Wasted – no money, no phone, no keys, no friend, no memory, and maybe no way of knowing what happened (Bruiser Theatre, touring)

While quite a number of recent theatre productions have covered with the issue of consent, few scripts deal with it as deftly as Kat Woods’ Wasted.

Emma and Kate were out on the town when they met brothers Oli and Charlie. A lot of craic was had and much alcohol was consumed. The group got split up. With no money, no phone, no keys, and no best friend, Emma went back home with Oli, a guardian angel helping a damsel in distress. The next morning she’s not certain what all happened, but she’s pretty certain her body’s telling her that something happened, and that a morning after pill would be a necessary precaution.

Having established the hazy events of a night out, Wasted jumps back and forth with a very modern yet accessible non-linear approach that sees Kate confronting Emma with the likelihood that she was raped, while Oli tries to mould his grasp of consent being a feeling to the cold light of day truth of his actions.

Sharon Duffy plays Emma, a young woman who is somewhat happy-go-lucky, realistic about her overcapacity to consume, and doesn’t see herself as a victim. Warren McCook plays the Oli, who isn’t an out and out predator, but is scared that he won’t be able to escape the long-term consequences of his actions. Together, they are incredible.

Two chairs and a table are rearranged to establish the different locations. The actors’ movements are frenetic. Their lines whizz past like bullets as they jump in and out of various supporting characters. Bruiser’s famed physical theatre techniques see the pair rewinding and fast forwarding through the night out and the morning after, at one point creating a night club strobe effect without needing lights to flash. Some scenes repeat with new details coming to light. Watch out for the roller disco moves without needing wheels!

The pace is full on, requiring stacks of kinetic energy and commitment from the word go. There’s no room for error, either on stage or behind the scenes with the stage manager who has to be totally in sync with the actors to create the effects. It’s hard to imagine the level of drilling required to get the choreography so exact: at times, it feels like a frantic synchronised dance with added words. Garth McConaghie’s soundscape mixes sweeping musical themes with distressed sound effects to enhance the emotional turmoil. Eoin Robinson’s letterbox video adds subtle reminders about phone callers and police interviews.

Driving back from the Newtownabbey Theatre At The Mill venue I passed close to The American Bar where I first saw Pintsized Production’s version of Wasted back in 2018. Nuala Donnelly was the director, and she is assistant director beside director Lisa May on this Bruiser production. The 2024 set’s footprint is nearly larger than the upstairs of the original pub! Yet the claustrophobic feeling of heads turning and lives spinning out of control is retained.

This afternoon, the PSNI have been tweeting out messages aimed at students heading off to college. One deals with FRIES: consent should be Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, and Specific. Wasted powerfully portrays a young woman and a young man who at first don’t comprehend (as the play explains) that someone’s “capacity to consent may evaporate before a complainant becomes unconscious”. But within 24 hours, they both learn a lot about themselves and each other.

Wasted is a sweaty and sweary examination of consensual sex within the context of a one-night stand and binge drinking culture. It’s a vital and breathtaking piece of theatre, that years later still feels painfully relevant in a place where instances of assault are still excused by laddish behaviour and society at large struggles to see respect and consent as priorities in every situation.

Bruiser are touring Wasted through theatres in Downpatrick (Friday 6 September), Omagh (Thursday 19), Armagh (Saturday 21) and Belfast’s The MAC (Wednesday 25 to Sunday 29). Importantly, they are also taking the production into schools and colleges, to prompt conversations about the issues the show raises before people are harmed and the criminal justice system has to comes into play.

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Reawakening – the return of a prodigal daughter poses more questions than it answers (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 13 September)

Clare Reed walked out of her family home aged 14, never to return. For ten years, Mary and John have lived with her absence, one throwing themselves into work as a classroom assistant looking after other people’s children, the other working as an electrician by day while combing homeless centres by night to try to trace anyone who might recognise the girl in the last picture he had of his daughter. Mary comes home one day to find a woman sitting on the wall outside their house. John has so many questions, but good answers aren’t forthcoming.

Reawakening is a character study of two parents and a young woman. It’s about a mother whose need to love a child makes her reluctant to confront the truth staring her in the face. How a young person longs to live in the safety of a family home. How a father struggles to balance his desire for truth and explanation with what’s best for his wife.

Erin Doherty is trapped in the middle of this fractured domesticity, playing a young woman who has been lied to, abused, and now wants to reconstruct her life. John (played by Jared Harris) lashes out with incredible outbursts of rage. Yet later in the film, the camera lingers on his emotionally fraught face as he silently listens to a revelatory account of Clare’s life. Juliet Stevenson offers a multi-layered portrayal of a mother whose grief is mixed with guilt and longing. She’s bubbly and broken, all at the same time.

Together these parents have to deal with the consequences of their action and inaction, in the past and going forward. Maybe there’s an unorthodox way of rationalising what’s now real, and a path that everyone can follow? But that’s bit of a stretch. Little of what happens in Reawakening feels terribly believable, which sometimes interferes with the psychological tension that screenwriter/director Virginia Gilbert is building. The audience are asked to suppose that the mental anguish of loss could be so great that two people would become so utterly irrational that they could continue to talk to the police while not admitting that a child has returned home. The fear of continued media intrusion is offered as a half-hearted excuse. But it really doesn’t wash.

Ultimately, the film feels like watching the first two parts of a gloomy television drama without ever seeing the brilliant conclusion. The acting is more gripping than the storytelling. Reawakening is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 13 September.

 

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Sing Sing – prison drama opens doors towards a better freedom (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 30 August)

Sing Sing is a new film from Greg Kwedar which looks at the work of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme that works in six men’s and women’s maximum and medium security prisons in New York State.

