Displace: The Battle For Dublin – a story of rebuilding community in the midst of precarity, planning and protest (Docs Ireland at An Cultúrlann on Thursday 18 June)

Ireland’s housing crisis is multifaceted. Displace: The Battle For Dublin documents buildings lying derelict, landlords choosing to ‘no fault’ evict families on their sixth anniversary renting flats, artists being thrown out of their studio spaces despite being long-standing tenants, pockets of land that service communities being redeveloped for profit.

The lack of accommodation (affordable or not) is argued to be a result of commercial overdevelopment, exploitation of poor renter protections, and underinvestment in initiatives that could heal fractured communities.

James Redmond’s gentle pacing introduces the audience to people living precariously, unsure if their poorly maintained accommodation will ever be repaired (there’s an example of a large landlord taking nine years to fix a broken window), people wondering whether they’ll have a home to live in this time next year. We are introduced to individuals who are organising neighbours to form tenacious residents’ groups that can stand up to their wealthy landlords. And we see when lobbying and meetings turn to last ditch street protests.

There’s a quick lesson in ‘asset urbanism’, the concept of the rich making decisions about the urban landscape, using it as a playground for making money, with home owners and small commercial and cultural renters pawns in a bigger game of wealth extraction. Pockets of land become instruments of investment rather than habitats for humans to live and thrive.

Dublin is not alone in having a housing crisis. Locking people out of the city in which they grew up is common. Local government enabling commercial companies to delay redevelopment is not unusual. But despite the Celtic tiger, despite Dublin being the European home to so many multinational tech giants, it’s particularly chilling that there is such underinvestment in community-building that would benefit citizens in this city.

In Belfast and elsewhere up t’north, the derelict buildings tend to mysteriously combust at night, sometimes making it more necessary to be demolished. It’s hard to watch the film without wondering what a thriving North Street Arcade would be like and why the poorly-named Tribeca Belfast project had been allowed to stagnate for so long. Maybe the scenes about the ‘blandmarks’ walking tour will inspire a Belfast version being developed.

Displace: The Battle For Dublin carries a sense of lament throughout its 100-minute essay on the accommodation crisis. The sense that hope is being lost is strong. But its humanisation weaves in moments of celebration and appreciation amongst the sequences of communities being pulled apart or squashed.

Throughout the film the character of buildings pops out from the screen with gorgeous black and white cinematography. Good people look tired. Protests look earnest. The final credits list contributors like a roll call of saints.

The last sequence suggests that a minor victory might be around the corner for one community. Yet the very fact that so many people need to move off the site for a number of years leaves the lingering worry that the redevelopment could still be delayed or dropped. It feels like a cake-fuelled ending that may yet have to fade into a title card that says “six years later, none of the residents were back living on the site”. Hopefully that’s not the case …

Displace: The Battle For Dublin is being screened as part of the Docs Ireland documentary film festival at 19:00 on Thursday 18 June in An Cultúrlann. Docs Ireland runs from 16 to 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

  

The full programme can be viewed on the Docs Ireland website.

Previewing Docs Ireland 2026 - six days of documentary delicacies (16-21 June)

Documentary film festival Docs Ireland is back for the eighth time with a smorgasbord of films.

The majority of screenings are Pay What You Want.

Amid the myriad of shorts, talks and screenings, here are a handful that caught my eye from the chunky programme.

Tuesday 16 June

Steal This Story // 18:30 at QFT // The festival’s opening night gala spotlights the work of independent US journalist Amy Goodman who has been telling stories neglected by larger networks and holding the powerful to account for over three decades. Goodman will be present for a Q&A after the screening. SOLD OUT

Wednesday 17 June

American Doctor // 18:15 at QFT // Three US physicians return to Gaza during a ceasefire. Their work in operating theatres and hospital corridors is documented before they return home and take what they’ve seen to the corridors of power and the US Congress.

Thursday 18 June

Once You Shall Be One Of Those Who Lived Long Ago // 12:00 at QFT // A northern Swedish town is slowly collapsing into the iron ore mines beneath it. Prosperity goes hand in hand with disappearance. A melancholic, humorous and absurd look at a settlement in its dying days.

Now We’re Talking: Michael J Murphy and Sam Hanna Bell on screen // 13:00 at PRONI // Celebrating two important local cultural voices – folklorist and playwright Michael J Murphy and producer/author/editor Sam Hanna Bell – whose personal archives have been donated to the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland and have been catalogued and curated. A TV profile of Murphy being interviewed by Bell will be followed by a radio interview with Bell reflecting on his writing life, finishing with a film created by Drumintee Primary School inspired by the work of Murphy. (The same programme will also be screened in the shadow of Slieve Gullion in Tí Chullainn in Mullaghbawn at 19:00 on Saturday 20 June.) [You can find out more about Michael J Murphy in the Nerve Centre podcast series I helped make earlier this year with a group who explored his archive.]

Displace: The Battle For Dublin // 19:00 at An Cultúrlann // Gorgeous black and white cinematography and remarkable community building shine a light on the multi-faceted housing crisis in Dublin. Asset urbanism is stripping money out of areas along with the communities that enlivened them. But can citizens meaningfully fight back? (REVIEWED)

Ghost in the Machine // 20:30 at QFT // Vlerie Veatch’s documentary pores over the history of Artificial Intelligence and its ties between governments and private equity. Can we trust the people fashioning the regulation and holding the purse strings?

Friday 19 June

Trop C’est Trop (Enough is Enough) // 18:15 at QFT // The enduring conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo rarely makes it to news bulletins or newspaper reports. Elsié Sawasawa’s film bears witness to the Congolese people trapped in the endless fighting as the Congolese army protecting a regional capital are overpowered by rebels in just four days.

Lesbian Lines // 18:30 at QFT // Director Cara Holmes explores the hidden history of the underground network of lesbian helplines that operated across Ireland, mixing fear with fun and a celebration of togetherness as women who felt trapped found a chink of light. (REVIEWED)

Saturday 20 June

Desert Passages // 18:00 at QFT // Look after your water sources and waterways before it’s too late. With the 1,450 mile long Colorado River being diverted to new settlements and industry along its path down form the Rocky Mountains, the borderlands of the US and Mexico are experiencing drought. A brooding documentary with gorgeous visuals. (REVIEWED)

Cutting Through Rocks // 20:15 at QFT // Sara is the first elected councilwoman in her Iranian village. The complexity of Iran is displayed as she challenges patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and stopping child marriages.

