Lesbian Space Princess // Ulster Says No: The Year of Disorder – Belfast Film Festival #bff25

From the blurb in the Belfast Film Festival programme, it was clear that Thursday evening’s Australian animation Lesbian Space Princess had a lot of creativity behind it: “Straight White Maliens” kidnapping the ex-girlfriend of a royal princess who sets off on a quest to get her back. The concept of “maliens” is genius.

The witty script throws in a lot of clever dialogue, along with universal observations around sexism and reflections on lesbian experience in relationships. White men complain about once being the “most powerful beings in the universe … but we’ve been forgotten”. Their “chick magnet” did not function as intended. Queer love does not run smooth.

Feature debut writers/directors Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese have deserved utter confidence their material is good enough that it only needs to be said once. (Office Politics, cough.) It’s all very tongue in cheek, so don’t be surprised to find a Royal Pussy living on the “famously hard to find” planet Clitopolis.

Despite being a lesbian whose coming of age has publicly stalled, self doubt-laden Saira (voiced by Shabana Azeez) steps out of her comfort zone to fly off in a Problematic Ship (brought to life with thick sarcasm by Richard Roxburgh) to rescue the much cooler Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel). A former gay-pop idol Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran) lends more than a helping hand.

The animation is psychedelic and contributes to the surreal nature of the film. The stereotypes are well drawn. The original songs (Varghese) are whimsical yet beautiful. Profound commentary is wrapped up in quirky scenes. A tiny penis is (frankly deservedly and comically) harmed in the making of this film.

The small audience in The Avenue Cinema made a lot of noise as we chuckled at the gags. (It was my first visit to the upmarket cinema and I still haven’t got over the table lights staying on, people ordering skinny chips and mushroom pizzas to their seats, and the sound of people chewing throughout the first fifteen minutes of the film.)

When its festival run finally concludes, I’d hope that the riotous and inventive gem Lesbian Space Princess will return to somewhere like the Queen’s Film Theatre sometime next year.

Saturday afternoon saw the screening of Ulster Says No: The Year of Disorder. It’s the product of a partnership between the UTV Archive and Northern Ireland Screen. Director Evan Marshall combed through two years of UTV news reports to craft a 90 minute that charts the build-up and eventual decline of loyalist and unionist protests and unrest in reaction to the London and Dunlin governments signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

It’s the mid-1980s and Dennis Taylor was potting snooker balls while Barry McGuigan was knocking out opponents in the boxing ring. The Sinclair C5 was launched to a sceptical public. The two governments hoped that their agreement would foster an atmosphere where peace could grow. The launch wasn’t met with raised eyebrows, but active protest by loyalists and unionists (and rejection by Sinn Féin who saw it as “the formal recognition of the partition of Ireland”).

Strangely I’m more aware of the Falklands conflict in 1982 than this period of local history, despite growing up in a house where Good Morning Ulster was the soundtrack to breakfast. 

We watch politicians warn that violence is inevitable one night, only to condemn the actions of people they distance themselves from the next morning. A picture builds up of political anger that was channelled into mobilising members of the public out onto the streets. Violence broke out at the edges of every mass rally in Belfast. Unionist politicians blame republicans and the NIO’s “dirty tricks department” for incidents of loyalist violence.

We see the owner of SS Moore inspecting the damage to his Chichester Street premises which was looted for golf balls to throw at the police. (The sports store permanently closed this week.)

There is much talk of “quislings” (enemy collaborators), a term which has fallen out of the political lexicon. Fresh faced politicians who are now veterans are seen at every major event: curly haired Jim Wells, Nigel Dodds, Peter and Iris Robinson, Jim Allister, Sammy Wilson, Jeffrey Donaldson with a terrible bowl haircut. But it’s the twin figures of Ian Paisley and Jim Molyneaux who provide the drum beat of the 18 months of fevered protest. Paisley calls the Secretary of State Tom King a “yellow bellied coward”.

The DUP leader opines that “this is a war … this is no garden party or picnic … This could come to hand-to-hand fighting .. we’re on the verge of a civil war in Northern Ireland” would also call for the “organisation” and “mobilisation” of forces opposed to the Agreement. Later, loyalist leaders would say there would be “no violence in this phase of the protest” but warnings were also given that unionists needed to be “prepared to go to violence” if necessary to stand up to the continued implementation of the Agreement.

Alongside the backdrop of ‘ordinary’ attacks and murder in The Troubles, this new set of politically-motivated unionist events are serious – Keith White was shot in the face with a plastic bullet and died in hospital on 14 April 1986 – but aspects of what unfolds is also pretentious and unserious.

Unionist politicians take over the phone switchboard in Parliament Buildings and barricade themselves in, even intercepting a call from a Cabinet minister to a Belfast colleague. From their vantage point outside the building, the camera crew’s microphone picks up the sound of the internal door being broken down.

John McMichael (Ulster Democratic Party and prominent figure in the UDA) swerves reporters’ questions but indirectly makes clear that violence may be the only option. There is talk of “laying down lives rather than surrender”. The 400-strong border village of Clontibret is invaded on 7 August 1986 and “held” for around half an hour. unarmed Gardaí were beaten up.

Peter Robinson was arrested and eventually fined 17,500 punts. Peter Robinson is also seen among those wearing a red beret in an Ulster Resistance parade in Portadown. The end credits note that guns imported by Ulster Resistance were used in many murders and attacks in subsequent years.

While the politicians are most often seen and heard on screen, UTV journalist Ivan Little’s reporting stands out. His rhetorical flourishes provide a lot of colour and prick the pomposity of some incidents. The hanging of mayoral chains on a barbed wire fence erected at Stormont Castle signifying the “death of democracy” was “somewhat undermined when [they were] retrieved 15 minutes later”.

The footage from the time was captured in a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio. Stylistically, it’s unfortunate that the captions sometimes ignore those boundaries and extend into the black bars at the side.

Editor Paul McClintock does a fine job in cutting down reports to pick out the most salient points. While journalism is only ever “the first rough draft of history”, these clips from the UTV archive paint a picture of the mood and depth of feeling in late 1985 and throughout 1986. School history and politics teachers will be keen to get access to the snappy reprise of this important period.

Marjorie’s Dead – mixing laughs and legend in this tale of a woman who lived once, buried twice (Dark Forest Theatre at Grand Opera House until Saturday 8 November)

Marjorie McCall’s husband is the local doctor. John wasn’t able to properly diagnose or cure the sudden illness that cut her young life short. The undertakers don’t quite finish the job, leaving the coffin above ground and covered in an eighteenth-century tarpaulin. They’ll come back later after a few scoops at the local hostelry. In the meantime, graverobbers fancy their chances selling her wedding ring.

