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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Ciaran Bagnall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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

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

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

Thursday 30 October

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

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

Friday 31 October

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

Saturday 1 November

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

Sunday 2 November

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday 3 November

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

Tuesday 4 November

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

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

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

Wednesday 5 November

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

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

Thursday 6 November

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

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

Saturday 8 November

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

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

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

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

Another gem ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Neil Harrison Photography

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

Unreconciled – refusing to be silenced by clerical abuse (Lyric Theatre as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF25

Joe Sefton chain smokes. We can hear him sucking on each drag. He suggests wrapping the local Catholic church in “you are entering the scene of a crime” tape. It’s a striking image and just part of his relentless campaigning to hold church authorities to account for abuse and unsympathetic reparation processes run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

We watch as an 8th grade class elect Joe’s son Jay to play the part of Jesus in the popular local passion play directed by the young and trendy priest Father Tom Smith. The finale promises a sweet moment in the arms of his school year crush. Rehearsals are intense, more so because the priest singles ‘Jesus’ out for intimate attention. With the passion play over, Father Smith takes young lads away for boozy outward bounds adventures. He wrestles with Jay in the family’s living room while his parents cook dinner.

The sole performer switches between characters mid-sentence: the voice and mannerisms of the local gossip are a particular highlight. We learn that the portrayal of the abuser deliberately offers no hint of warmth. We watch the performer breathe life into a mother who doesn’t believe that her son was really abused – “everyone wants to be a victim these days” is an incredible response – blaming Jay rather than the creepy abuser or her own lack of curiosity and oversight. It’s a real contrast to the fervent support by his angry father who wants to see justice done.

The action keeps returning to a meeting that’s been organised with church authorities to listen to Jay outlining the alleged abuse. It will feed into a compensation claim process. Yet we witness the ignominy of such a serious and traumatic moment being interrupted by a mobile phone ringing. The sound effects in this show are sparse, but when they are triggered, you’ll jump in your seat as they come out of nowhere, synchronised perfectly with the dialogue and the actor’s precise movements.

The cutdown set used in this touring production brings the storytelling to the fore with just a chair, a table and a projector screen. The audience are deliberately lit throughout the performance. We’re not afforded the luxury of watching the story unfold on an isolated stage. Instead, we’re being silently asked to consider our part in the universal aspects of the story: abuse that goes unchallenged, blaming survivors over perpetrators, not holding organisations to account that are only going through the motions of being sorry.

Unreconciled is an autobiographical play. I had to pinch myself throughout to remember that the actor on stage wasn’t just playing Jay Sefton, but the actor was Jay Sefton. This is his story. That’s him up on screen in the original video footage from the passion play. The most emotionally-charged moments come when he morphs into his father Joe around whom the play ultimately revolves.

Legal action isn’t an option for Jay as the state of Pennsylvania hasn’t amended the statute of limitations that would allow survivors to sue church authorities. He declined a paltry offer of compensation by the archdiocese that would have required him to sign away his voice. Instead, and as a direct consequence of the legislators’ failure, Jay relates his story to audiences across the US and Europe.

While the subject-matter is dark, Sefton’s co-writer Mark Basquill and Belfast-born director Geraldine Hughes let the natural Philly humour shine through the cracks.

Institutional and clerical abuse was for so long a taboo subject across the island of Ireland. Silence protected perpetrators and survivors were cloaked in shame. With some notable exceptions, books and films have tended to tell stories of abuse more than plays. While Unreconciled is sadly a familiar story, this particular tale ultimately celebrates choosing righteous anger over all out rage, and finding ways to personally reconcile what’s happened without being further insulted by an organisation wishing to draw a line under its heinous sins without offering any real reconciliation.

Unreconciled was staged in the Lyric Theatre as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. The show moves to the Mick Lally Theatre in Galway on Friday 31 October and Saturday 1 November.

Photo credits: Dennis Crommett and Andrew Greto

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

The Boy Who Kicked Pigs – full-on flights of fantasy as one lad imagines leaving a lethal legacy (Bruiser Theatre Company at The MAC until Saturday 18 October)

Step into the world of The Boy Who Kicked Pigs. Kicking his sister’s piggy bank out the window isn’t nice. But is that the extent of Robert’s evil streak? Or is he capable of much greater carnage? It’s a delightfully dark premise into which Bruiser inject their physical comedy with rhyming dialogue, tight choreographed routines and slow-motion falls, character and costume changes quicker than an actor can turn on their heels, and madcap tomfoolery.

The cast’s movements are constant and breathtaking to watch. Garth McConaghie’s soundscape is complex, but less frenetic. Coastal birds tweet. Stabs of music play. Crossbows twang. The audience adds copious laughter.