Sunday 21 June

Earth, Wind & Fire // 15:00 at QFT // Tracking the fractious yet fructuous history of the experiment band who started out as afro-gospel-jazz-blues-rock and would go on to define disco sound with songs like Let’s Groove Tonight.

Magilligan // 18:15 at QFT // The festival’s closing night film (preceded by the festival awards ceremony) presents a portrait of Ryan, a teenager imprisoned for a violent offence who finds purpose working on the prison farm but upon release finds his past hard to shake off. After the screening, Belfast director Ross McClean will be interviewed about his feature debut by Myrid Carten (director of last year’s closing film A Want In Her).

The full programme can be viewed on the Docs Ireland website.

Lesbian Lines – the network of helplines that offered connection, protection and solidarity (Docs Ireland in the Queen’s Film Theatre on Friday 19 June)

Quite a number of LGBT organisations across the island have recently been sifting through their archives and reflecting on many decades of support and advocacy. In parallel, a number of cultural productions have been documenting the early days of these groups. Kabosh staged Dominic Montague’s Callings (2022) looking back at Cara Friend helplines. Kabosh and Montague were also responsible for the electrifying A Queer Céilí at the Marty Forsythe (2019)

Films like Rebel Dykes (2021) give a sense for the lesbian scene in London in the 1980s and 1990s. Cara Holmes’ new documentary Lesbian Lines hears from women involved with the network of lesbian helplines that ran – and continue to run – across Ireland. What starts off as a celebration of the almost underground community offering connection, protection and solidarity then examines key moments of lesbian visibility in Ireland, before acknowledging some of the darker calls the helplines received.

Back in 1980, 26-year-old Joni Crone appeared on The Late Late Show. Host Gay Byrne asked “What would compel a girl like you to appear on a programme like this and blow as it where her cover?” Later Byrne in the interview would refer to lesbians as “these people”. The host adopted a patronising tone throughout, but Crone kept her cool – perhaps aided by the backstage vodka someone in the production team recommended to calm her nerves! – and explained what it was like to live as a lesbian in Ireland.

Cinematographer Aidan Gault uses shadows and dim lighting for the interviews that sustain the storytelling. It’s almost like the women are sitting in a closet. There’s a mix of testimony, dramatic reconstruction and conversation.

Outburst Queer Arts Festival director Ruth McCarthy is among those interviewed. And there’s a snippet of archive from Free Presbyterian minister Rev David McIlveen to remind viewers of the opposition to homosexuality. Footage of the security search barriers on Royal Avenue grounds the film in a period of history which will seem alien to younger audiences but remain all too vivid for some of us oldies.

Last year’s Docs Ireland festival screened the Housewife of the Year documentary (which Holmes edited) about the now-jarring pageant of domesticity. Lesbian Lines opens a door onto another side of how society in Ireland slowly changed.

Responsible for the clamouring soundtrack of Irish folk horror Fréwaka, Die Hexen sensitively allows scenes to breath: there’s no sense of urgency, and when the mood dips, the music fades as more sombre and tragic moments are remembered. A volunteer recalls a woman ringing up in a distressed state before being cut off when an angry man comes into the room. Beaten up by her husband, she dials back the next week from hospital. Another volunteer remembers callers contemplating suicide.

Voiced up conversations based on the extensive phone logs give an insight into the vulnerability of those moments, and intimacy of people feeling safe enough to open up to a stranger and remove their mask.

Like another Docs Ireland screening – Displace: The Battle for Dublin – Lesbian Lines is a film about a silenced section of society nurturing community, allowing people to find their voice and find their tribe. Considerable fear is mixed in with fun and a celebration of togetherness as women who felt trapped find a chink of light.

You can catch Lesbian Lines at the Docs Ireland documentary film festival at 18:30 on Friday 19 June in Queen’s Film Theatre. Docs Ireland runs from 16 to 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

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Bold Girls – facing up to the unpalatable whole truth and choosing how to move on (Centre Stage at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 14 June)

Bold Girls is located somewhere in and around the Falls Road/Anderstown Road in west Belfast in the late 1980s. Cassie lives with her mum Nora and kids across the road from Marie. These women are rich in ambition, poor in pocket, and they’ve been hiding secrets from each other and possibly from themselves. Phil Jennings’ simple maroon-themed kitchen set floats above the Lyric’s Naughton Studio stage, a dias for teal-spilling and dealing with the past.

An early question “Do you believe in ghosts?” sets up the non-supernatural appearance of Deirdre (Annie McIlwaine), never not dress in white, who lurks in the vicinity of Marie and Nora wherever they go.

Director Michael Quinn freezes the action – aided by Jennings’ sharp spotlighting – as characters deliver thoughtful monologues to the audience. An episode of ITV’s Blind Date plays in the corner, emphasising the neighbours’ vacuum of romantic relationships and their lust for love.

Rona Munro’s dialogue excels at allowing the lively women to speak at cross-purposes, with three people often conducting two different conversations in beautiful harmony. An unseen washing machine is an early source of humour. But this play is no comedic sitcom.

Caroline Curran sports a brunette wig and plays Marie with warmth and wit: a feeder who welcomes even the stranger into her kitchen and can knock up a sandwich in the middle of the night. (The rest of the cast had better like Curran’s sandwiches as there’s a lot of eating on two show days!)

The first act sets Marie up as a cheerful single mother who idolises her dead husband. Bold Girls asks whether any of these women can make their own decisions and escape the orbit of their men folk, who are either dead or incarcerated, and remain absent from the stage. Can they truly run away from their past and other people’s past actions?

Marie’s steady attitude is knocked in the aftermath of a trip to the local nightclub when her more sporty neighbour Cassie (played with engaging vigour by Hannah Carnegie) opens up and shares a succession of pieces of distressing news. Throughout, dream-stealing Deirdre loiters with unsure intent.

Anger bleeds into Curran’s happy-go-lucky portrayal of Marie as the young mother pushes back on other people’s legacy. Meanwhile Cassie’s mum (played by Mairead McKinley) is waking up to the fact that other people are denying her nice things. The most powerful scene comes when the women – all of whom should know better – take the side of heinous men against their kith and kin.