Starting at the wake house – quite a familiar device in Belfast theatre! – the fourth wall-breaking Marjorie’s Dead soon unravels the backstory of how this woman ended up with an overbearing husband who didn’t share her vision of an island steeped in folklore and wonder. She believes in spirits, rejoices in the beautifully rich landscapes, marvels at legends. Yet she’s about to become a legend herself: the Lurgan woman who was buried twice.

Dark Forest Theatre love lifting the lid on family secrets.Nathan Martin’s take on the premature burial of Marjorie McCall weaves her story around that of Oisín and Tir na nÓg. Through her astute brother Cian (played by Martin) we hear how Marjorie came to be lying in a rural forest burial plot. Through her logical and disrespectful husband John (Tiarnán McCarron) we understand how she became trapped in a marriage with a monster.

Thursday’s matinee audience did a good job of picking up the social commentary and there was much tutting and sharp intakes of breath in moments when John took decisions on behalf of Marjorie (like deciding to marry her, his proposal lacking a question mark) and when he revealed the chillier side to his character. And there were laughs when truth was spoken:

“Be careful Mr McCall, you’re speaking to a Lurgan woman!”

The nature of this three-handed play requires Annina Noelle Watton to deliver a series of lengthy monologues, alone with just a couple of beautiful trees and some stumps to work with. While there’s a lot of material to get through, and there’s a lot of attention taken to creating and preserving the sense of atmosphere, parts of the delivery would benefit from being less rushed and given more space to breathe. Marjorie interprets her life against the unfolding tale of Oisín (differentiated from the main action by being performed stage right) which gives depth to the thin details known about the circumstances of her life and deaths.

Marjorie’s Dead mixes laughs and legend. McCarron and Martin (who also directs) make a good comedy double act. Watton is solid as the titular character, although there would be room to ramp up the more bohemian side to the character to emphasise her otherworldly nature. The short run in the Grand Opera House studio space sold well and finishes this evening. Dark Forest Theatre continues to demonstrate its talent in relating tales of the unexpected.

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Underscore // Housejackers – two feature films enhanced by Phil Kieran’s scores – Belfast Film Festival #bff25

Two very different films celebrated their world premieres at Belfast’s Odeon Cinema last night as part of Belfast Film Festival. One thing linked them: banging soundtracks from Phil Kieran.

Underscore is a genre busting feature, an experimental film, part poem, part guided meditation, and part cautionary tale about the state of the Earth. Real and special effects landscapes and creatures are fused together. It’s ages before the back of a man appears on screen, and local audiences will immediately recognise Granda Joe Granda Aodhán (Ian McElhinney) from any angle.

One of the film’s concepts will be familiar to fans of Star Trek: Discovery with its ‘spore drive’ taking advantage of the ‘mycelial network’. In Underscore, Laoise (Jessica Reynolds) must educate her grandfather about the mushroom network that allows fungi talk to each other. The film is a cry for people to better connect themselves with the Earth before it’s too late.

Shots jump from macro to micro. What feel like a solid animated structures morph into other forms and then back again. It’s like weaving through a three-dimensional fractal. One of the most sophisticated scenes comes in the shape of feathery fish. The biggest wow moment comes when the fish dissolve into a pastoral scene shot from above. By that stage of the film, the trancelike music and visuals have worked their magic and you barely notice the transition until it’s happened.

Reading that last paragraph without having seen the film may make it sound like a cinema full of people willing took a particularly vivid trip courtesy of some magic mushrooms. No mushrooms were harmed in the viewing of the film. But coming just a couple of hours after attending a heartbreaking funeral, attending the screening of Underscore did prove to be a calming and therapeutic intervention.

It will be interesting to see where Underscore goes. It would be perfect to watch wearing a virtual reality headset, although you need the big bass subs and surround sound of a proper cinema to do Kieran’s music justice and become absorbed in the mood. It might also work projected onto a curved screen that you could walk into the middle of and become consumed by Glenn Marshall’s visuals and the soundtrack. Watch this space to see how Hugh McGrory’s masterpiece develops.

The second premiere had to be switched to a larger screen to accommodate the strong interest. Housejackers watches the chaos wreaked on a student flat as Jerdy invites himself to stay with his foster brother.

While the flat is populated with some predictable stereotypes, the characters are (mostly) sympathetically written. Shauna is ditzy and has her own line in ukelele electronic music (played by Saorlaoith Brady). Raymond (Finnian Garbutt) works in the local filling station shop and is secretly studying for his GCSE Maths exam. Lucy (Eubha Akilade) is a hard-working and kind-hearted medical student who mostly has Raymond’s back. Bobby (Ryan Dylan) is the unlikeable posh fun-sponge who looks down his nose at Raymond’s less refined background.

Actor John Travers regularly wows audiences on the stage with his brash delivery of one-person theatre shows that are full of energy. He’s perfectly cast as Jerdy, the driving force of the film. Jerdy could start a party in an empty room. But one glare could also kill the mood at any celebration. He’s a tad younger than Raymond, but the pair were fostered around the same time by ‘Nan’. They’re good company for each other but might potentially lead each other astray. They may not be blood relatives, but in the past they were as close as brothers in criminal escapades for which Jerdy served time but Raymond escaped and took full advantage of his second chance. Now Jerdy is back and is winding Raymond back into his destructive orbit.

The cast turn in performances that match the intensity of the story arc. Director Rian Lennon and screenwriters David Kline and Brian McGleenon gently demonstrate Raymond’s insecurities to the audience in contrast to Jerdy’s extreme heart-on-sleeve unfiltered personality that bursts into all his scenes. The filling station is the location most steeped in humour, yet also the venue for the most brutal violence.

Housejackers certainly provoked lots of conversations on the way out of the screening. The wider fostering network may well recognise the pressures Nan is under and the issues she raises. Raymond’s innumeracy is very credible. The film doesn’t judge and never makes fun of Gerdy and Raymond’s circumstances. But is the depiction of looked after children in foster care growing up to lead a life of crime accurate even at one end of the spectrum? Those behaviours definitely exist across society, whether living with birth parents or not.

Confidently directed and beautifully filmed and edited, Housejackers is a quality product. Its future journey through distribution, release and marketing will be interesting to follow. My bet is that it’s more suited to a streaming platform than the cinema given its lack of mainstream appeal. Time will tell.

Two very different films that show off the talent and creativity of Northern Ireland cast and crew. And still three days to go in this year’s Belfast Film Festival.

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Office Politics // Fior Di Latte – an evening of men behaving badly – Belfast Film Festival #bff25

Tuesday evening at Belfast Film Festival featured a duet of movies all about men behaving badly.