Robert has established a secret lair in a dump, Stuart Marshall’s silvery set accessorised with a versatile back curtain and multipurpose stools. There are lots of props, but nearly everything seems to have more than one purpose. Everything is bathed blue and wide on cool white lighting (James C McFetridge).

Four talented comic actors – Gerard Headley (with an incredible gait when he moves around as Robert), Eleanor Shannon (who is brilliant as shouty sister Nerys), Jack Watson (a strangely qualified medic) and Mary McGurk (an unforgettable Pedro the Speedo-wearing lifeguard who could be arrested for smuggling budgies) – revel in Lisa May’s direction. You’d almost think they’d been drilled into doing some of the scenes blindfolded such is the confidence with which they can spit out the words, turn in tandem and hit every cue on an escalator that won’t let them set off or pause for a minute.

The Boy Who Kicked Pigs has been adapted from Tom Baker’s short novel. Yes, that Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor, the actor who revelled in skirting close to madness (with added jelly babies for sugary mirth). So it should be no surprise that the patronising piggy bank is named Trevor and speaks to Robert. (To be honest, you’d wonder which of them – boy or piggy bank – sustained the head injury falling out the window.)

For much of the 70-minute show, you’ll find it difficult to take anything about The Boy Who Kicked Pigs seriously. You’ll walk out of the theatre with a big grin on your face, remembering the terribly funny deaths and the sense of witnessing a life spiralling out of control from the safety of your theatre seat.

And then, as you meander down the street, you’ll wonder about the circumstances that enabled Robert to carry out his lethal actions. Why was Robert left alone with his imagination and his misplaced ideas about leaving a lasting legacy? Who missed opportunities to intervene? Who lacked enough love to be present in his life?

You’ll recall the radio reporters who were so keen to be first with the news that they failed to see the bigger picture. And wonder at the jaded newspaper journalists at the the Kent Clarion who’d figuratively chained themselves to their desks and railed against a supposedly overambitious newbie Peter who wanted to pursue actual stories. The four priests who’d lost touch with Jesus.

Amid the full-on flights of fantasy, you’ll notice real life themes, just magnified for effect. Trigger warning: a recorded is tooted in an aggressive manner. It’s important to the storyline, and frankly not the most disturbing aspect of this wonderfully grotesque piece of theatre.

The Boy Who Kicked Pigs finishes its short run at The MAC on Saturday 18 October. It’s another full-throttled production from Bruiser Theatre Company who revel in creating extraordinarily intense pieces of physical theatre. 

Photo credit: Carrrie Davenport 

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

Previewing the 2025 Belfast International Arts Festival – theatre, dance, music, magic ... and raw chicken (14 October–9 November) #BIAF25

Belfast International Arts Festival starts today and the programme (PDF) looks like a bumper year for theatre in particular.

Ireland’s National Dance Company is back in Belfast with a revival of Emma Martin’s Dancehall. // Wednesday 15 October at The MAC. (sold out)

Jolene O’Hara lends her spine-tingling voice to Richard Clements’ Ottilie, based on the life of Northern Ireland blues singer Ottilie Patterson who grew up in Comber, sang with the best blues artists touring the UK, performed in the US, but then became a recluse. // Wednesday 15–Friday 24 October at Grand Opera House Studio Theatre. (reviewed)

Unreconciled is based on the true story of a young lad cast as Jesus in a Philadelphia school play directed by a parish priest. A survivor’s journey to confront his past, find his voice, and navigate the reparations program set up by the Catholic Church. Powerful, heartbreaking … but also promises to be hilarious. Friday 17–Sunday 19 October at the Lyric Theatre. (reviewed)

If you enjoyed last year’s dance Wild performed on a scaffolding forest, there’s more free aerial theatre to enjoy on the afternoon of Saturday 18 October in CS Lewis Square. Anchored in Air is a fusion of circus, dance, text and live music with flying wheelchairs, and acrobatics from the disabled and non-disabled cast.

One of my all-time favour shows from Richard Wakely’s festival programming was Pending Vote in 2013 where the audience controlled some the narrative – or thought they did! This year, Nathan Ellis beings his theatrical experiment Instructions to Belfast following its 2024 Edinburgh Fringe success. Each night a different unrehearsed actors steps on stage ready to react to real-time prompts as a story unfolds and a life unspools. Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 October in Lyric Theatre.