We step inside the Sing Sing Correctional Facility to see a group of men working with an outside director (Brent played by Paul Raci). They've just completed a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream and are keen to decide their next play and begin rehearsals. It helps to know up front that while this looks like a rather slickly filmed documentary, it is instead a fictionalised representation, cowritten with alumni from the RTA programme, and starring many former inmates who take all but three of the main roles.

The RTA programme works with professional artists to help inmates create art, to write, and to perform. What started off as an opportunity for prisoners to learn practical lessons about management ahead of eventual release became a much deeper chance to find a new vocabulary to express themselves, new ways of reflecting on their own lives, past actions and future choices, and to open up with others in a usually fraught environment where vulnerability equals pain. RTA reckons that less than 3% of programme participants return to prison after they are released compared to 60% nationally.

Colman Jason Domingo portrays G, a leading figure in the Sing Sing RTA group, a playwright who batters out scripts on a typewriter in his cell, and an actor who can take on the big roles. The real G – John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield – was an early member of RTA, attended the High School for Performing Arts (you’ll know it from the TV series, musical, or film FAME). Away from the theatre, he uses his legal learning to help inmates with their parole applications. G’s closest confidante and buoyant lieutenant is Mike Mike (played by Sean San José).

The film’s initial conflict stems from the disruptive influence of Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin, a new recruit to the RTA who doesn’t wait to get his feet under the table before throwing out suggestions. Not only does Maclin suggest that a comedy would be better than producing G’s latest script, he then auditions for the role G would traditionally be cast in. While we’d expect the two alpha males to square up to each other like fighting peahens, G takes a beat, recognises his pride, gives Maclin room to flail before stepping in to gently and more robustly assist and challenge him.

Maclin is a gripping presence on screen, full of raw emotion. It’s quite a contrast – a welcome one at that – to Domingo’s equally intense but much more muted performance with slow-moving facial expressions and temperate demeanour. Domingo is allowed to linger in scenes, whereas Maclin tends to butt in or storm off. Director Brent crafts a surreal time-travelling fantasy script out of the group’s wish list that includes ancient Egypt, pirates, gladiators, Hamlet and cowboys. We see very little of the final production: that’s not the end goal of the movie. (Though snatches of camcorder footage from actual RTA performances appear towards the end of the film.)

“We’re here to become human again” is how one prisoner sums up the role of the drama. There is freedom to be found under lock and key through RTA. The inmates are expert at playing roles: on the outside before prison, inside the correction facility, externally to the other inmates, internally, and now on stage. The actors are also expert at putting themselves back into their prison days, and improvising scenes that look very authentic in the final film. Anyone who has seen a performance of the Belfast Lyric Theatre’s Blackout production in conjunction with Hydebank Wood College will have first hand experience of what is possible.

The fiction-based-on-reality aspect of Sing Sing is a troublesome distraction at times. Yet the strong performances, emotional scenes, and the sense that even the most passionate helper can need a helping hand in prison carries the film through to its conclusion. It’s a powerful reminder that rehabilitation can be a process, that change is possible, and that recidivism can be reduced.

Sing Sing is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 30 August.

 

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Hairspray – Good evening Balti-fast! (Grand Opera House until Saturday 31 August)

While the starting point of the stage musical Hairspray is a TV producer rejecting the audition of a white girl with plus-sized proportions to be on the popular Corny Collins dance show, the conflict is quickly established as the racist segregation that sees an all-white cast broadcast every week except ‘Negro Day’. But young Tracy Turnblad gets a second chance when the show’s host comperes her school dance and is impressed with the fresh moves she’s picked up from black students in her regular detention class.

It may be her professional debut, but Alexandra Emmerson-Kirby gets straight down to business making a strong impression with Tracy’s opening number Good Morning Baltimore, soon followed up with the demanding but well-delivered I Can Hear The Bells. The early appearance of remote-control rats suggests that the next couple of hours will be very playful. Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now creates a pacey triptych between Tracy, her best friend Penny, and TV dancer Amber and their respective mothers.

Tracy’s mum and dad – played by Neil Hurst (traditionally a drag role) and Dermot Canavan – mercilessly milk Timeless to Me to the delight of the audience and themselves. Katlo injects a lot of energy to the production every time Little Inez comes to the front of the stage. The second act quartet Without Love shows off Freya McMahon’s superb voice (playing Penny) alongside Reece Richards (Seaweed), Solomon Davy (Link) and Emmerson-Kirby (Tracy).

Embellishments to the 2021/22 tour add unfussy projected backdrops for a handful of scenes and see Brenda Edwards (formerly Motormouth Maybelle) join Paul Kerryson as co-director. Some neat moments of choreography – there’s a Bucks Fizz skirt pull – are lost in the melee and wasted. At Monday evening’s performance, Motormouth was played by Vanessa Dumatey who had stacks of stage presence and a great singing voice, but lacked some of the vocal grittiness usually associated with the role.

The contemporary resonance of the long-standing line “manipulating the judicial system just to win a contest is un-American” was appreciated by the Grand Opera House audience, even if the Milton joke passed most by.

Three weeks ago, PSNI landrovers with their sirens blazing raced past the door of the theatre as audiences left the opening night of The Simon & Garfunkel Story to respond to race-motivated violence just a couple of hundred yards away. Disappointingly, the climatic moment in the dialogue – where Tracy declares that “The Corny Collins Show is now and forevermore officially integrated” – barely got a whimper from the Belfast audience never mind the whoop it might stir up in some other UK venues. I can’t help wondering if the local audiences will be the most predominantly white ones that the Hairspray cast perform to on their UK tour. That’s not a fault of anyone attending, but the fact that local theatre audiences rarely reflect the full diversity of those living and working in Northern Ireland should be a matter of concern and on the agenda of the Arts Council.