North coast tragi-sex-comedy-part-horror Office Politics was screened in the Belfast Odeon cinema and examines the behaviour of three men who staff a tax return advisory company. Self-obsessed Lawrence (played by Neill Virtue) is ill-mannered towards his exasperated pregnant wife (Jenny Marshall), perennially turns up late, and tells appallingly off-colour jokes. David (Gary McElkerney) is obsessed with getting his long-suffering partner (Joanne O’Neill) to “talk dirty” to him. George (Michael Killen) is quickly described on-screen as a “Walter Mitty” character who claims to have fought in Vietnam (despite being the youngest of the three misogynistic degenerates), takes everything very literally, shows signs of having OCD, and struggles to find the right words to say to the feisty waitress in the local restaurant (Christine Clark) who has the hots for him. All three have a torrid fascination with – though little experience of – anal sex.

The trio leave a wake of disruption and disrespect behind them like an HR cluster bomb. To emphasise his absolute lack of common decency, Lawrence bullies George – eating his cookies and snaffling his milk – while David tries to feed advice to improve his younger colleague’s faltering love life. They’re the kind of men who never grew up and race to the window each morning to see a woman in yoga pants walk by, and refer to a woman with many children potentially from different fathers as “machine gun fanny”.

Aside from the office workers, the director and screenwriter Neill Virtue (who also plays Lawrence) throws a few more ne’er-do-wells into the fray, including one ignoramus who calls the waitress “sugar tits” and rightly gets clobbered around the head. The comedy makes little attempt to be sophisticated. An early dance sequence promises a sense of the surreal that isn’t particularly followed through. The element of horror is entirely down to the recurring actions of George which I won’t spoil. The skillful editing, bouncing between parallel locations and storylines, along with Richard Brown’s playful score lift a number of scenes and provide colour in the midst of simple sets.  

Does Northern Ireland need – or deserve – a sex-mad comedy with puerile humour? I’m not sure, but it’s certainly got one. Despite my misgivings, it certainly compares well to The Unholylands which has been screened daily for weeks in Omniplex and Movie House cinemas. Office Politics is a real labour of love, with a short (probably a better format to contain the three coworkers’ mannerisms) produced before Covid and the feature version finally making it to the big screen in 2025. 

While the men are beyond redemption, the objectified women largely grow in confidence, learn to stand up for themselves, and – by the film’s half way point – begin to take back control and emasculate their doltish partners. A final scene is stolen by a grinning pre-schooler in an attempt to give the film a happy ending. Burying the three office workers up to their heads in the sandy beach at high tide might have been a more fitting conclusion and would have cemented the horror vibe.

A fifteen minute race across the city got me over to see Charlotte Ercoli’s feature debut Fior Di Latte being screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre. When struggling playwright Mark (Tim Heidecker) loses the inspiring scent of his comfort blanket (a pair of boxer shorts over which perfume was spilt in his suitcase on a trip to Florence, Italy), he desperately tries to recreate the smell and sense of being valued from the holiday. This is complicated by the presence of Francesca (Marta Pozzan), now lodging in his cluttered New York apartment and the subject of his obsession.

A collector of mostly faux (and sometimes unpleasant) cinema memorabilia, Mark’s ability to relate to women is almost as deeply flawed as his ability to live up to his job as a writer. A looming deadline to produce a draft script leaves him in a panic and his writing method is shown to be all madness, The loss of his prized rag sends him on a mission across the city to find precious ingredients for a master perfumer (Kevin Kline) to recreate his preferred scent.

A strong whiff of the aroma triggers hallucinogenic flashbacks to moments when Francesca has been kind or praised Mark. Her on/off attraction towards rude and thankless Mark is troubling, and feels like a type of Stockholm Syndrome. His utterance of “take me as I am or you scram” could equally have been said by some of the men in Office Politics. 

Ercoli has a much larger budget than Virtue, and the attention to detail in her sets gives the scenes a lot of depth that is understandably missing in the north coast movie. Cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis liberal use of wide-angle lenses gives an other-worldly feel to some scenes. The perfumer’s Heath Robinson machine to blend his ingredients adds to the sense of whimsy along with Andy Street’s score. On two occasions – far too few – characters burst into song … reminding viewers that Mark claims to be a lyricist as well as a writer.

Whereas Office Politics’ menfolk are totally objectionable, Ercoli’s Mark is allowed to veer between pathetic and creepy, written quite sympathetically as a man in the middle of a long breakdown. It’s a stronger approach and plays to Heidecker’s considerable comic talent, leaving Fior Di Latte’s audience wondering whether Mark could salvage a decent personality and a career from the mess he has created.

Belfast Film Festival continues until Saturday 8 November.

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Lucky Lu – a man reliant on the gig economy comes close to losing everything – Belfast Film Festival #bff25

Less than a month ago, Queen’s Film Theatre screened the superb Souleymane’s Story about a Guinean refugee who works as a food delivery rider in Paris while waiting for the outcome of his protracted asylum claim. Director Boris Lojkine’s tale (cowritten with Delphine Agut) is one of being taken advantage of at every corner, and ends up focussing on the structural problems with the French asylum process and how that drives migrants into a shadow economy where profiles on delivery apps are rented and more than half the takings are withheld. Parts of the lead actor’s own experience of coming to France were written into the script and the success of the film seems linked to Abou Sangaré being invited by the French government to apply – his fourth time of trying – for residency.

Lloyd Lee Choi’s feature debut Lucky Lu covers a lot of similar territory. This time, Lu Jia Cheng has a visa to work in the US. But his original restaurant business failed and he’s been forced to work as a delivery rider to raise the funds to rent an apartment that will allow his wife and daughter to fly from Asia to join him in New York.

Over two days we witness his entire livelihood collapsing like a takeaway falling through the bottom of a thin plastic bag and the food spreading over the pavement, unable to be recovered into something edible. Lu falls onto a catastrophe curve that only goes one direction. While his family are in mid-air, his e-bike is stolen in the first of a series of losses. No bike means no rented profile on the delivery company’s app, no bike deposit, no income stream, no deposit and rent for the new flat, and soon his physical health is joining his poor mental wellbeing in the gutter. Lu’s life seems to have gone beyond a point of no return into a wasteland beyond precarious.

Chang Chen portrays an utterly broken man who doesn’t know how he’ll get through to the end of the day, never mind find a way of surviving the next. He veers between desolation and depression, with a gaunt face reflecting his undereating. “I’ll pay you back soon – I give you my word” won’t pay an apartment deposit in the morning. People let him down, yet he carries the deep shame of having let other people down in the past.

Less than a day after the film begins, his young daughter Yaya (Carabelle Manna Wei) arrives in New York and the film pivots to experience America through her eyes. Out of the mouth of babes comes many home truths. Her finely tuned emotional intelligence senses that father Lu is not well. The pair spend a full day together, tearing across the city almost heroically trying to raise funds that will surely never meet his immediate needs.