The characters are well drawn, the laughs keep rolling, and 36 years after its première, Rona Munro’s script still has much to say about this conflicted society where can women be left to suffer the cost of their partners’ actions. It’s a simpler yet at least as effective companion piece to the Lyric’s recent production of Tea in a China Cup.

Centre Stage’s revival of Bold Girls finishes its sold out run at the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 14 June. 

Photo credit: Rebecca Jane Windsor 

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Desert Passages – brooding documentary about a disappearing water source (Docs Ireland in Queen’s Film Theatre on Saturday 20 June)

Snow melting in the Rocky Mountains provides up to 90% of the water flowing down the 1,450-mile-long Colorado River. It’s all but dried up by the time it reaches the ocean. Desert Passages is a gently told story of decline. There’s less snow to melt. Water is evaporating from reservoirs faster than before. Population and agricultural growth along the flow means that water is being “diverted to people as opposed to moving people to water” as one contributor explains.

Beautiful cinematography serves up striking vistas. Red stone contrasts with concrete dams. A drone camera flies low over the water like a modern recreation of a scene from 1980’s Air Wolf. Tide marks along the side of rock faces show the huge change in high water level.

The contributors are thoughtful rather than angry. There’s a stoicism that talks of adapting to the new reality of drought rather than voluntary or forced displacement of populations to land that can better support them. Towns in Arizona truck water in. The landscape becomes increasingly barren as the river almost impotent in its final hundred mile stretch into Mexico. Homes and habitats have changed forever. Climate refugees are on the rise but have no protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Desert Passages is a brooding documentary that places layers of similar detail on top of each other like a papier-mâché construction. The quickly established premise that access to water isn’t evenly spread and made worse by human decisions is almost diluted by repetition. The visuals distract from the oral duplication that stretches the film out to 77 minutes.

The film’s many moments of silence will give time for Northern Ireland audiences to consider the plight of Lough Neagh. While it’s a story of pollution from agriculture and sewage, exacerbated by arising summer temperatures that allow the blue-green algae to bloom, Jan Carson’s latest novel Few and Far Between imagines a populated archipelago in the lough, created by a government programme to reduce the water level. The residents face an existential threat of a flood to tackle the algae bloom in this fictional universe. (Just one of a number of threats the author conjures up!)

Look after your water sources and waterways before it’s too late. That’s the message of Kevin Brennan and Laurence Durkin’s new film that is being screened as part of the Docs Ireland documentary film festival at 6pm on Saturday 20 June in Queen’s Film Theatre.

PS: Watch out for the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.

Docs Ireland runs from 16 to 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

  

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Report on June 2026 PCI General Assembly #pciga26

On top of the violence and disorder on the streets, there were three themes running through the four days of this year’s higgledy-piggledy General Assembly: Safeguarding, Finance and Reconfiguration, and the three were quite interlinked at points.

Three and a half days of business stretched into four. (You can still watch back the live-stream from Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.) Here’s a few highlights from my four days attending ... though lots more of note happened that I haven’t commented on, like the timely sermon during Thursday lunchtime’s worship. 

My takeaway observations are that:

• Members of General Assembly are incurious and few seemed to have (taken the time to) read the Blue Book (main and supplementary reports) from cover to cover. (I recommend working from the back towards the front as General Council’s multiple sections make more sense once you’ve got a picture of the other councils’ work.)
• The lack of coverage of the General Assembly’s business outside of the News Letter and Belfast Telegraph is an indication that PCI is currently being defined by its response to the safeguarding crisis. The commitment to openness about learning is to be welcomed.
• Wordy reports, corporate communications and press releases don’t cut through in a world that prefers to hear about the experience of individuals so the denomination’s much-needed response to racism and violence against women and girls needs to be shared in a way that it will be heard. (That said, the background work to respond to NI Executive and Assembly Committee consultations is also important and worthwhile.)
• The process to restructure how the denomination operates – which is being driven by a hydra of task groups – will also have to take into account the results of INEQE investigation due next June. It would be wise to plan for a Special Assembly in November 2027 to address the final Structures proposals as it’s already clear that final decisions would be unwise and unlikely in June 2027.

Disclosure: I’m a member of the Presbyterian Church and sit on the Support Services Committee (whose private business doesn’t inform my public reporting). And I've read enough blue books of reports and sat through so many General Assemblies I can nearly spot when resolutions are taken in the wrong order (they were at one point this year) and could almost explain PCI’s version of the‘offside rule’ (when an amendment becomes the substantive motion and there’s unexpectedly more time for debate)! 

Business at this week’s Presbyterian General Assembly was disrupted by what was happening outside the Assembly Hall.

The opening day’s business on Tuesday was curtailed by the online threats of disruption with the evening session cancelled and delegates sent home. Many of the delegates use public transport to travel in and out of Belfast. Wednesday’s late afternoon installation of the new moderator was postponed, the civic guests cancelled, and delegates sent home at lunchtime. Many traybakes for the moderator’s bun-worry were wasted.

Outgoing moderator Richard Murray served an extra day in office and Richard Kerr was finally installed at 10:38 on Thursday morning. So there was a lot of shuffling of business and reduced times for some speeches to catch up on the lapsed business which finally concluded just after 4pm on Friday afternoon.

Richard Murray said he was “appalled” at the knife attack in North Belfast. Prayers were offered over several days for the victim, and then (to quote) “for ethnic minorities who live among us” and for people whose homes, vehicles and work places had been attacked. The Moderator said that the rioting “has also left us appalled”. He said that the right to protest did not extend to a right to riot, or a right to intimidate or to threaten or to take life. Speaking on behalf of the denomination, he appealed “to the wider community for peace and calm, and for sense to prevail”.

Former Moderator Frank Sellar also commented on what he called “sinister” scenes with protesters wearing balaclavas to disguise their identities. He went on to address the latest unsolicited and anonymous email from a person or group called Troubled Presbyterians sent to most ministers. He said the emails were “sinister” and the issues should be more properly raised on the floor of the Assembly. “Please stop sending these emails … it’s important that we do everything we do is done openly and transparently … please stop hiding behind balaclavas.”

Could the church be prophetic in tackling racism? Or at least make a difference in changing public attitudes and protecting those who are experiencing racism everyday? Those weren’t questions the General Assembly considered. [Although I’ve been told of a Belfast congregation experiencing racism-related damage to their building.]