Hairspray is a story of its time with dialogue from the 1960s – or perhaps the 1980s when the original film was released – that now jar. Aspects of the musical’s original book that tend towards a white saviour narrative (teen Tracy being celebrated for her role in integrating Baltimore) have been watered down with Inez winning the Miss Hairspray competition instead of Tracy. This prevents the eleven o’clock number I Know Where I’ve Been from being robbed of its power.

Hairspray continues its run at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 31 August. Even a delayed start and some misbehaving scenery in the second act couldn’t stop the beat this evening. And if you miss out on tickets, the cast will be back in Derry’s Millennium Forum next March (Monday 10–Saturday 15).

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Between the Temples – organising an unorthodox bat mitzvah heralds freedom (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 23 August)

Ben is depressed and unsettled, a cantor at his local synagogue who has lost the confidence to lead worship. His old school music teacher Carla wants to reconnect with her Jewish faith and heritage. Both are widowed, and a chance meeting connects Carla with someone who could prepare her for the bat mitzvah that she missed out on as a teenager. But two mothers, a devoutly atheist son and a rabbi’s daughter, never mind the pair’s own insecurities, threaten to disrupt the healing process.

Jason Schwartzman portrays a middle-aged man who is totally lost. Throughout Between the Temples, he shows off a wide range of coughs as Ben struggles to recapture the voice so crucial to his job. Opposite him, a raspy Carol Kane conjures up Carla with a laid-back attitude and an open heart. This is a woman at an age and a stage where she wants to be heard. Together they are an odd couple, though they would struggle to see themselves being defined that way.

Every character has obvious flaws or lives under some sort of a societal cloud which brings with it comical consequences. Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel) is good at bending rules, although that extends to cheating at golf. His daughter’s broken engagement has labelled her as ‘damaged goods’ and both she (Gabby played by Madeline Weinstein) and her father assume Ben might be a route to social salvation. She also represents a ghost from Ben’s past, a timeline of continuity that confronts him.

Co-writers Nathan Silver and C. Mason Wells aren’t afraid to inject the script with cultural detail and quirks. So watch out for the Protestant girl on his Jewish dating app, and the different approaches taken by Ben’s mothers: the artistic one (Caroline Aaron) and the pushy estate agent/realtor (Dolly De Leon). A claustrophobic dinner scene eventually unpacks everyone’s pent up frustrations.

The dialogue is peppered with one-liners: some zing, and others linger like existential questions hovering over the storyline. “Have we made some choices?” asks a waiter in a restaurant with comedy-sized menus. “Hell, yes” your heart will cry as you witness Carla’s son’s (Nat played by Matthew Shear) coercive and belittling attitude.

Like another recent release – Only The River Flows – Between the Temples is shot on 16mm film and revels in the graininess and the softer colour tones. While much of the film is edited like a fly on the wall documentary – albeit with very exaggerated characters – there are abrupt stylistic changes to reflect changes in Ben’s wellbeing.

Between the Temples is a somewhat unorthodox film. It’s charming and a sweet story the open ending suggests that Ben and Carla may well be the sanest and least troubled characters in the whole menagerie of mayhem. A rom com with the ‘rom’ artfully disguised and ill-defined. It’s being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 23 August.

 

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – bringing the magical world of the Wonka factory to life (BSPA at The MAC until Saturday 24 August)

Reclusive Willy Wonka opens a candy corner store, an incognito way of reconnecting with real people after a long period making chocolate treats in a factory which no longer employed townsfolk as workers. With sales on the decline and purchasers shuffling towards older age brackets, the chocolate bar inventor needs to revamp, revive and reimagine his brand offering. Golden tickets are hidden in Wonka chocolate bars, sparking a worldwide hunt and a boost to his brand. Five children and their responsible adults turn up to tour the factory. It’s as if Roald Dahl had foreshadowed The Hunger Games, with only one child winning the ultimate prize.

In Belfast School of Performing Arts’ production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Michael Nevin confidently captures the playful yet twisted, dangerously eccentric manner of Willy Wonka. Young Charlie (played on Thursday evening by Max Reid who alternates the part with Aimee Toner) is the luckiest lad alive, steeped in poverty but blessed with an abundance of love from his Mum and four comically bedridden grandparents. For Nicole Craigan, taking on Charlie’s Mum (alternating with Matilda Gibson) is quite a contrast with her role earlier this summer as the evil Sea Queen Ursula in BSPA’s junior production of The Little Mermaid. Her lilting rendition of If Your Father Were Here is the first moment that emotion properly enters the story. Oliver Stevenson plays Grandpa Joe (alternating with James Spencer), a teller of tall tales and always on the lookout for Charlie.

While Charlie is an optimistic dreamer, a quietly virtuous humble soul who puts others before himself, the other four international golden ticket winners truly put the ‘brat’ into this summer production: insatiable beefcake Augustus Gloop (Oliver Chestnutt), screechy and self-centred Veruca Salt (played by terrific dancer Alice Mackle), gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde (Amelia Galbraith who ably handles the physical effects that depict her character’s demise) and cyberhacker Mike Teavee (Sonny Kerr). I particularly loved how Grace Convoy made Mrs Teavee elegant yet with a twist of Miss Hannigan. And Moss McPeak’s Mrs Green was a delight every time she came on stage to flog comedy ingredients for Charlie’s family dinner.

With a cast of more than 60 actors, the ensemble is split into four groups. When everyone is on The MAC stage, it’s a tight fit, but the clusters of costumes and props help differentiate the different roles. Michael McEvoy’s choreography is to be applauded, not least for its very natural but wholehearted inclusion of a performer who uses a wheelchair is to be applauded. It’s handled as if it’s the most normal occurrence – which it is, or at least, it should be – yet is rare to see in amateur or professional productions.