The people Lu meets fall into two categories: those who are tough but end up showing him limited amounts of kindness, and those who are just out to rip him off. Sometimes it’s hard to determine which category characters will fall into. And the challenge to Lu is which camp he will fall into as he discovers the easiest way to make money is by stealing bikes and inflicting pain on other people for his own meagre reward. At one point little Yaya offers a way of making some easy cash and it challenges Lu to consider whether to drag her into his dangerous pursuits.

A glimmer of hope – a physical ray of light – is proffered at the film’s conclusion. But it seems like a false promise. Crawling out of one hole will only lead to landing in another pothole a day or two later. Can the presence of his wife and the restoring love of his daughter materially change the family’s luck?

Lucky Lu is an incredible first feature written and directed by Lloyd Lee Choi. It combines well rounded characterisation with some superb acting to go beyond documenting the gig economy’s exploitation of overseas workers to explore to what lengths people under pressure will go to survive.

Another great screening as part of Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 8 November.

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It Was Just An Accident // The Secret Agent // A Private Life – Belfast Film Festival #bff25

Over eight hours on Sunday afternoon and evening, the Belfast Film Festival whisked me away to authoritarian regimes in Iran (contemporary) and Brazil (1977), and a psychanalyst failing as an amateur detective in France.

It Was Just An Accident begins with a family on a late-night car journey who ‘meet’ a dog on the dark road. The driver has a distinctive limp, and he’s recognised while asking for help for his broken down car. Before long, there’s a drugged body in the back of a van, along with a bride, her groom, her wedding photographer, another local man, and a shovel.

A group of Iranian dissidents think that they have stumbled upon the man they nicknamed ‘Peg Leg’ who tortured them. His identity takes time to prove. His fate takes even longer to decide.

Part road trip movie, part exploration of the merits of justice and revenge, It Was Just An Accident is often droll, sometimes farcical, at times emotionally wrought, but always measured. In the face of death, there’s also room for new life, a modicum of compassion, and a bribetastic mentality. The drawn-out plot together with the group’s diffidence reflect the moral struggle of sinking to the level of a torturer or retaining the upper hand without getting a satisfactory result.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi has been imprisoned multiple times and was banned from making films. He continues to work as a guerilla moviemaker, without permission and using small casts and minimal crew. His take on a society that lives in fear of state authorities is brave and informed. Even without this backstory, It Was Just An Accident is a classy piece of screenwriting, cinematography and filmmaking.

The Secret Agent heads back to the late 1970s and the Brazilian military dictatorship. Former teacher Armando (known by the alias Marcelo for much of the film) is on the run as a political refugee. He takes shelter in an apartment block run by a 77-year-old landlord in the city of Recife. But the safe house doesn’t provide all the protection he needs when a contract is taken out on him and comes under an active threat.

Cut into this sepia tale of living under threat are occasional scenes with modern-day researchers listening to old interviews from the resistance network who are able to piece together Armando’s fate. Watch out for the conjoined cats, and a missing leg which performs some neat karate moves (a distraction story planted in the media rather than the film swerving into magic realism).

While the grindhouse style is a strength, The Secret Agent’s unhurried (ie, monstrous) runtime (over two and a half hours) isn’t quite justified by the on-screen storytelling. Yet Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film still manages to be a vivid insight into a terrible period of Brazil’s history.

Sandwiched between these two stories of corruption and violence was A Private Life. Jodie Foster plays Lilian, an American psychoanalyst in Paris. Not all her clients are happy. One wants a refund for a decade or more of therapy after a simple trip to a cheap hypnotist helped him quit smoking the same day. Another client is dead, presumed to have taken her life. But Lilian wonders if there’s a darker reason for her death. Together with her optometrist ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), she delves into her dead client’s husband’s life and affairs.

As a fan of the MiniDisc format, it’s of particularly note that Lilian archives her client interviews using portable MiniDisc recorders. While Sony stopped selling MD devices in 2013, they only ceased production of blank MiniDiscs in January this year.

A Private Life feels like a rare opportunity to see Foster playing a comedy role, and only her third French-language film. The amateur sleuths aren’t afraid of bin-hoking or larceny. They get embroiled in plenty of false leads. But Lilian and Gabriel’s bonhomie and overthinking approach means that this 103-minute-long film could cheerfully have been extended.

A great Sunday at Belfast Film Festival which runs until Saturday 8 November.

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Faust-ish – is a deal with the devil the only way out of this politician’s #CashForMash scandal? (Big Telly Theatre Company in Lyric Theatre as part of Belfast International Arts Festival until Sunday 9 November) #BIAF25

The 2025 Belfast International Arts Festival programme has included some brilliant theatre productions, but they may have saved the best until last. Big Telly’s Faust-ish is a fresh, contemporary and invigorating production with a consistent aesthetic that extends across the script, the acting, the movement, the set, the lights, the sound, and every aspect of the show.

The gathering audience find themselves witnessing a hastily convened press conference with the local Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Farming who quite categorically states “I will not resign” despite the police investigation into the ‘Cash For Mash’ scandal. (Current criticisms of several Executive Ministers and calls for votes of no confidence strongly resonate, although there are no financial allegations in these real-world challenges.)

We next join the now former minister Faith Hughes in Black Arch Cave where she’s knocking back miniature bottles of solace, pouring out a circle of salt, and chanting an incantation in a bid to summon the devil and do a deal to restore her reputation and regain power. Not quite the ‘meaningful change’ she has been campaigning for, but she’ll do just anything that’s asked of her if it’ll resurrect her career. The problem for Faith is that she may not have much of a soul to sell. (Classically, Faust makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.)

Dressed in a red power suit, Jo Donnelly portrays a ferocious political operator whose personal relationships are tertiary to her concerns to exercise power and cling onto it. (Donnelly previously appeared as resigned Prime Minister Theresa May in Rosemary Jenkinson’s 2019 Mayday! tragi-comedy.) Even when her chips are down – or about to be toasted in the fires of hell – Faith still works every angle to exploit matters for her advantage. Double down and never quit seems to be her mantra.

To help Faith understand who she is dealing with, Lucifer (a masterful Chris Robinson) takes the shape of her ultimate nemesis ... a senior civil servant accompanied by his resourceful junior underlings. But will he play by the rules when up against such a fierce negotiator as the cancelled politician?

Big Telly enjoys turning theatre on its head. In the Lyric’s studio venue, curtains rise up from the floor to help create the set. The tech desk sits to stage right while some props and live sound effects spring from stage left. The devils’ costumes are beige (with Lucifer getting neat pockets on the outside of his trousers), part of the production’s stripped back canvass onto which an examination of power is projected. Much of the lighting (Sarah Jane Shiels) is handheld, creating novel and evocative shadow effects.

Emma Rose Creaner slips on a red jacket to become Wendy, personal assistant to Faith, morphing into an uber-ambitious colleague who slowly amps up her megalomaniacal tendencies as she navigates the opportunity caused by Faith’s fall from grace. Creaner also portrays Faith’s daughter Aoife who has been sidelined as a terrible inconvenience and embarrassment by her mother and is bullied at school (as one nearby audience members knew from personal experience).