Back in 2021 General Assembly heard that “Racism and inclusion are very challenging issues that appear in many forms and guises. Through following up on research initiatives, one aim is to keep abreast of the experiences of ethnic minorities in churches on the island of Ireland, with a view to ensuring PCI’s own house is in order before seeking to call society to account. In addition to grappling with issues such as colonialism, empire, and the spiritual battle against fear, prejudice, and segregation, PCI will need to reflect on the place of ethnic minorities in leadership roles within the Church.”

General Assembly reports stated that “issues around the welcome, support for and integration of refugees and other ethnic minorities, together with challenging racism and negative stereotyping, is a cross-cutting issue across various councils of PCI.”

PCI’s central work on inter-cultural relations has somewhat stalled in recent years. Addressing racism as individual Christians and as congregations could become a priority. The Irish Council of Churches – whose general secretary Rev Dr Karen Campbell is one of the new moderator’s chaplains – did some work on this last year in response to the race riots, and their 2010 report on Migration, Diversity and Interculturalism would give PCI a head start.

After November’s announcement about central safeguarding failures and two Special General Assembles, there were updates on the various safeguarding reviews and investigations.

General Assembly heard that “to protect the integrity of the police investigation there is relatively little we can say about it at this stage”.

Regarding the INEQE (prounced ‘in-eek’) review of governance and safeguarding for the Charity Commission, it is “progressing well” and the group led by Jim Gamble will soon begin gathering information from congregations and individuals. Completion of the report is due by June 2027.

General Council has committed to publish the findings of that Charity Commission review and the learning within (except where it would contradict legal obligations regarding data protection).

Incoming clerk Jonathan Boyd who is currently convenor of the Statutory Investigations Advisory Task Group which has been advising Richard Murray in his liaison role said that it was part of our reformed conviction that God can use the civil authorities to address problems in the church and we should thank God for the work he does through the civil authorities to correct and purify the Church. (It’s not clear whether the former moderator remains the main liaison point for the PSNI, or whether that will shift to his successor or someone else.)

The work to support the investigations and reviews was said to have been onerous and prioritised. The sentiment that other normal work of the denomination has been sidelined and delayed was echoed in several Council reports. One report in particular went as far as to say that unintentionally prioritising safeguarding, updating the Code and reconfiguration of ministry had led to “neglect [that] has significantly weakened the local church”.

Convenor of the General Council David Bruce said he believed the denomination is being chastised and their reputation will need to be rebuilt from the ground up. He told the Assembly that “over the course of the past six months, I have met personally with several people at their request, either in their homes or elsewhere, and I have corresponded with others, as have [other senior church figures] and members of our Safeguarding Team. This has not been perfect, and I want to apologise sincerely for the times when the church’s central responses to emerging situations have caused further distress.”

Outgoing moderator Richard Murray preached at very start of his fourth General Assembly in the chair. He said “it has been a torrid time for us in PCI” adding later in his sermon that “it’s been a tough seven or eight months for the denomination and many have been left disheartened and discouraged by our failures in safeguarding”.

But he questioned whether balance had been lost in a hard-hitting part of his address: “I’ve been hearing a lot about polity over the last seven months … but I haven’t heard anyone talking about spirituality. I’ve been hearing a lot about the Code … but I’d love to hear a lot more about compassion. I’ve been hearing a lot about covenant but I’d love to hear a lot more about conversion.”

New moderator Richard Kerr’s theme is “For God so loved”, an invitation (from chapter 1 of the gospel of John) to refocus on what is at the core of Christian faith: to refocus on the lavish love of God, the centrality of the cross, and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. He said that he hopes that the investigations and inquiries can be turned around from something negative to something constructive, and provide an open and honest foundation from which to move forward.

Back in December, the Special Assembly agreed to beef up the Safeguarding Department and boost its independence.

Director of Operations Ken Swarbrick updated Assembly. So far, they haven’t been able to recruit a Head of Safeguarding, but by the end of next month, there will be 6 executive staff working in the safeguarding department aided by 3.5 admin officers. No one asked why the post was proving difficult to fill or whether there was a timescale for further recruitment.

Last December in the first of two Special Assemblies, ministers discovered that there was a so-called Secret Protocol that was being followed if serious safeguarding complaints were made. Prior to the Special Assembly in December, it hadn’t been shared with ministers. In the most serious of cases, individuals could be required to step back from their roles. A revised protocol has now been agreed by the Assembly which includes timescales and procedures for who needs to be appointed to an Emergency Safeguarding Panel and a reminder that it’s not an investigative body.

No one asked how often the protocol has been used … but it’s understood that the protocol has been used in a handful of cases and people have been asked to step back.

The work of reconfiguration and restructuring continues.

Work to reconfigure how local congregations relate to each other – with linkages between congregations, mergers, and dissolutions or closures planned at a regional Presbytery level began a few years ago and is ongoing. Compared to last year’s General Assembly, this activity has accelerated, but the process has many years to run.

Alongside these changes is the vision to create 10 newly-constituted congregations in addition to 10 new church planting projects over the next 10 years, an initiative with the snappy title of 10+10 in 10.

Speakers rose to ask whether it’s turned into a reconfiguration of buildings and lost sight of the reconfiguration of ministry. Some spoke about how reconfiguration can be positive.

Leaving aside the reconfiguration of congregations, more centrally, a separate General Assembly Structures and Resources Review is ongoing. A long report has been produced which is neither final nor exhaustive, and will now be sent to presbyteries and staff for comment.

Former moderator William Henry explained that this rationalisation is due to “a shortage of ministers and declining numbers and resources”. It’s remit includes finances, buildings, ministerial training and the college, social witness, missional priorities and home and abroad, how presbyteries are organised, and more.

It contains some options but no recommendations, and it was explained that the report is purposefully full of perceptions rather than hard evidence, with delegates and staff pointing out that some of the perceptions are very inaccurate.

Overall the Structures report has the feel of homework that was incomplete but handed in to meet the deadline of the General Assembly meeting. That is a bit harsh, but the reality seems to be that the bandwidth of senior figures needed for the many, many Structures meetings was diverted to the safeguarding work, and with the pressure on staff working around the clock week in week out, nothing more concrete could be produced.