An unseen band of ten play with gusto under the direction of Ashley Fulton. Many scene changes are accompanied by a group of two to six singers who deliver bursts of close harmony that will give you goosebumps. The final two songs – as Willy Wonka and Charlie travel up in the glass elevator and are then joined by the full cast on stage – epitomise the quality of the vocals and musical accompaniment.

Fergus Wachala-Kelly’s projected animations always improve productions, and in this show, his white on black handwriting and drawings increase the sense of scale of young Charlie’s imagination and his desire to improve the lives of his family. The chunky sets used for many scenes – the ability to squeeze them through the wings adds to the visual magic already in the show – mean that the absence of physical props in some parts of the second act is quite noticeable. The costumes dazzle, and the green Oompa-Loompas with matching wigs are simultaneously fetching and sinister. PS: I’m in Team Veruca in terms of wanting to go home with a Jeremy the Squirrel costume.

This new tweaked and modernised edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory certainly stretches the BSPA production team. The cast and creatives can’t rely on familiar music to delight the audience. Instead, the company get to grips with the less familiar music, the principals all sing and act their socks off, while the ensemble bring the magical world of the Wonka factory to life in glorious – and at times psychedelic – technicolour. BSPA’s versatility and Peter Corry’s imaginative direction shine through.

You’ve as much chance of getting a ticket to see the remaining performances of this show in The MAC as you have finding a Wonka Golden Ticket. Other than a handful of seats at Friday’s 2pm matinee, they’re rarer than hen’s teeth.

Photo credit: Toby Watson Photos

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Hollywoodgate – a fly on the wall view of the Taliban air force (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 22 August)

When the US troops pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, Taliban forces moved in behind them to take over their former bases. One such site was in Kabul, dubbed Hollywoodgate, suspected of being a former CIA base of operations.

While some military vehicles and equipment were destroyed or put beyond use, lots of other paraphernalia – “an enormous treasure” – was left behind when the US troops withdrew.

Egyptian documentarian Ibrahim Nash’at negotiated access – insane access – to film a Taliban group as they tried to bring the disabled Black Hawk helicopters back to life. The deal was that any person could be filmed, but only a couple of specific individuals could talk on camera. Capturing footage of the aircraft was meant to be off limits, but Nash’at studiously ignored that rule.

“Why is he filming us?” asks one soldier. The explanation comes back: “He is making a documentary, like a film with real people”. Then his radio mic picks up the loaded remark: “If his intentions are bad, he will die soon”. A deadly mix of propaganda and power.

The real answer to the soldier’s question may be that that the Taliban reckoned he was harmless and compliant, and his film might provide a publicity coup. They may have thought that the filmmaker was keen but vulnerable. That they could run rings around him. Was it a naïve decision by an egotistical leader? Or a strategic gamble?

Nash’at captures the innumeracy and illiteracy of those in charge. He portrays a leader – Mawlawi Mansour, head of the air force – whose eyes light up like a child in a toy shop at Christmas when he sees a running machine and issues the order to “send one of those to my home”. He also gives a sense of the incompetence, medicine the US left behind goes out of date before they get round to using it. And while the Afghan citizens outside the base are not meant to feature in his filming, Nash’at manages to give a sense of the general plight in a chaotic country.

The widescale ineptitude is accompanied by some engineering success. Yet there are still changes of military personnel before the film ends. And having chanced his arm for a year, Nash’at flees the country when he realises that his generous access might be brutally curtailed.

“What I tried to show is what I saw” explains the filmmaker.

Over 90 minutes, Hollywoodgate portrays a military force with little training, more used to scrappy fighting, but not transforming into an army, or in this case, an air force. Everyone is on edge, fearful of being demoted or disposed of with the flick of a higher-up’s wrist. Much like the general population who have been living for years – decades – in fear of local and international forces supposedly fighting for their rights and freedoms.

First shown in Belfast as part of the DocsIreland festival, Hollywoodgate was one of my personal highlights. It now has a UK release and is being screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 22 August. It’s a brief glimpse into a corner of the world that is rarely seen up close by those not living there. Worth a trip to the cinema to be a fly on the wall.

 

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Bringing It All Back Home – extracts from three Belfast playwrights’ plays set in the city (Sanctuary Theatre until Saturday 17 August)

As I’ve mentioned before on the blog, I’m a big fan of rehearsed readings of plays. Sitting back, listening to well delivered dialogue and being able to imagine the location, the set, the costumes, the interactions. It’s why radio plays work so well. (Radio also has the added advantage of sound effects and added music, but it’s a very similar experience.) I find that it’s the dialogue and the intensity of interactions that stand out in my memories, not beautifully created tableaux of choreographed characters or stunning lighting effects. The words and the character relationships take centre stage without distraction.

Patsy Montgomery-Hughes is joint artistic director at Bright Umbrella Drama Co in east Belfast. This week, she’s presenting Bringing It All Back Home, with rehearsed extracts from three east Belfast plays that haven’t been staged before in full in the city.

A quartet of superb actors – Abigail McGibbon, Caroline Curran, Dan Gordon and Sean Kearns – bring their talent to bear on plays by David Ireland, Lucy Caldwell and Caitlin Magnall-Kearns. The 45-minute performance features two extracts from each of these three plays.

Never one to tiptoe around an issue when you could pull it apart like a vicious dog with a new stuffed toy, David Ireland’s Ulster American immediately latches onto the deep-grained complexity of identity in this place. “What is Ulster?” asks one of his characters, an acclaimed American actor who comes from a place of ignorance and makes a lot of assumptions that his local colleagues – a forthright playwright and an ambitious director – start to unpick. Even with only a few minutes of material, the actors’ take on Ireland’s script has the Sanctuary Theatre audience gasping, involuntarily moving their hands to their mouths. Their discomfort with the concepts, and how they are being expressed, is visceral.