Claire Lamont completes the strong cast of daemons, and plays adolescent Faith’s guardian and ‘The Way’, a character who holds Lucifer to account. Sashaying her way across the stage, Lamont exudes joy and delight in many of the moments of beautiful movement which feel very natural and unforced that have been created by director Zoe Seaton and choreographer Sarah Johnston. The miming of typing is both fun and frenzied. An argument physically moves across the stage from side to side as we watch the two protagonists try to turn the table on each other.

Nicola McCartney’s deeply satirical script takes the view that the public don’t – or no longer – expect high standards of those serving in public office. It’s full of political lingo and a riot of ideas and analysis of how power corrupts. By the time we reach the final quarter of the 70-minute show, it feels like the shark has almost been jumped when a Mars-bound tech CEO Ella Tusk appears (although the gag about “interplanetary salad bars” is almost worth it).

Politicians are easy targets for cynical playwrights. Yet politicians are a focal point for how we scrutinise society and how the state impacts our lives. They demand and deserve considerable media attention, and can sway everyday debate and sentiment on subjects many of wouldn’t have realised we needed a strong opinion on. And politicians – a proportion of them – have a record of not always behaving with the integrity the role warrants (even if public expectations have been dampened).

But McCartney’s script does hint that politicians aren’t the only people who might sell their soul to the devil. And the scenes between Faith and her daughter Aoife are some of the most poignant moments in the play as nature faces nurture and Faith must decide whether she has passed on her experience of being abandoned by her mother to the next generation. That’s quite universal amid the throwing of shade towards elected representatives!

The atmosphere created by the lights and set are augmented by Garth McConaghie’s soundscape which runs throughout almost all of the performance (the few moments when it’s silent really stand out) with musical themes that accent Faith’s behaviour and struggles as well as reverb effects that emphasise when the action has returned to the cave.

Monologues, arguments, flashbacks, a song and dance number: Faust-ish throws a lot of different elements into the mixing bowl and together they create a very tasty performance. There are puns aplenty, both verbal and musical.

Faust-ish is technically ambitious. It’s quite mad. Yet even in its most outlandish and unexpected moments, you still get drawn into the scenes through the quality of the different creative elements working together in perfect harmony.

Race to get a ticket for Faust-ish. It runs in the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 9 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. And don’t forget to bring a torch.

Photo credit: Neil Harrison Photography 

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The Musicians of Bremen Live! – a riot of colour and music as four animals learn to work together (Cahoots NI and Segerstrom Center for the Arts as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF25

Attending a performance of The Musicians of Bremen Live! feels like being part a live-action version of a much-loved children’s book. A hen, a mule, a coyote and a bobcat find themselves thrown into a mission to return some lost musical instruments to the big city in the west coast of the US. Along the way, there are human, animal and topological dangers to avoid, and plenty of strains and stresses amongst the diverse group of characters.

Charles Way’s take on the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale ably adapts the original plot points and refines the sense that the diverse troupe of animals have to first become comfortable listening to themselves and then to each other before they can act in harmony to live out their shared ambitions.

The colourful quartet features Ruffles the effervescent glass-half-full ideas-factory hen (“she’s for singin’ not for eatin’”) played by Philippa O’Hara. Christina Nelson brings to life the old curmudgeonly mule who isn’t afraid to get on her high horse and wiggle her ass and who is unfailingly taken for granted while having fought hard for her freedom. Making their entrance through the audience are the chaps-wearing howling coyote (Kellee Broadway) and a bobcat who never wants to be kept in the shade (Pepa Duarte).

Narrating the tale and providing the live soundtrack are Chubby Jones and Dizzy Dexter (aka composers Kyron Bourke and Padraig Dooney). The musical styles almost cross genres mid-song with moments of jazz, gospel, honky-tonk, musical theatre, blues and pop. If you’re not tapping your foot by the time I’ve Got a Friend in the North comes round, you’ll have succumbed during the starry rendition of There’s Water on the Other Side and the later Hold Onto Each Other.

Diana Ennis has gone to town with the costumes, with feathery accessories for Ruffles the hen and deep pannier bags for the mule. An upright piano is the only permanent prop on the circular stage (which also supports Cahoot’s other festival show Unlocking Sherlock). Simon Bond’s lighting effects help involve the audience by extending the atmosphere into the tiered seating in the shopping centre venue.

At times there’s so much going on with four animals bickering – or “gnarlin’” as the straight-talkin’ mule might say – along with the narrators’ vocals that the storytelling is lost in the melee. The abandonment of the pledge to return the instruments is skipped over in a heartbeat, but that’s easily forgiven when the band reach their destination.

Towards the end of the hour-long show, there’s a gorgeous ballad City That Gleams featuring Ruffles. O’Hara’s soaring vocal quality is reminiscent of Whitney Houston with a much higher range. Broadway riffs off the catchy melodies as the foursome morph from four individual animal crooners to a close harmony group. Before long – spoiler alert – we enter the psychedelic Wibble Wobble Club for a closing medley with a riot of colour and musical styles. Watch out for the hip hop-tastic mule who no longer seems so long in the tooth!

Questions of valuing the other and playing to your strengths while learning to look out for each other’s needs are universal. Conquering fears and sharing the load are much-needed traits in the US, the UK and beyond. There’s a lot packed into the show, and while the youngest audience members (suitable got ages 5+) may be transfixed by the colour, sounds and animal characterisations, the older members of Saturday afternoon’s audience were in kinks at some of the dialogue.

The Musicians of Bremen Live! was created and produced by Cahoots NI and Segerstrom Center for the Arts. It’s Northern Ireland premier is part of Belfast International Arts Festival. The short (sold out) run finished on Sunday 2 November in Cityside Retail Park.

Photo credit: Melissa Gordon/Gorgeous Photography (from the original US run of the production) 

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Unlocking Sherlock – learning to ask the right questions (Cahoots NI as part of Belfast International Arts Festival until Sunday 2 November) #BIAF25

Cahoots NI have a core roster of talented performers who frequently pop up in their new shows, so it’s good to see magician Caolan McBride back in centre stage. He proved his mathematical mettle in the Covid-era online production of The University of Wonder and Imagination, and he’s back this week in the company’s Cityside Retail Park venue.

Unlocking Sherlock is a new show about learning to ask the right questions … not what seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but questions to which the answer will reveal something new about the problem you face. (A method that the politicians sitting on NI Assembly Committees would do well to practise.)

The vehicle for this endeavour is Sherlock Holmes, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s huge catalogue of stories providing fruitful fodder. A series of interconnected stories and illusions that build up to a final reveal. Humour abounds and the audience become gently involved. Objects vanish into thin air. Cards appear on demand. People are chosen. Numbers are selected. And always, even if we have to wait, the answer is in plain sight.