A lot of frustration with the protracted process was expressed – on the floor of the General Assembly and in the corridors and coffee times – that it could go on well beyond 2027. The members of General Assembly expressed that dissatisfaction by supporting an amendment brought by Rev Sam Bostock that forces General Assembly to make a final decision during the next calendar year, either at General Assembly or by convening a Special General Assembly. That his amendment was seconded by Rev Daniel Kane, a convenor of one of the Councils, and supported by a former moderator felt significant.

To give you a flavour of some of the ideas and questions floated in the long report that will be hitting Presbyteries and members of staff’s desks over the summer and in the autumn …

• Should PCI stop sending out its own missionaries and instead work with global mission partner organisations (who already send more Presbyterians around the world than the denomination itself)?
• Should the training of ministers be devolved to a non-PCI organisation? There was immediate strong pushback on that notion.
• If more work is to be devolved to Presbyteries, perhaps the current 19 presbyteries – the largest currently has 3 times the number of congregations than the smallest – should be reshaped into 6-8 or 12-14. Warnings from the platform that bigger does not always equal better.

It continues to be an anxious time for staff who are working against uncertainty of how they fit the denomination’s future priorities. And there are indications throughout the blue book and supplementary reports that PCI has a poor understanding of meaningful consultation and lacks expertise in surveying and measurement.

The finances of the church’s care homes and social care work were discussed in more detail than previous General Assemblies.

For several years, reports in the blue book mentioned the difficult financial situation of the work of the Council for Social Witness without giving a lot of detail. That church council currently run 6 residential care homes, a nursing home, services for addiction rehabilitation, and more. Most of its work is funded by the health and social care trusts.

This year’s council report gave the stark figure that they have now built up over the last three or four years a £3.6million internal overdraft (that’s against an annual £16m turnover). Their report explains that the council had believed their financial situation had almost turned around only to discover it was worse than they thought.

Interim Secretary Caroline Yeomans told the Assembly that some of their services “were developed for a different era” and as a Church organisation “we have not always adapted a quickly as the environment around us has changed”. She spoke of being “thankful that difficult truths are now being faced honestly”.

She spoke about years of rising costs, increasingly complex care needs and policy changes. The printed report highlights that central government fees rise slower than inflation. There has been a heavy reliance on agency staff to fill There was an opportunity for recovery that might include stopping unsustainable work and investing in areas of emerging need. From February this year, new financial recovery plans now are in place.

The Structures report suggests that the work of the Council for Social Witness could be spun out into an arms-length agency of the denomination, become totally autonomous, or sold off. The Council favour the agency approach. The need for a decision may be more urgent than the overall PCI structures review.

Answering a question raised by former moderator Norman Hamilton about other areas the Council for Social Witness could extend its expertise into, David Brice suggested that the church needed to look at streets and develop ministry for homelessness, for people with addiction and who have been through the criminal justice system. Later Norman Hamilton would return to the platform with a wren’s nest in his hand to illustrate his speech about homelessness.

Another area of the church’s work in financial difficulty is the college. Union Theological College continues to run at a deficit and is “projecting to operate at a loss for the foreseeable future”. No one asked how big the (accumulated) deficit was. The Council for Training in Ministry requests for central funding from the denomination’s United Appeal have been rising every year, with the 2027 request 30% more than back in 2023.

Is there a shortage of Presbyterian ministers?

Yes and No.

One of the reports highlighted that there may be a shortage of churches for student ministers finishing their two-year-long assistantships. This is because some vacant congregations are being held back from being allowed to call a new minister until the mergers and linkages are agreed. So in the short term there may be a shortage of churches to apply to. That said, General Assembly was told that ministers are slow to apply to opportunities in the west that have been left unfilled for well over a year.

However, in the medium term, with only 10 or 11 new student ministers entering the college each year, the number of retirements far exceeds the new supply of ministers and there may ultimately be more vacant churches that available ministers. Ministers transferring in from other countries and denominations may help make up the shortfall.

The reason for the college’s financial position was partly put down to unpredictable numbers of students. Having broken away from Queen’s University, their new partnership with St Mary’s University in Twickenham has offered non-ministerial students a BA (Hons) in Theology since September 2022.

Buried in a Structures Review report – but not verbally explained from the platform as part of the Council for Training in Ministry section of business – no further students are being accepted onto that undergraduate course, although students who are already enrolled will be able to finish their degrees.

This year’s Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) annual monitoring report is due to be published any day now and may provide more external insight into that decision.

There was commentary in written reports about the challenge of operating a ‘mini-university’ and managing the regulatory requirements being imposed by the Office for Students in England via the link with St Mary’s.

Former moderator John Kirkpatrick chairs the College Management Committee. He warned members of General Assembly that “as goes the college, so goes the church”, an oblique reference to questions of whether ministerial training could be outsourced. Instead he said the church should “prepare for growth”.

Against the backdrop of the incomplete Structures Review, Rev Prof Michael McClenahan’s three year term as college principal was extended by one year.

NDAs and Compromise Agreements

The December Special Assembly commissioned a task group to write a policy on the use of Compromise Agreements. A two-page document was debated and agreed almost unanimously, although the 380-word Biblical perspective was criticised by some as being too brief.

The official PCI position is now that NDAs will not be used as a matter of course. But they may be considered at the request of the departing employee, or to prevent or reduce further harm, or to protect other parties – like PCI staff – of whom the church has a duty of care. The triumvirate Senior Leadership Team now need to approve their use with legal and HR advice. The General Council will be furnished with an annual anonymised report about the use of Compromise Agreements and NDAs, and will have the power – subject to legal advice – to amend or cancel obligations placed on an employee.

New Clerk 

Rev Jonathan Boyd is the new clerk, taking up the post in early July. He’s one of three Jonathan Boyds in the system. So it’s not a sudden rise to fame for the student minister, but instead the minister of Killyleagh congregation. (Acting Clerk David Allen will then become a part-time Assistant Clerk with responsibility for the Reconfiguration of Ministry.)

As agreed at the Special General Assembly in February, the powerful General Council now has two co-convenors, a minister and an elder, with Avril Heenan joining former moderator David Bruce as the line managers of the ‘three Wise Men’ (aka Senior Leadership Team): Clerk, Deputy Clerk and Director of Operations.

Ecumenical matters

Correspondence from one minister has triggered a review of the principles that should underlie PCI’s engagement with ecumenical bodies. A pivotal moment in PCI’s history was its decision to leave the World Council of Churches in 1980. 46 years later, the minister of Trinity congregation in Cork, Rev Richie Cronin, expressed dissatisfaction the World Communion of Reformed Churches’ gender justice policy, and stance on abortion, same-sex marriage, and its theological position on justification.