Lucy Caldwell’s Leaves feels more gentile. In the first extract, we hear two parents debating whether “a place or a person is more than a name”. Their rambling dialogue hints that they’re avoiding addressing a much bigger problem under their roof.

Two colleagues working behind the counter in a chip shop are discussing life, the universe and everything in Caitlin Magnall-Kearns’s Orangefield. Can a hopeless romantic find love?

The run time is all too short, leaving everyone wanting to hear much more of one or more of the plays. These tasters have particularly strong flavours, particularly when savoured while sitting on wooden pews in east Belfast. Hopefully, one or more will get a full production, or at least a full reading at some point in the future. And hopefully, other unheard plays – like Abbie Spallen’s Strandline which enjoyed a brilliant reading back above The American Bar in 2022 – will eventually get a chance to grace a local stage and wow audiences with its wordplay.

Bringing It All Back Home finishes its run on Saturday 17 August with a 14:00 matinee and a 19:30 evening performance.

Photo credit: Gorgeous Photography

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Only The River Flows – a rainswept police procedural that is muddy rather than noir (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 22 August)

Only The River Flows is a police procedural film with a difference from Chinese director Wei Shujun.

It’s 1995, and detective Ma Zhe (Yilong Zhu) begins to investigate a murder on the banks of a river. Like all good screen detectives, he has a distinctive non-police issue uniform, a black leather jacket. The weather is dirty – a perfect film to watch during a wet Irish summer – and soon the suspects’ bodies begin to mount up as one death turns to many. (The last film with this much rain was Parasite.)

The investigation runs in parallel with the audience’s exploration of the somewhat dysfunctional police department. The big boss is better at playing ping pong than delivering motivational speeches with any meaning. A former ‘cultural bureau’ – a theatre space with a cinema screen – has fallen into disrepair and he sends Ma Zhe and his team over to set up their office on the stage.

The level of forensic expertise is low in the region: they use different blades to cut pig flesh to see which most closely matches the neck of a murder victim. The lack of training, or lack of backup, is almost comical. The intense pressure for everyone to submit merit applications – it’s almost more important than getting to the bottom of the series of murders – creates yet more uncertainty about the mentality of the police leaders.

Watching a film about an investigation on a stage with a cinema screen creates a meta narrative that asks whether reality can be stranger than fiction. A jigsaw puzzle is another visual metaphor. A missing merit certificate sits alongside missing motives and a missing murderer. Shot on 16mm film, the colours are dull and the images vary in sharpness. The older feel contributes to the sense of 1990s and the weather. The sophisticated sound track is a creative success: listen out for the geese.

Ultimately the flippancy of some of Ma Zhe’s colleagues, along with his chief’s desire to bask in everyone else’s success creates the potential for a very watchable film. Only The River Flows is let down by its ending. All the way through Ma Zhe has avoided every easy answer. “Arrest me and you’re done” cries one suspect who it seems was certainly not the culprit. While Ma Zhe ends up suffering an existential crisis at home and at work, the film’s conclusion felt incredibly rushed and muddied. As the end credits rolled, I had no idea whodunit, and I’d no desire to go back a second time to find out. Which is a shame as Wei Shujun’s film started out with a lot of promise, and you may find you better connect with it if you catching a screening.

Only The River Flows is being shown at Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 22 August.

 

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Fly Me To The Moon – women bear the burden, and also carry the can (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 25 August)

In Fly Me To The Moon, Marie Jones writes about women who are literally doing the heavy lifting in their households. She writes about women who don’t earn much more than the minimum wage and are the ones who put the money aside to pay the household rent. They’re the women who are always on the lookout for a way to earn a few bob extra or save a pound or two.

“I dream about money, Francis, don’t you?”

One of the women praises her son for his entrepreneurial spirit: overlooking the criminal nature of his moneymaking schemes, but applauding the fact that a man in her family has got of his backside to try. The other woman is sacrificing her holiday – a friend’s far too elaborate hen weekend – to make sure her working class daughter doesn’t have a second-class experience at the grammar school she qualified to study at. Both hope that the next generation won’t suffer the poverty that their parents continue to endure.

Francis and Loretta are care assistants, travelling around people’s homes to make sure they’re washed and dressed, fed and put to bed. Their clients are sometimes heavy. And in the case of Davy Magee, they don’t get much feedback. But the women still go beyond what they’re paid to do, collecting his pension, placing his bets at the bookies, and buying him the paper so he can check the racing results.

They’re women who in the face of poverty don’t slump down in a chair and let the depression wash over them. Instead, they keep going. Francis turns a blind eye to deceit that she views as victimless. Loretta’s first reaction is to sense the shame, but her everyday reality helps her push through the barrier of guilt.

But Marie Jones sets a trap. When Davy becomes rather permanently indisposed, there’s almost a game-show feel to the increasingly value of the prizes that are dangled in front of the women. Finding a way to twist their consciences around accepting one offer opens the morally corrupt door to another larger ill-gotten gain. Soon Francis and Loretta are in over their heads. By the second act, there’s almost a sense of pantomime to the scale of what they’re considering doing. They are overthinking the opportunity while being blind to the consequences.

Nine years after first seeing Fly Me To The Moon, I came away with a different sense of feelings. I’m older for one thing. But the state of economy also feels poorer and more fractured. There’s been some gentle modernisation – memory sticks are mentioned at one point, though the counterfeit films appear on physical DVDs later on.