Whether, like me, you overthink what you’re seeing and try to figure out how it happens – I smugly explained one of the simpler sleights of hand to the befuddled audience member beside me, only for the method to be revealed to the audience minutes later as part of the plot! – or simply sit back and enjoy being baffled and bewildered.

Sitting to the sides of the circular stage are The Baker Street Irregulars, with sultry crooner Kyron Bourke on piano and extravert Padraig Dooney on a digital wind synth. They accompany Caolan’s storytelling with their original music and whimsical improv songs that the audience lap up.

Detectives solve crimes while magicians hide answers. In the case of Caolan McBride’s show, he unlocks an attitude of looking past tricks to see the bigger picture of the story with the help of Cahoot’s writer Charles Way and artistic director Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney.

Unlocking Sherlock is suitable for late teens and older, and runs as part of Belfast International Arts Festival alongside Cahoots NI’s The Musicians of Bremen Live! (ages 5+) until 2 November. (Update - both productions are now sold out.)

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Denouement – fighting and flirting at the end of the world (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 15 November) #BIAF25

I’ve sat through the end of the world at least once before in the Lyric Theatre. A few months shy of my tenth birthday, I was taken to watch the stage version of Raymond Briggs’ When the Wind Blows. It’s a moving piece of theatre about an old couple who are suffering from increasing radiation sickness and are totally naïve about the nuclear war.

John Morton’s Denouement also watches a couple come to terms with the end of the world. This time they’re quite informed about what’s happening on the outside but turn out to be totally naïve about each other. They’re anything but intimate in how they address each other and behave. There’s a war at home as well as outside.

It’s 2048 and somewhere in rural Ireland the local nuclear reactor is on its last legs. Books and decades of ephemera are dotted across two walls of dark shelving of a farmhouse, with flickering TV screens bringing voiceless live reports from Belfast and Ballymena, a countdown that looks terminal (irritatingly it resets every ten minutes), along with computer warning messages. Far away explosions cause the one overhead light to shake. The floating floor of Maree Kearns’ set appears to crumple over the edge of the stage and into the audience: the world is on the precipice of disappearing.

Having weathered the storms of parenthood and an affair, Emer and Liam are facing oblivion with a lot left unsaid. Edel copes by reaching out to family, friends, faith … and the last bottle of alcohol in the house. Her desk in the kitchen/living room is filled with electronic devices to connect her to faraway people who she feels can provide her with the solace her husband across the room is not capable of offering. Behind her are family photographs. Liam is processing his looming impermanence by sitting at his table, battering away at a manual typewriter, racing to finish writing up his memoires.

“If life has taught me anything: finish your memoires before the f***ing apocalypse.”

The couple’s world keeps shrinking as north America “drops off the grid” and last-minute phone calls are cut off. Anna Healy and Patrick O’Kane portray a wife and husband who are neither at peace with themselves nor each other. They bicker incessantly. Over 90 minutes (no internal) they talk about tidying up loose ends, but there are so many to choose from. Eventually the tea is spilt on secrets they have long carried and truths they have kept hidden. Edel suggests Liam is “afflicted by nostalgia”. But as she stares into her own last moments, her heart also opens up to missed opportunities. They have come a long way from cosy nights out in the pub and chips eaten on the way home.

The population has been thinning itself out ahead of the actual end, with people choosing how to die rather than waiting for an external event. Bunker mentality takes over when vehicles or animals approach. Liam carries a shotgun and cartridges like a man who knows how to use then. Director Jimmy Fay isn’t afraid to include violent outbursts and flying objects which cause audiences members to curse as they break apart on the floor. But some of the quieter moments could have been given a similar brooding intensity. 

Healy and O’Kane’s great character acting fully grasps the futility of the moment and the powder keg of pressure that builds up. An early dance around the table soon feels out of place as the couple settle into a war of attrition and bitter barbs. The play’s at its best when the darkness threatens to step over the threshold and invade the house.

The ambition of the wider creative team is nearly fully realised. Subwoofer speakers hang overhead to bellow out deep frequencies and rumbles that will unnerve the audience. Chris Warner’s sound design has great localisation of effects and is a constant presence – though it requires the actors to be micced up to be heard. Sarah Jane Shiels’ lights play well with the video backdrop which extends across the full width and height of the stage, showing the branches of a tree swaying over the family home, and a final warm glow.

While the scale of Douglas O’Connell’s video design impresses, its integration with the narrative varies. Sharp-eyed audience members will spot the announcement of the US going dark appearing on screen before Edel receives the news by phone. But for most of the rest of the time, it’s providing colour and visually reflecting the instability of the power supply rather than adding to the plot.

The actual denouement of the play – the climax and resolution of the plot threads – felt emotionally light with the couple’s final moments surprisingly quiet after such a raucous buildup. Instead it was the set which delivered the theatrics, revealing yet more pleasing secrets and tricks in the final seconds.

For me, Morton’s script hesitates to find a way to be truly profound. It does successfully capture the worn-out tiredness of a couple whose personal energy banks have become as depleted as the reactor powering their home. Even if the end of the world wasn’t quite so nigh, their lights would be flickering and permanently darkening their relationship. The apocalypse might actually have saved them.

Denouement continues its run at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 15 November. It’s a production with big ambitions and a feeling of Armageddon in sympathy with the multiple conflicts around the world in 2025. Denouement is part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

Photo credit: Ciaran Bagnall

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The Upside Down House – tearing down the old to finally confront what had long ago been denied and abandoned (Tinderbox in The MAC as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF25

‘Older’ makes one last visit to his childhood friend’s house in west Belfast. The bulldozers are in and the estate is about to be flattened. The ‘upside down’ house – a two-up-two-down with bedrooms unusually below the living room and kitchen – will soon be no more. Memories come flooding back and Older is soon confronted with the ghost of his boyfriend from those school days.

The Upside Down House is the place they first kissed. The place they first figured out how to have sex … dial-up internet connection speeds would certainly have taken the edge off looking for much-needed advice online! It’s the attic in which they watched old movies and weaved the lines of dialogue into their banter.

Twenty-four years later, as the bricks and mortar prepare to crumble, some of the memories also begin to deconstruct, perhaps exorcised by this intentional re-examination. Yet Older (Shaun Blaney portraying a cautiousness as the impermanence of life confronts his character) is building up the emotional energy to confront the night he disowned his true love (a jolly flibbertigibbet Colm McCready) in an almost Biblical moment of repudiation.