Former moderator Trevor Morrow rose to tell members of General Assembly that the reformed tradition in Britain and Ireland is traditionally ‘big tent’ theologically, while US Presbyterianism tends towards separatism. He suggested some people were receiving their reformed theology from the US. Richie Cronin countered that he was not a separatist and would like “like to stay and fight”.

Public Affairs

Convenor of the Council for Public Affairs, Rev Daniel Kane said that the denomination was not trying to “be known for winning culture wars” but wanted to be known “for advancing morally serious and human theology” as society faces up to big issues.

He said the church needed to move wider than the old hackneyed issues of human sexuality, abortion etc. “We need not to be seen for what we’re against, but be seen for what we’re for.”

Commenting on the Department of Finance’s Marriage and Civil Partnership Bill that has reached Committee Stage, Daniel Kane suggested that giving legal recognition to non-religious belief marriages – like humanist ceremonies – should not “facilitate eccentric or frivolous” ceremonies and said that the church was “opposed to marriage ceremonies being offered on a for-profit basis”. Given that consensual sexual activity is legal from the age of 16, and sex belonged within marriage, he said it was illogical of the bill to raise the minimum age of marriage from 16 to 18, provided safeguards were in place.

The church’s response to Violence Against Women and Girls was raised once from the platform.

Christian Aid

Questions were raised at last June’s General Assembly about the LGBT position taken in a report published by the Great Britain wing of Christian Aid. After spending considerable time debating it, the denomination’s Christmas World Development Appeal, a fundraiser traditionally split evenly between Tear Fund and Christian Aid (and a small amount for other projects) was altered to give congregations the option of not funding one of the charities.

While the verbal reports didn’t highlight it, the printed report of the Council for Global Mission notes that only 15 of the 500+ congregations asked for their contributions to go to Tear Fund alone, and one congregation even requested that all of their donations go to Christian Aid. Just about 3.5% of the £0.5m appeal was affected.

The science of climate change was challenged

A resolution in support of last September’s Stewardship of Creation conference went to a standing card vote late on Friday afternoon. Two speakers questioned what they perceived as a lack of alternative opinions on the science of human-induced climate change at the event. Though the organiser said the conference was primarily about unpacking what the Bible said about the issue rather than articulating the science. Several speakers expressed their dissatisfaction. A vote on the resolution eventually passed 64 to 50. But climate change is still a topic of debate among a significant minority of ministers and representative elders.

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General Assembly returns on Tuesday 15 June next year. In the meantime, the restriction on serving alcohol in Assembly Buildings has been varied so the Anglican Consultative Council can serve alcoholic wine at Eucharist services when they meet in Belfast between 27 June 2026 and 5 July 2026!

Derren Brown: Only Human – combining magic, misdirection and mentalism to great effect (Grand Opera House until Saturday 23 May)

The audience are quickly integrated into the running of the Derren Brown: Only Human show. And we stay involved right to the finish. The underlying techniques that the skilled storyteller and hustler claims to be employing – never mind the ones that he’s actually using to obtain the wowing results – vary across the different beats of the production.

Everyone attending – and specifically reviewers – are asked not to reveal the details of the almost fully sold-out show. But it’s safe to say that there will be demonstrations of the full suite of mentalism (suggestion, perception, psychology and hypnosis), close magic and the manipulation of objects, misdirection, and large-scale illusion which may put a relatively simple trick at the heart of something so theatrical that it feels immense. There’s lots of live camera work to pick out people in the audience – sitting up in the Gods doesn’t preclude you being called down onto the stage or given a mic to share your input.

Brown is warm and affable. Volunteers – if anyone can truly show freewill in an environment that so carefully controls certain aspects of our experience – all seem very comfortable. Walking up Great Victoria Street after the show, I bumped into one of the early on-stage volunteers carrying his ‘prize’ and he was thrilled with his evening.

Learning to ask the right questions was the theme of local magician Caolan McBride’s impressive Unlocking Sherlock show last October. With a focus on how we relate to the future, the “Only Human” title is loosely referred to during Brown’s two-hour 40-minute show – plan your return travel arrangements accordingly as some of tonight’s audience members hadn’t correctly predicted their exit time! – he keeps returning to another question: “What do you want to be?”

The historical figure of Nostradamus provides a vehicle for a set of in-show predictions which build up and extend throughout the full duration of the performance. Overthinkers like me will spot clues and develop hunches about how some of the illusions might be achieved. But by the time we’ve reached the grand finale, the combination of what seem like huge coincidences and the arms-length nature of one of the final numerical tricks defy easy explanation, and any suggestion that the coherence of the show’s theme didn’t always land is mostly replaced with a sense of wonder that Brown and his expert team can keep the myriad of plates spinning to pull off such a series of big reveals. 

(Overthinkers may later want to question the assumptions that are re-enforced at intervals throughout the show to unpick how some of the illusions are achieved. However, the people who’ll get the best sense of what’s truly going on will be the theatre’s ushers who will see the same elements of the show repeated – and probably adapted to go with the flow of audience responses – throughout the week. But they’ll also be keeping tight lipped about their observations! Most people seem happy to sit back, relax and soak it all in and be wowed.)

Derren Brown: Only Human continues at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 23 May before heading off to Plymouth, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and more … ending up in the Apollo Theatre in London’s West End for three and a half months from 10 October.

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Hen – fresh and feathery perspective on a familiar human crisis (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 May)

Over the weekend, I had to watch To Kill A Mockingbird in preparation for the recording of an upcoming episode of Banterflix. Harper Lee’s novel wasn’t part of my GCSE English Literature experience: Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie was the book we had to study. Like the original 1960 book, the 1962 film adaptation examines racial injustice in the American South through the eyes of a child. The mixture of naïve and old-beyond-her-years observation feels fresher than any adult procedural storytelling could have managed.

Reacting to the constraints on his normal mode of filmmaking in his home country of Hungary, György Pálfi’s new film Hen uses the perspective of a chicken. Born and reared in a factory farm environment, the unnamed avian escapologist takes advantage of an opportunity to flee from a lorry transporting hens to the next, likely final, stage of their journey from egg to plate. It’s the first of many breakouts, as the leghorn hen travels to her new home where she ‘flies the coop’ to explore the surroundings of a family-owned restaurant on the Greek coast.