John Morton’s Denouement fast forwards to 2048 where Edel (Anna Healy) and Liam (Patrick O’Kane) are living out their final hours in a remote Irish farmhouse. Bickering in the face of the apocalypse. Holding and sharing secrets. Tragic, absurd and funny. Tuesday 21 October–Saturday 15 November in Lyric Theatre. (reviewed)

When a man ‘Older’ returns to the abandoned house of his use, he meets the memory of his first love. As the home collapses around them, Older relives the electricity and heartbreak of a hidden romance. Ciarán Haggarty’s The Upside Down House is directed by Patrick J O’Reilly and produced by Tinderbox Theatre. Wednesday 22 October–2 Sunday 2 November in The MAC. (reviewed)

Dylan Quinn’s My Grandfather’s House received is an intimate physical performance by a grandfather and a grandson within a reconstructed 1970’s living room that holds just four audience members. Tuesday 28 October–Sunday 2 November in a secret location. (already sold out)

Big Telly Theatre Company are back with a razor-sharp ensemble bringing to life a horror-filled fever dream Faust-ish from the pen of Nicola McCartney. Distraction, desperation and desperate deals under the direction of Zoe Seaton. Wednesday 29 October–Sunday 9 November in Lyric Theatre. (reviewed)

Cahoots NI are presenting the Northern Ireland premiere of The Musicians of Bremen Live! inspired by the Grimm’s fairy tale with live music, storytelling and surprises as Ruffles the lost hen meets Mule, Bobcat and Coyote and chase their dream to be a famous band. Thursday 30 October–Sunday 2 November in Cityside Retail Park. Age 5+. (reviewed)

Magician Caolan McBride is on stage Unlocking Sherlock and exploring the connections between deduction and deception in another Cahoots NI show. Thursday 30 October–Sunday 2 November in Cityside Retail Park. Age 16+. (reviewed)

Off the Rails Dance is showing a work in progress from Eileen McClory. BPM: Barneys, Parties and Melters plunges into the 1990s-2000s rave scene in Northern Ireland with energy, euphoria, and lots of sweat in a blend of contemporary dance, theatre and archive material from that era. Saturday 1 November in the Brian Friel Theatre (next to the QFT).

With instruments crafted from PVC pipes, paint cans, and shampoo bottles, HOOLA is an electrifying collective from Daegu city in Korea that reimagine opera arias and EDM anthems through the pulse of upcycled sound. Tuesday 4 November at The MAC.

Acclaimed author Bernie McGill will be in conversation with High Odling-Smee about her archive and her career. Friday 7 November in The Linen Hall.

And the annual Royal Ulster Academy Exhibition will be open in the Ulster Museum from Sunday 19 October until January 2026.

Another exhibition in the programme caught my eye. Raw Chicken will be performed live by Éabha Campbell and Indigo Azidahaka, a Dada-inflected performance that is participatory rather than passive with puppetry, costume and nonsense narration. Saturday 8 November in Queen Street Studio. (Exhibition runs Thursday 9 October–Thursday 13 November.)

The majority of this year’s theatre/dance programme is showcasing locally-created work rather than bringing international work to Belfast (which is admittedly cost-prohibitive, particularly for anything larger than a solo-performer show). It’s Richard Wakely’s last year at the festival’s helm and it’ll be interesting to see how Chris McCreery puts his stamp on next year’s programme. One of his achievements has been a persistence in showcasing local and international dance, though it’s mostly only the circus/acrobatic acts that have drawn sizeable audiences. A decade and a half ago, the talks events were a particularly vibrant aspect to the programme, bringing colourful, challenging and often high-profile guests to Belfast and packing out good-sized venues. Better defining what makes BIAF ‘international’ and distinct from other large festivals should be a key priority for McCreery to address.

You can browse the full programme on the festival website or the brochure.

The Arcadia – brilliant physical theatre that immerses audiences in a world of dementia (Lyric Theatre until Friday 10 October)

It feels like dementia runs in my Mum’s side of the family. Both her parents had late-stage dementia when they died. She lived and died with it too. Sometimes when a word or a name escapes me, it feels inevitable that it’ll be my fate too. Apologies to the next generation if it passes down the line.

Steven Millar’s play The Arcadia uses a set of interconnected stories to invite audiences to witness what it might be like to find your memories melt away through dementia. As the show begins, lights partially blind the audience and a powerful soundscape creates a melee of recognisable snippets from key moments in past lives: a phone call, familiar refrains from Dirty Dancing, a German radio station. These aural motifs will be revisited throughout the hour-long performance. Repetition is key to the overall experience.

Cat Barker, Christine Clark and Steven Millar flit between roles as patients and carers. We sense their paranoia. Their frustration as interruptions force stories back to the start. Their reaction to platitudes that can be comforting but can also lose their reassurance when repeated so often. The unnecessary shame of being told “you don’t want them to see you like this”.

The patients being cared for in the residential home have no lack of imagination. If anything, there’s too much stimulus. There’s also a cuteness, a hint that residents may be more perceptive about their environment than staff realise.