Tracey Lindsay’s set is sparse, dominated by a few moveable stud walls and a tall A-frame ladder. Yet it feels like it satisfyingly fills with full width and height of The MAC’s upstairs theatre space. Polythene sheeting hangs across much of the abandoned home, acting as a screen for hand drawn and pointillism projections that are deliberately not sharp until the polythene is pulled down. The boyfriend’s costume matches the graphics and the look of being hand-drawn, with dark pen lines around the edges. Designer Rosie McClelland could do a roaring trade selling jackets as merch after the show.

Isaac Gibson’s immersive soundscape includes the sound of construction and old movies. Gavin Peden’s videography merges with Mary Tumelty’s elegant lighting (which even manages to neatly cheat a projector beam with a lamp on the floor) to transform a plastic sheet into a duvet.

Ciaran Haggerty’s emotionally-laden script is stuffed with nods to classic cinema, and the two school groups in last night’s audience lapped up the moments of levity. There’s even room for a superhero ascent through a couple of ceilings to reach the attic for a spot of Film Club. Over the 65 minutes, the regularity of the jokes relaxes and the serious business of Older facing up to his youthful shame. There’s a pattern of keeping his boyfriend at a distance, and years later, it still troubles his trapped soul.

Patrick J O’Reilly creates a magical world, consistent with itself, expressing the story in visual form and movement as much as in words. Tinderbox Theatre Company’s The Upside Down House continues at The MAC until Sunday 2 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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Previewing Belfast Film Festival – some picks from this year’s smorgasbord of cinematic treasures (Thursday 30 October to Saturday 8 November) #BFF25

Belfast Film Festival is 25 years old. This year’s smorgasbord of cinematic treasures will be screened between 30 October and 8 November. Here are some of picks from the gazillion films on offer in the full programme (PDF).

Thursday 30 October

19:00 | Die, My Love | Cineworld | Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson star in Lynne Ramsey’s film (co-written with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch and based on Ariana Harwicz’s novel). An intense exploration of a new mum Grace whose depression descends into psychosis as she lives in the solitary Montana countryside.

20:40 | The Love That Remains | Queen’s Film Theatre | As a rule, anything Icelandic merits viewing at Belfast Film Festival. An artist leaves a large-scale sculpture to rust in the Icelandic landscape. Her husband almost lives on a fishing trawler. Land and sea are separated, much like the couple’s union. Hlynur Pálmason directs. Panda, the family dog, won the Palme Dog award at Cannes.

Friday 31 October

19:00 | Aontas | Cineworld | Damian McCann (Doineann) and Sarah Gordon’s new Irish language thriller is a noir heist where three women rob a rural credit union.

Saturday 1 November

20:00 | Undisclosed Mark Cousins Project | Black Box | Flâneurial obdoc What is This Film Called Love (2012) and Here Be Dragons (2013, set in Tirana) are my favourite Mark Cousins’ movies. More recent efforts like But 6 Desires: DH Lawrence & Sardinia and I Am Belfast (being screened on Friday 7 at 18:00 in the Beanbag Cinema at 18:00) fell flat. If you’re willing to sign an NDA, you can catch a screening of a new secret project from cineliterate Cousins ...

Sunday 2 November

10:30, 12:30, 14:30, 16:30 | New Irish Shorts | It’s great to see some familiar faces – and some new names – screening their work in the New Irish Shorts programme, with a shout out for Nick Larkin’s Punt, Conor McCauley’s handpainted animation Behold!, Louise Parker’s Jeggies and Will McConnell’s A Tourist Story.

13:00 | The 1939 Diary of a Belfast Cinema-goer | Black Box Green Room | While I’m totally against the concept of reducing the complex multi-dimensional ways in which a film can be judged to a number of stars out of five, I do keep a spreadsheet throughout the year with actual stars (and a couple of justifying sentences) as a shorthand so I can quickly filter out the best and worst films for Banterflix’s end of year review TV show. I’m not planning to ever make the spreadsheet available. But perhaps the Belfast resident who used their own rating system to log the 325 films they saw in 1939 – no sitting on the sofa watching streaming services at x1.25 speed in those days – didn’t expect their diary to be the focus of a talk by cinema historian Sam Manning. With no name or address on the diary, what clues did the cinematic critic leave.

15:15 | It Was Just An Accident | Queen’s Film Theatre | A family driving home hit a stray dog. Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s film sets a series of dominoes falling as attempts are made to identify the driver. Surreal humour mixed with brutal political oppression. (reviewed)

17:30 | Rosemead | Queen’s Film Theatre | The American dream slips out of Irene’s hands when she is widowed. A window into the rarely portrayed on film Chinese community in Los Angeles. Introduced by Lucy Liu (who plays Irene).

17:45 | A Private Life (Vie Privée) | Queen’s Film Theatre | Jodie Foster stars as a psychiatrist unpicking the threads of the death of a Parisian patient in this French-language psycho drama. (reviewed)

18:30 | Zodiac Killer Project | Black Box | An unidentified serial killer murdered at least five victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. Charlie Shackleton set out to make a documentary about the so-called ‘Zodiac Killer’ for a streaming service. Despite the world being saturated with true crime shows, his proposed streamer doc wasn’t green lit. This film-behind-the-film explores the tropes and conventions of true crime, and sheds some light on the one that got away. Followed by Q&A with Charlie Shackleton. (Which all reminds me of a bum-numbing screening of Zodiac back in 2007.) 

20:40 | The Secret Agent | Queen’s Film Theatre | A university researcher comes under scrutiny from the dictatorial Brazilian regime. Set in the 1970s with many nods to that era’s cinema, a bittersweet historical story rooted in the present. (reviewed)

Monday 3 November

21:00 | Lucky Lu | Queen’s Film Theatre | A New York delivery rider’s only source of income, transport and accommodation are lost on the eve of his family arriving from Taiwan. The great American dream is in tatters in this pressure cooker of a film, a contemporary reimagining of Bicycle Thieves. (reviewed)

Tuesday 4 November

16:00 and 18:30 | NI Independents Mid-length Programme | Odeon | Some longer but not quite feature length local independent cinema, including Olcan McSparron’s Petyr which follows a group of small-time criminals who bugle a heist and learn about betrayal and violence. 

18:30 | Office Politics | Odeon | Neill Virtue’s bawdy North Coast sex comedy about the colliding lives and loves of three office workers. Misunderstandings, mischief and mayhem. (reviewed)

21:00 | Fior Di Latte | Queen’s Film Theatre | Even for an anosmic like me, memories can be tied to smells. A playwright struggling for inspiration returns to the perfumed scent of his most treasured holiday … taking ever more desperate measures to find the smell and fulfil his dreams. Throw in the unrequited love of a flatmate and you have Charlotte Ercoli’s offbeat comedy feature debut. (reviewed)

Wednesday 5 November

18:00 | Underscore | Odeon | Ian McElhinney and Jessica Reynolds star as bewildered relatives on the frontier of a strange new world. A grandfather and granddaughter face up to the end of the world, the end of their environment, as the very fabric of reality mutates into something new. Directed by Hugh McGrory. (reviewed)

20:00 | Housejackers | Odeon | A darkly funny psychological drama about family and identity from the twisted minds behind the Funboys sitcom. Raymond (Finnian Garbutt) and Jerdy (John Travers) deliver magnetic performances as two foster brothers who move in together, upsetting the vibe of a middle-class student house and threatening to explode their rekindled bond. Directed by Rian Lennon. (reviewed)

Thursday 6 November

18:00 | Bulk | Queen’s Film Theatre | Ben Wheatley’s film takes a madcap plunge into the unknown as a Bogart-like protagonist investigates an elusive scientist whose string theory experiments threaten to break down the dimensions of reality. Back-projection, model car chases and cardboard. A freewheeling lo-fi odyssey through the multiverse.