In 2024, it feels much more harsh to brand care workers as potential fraudsters. Their lack of pay progression is much more widely understood. Their profession’s courageous resilience through the Covid pandemic, continuing to tend to and serve their clients, is still appreciated. But it’s the jokes related to colleagues with different ethnic backgrounds that land least well, even more so in the immediate aftermath of anti-immigration protests in the cities of Belfast and Bangor. But these changing sensibilities don’t make Fly Me To The Moon a bad play, even when it continues to be set in the present day.

The ending is structurally the shakiest part of the direction and the script. Practically, excited and premature audience applause at what seemed like the incendiary finale drowned out a final short scene that should have wrapped up the story, so its context was lost to many of us in the audience. (That on top of first night sound issues that left those at the back of the theatre without sufficient amplification of the actors’ voices … something that was mostly fixed during the interval.) But dramatically, the final 10-15 minutes set up a situation where (and I’m being careful not to give away too much detail of the plot) important papers and notes are left sitting in a box on the bed, likely to be totally destroyed, but also left there because they could be found. When your brain has to think so hard to rationalise what feel like contradictory plot elements, there’s probably something that could be improved.

Marie Jones’ script successfully keeps the audience’s empathy in place while ever more kindling is thrown onto the farcical fire. In the final minutes of the play the care workers discover more about Davy than they’ve garnered over the years they’ve been coming in and out of his house. That’s the biggest shock of the show.

Katie Tumelty – for whom the role was originally written – allows the scheming Francis to be a gentle bully, pushing her colleague into doing things she can’t abide, and keeping her onside. Maria Connolly expertly portrays a hyperventilating Loretta who continually goes against her own instincts. On opening night, the quickfire retorts weren’t quite as sharp and pacey as they’ll no doubt become with further performances in front of an audience who regularly interrupt proceedings with generous laughter. And there’s a certain amount of cheating going on, looking at each other through the partial walls of Davey’s flat, instead of ‘listening’ through the doorway between the kitchen and the bedroom.

Fly Me To The Moon is produced by Patrick Talbot Productions and Rathmore Productions. It’s written and directed by Marie Jones. Performances continue at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 25 August.

Photo credit: Kasia Rogoweic

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

ROOTS – connecting people, place and plants (until Sunday 18 August)

I’m late. Though I still think I’m early. The GPS has plotted a route that unexpectedly takes me up to the top of the Whiterock Road. The road narrows to a lane. The gradient forces my lightweight car into first gear and it complains as it clamber to the top, round the tight corner and then faces back down towards the city. The track has now become the Ballygomartin Road and it widens. The GPS is certain that I have arrived at my destination, an isolated field which is even bereft of mobile phone signal to try a different app. I head on, further down, and the Belfast 2024 branding hints that I have arrived at the Black Mountain Shared Space.

The audience for ROOTS, perhaps appropriately given some of the piece’s overall narrative, have been split into three groups, tribes if you like, each wearing a different colour and hearing different voices in our heads through the wireless headphones that deliver the Isaac Gibson’s soundscape and poet Maria McManus’ word pictures.

“And in the beginning was the mountain … sleeping under her duvet of ice.”

Following the opening segment that grounds the piece in its location, each tribe heads off in a different direction. For me, there was a period of meditation, thinking about the abundance of the natural world and deepening our connection with the land and the shrubs in a community garden that has been planted and will survive beyond these performances. There was a period of collaboration, planting and realising that once there are two people, there can be a cure, with laughs and mutual support. Finally, in my version of the performance, there was a period with conflict, a couple falling out of harmony, shifting from pulling together to pushing apart, one carrying the other who seemed limp and injured, stumbling through their hurts before one lifts the other to new heights.

The three tribes and the five dancers reconvene for the final sequence. It’s been a time of communal experience and expression. The performers demonstrate a sense of togetherness, leading each other, leaping up, setting down, trusting and belonging in concert.

Over the hour, the audience aren’t left as mere spectators. We have become involved in the planting, encouraged to look and feel and smell what’s growing in the beds. Moving through the space, we have walked under wooden arches, doors to new places, portals to new ways of living. To one side, children are playing in the street, throwing balls and zooming around on scooters. Our headphones may have blocked out the noise, but their presence grounds the site in its locale, connecting the communities of the Springfield Road and the Ballygomartin Road.

The bark mulch is soft to stand on. Una Hickey’s gorgeous slate/green/beige costumes tone in with the hues of the landscape and the garden. Clara Kerr, Ed Mitchell, Rosie Mullin, Harry Wilson and Sarah Flavelle bring each section of the work to life with their flowing moves, wordlessly guiding their wandering audience around each space and through the emerging story.

Artistic director and choreographer Eileen McClory (OTR/Off The Rails dance theatre company) has created a thoughtful, site-specific, outdoor performance that blends dance, poetry, storytelling, and active participation. It’s a triumph and well worth finding.

ROOTS asks what roots us to the places we live and work and encounter each other. It asks what we feed on to sustain us. It asks what we are planting as a ‘love notes’ or gifts for the future. The new Black Mountain Shared Space building will be home to sport, meetings, community projects, performances, and a garden. Like ROOTS, it hopes to connect people, place, and plants.

While this is a site-specific piece, positioned high up overlooking part of Belfast, many of the themes can be elevated to a universal level. ROOTS has been in the planning for many months. Yet it’s portrait of people living side by side but not always in harmony is not only a metaphor for the situation in this part of Belfast, but also speaks into the fractured wellbeing of the city as it responds to anti-immigration marches, expressions of racism, violent attacks, and vigorous shows of strength to counter these challenges to the city’s rich diversity and sense of welcome.