Audience members join in the actions of a song, as if we’re also sitting in a care home lounge, doing something that doesn’t come naturally. The performance grants us permission to laugh rather than be filled with pity.

The sparse set reveals the bare brick wall of the Lyric’s studio theatre. The furniture of life is constantly being rearranged as three wooden chairs and a table are moved across the stage. (Never get in the way of Christine Clark and her table!)

Jonathan M. Daley and Aaron Ferry’s lighting design renders a replacement set as bold overhead beams create spots on the floor in which the actors can perform. Low level lights cast dark shadows across the full height of the back wall: like monsters looming over the residents, or shadows of their younger days.

It’s often a bit of a red flag to spot that a play has been written by someone who also directs and stars in it. That’s not the case with The Arcadia. The level of generous collaboration with cast, creatives and mentors shines through Steven Millar’s work.

Sophisticated dramaturgy is at work even if the plot isn’t linear or strictly bound by traditional structure. There’s an incredible physicality to the performances – take a bow Amadan Ensemble – with a lot of acting done with eyes darting from side to side, as well as actors racing across the stage to secure their favourite chair or position. The sense of timing and coordination is striking.

The performance revisits at intervals the act of Steven remembering the night in The Arcadia dance hall where he went up the steps, past the barman and the coat attendant, and spots a girl with green eyes behind a pillar. It’s a story that struggles to finish and the audience are soon filled with empathy for his frustration at not being able to unlock the significance of this memory.

My second all-time favourite TedxBelfast talk was delivered by Chris Blake and was about the art of accompanying. At one point he describes his musical interaction with a young boy with autism who was sitting at a piano playing the same note over and over. Thirteen years later, I can still remember my emotional reaction to his story.

That concept is at the crux of the denouement of The Arcadia – an important teachable moment for audiences – when carer Christine doesn’t interrupt or jump ahead when Steven’s recollection falters, but gives him her full attention and presence. Tears will stream down your face when the joy fills his face and she promises that “you can go to the dancehall anytime you want to go”. The magic and intimacy of theatre.

The Arcadia completes its short run at the Lyric Theatre on Friday 10 October. This isn’t a dementia friendly performance: do not bring people with dementia along to see it. However, it is great piece of physical theatre that explores dementia in a deep and meaningful way and deserves to be witnessed and appreciated by wide audiences.

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

The Shawshank Redemption – faithful retelling of popular Stephen King story (Grand Opera House until Saturday 4 October)

A man is imprisoned for two murders he didn’t commit. That’s a sound theatrical premise, but the stage version of The Shawshank Redemption with its cast of 12 men struggles to make it dramatic. A long build up introduces the two seeds of power in the stone-walled Shawshank Penitentiary: the warden (played by a shouty Bill Ward) whose duplicitous word is law, and inmate Rooster (Ashley D Gayle) who rapes new prisoners to assert his dominance as part of ‘the Sisters’ gang.

Ben Onwukwe delivers a spirited performance as Red, the narrator who guides the audience through the story. He’s the fixer who can get nearly any contraband smuggled into the prison for a price, including new prisoner Andy Dufresne’s unusual request. Joe McFadden gets to grips with Dufresne’s smiley smart aleck nature, unafraid to stand up to authority, but also keen to court favour in return for perks by offering advice on sound financial investments and tax efficiency to the screws.

The oldest inmate, librarian Brooksie, is hampered by Kenneth Jay’s soft voice having to compete with the venue’s air conditioning. Northern Ireland-born designer Gary McCann’s set captures the gloomy environs with simple walls dropping in to shift the action out of the communal area and into the warden’s office, Dufresne’s cell, and the library that’s been fashioned out of the old paint story.

Friendships are tough, trust is fickle, and some inmates are poorly prepared for life on the outside (assuming a parole board feels they measure up to a shifting definition of rehabilitation). Although important to the show’s title, actual ‘redemption’ is fleeting, perhaps most fully seen in how the prison system is overhauled when the warden’s abuses eventually come to light.

While the two final reveals bring the tale to a satisfying conclusion – the concluding ‘set’ change making up for most of the audience already expecting the first surprise in Dufresne’s cell – the act of telling this story on stage feels like it’s paying homage to the popular film rather than the genre adding anything new to the impact of the tale. The Shawshank Redemption is adapted by Owen O’Neill and David Johns from Stephen King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, and has more than a few nods to the 1994 film and, in particular, Morgan Freeman’s portrayal as Red. The play’s linear structure is faithful but ultimately unexciting. In the time it takes to watch The Shawshank Redemption on stage, you could complete reading the novella or watch the film.

The Shawshank Redemption continues its run at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 4 October. The UK and Ireland tour continues until the middle of next year, with performances in Dublin in April.

Photo credits: Jack Merriman

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