Business isn’t good and the owner’s daughter’s boyfriend decides to diversify their income with people smuggling. Despite the feathery perspective, Pálfi boldly makes the hen complicit in events that will shock but not surprise audiences.

The lead role is played by eight chickens: Anett, Enci, Enikő, Eszti, Eti, Feri, Nóra and Szandi. You can find out more about their jumping and running skills in a Guardian interview with Pálfi. The performance of the hens on screen are always real, never CGIed, though their human handler is magicked out of some footage.

What starts out as an almost flippant film about factory farming, switches to tell a somewhat familiar tale of human trafficking. A novel depiction, but hardly a new story? Yet the fresh perspective remains vivid in my mind days after the preview screening.

The tale of a hen determined to break free from her own captors, who stows away and witnesses terrible things along her journey. The parallels are subtle yet significant with the hopes and experiences of the people we briefly see being moved around ‘like animals’.

Hen is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 May. 

 

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Guys and Dolls – agile gamblers with varying degrees of situationships are confronted with the error of their ways in this infectious musical (Belfast Operatic Company at Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 May)

Nathan is running an nomadic crap game under the nose of the local cop and in spite of a warning from his long suffering fiancée of 14 years, nightclub dancer Adelaide. To raise enough money to secure a new venue, he bets master gambler Sky Masterson $1,000 that he can’t take a local Save-A-Soul Mission worker Sergeant Sarah on a same-day dinner date to Havana. The odds are stacked in his favour, but does anything ever run smoothly for Nathan?

Despite the appearance of a gun on stage, Guys and Dolls is a musical comedy that swerves all opportunities to become a heart-wrenching noir story of tragic loss. Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows’ book with lyrics and music by Frank Loesser is set in early 1950’s New York.

A gang of gamblers view all women as ‘dolls’. The women show their smarts and view the gambling, misogynistic guys with varying degrees of distain. Spoiler alert: Sarah’s spiritual battle with the gamblers in “this jungle of sin” ultimately leads the men through a pleasingly theologically sound process of examining their consciences, confession, redemption and ultimately restoration!

76 years after the show’s Broadway première, Belfast Operatic Company’s ambitious production swims in a sea of talent. The whole company look at home on the stage and ooze enthusiasm and a sense of joy. The chemistry between the potential love interest’s is natural. Dessie Havlin’s confident swagger and tenor voice as charismatic Sky are well matched by Naomi Smyth’s all-round performance as Sarah (and her terrifically trolleyed introduction to rum), with their gorgeous duet I’ve Never Been in Love Before a fabulous way to round off act one.

Greg Fox brings humour, exasperation and pleading to his portrayal of larger-than-life Nathan. Emiko Seawright swings the put-upon artiste Adelaide between hope and exasperation, with starry singing and dancing in A Bushel and a Peck and the playful Take Back your Mink. Adelaide’s only duet with fellow situationship victim Sarah, Marry the Man Today, beautifully blends the voices of Seawright and Smyth. Kudos to Conor Anderson who animates the character Nicely Nicely and ably leads the jubilant 11 o’clock number Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat. Salvation Army member and Belfast Operatic/St Agnes’ stalwart, Laura Kerr, plays the stern-until-she’s-flexible General Cartwright with gusto ... hopefully not based on anyone she’s met in church! 

Guys and Dolls is a long show, running just shy of three hours including the interval, which seemed to catch out some first night audience members (who shuffled towards the theatre’s exits to catch last buses and trains before the second act was even close to finishing). Despite the run time that must have put pressure on rehearsals, director Kerry Rodgers delivers a well-drilled cast who felt like they’re mid-way through a month long run rather than the first of six shows.

The 20-strong orchestra in the pit under Colin Scott’s baton crank out toe-tapping tune after infectious tune, although the meaty second act entr’acte (blame the composer!) almost causes, rather than prevents, audience restlessness with a desire to quickly get back to the on-stage madness.

I can’t think of many amateur groups who could deliver the all-male Luck Be A Lady song and dance routine with such aplomb and nimble footwork. The dice-heavy set design and flamboyant costumes – the guys’ rainbow suits are a triumph of the second act – reinforce the frivolity of the plot. Tim Bell’s ambitious choreography impresses throughout, whether bringing the Hot Box dancers to life, or creating the visually pleasing Havana routine as Sky and Sarah mingle with the carousing street party. The vivid lighting design adds height and movement to scenes, though on opening night left some characters performing in the relative shadow.

Guys and Dolls continues its impressive run at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 May.

Photo credit: unknown

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Tea In A China Cup – getting out the good china from 1983 for a fresh brew (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 30 May)

As part of the Lyric Theatre’s 75th anniversary programme, Christina Reid’s 1983 play Tea in a China Cup is being restaged. Back then she was the theatre’s playwright-in-residence (1983/4) and one of just four female playwrights to have their work produced by the Lyric during the 1980s. One of just four women playwrights in a decade!

Tea In A China Cup is a play about working-class Ulster Protestant women penned by a working-class Ulster Protestant woman who lived in Ardoyne. To borrow from one of the script’s recurring themes, it’s as if the play has been trapped in one of the wooden cabinets with glass shelves dotted around the walls of the Lyric Theatre’s public areas, like the ‘best’ china tea set that no one uses. And more than 40 years later, someone has had the nerve to open the door and lift out a cup and saucer.

This is a play full of sorrow that follows three generations of women in a family. History repeats itself with dangerous military service (across world wars and the Troubles), husbands with little respect for their wives, and a strong sense that the first rule of Protestant club is to never let yourself down in front of other people.

Everything is viewed through the eyes of Beth. When she’s not in the heart of a scene, Amy Molloy lurks to the side, either crouched down or peering down on the action from high up on the multi-storey set. Poverty has constrained Beth’s education along with her wider family’s social mobility. It’s easy to forget that the play is set in North Down rather than north Belfast. Perhaps true to her own Ardoyne environs, Reid writes in a best friend for Beth, Catholic girl Theresa (Louise Parker), who seems to have the best of everything, but who we will discover ultimately also lives under her own family’s omertà and suppresses her actual circumstances when back home from London.