ROOTS is part of Belfast City Council’s Belfast 2024 programme. Performances continue at 3pm and 7pm until Sunday 18 August (with no shows on Monday 12 and Tuesday 13). Tickets are available from Belfast International Arts Festival. Dress appropriately as the show will go ahead no matter the weather!

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

Radical – equipping children to learn, looking past the poverty to see the potential (QFT from Saturday 10 August)

What happens if you abandon a strict curriculum, if you shy away from a testing system that rewards recall of facts, and instead give children the skills to learn independently? In the case of a school which previously suffered large scale dropouts and was at the bottom of exam league tables, the answer turned out to be a complete reversal of fortunes for the school and, much more importantly, the children.

New film Radical is based on real events in Matamoros, a town close to the Mexico/US border. Sergio Juárez Correa (played by Eugenio Derbez) is new to the elementary school and quickly makes waves with his unorthodox teaching techniques. His first lesson involves turning the tables upside down and pretending they are lifeboats, leading to discussions about displacement and density, as well as ethics. Sergio believes that people can learn by getting things wrong. “Who wants to be wrong first?” he asks and then waits for hands to slowly be raised.

If the pupils are at first bemused, the other staff are unhappy, and the school principal requires a lot of convincing that Sergio isn’t taking him for a fool. Over two hours – which pass in a flash – we watch the effect Mr Juárez’s approach has on three pupils.

Paloma (Jennifer Trejo) lives at the side of a dump in which her father scours daily for scrap that he can sell. She has a natural affinity for mathematics and dreams about space. But her star is certain never to shine given the poverty into which she was born and her dad’s dismissal of her “fantasies”.

The class joker Nico (Danilo Guardiola) is sweet on Paloma. He has a quick wit that compensates for his internal struggles with being forced to work on the side for a drugs gang who are laundering money.

Whereas Paloma gravitates to the mathematical and practical science aspects of Mr Juárez’s teaching, fellow student Lupe (Mia Fernanda Solis) picks up on the philosophical questions and discovers the rich resources available on the shelves of a municipal library. Lupe is the eldest child in an expanding family. Despite her thirst for knowledge, she is expected to quit school to look after her youngest sibling to allow her mum to return to work to provide for the family.

School is portrayed as a secure oasis in a relatively violent town. Societal corruption is established through the missing school computer lab and the local administrator’s slippery attitude.

Derbez conjures up a teacher who is dripping with enthusiasm and confidence that his novel technique will bear fruitful results. Trejo is brilliantly cast as Paloma, delivers a terrific performance as a pupil with great ability that sits outside the in-crowd of the class for so many reasons.

You’ll see parallels between Sergio’s approach in Radical and the Montessori method of education. You’ll think about the late Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. And your memory may also be drawn back to the recent film Young Plato which showcased the work of head teacher Kevin McArevey in Holy Cross Boys’ Primary School in north Belfast.

Based on a 2013 article by Joshua Davis in Wired magazine, screenwriter/director Christopher Zalla has crafted Radical into a story of how a motivated dreamer can empower young people to demonstrate their potential. It is imbued with a feelgood sensibility that miraculously never quite turns to mush. It’s a sanitised and emotionally shaped film. (I’m going to choose to overlook the impossibility of Paloma seeing the SpaceX launch site across the border in Boca Chica from Matamoros through a small telescope!) But it’s also one that takes its time to challenge the audience about the practicality of Sergio’s technique and the sacrifice that is required to stand up and be different.

Radical is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Saturday 10 August. Well worth a visit.

 

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

The Simon & Garfunkel Story – quality vocals bring the sound of the duo’s classics back to life (Grand Opera House until Wednesday 7 August)

The Simon & Garfunkel Story begins in near darkness. The two lead singers of this tribute show stand in silhouette, emphasising the quality of their vocals which recreate the familiar tight harmonies of The Sound of Silence. They’re a five-piece outfit with electric guitar/keys, bass and drums producing a facsimile of the musical riffs that have been drilled into your head over the decades listening to Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon’s classic repertoire.

Soon the lights come up and we’re taken back to the talented duo’s origin, their participation in a school production of Alice in Wonderland, and the beginning of their recording career as Tom & Jerry.

Throughout the 140-minute show, animations projected behind the band fill in some of the details of Simon and Garfunkel’s musical progress, though some of the on-screen storytelling between songs fails to engage portions of the audience who chat rather than staying fully engaged in the show.

Alex Bradshaw (Art Garfunkel) and James Pattison (Paul Simon) abandon their click tracks and in-ear monitors for some of the more intimate numbers like Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Close your eyes and it’s like listening to the album.

Harrison White plays keys and electric guitar, delivering an extrovert performance that adds a lot of colour to the uncluttered stage. There’s a great sequence of songs in the lead up to the interval: Homeward Bound, Scarborough Fair, and Feelin’ Groovy.

While the drums (Harry Denton) and bass (Nick Martin) are kept quite far back in the mix in the first half, after the interval the volume ramps up as the performers work their way through hits from Simon and Garfunkel’s final two studio albums, Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled Water. There are familiar tracks – Mrs Robinson and Old Friends, and some more novel appearances like Punky’s Dilemma (with its quirky opening stanza “Wish I was a Kellogg’s Cornflake / Floatin’ in my bowl takin’ movies”).

By this stage the interstitial videos are just getting in the way. Look out for an anachronistic plane bearing the British Airways ‘speedmarque’ livery that only appeared in 1997. We fast forward to 1981, nine or so years since the pair disbanded, to hear that they reunited for a gig in New York’s Central Park, playing in front of half a million people. The screen captions hint that they rarely worked together again, rattling through their solo careers, but downplaying the scale of the rift between them.

The rendition of America is a total triumph. But you could hear a pin drop – other than the audience members auditioning to become backing singers – when Harrison White begins to play the piano to accompany Alex Bradshaw for Bridge over Troubled Water. Such vocal control. A magical moment.

