screened on Friday 21 at noon in the Ulster Museum.

Thursday 20 June

I See a Darkness // A film essay that probes the historical relationship between photography, cinema and science using the lives and work of Irish chrono-photographer Lucien Bell, MIT professor and atomic test photographer Harold E Edgerton, and oceanographer/conservationalist Jacques Cousteau.

Home Invasion // An offbeat essay about the history of the doorbell.

Once Upon a Time in a Forest // Each generation lives with the consequences of it’s ancestor’s actions. A modern fairy tale in the enchanting embrace of a Finnish forest.

Saturday 22 June

Anatomy of the Cut // If you’re interested in non-fiction storytelling and the art of editing documentaries together, join a handful of editors in conversation with Mick Mahon (Gaza; I, Dolours; Nothing Compares) in the Black Box at lunchtime.

Hollywoodgate // Filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at spent a year observing the Taliban as they took over the Hollywood Gate complex (claimed to be a former Kabul CIA base) in the immediate aftermath of the US withgrawal from Afghanistan.

Sunday 23 June

The Ban // Roisin Agnew’s new film about British government’s ban on the voices of Sinn Féin and Irish republican and loyalist paramilitry representatives being used on televison and radio. Did the threat of terrorism justify censorship?

No Other Land // The festival closes with a film that follows a Palestinian activist who records the destruction of his region in the West Bank, with the help of an Israeli journalist who befriends him. Their across the divide friendship turns out to be unsettled and exposes divisions of security, freedom and living conditions.

Ahead of the main festival, it might also be worth catching The Moon Beneath the Water (Wednesday 12 June), a poetic trip full of magic realism through time and nature around Erto, one of the two villages in the Italian Alps that survived the Vajont Dam disaster on 9 October 1963. The landslide and flood killed almost 2,000 people, and destroyed five villages in the Piave valley, yet Erto and nearby Casso only sustained minor damage.

The full programme can be explored on the Docs Ireland website (and downloaded as a PDF).

Hoard – a soul-chilling coming-of-age debut about grief and neglect from Luna Carmoon (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 6 June)

Within 24 hours of watching the film Hoard, I had filled the recycling bin to the brim and was making a plan to deal with the plastic Ikea boxes overloaded with USB cables of varying shapes and sizes. It’s a deeply-affecting film that’s hard to shake off.

The first half hour of Luna Carmoon’s directorial debut is a haunting depiction of a single mum Cynthia and her daughter Maria living in a house that is beyond cluttered. Cynthia’s compulsion to hoard means she heads out at night to hoke through other people’s bins to find wonderful curiosities. As a result, Maria is perpetually tired in school, having spent the previous evening being wheeled around the neighbourhood in a shopping trolley along with the collectables. No teacher ever thinks to stop and ask why she’s tired before scolding her.

Cynthia believes that her treasures are a sign of her devotion towards Maria. Vivid performances from Hayley Squires and Lily-Beau Leach firmly establish the bond between mother and daughter. Little baby rats and the sometimes-illusive household ferret add warmth to the squalor. Every aspect of their lives is obsessive: with a family song or rhyme for every occasion, long duration screams, and vivid imaginations. Hoard is a vision of what happens when someone loses control, with the devastating consequences playing out for those close to them.

Nanu Segal’s stunning cinematography makes a playful scene under a blanket feel like something straight out of Macbeth. Everything screams of the cast having a blast filming the scenes. While Maria’s homelife is distressing, much more upsetting is a man exposing himself to the young girl as she walks home one night. That moment allows the audience to begin to build a hierarchy of neglect and abuse that will be updated in the remaining ninety minutes.

The transition from young Maria to adolescent Maria (Saura Lightfoot Leon) is beautifully handled. Now living in care, we watch the vulnerable teenager adapt to how her foster mum Michelle (Samantha Spiro) runs a household. Watch out for mirroring in the costume palettes. An extended visit by a former foster child Michael (Joseph Quinn) disrupts and thoroughly disturbs as Maria finds ways to reconnect with her birth mother while growing up into adulthood.

Over two hours long, Hoard slightly overstays its welcome. The brilliance of the taut opening setup contrasts with the sprawling analysis of grief and self-harm. But it’s a coming-of-age film that will chill your soul and preoccupy your thinking for days to come.

Hoard is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 6 June.

 

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Chronicles of Long Kesh – a harrowing dip into painful history (GBL Productions at Grand Opera House until Saturday 8 June)

Belfast is awash with harrowing theatre at the moment. Over in the Lyric, Keith Singleton leads a cast who are delivering stellar performances in Prime Cut’s The Pillowman. Tonight, it was the turn of the Grand Opera House with a restaging of Martin Lynch’s 2009 play Chronicles of Long Kesh.

Over two and half hours we’re reminded of the violent events on the streets of this place, carried out by – and in the name of – paramilitaries and state forces, as well as examples of the violent events inside prison, specifically the Maze Long Kesh, again carried out by paramilitaries and officers.

At the start, Oscar is the Commanding Officer in his compound. Marty Maguire revisits this showman with his great voice and staggering falsetto, bringing to life the upbeat character who drills the other men on the wing. The contrast between the beginning and the moment Oscar loses his mojo is stark.

Toot was interned – wrong place, wrong time, though he’s no saint – the first time he ends up behind bars. Gerard McCabe has great fun with this soft-headed clampit who has a fixation with seagulls and provides much of the light in an otherwise shady story. Shaun Blaney’s Eamon is drawn further and further into the republican movement, eventually ending up as a ‘blanket man’ and considers volunteering for the hunger strike. He also teaches Toot to read.

Jo Donnelly excels as the loyalist supremo Thumper, a man who misses the boat on getting an education and ultimately fritters away the opportunities that might have turned his life around. Bob Dylan-loving loyalist Hank is played by Warren McCook. But the real drama is always over in the republican compounds.

Lisa May co-directs Chronicles and her stylised frozen action choreography along with James McFetridge’s focussed lighting allows prison officer Freddie to step forward and provide the context – for much is needed as we speed through history – of who the characters are and what’s happening inside and outside the prison. Like all the characters, Jimmy Doran’s Freddie life is affected by what happens at work. The darkness of the black set and props echoes the depression that falls over the inmates and their officers.

A long first act reaches its crescendo with the beginning of the first hunger strike. After the interval, the drama switched from stage to the stalls, with phone calls galore, someone answering a call from their taxi firm, taking a photograph with their phone’s flash on, and constant loud side conversations with deep voices that distracted from key moments on stage. Lots of shushing from those seated around them was ignored: in fact, this all came from a group who had moved forward to empty seats at the interval and were joking about having been shushed on the way out. If only the Grand Opera House had a slammer to throw them in …

The second act is caught in a conundrum. Early on, a lot of Tamla Motown music is used – all performed with beautiful a cappella harmonies by the cast with only the beat of a stick on the wooden set to accompany them – to inject pace back into the performances. But the oppressive events inside and outside the prison mean that even music can’t lift everyone’s mood in the audience.

The cast’s rendition of Long Time Coming after the republican inmates hear about the death of Bobby Sands is a beautiful moment of theatre, absent of romanticism, but thick with grief, loss, pain and pity.

While Martin Lynch’s play doesn’t teach us anything new about the Troubles or the prison system, and it defiantly ignores victims to focus on the experience of the perpetrators – most of whom also qualify as victims in one sense or another – it does creatively mark a passage of history that should not be forgotten. Like the heavy black boxes that form the set, the constant sense of separation that rains down on the prisoners and officer Freddie can shift around but can never leave the stage.

Chronicles of Long Kesh continues its run at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 8 June before continuing its NI tour. 

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