Beth was apparently born asking ‘why?’ and as her character matures, Molloy finds new ways to question difference and physically react to the hypocrisy around her and the perennial absence of fulsome answers. Will she ever find relief from the burden of carrying around everyone else’s past lives? Again, an attitude that will have seemed more novel and x in 1983 than 2026.

The play’s narrative crashes together flashbacks like a script dropped on the floor with its pages picked up in a random order. In the present, Mum Sarah (a brilliant Mary Moulds) is facing the final months of her life with great fortitude. With effort she moves from her bed to a window to watch the bands go past on the Twelfth. Director Dan Gordon starred in the 1983 production. His decades-long work with bands brings the authentic sound of Mourne Young Defenders Flute Band into Chris Warner’s vivid soundscape. (The Lyric’s spatial audio system is put to good use throughout, though the sound of cars going past being placed above the audience’s heads felt jarring.)

Marie Jones has a twinkle in her eye playing Beth’s grandmother, with some great conspiratorial scenes shared with Great Aunt Maisie (Katie Tumelty). The remainder of the cast play family members, council workers and neighbours. Maria Connolly sets a flippant tone as a cemetery department clerk with a bouffant hairdo and a comedy-sized magnifying glass. She later garners more laughs as a costly fortune teller.

One generation’s loss during a world war is followed by the next’s loss of homes as the Troubles begin. Simon Sweeney sympathetically portrays two generations of young men heading away to army training – cherished figures with pride of place on the wall of the family home – with the first departure particularly touching. John Paul Connolly is the more trouble-than-he’s-worth grandfather, while Matthew Forsythe appears in a number of roles including a British Army officer struggling to protect homes under threat.

Ciarán Bagnall’s spinning and sliding set and lighting design cast vivid slabs of light through open doorways in dark building with the cast needing to take care to hit their mark precisely to keep their faces illuminated in the narrow beams. The homes on either side of the stage neatly rotate, revealing perilous ladders that that put your heart in your mouth as you watch cast members clamber up and down. (The forced perspective works well, though I almost expect Scrooge from the Lyric’s recent festive productions to step through at any moment.)

Death rituals and lousy sex education are familiar topics in modern theatre. Shame may still be a driving force in families, but is secrecy still as prevalent? Tea In A China Cup often feels like a play of its time. What producer today would entertain commissioning a play with such a large cast (nine)? Yet its restaging is a much-needed reminder that women are still under-represented in almost every aspect of Irish theatre (except costume design), but will contribute so much when not actively frozen out.

If she was allowed to break the fourth wall, Beth might ask why this play was chosen from the archives to be revamped and presented to fresh audiences? A women-led story on a Belfast stage is almost as unusual then as it is now: Cuckoo-Land is a recent exception. When first staged, the brazen and unfiltered anti-Catholic bigoted utterances of the main characters must have been shocking and almost fearless. But what about today? How much has changed? Those lines of dialogue – sometimes funny, sometimes almost too crass to be comfortable – are a reminder of how far society has come. Sectarianism is by no means dead, but it’s much diluted and has largely moved beyond simple beliefs that people from the ‘other side’ are lazy and don’t have good personal hygiene. Yet communities are still apt to be swayed by fear and difference over hope and cohesion.

Tea In A China Cup continues its run at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 30 May.

Photo Credit: Neil Harrison

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The Bodyguard – high production values but emotionally light adaptation of classic film (Grand Opera House until Saturday 9 May)

The spirit of Whitney Houston is much less pronounced in this latest UK touring version of The Bodyguard musical (based on the 1992 film) directed by Thea Sharrock. There’s no attempt to recreate Houston’s legendary vocals, and instead the Houston’s back catalogue is explored and reimagined through the eyes and experience of fictional singer Rachel Marron.

Former Secret Service agent turned bodyguard Frank Farmer has been hired to protect Oscar-nominated power balladeer Rachel after she received a series of threats. His no nonsense hyper vigilant approach soon rubs Rachel and her entire entourage up the wrong way. Only her young son Fletcher is on Team Frank. But the tension melts away between Rachel and Frank after a risky club gig goes south and the pair bond over karaoke.

The Bodyguard breaks a lot of the normal rules of jukebox musical theatre. The build-up of tension trades on the fact that the audience are often kept well ahead of the characters. One scene late in the show is a case in point with some in the audience practically shouting to warn the cast about an emerging threat. In complete contrast, there are also moments when large bangs and flames startle the audience. (The appearance of a man wearing a balaclava feels like it’s going to be so much more sinister in Belfast than some English cities.)

Jukebox musicals also tend to rely on a central set that forms the backdrop for nearly every scene. The Bodyguard’s set designer Tim Hatley instead uses floor to ceiling curtains to (visually pleasingly) section off parts of the stage and create windows into rooms in Rachel’s mansion. Scene changes are achieved with elaborate yet elegant automation. The lighting design (Mark Henderson) slowly reveals its depth and tricks over the first ten minutes. Video projection (Duncan McLean) hints at production’s cinematic heritage and also helps immerse the audience in the second act build-up to the Academy Award ceremony.

Tonally, the regular appearance of big musical numbers drives the energy in so many scenes that moments of extended conversation feel neglected. The stage musical plays up older sister Nicki’s jealousy about Rachel’s success, but the revelation about her character turns out to be very different to the movie.

Greatest Love of All is the first song that properly showcases Sidone Smith’s voice (playing Rachel). During the sisters’ duets, Sasha Monique’s vocals (Nicki) tend to shine out ahead of Smith, and her performance of Saving All My Love For You is a low-key but standout moment in the first act.

It’s two and a half years since a previous production of The Bodyguard toured through Belfast (reviewed back in September 2023). This time around, Frank’s initially diabolical karaoke performance isn’t allowed to improve in the second verse of I Will Always Love You, and we never get to hear Adam Garcia properly sing (not even in the final extravagant curtain call).

Overall, The Bodyguard fails to capture the strident emotion of the film. A death after the interval evokes a strong sense of peril but strangely the characters don’t emote significant sadness. Smith/Rachel’s final rendition of I Will Always Love You recreates the musicality of the classic Houston’s version (of Dolly Parton’s song), with a tender a cappella beginning, building up to the powerful middle section and the iconic key changes. The remote cabin singalong of Jesus Loves Me is the first real moment that the normally vocal Belfast audience start to join in, accompanied by the unwelcome sound of text message notifications across the auditorium.

The Bodyguard continues its run at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 9 May.

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