18:45 | Lesbian Space Princess | The Avenue | Animated comedy space adventure with a heartbroken space princess trying to rescue her kidnapped ex-girlfriend from the clutches of the Straight White Maliens. Fast, funny, unserious, with a belting soundtrack. (reviewed)

Saturday 8 November

15:15 | Kontinental ‘25 | Queen’s Film Theatre | A tragic eviction causes a bailiff to see philosophical solace. Dry wit and subtle symbolism from auteur Radu Jude in this ‘side project’ filmed in Cluj on an iPhone that went onto win Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. (Jude’s take on Dracula is being screened on Sunday 2 November.)

16:00 | Ulster Says No – The Year of Disorder | Black Box | Created entirely from UTV archive footage, this documentary follows the year of turmoil that followed the signing of the Ango-Irish Agreement at Hillsborough Castle. “Never! Never! Never! shouted Ian Paisley at a rally outside Belfast City Hall. Clontibret was ‘invaded’. The red bereted Ulster Resistance took up ‘arms’. Relive the moment Northern Ireland almost tipped into the abyss through this archive footage and the UTV news teams. (reviewed)

19:00 | Saipan | Cineworld | The festival closing gala screening returns to Belfast directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (Ordinary Love and Good Vibrations – being screened on Wednesday 5 at 18:45 in The Avenue) whose new film takes a comedic look at the 2002 Japan World Cup falling out between Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) and Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke).

20:30 | Sirât | Queen’s Film Theatre | A rave in southern Morocco. A missing woman. Illness. Landmines. Death. The end of the world. Oliver Laxe’s fourth film was fêted at Cannes and won the Jury Prize. A movie whose soundtrack and landscapes suit the big screen. Are you willing to walk the narrow bridge between heaven and hell?

Another gem ...

Running throughout four days of the festival is A Bunch Of Questions With No Answers. A record of questions posed by journalists to the US State Department at press briefings between 3 October 2023 (four days before the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel) and the end of the Biden administration. Endless demands for clarification and accountability were swerved by spokespeople … and edited out of the 23 hour film, which runs in six-hour blocks from 10:00-16:00 on Saturday 1, Tuesday 4 and Wednesday 5 November, and 16:00-21:00 on Thursday 6 in the Beanbag Cinema. Free entry, just drop in. On Saturday 8 November at 14:30 in the Black Box Green Room, a panel of journalists will discuss their response to the film, its wider context, and the large number of deaths of journalists in Gaza during the last two years.

Ottilie – a blues legend whose foreshortened career is brilliantly brought to life on stage (Rathmore Productions at Grand Opera House as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF25

Born in Comber, Ottilie Patterson soon moved to Newtownards. Her Latvian mum was musical. But it was the music of the Deep South – blues and jazz – that unexpectedly excited Patterson’s soul. She would become known as “the godmother of British blues”, yet outside those musical circles, her considerable legacy and influence are vastly underappreciated.

Jolene O’Hara portrays Patterson as a performer whose impetuous nature is twinned with undeniable talent. We watch and hear Patterson’s confidence grow and her technique develop as O’Hara delivers snippets of songs amid the monologue. Soon she has jostled and impressed her way into becoming a regular soloist with the Chris Barber Jazz Band in London, eventually touring the UK, Ireland, Europe and the US.

Even for audience members who aren’t aficionados of blues of jazz music, there’s a moment when Patterson is called up on stage by Muddy Waters – “lady, how come you sing like one of us?!” – that you realise the woman from Comber was a world class artist, feted by her peers as well as cultural critics. (The height of her musical success could perhaps have been dwelled upon for longer in the play which seems to display a bit too much Norn Iron modesty.)

The constant travel takes a heavy toll on Patterson’s personal life and her mental heath. After the play’s interval, her anxiety levels rise and her relationship with band leader Barber sours. Being able to perform is a balm but ultimately her vocal cords and her marriage are both strained, and her sense of wellbeing unravels.

Ottilie is a passion project by Richard Clements. It combines his considerable skill as a story-teller (How To Bury A Dead Mule) and his gift as a musician (composing much of the incidental music that is woven into the rich soundscape underneath O’Hara’s monologues. Matthew McElhinney is back in the director seat of this latest Clements’ production.

O’Hara’s is a perfect fit for the role. Her soulful voice, her power and range, lift the musical numbers. The big sound in Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean is spinetingling and aptly reprised as a finale. But the gentler moments, like when Patterson finds the blues in Celtic tunes, are beautiful oases to let the varying mood of the protagonist settle.

Tracey Lindsay has created a striking set, with a broken record as the backdrop and the shiny floor performance space delineated by crumpled up sheets of lyrics and music. Talented arranger and accompanist Zak Irvine sits at a piano to one side of the stage. Mary Tumelty’s lighting design tracks the changing temperament and includes a well-executed shrinking spotlight aimed at the set’s giant vinyl record that creatively mirrors the suggestion that Patterson’s musical prowess is diminishing as rock and roll pushes its way onto the hit parade.

With a run time just shy of two hours (including the interval), Ottilie is a gorgeous show to watch and listen to. Part cabaret, part dialogue, the largely linear narrative keeps moving forwards, though at times it lapses into moments that are perhaps too florid and a bit overwritten. Marathon monologues tend to benefit from props and different parts of a set to move between. While the pieces of paper and LPs (whose labels seamlessly match O’Hara’s costume) are well integrated into the overall choreography, the inclusion of a mic stand or a table with a phone on it might have decreased the amount of dress tugging and twirling in quieter moments.

Ottilie leaves me imagining how a more caring partner and stronger support network might have freed Patterson to take the opportunities of family and musicmaking that she was cruelly denied. There’s such a sadness in what could have been. It makes me ask how her talent was stuffed into a cupboard and only brought out into the light in recent years with a 2020 book, the 2023 documentary, and now this stage show.

Rathmore Productions’ Ottilie runs in the Grand Opera House until Friday 24 October (even the extra matinee performance has now sold out) as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

Photo credit: Neil Harrison Photography

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