Amidst this peak nostalgia, sadly there’s no nod to my favourite track 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night. It’s surely never too early to mark Christmas! One to listen to on the way home … if I can get back to my car through the disturbances in south Belfast.

The Simon & Garfunkel Story continues at the Grand Opera House in Belfast until Wednesday 7 August. All remaining performances are sold out.

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!

All Growed Up – when Tony met Lesley and his notions of peace were refined (British Youth Music Theatre at Lyric Theatre until Sunday 4 August)

The wee fella from the Shankill has long since grown out of his paper round, and with the grades to start a university course, he is giving up his part time bread delivery job to head up to Coleraine. It’s 1982 and All Growed Up’s opening song – This is Belfast – lays out the historic, political and religious context of the city and its conflict.

This new musical version of Tony Macaulay’s eponymous third memoir completes the triptych of British Youth Music Theatre adaptations that have been staged over the summers in the Lyric Theatre since 2018. It’s been written and directed by Dean Johnson, with Shauna Carrick as composer.

Dara McNaughton plays Tony and is rarely off stage as the fresher navigates his studies, his social life and his new lodgings. A click of his fingers and the action stops to allow a spotlit Tony to face the audience and explain his inner machinations and anxieties. It’s a big role and confident McNaughton is up to the challenge of delivering the majority of the dialogue, and pulls off an impressive extended solo in the second act.

Tony’s comedic Granny (played with great glee by Eimear Gallagher) haunts him as he navigates this new alien world as a student. He shares digs with Aaron (Oliver Coleman-Smith) and is looked after by Aberdonian landlady Mrs Flood (brought to life with the great mannerisms and a strong accent of Cara Stewart).

The previous two companion productions could riff off Belfast tropes and exaggerated characterisations of stereotypes and a close-knit community under threat. Tony was a child, and his naivety was winsome. The production has to work harder with a post-adolescent lad. The north coast Christian subculture is very familiar and accurate, mined to great effect, though you probably had to be immersed in it back in the day to get the full impact of the references to renowned relationship author Joyce Huggett.

Morelli’s Knickerbocker Glory gets its own song (Welcome to Portstewart) and dance routine. It was lovely to hear that the real “three Heathers from Portadown” were in the audience last night. The Christian Union’s earnest attitudes are fondly parodied (though never mocked). Ten years late, and the CU at Queen’s University would never have countenanced a fund-raising disco! Coleraine was a strangely liberal place. Oli Armstrong’s portrayal of Catholic student Marty Mullan adds continuing humour as he becomes entangled in Tony’s friendship circle and academic/social escapades, and also finds himself in the clutches of soul-saving, man-eating Tara Grace (played with suitably wild abandon by Nuala Sankey).

Veterans of Paperboy and Breadboy will recognise the surreal injection of science fiction fantasy. While the courageous Pacman and Space Invader choreography works less well this time, the quick change of outfits for the two leads in the final number is totally in character.

My favourite moment in the first half is the rendition of Social Politics 101 which explores Tony’s worldview and interrogates an amazing list of -isms. The self-confessed pacifist with his belief that everyone should get along and be unafraid to understand each other is challenged and to some extend refined though his interactions with other students, not least by a bright and sparky girl Lesley from Bellaghy.

The pace picks up after the interval and we fly through second and third year, reminded about the historical events like the Maze escape, the Miners’ strike and prime minister Margaret Thatcher that shaped Tony’s thinking and development.

Jida Akil’s simple set uses lots of wire mesh and reinforced coatracks that double as walls, doors and windows. Hanging above the stage are five icons that light up to signify Portstewart (a coffee cup), university, the train (old NIR logo), Belfast (yellow crane) and faith (a cross). Tony’s final project – a hard to define mixed-medium and potentially post-modern retelling of the story of Finn McCool – pleasingly draws those different strands of Tony’s life together and pleasingly integrates Aaron, Marty and foppish drama nerd Byron (Joel Woodshore) with his CU mates. It's a musical and dance triumph, with great choreography from Gyasi Sheppy that finally justifies the hexagonal platform that has been lurking all along in the centre of the stage. The five-piece band, under the direction of Adam Darcy, lurks behind the performers.

By the end of final year, Lesley is sharing centre stage with Tony. Eva Beveridge has an uncanny likeness with real-life Lesley, the way she stands, the way she nudges Tony, not to mention the great mid-Ulster accent, verbal ticks. Beveridge establishes her character as an equal partner capable of independent thought and challenge. Bellaghy gets its own anthem, complete with a tap-dancing cow and a lyric referring to artificial insemination. But it’s McNaughton and Beveridge’s duet in Blastoff Baby and an a cappella verse by the ensemble that is the musical pinnacle of the show. Finally we reach the moment when emotions burst through the bluster and life gets real.

All Growed Up tells the story of how a pair of dreamers start out on adult life together with faith and hope in their hearts. We leave them as they head off to live on the other side of the peace wall in the New Lodge. Watching this energetic performance on a day when the streets of Belfast and Bangor were filled with intolerance, intimidation, violence and hate, there was a strong sense of an unfinished peace. There’s still room for dreamers who’ll pull up their sleeves, create opportunities for dialogue, and tell stories about those who feel marginalised and those who feel powerful could live better lives together.

The summer is awash with youth productions of well-established musicals. British Youth Music Theatre premier new work, with a cast drawn from across Northern Ireland (and upwards of a third of them from further afield) and produce an entertaining and creative show with just a few weeks of rehearsal. The final performance of All Growed Up is this afternoon in the Lyric Theatre at 14:30. There are a few seats left if you’re quick.

Photo credit: Chris Hill

Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!