Lost City – the gangs they are a-changin’ but the victims suffer the same – part of Belfast Film Festival #BFF26

The world premiere of Seán Murray’s debut feature drama Lost City opened the 2026 Belfast Film Festival. It’s set in Belfast’s New Lodge, and provides a raw and gritty take on post-Troubles violence. The legacy of conflict remains, but there are new players in town, borders are porous, and violence rules.

Out of prison and on license, Paul (Martin McCann) has turned his life around. He’s off the booze, involved in a boxing club and keeping his nose clean. But life is turned upside down when his new girlfriend’s former boyfriend – a Limerick gangster – avoids prison for a violent crime and heads north seeking revenge.

Under the surface, there’s a much more interesting story being told. Ciara (Jade O’Neill) has escaped from her violent partner and is teaching in a bunscoil in Belfast. Now back in touch with a childhood friend, her stable situationship is turned upside down when her former lover won’t let anything stand in his way to get her back. Her new boyfriend’s mum offers warm refuge, while her ex-partner’s sister is facilitating a brutal gangland campaign of revenge.

While it’s often pertinent to question how violence against women is used to drive TV dramas and films, in this case, the sickening threat and previous harm is instructive rather than gratuitous or overly sexualised ... albeit graphic at one point in the story.  

At the heart of Lost City are a couple who can’t yet escape past mistakes. And the key to the film is newcomer Jade O’Neill’s vivid portrayal of a young teacher whose traumatic past is never far from her thoughts and concerns. There’s almost a visible inevitability about the pain that is travelling north towards her and those she now loves. In the face of chaos, Ciara is strong but the stakes are raised when the violence she is so familiar with begins to be meted out on Paul’s family and associates.

Louise Matthews brings Paul’s mother to life, a woman who lives on her nerves and can’t stop her sons being dragged back – sometimes voluntarily, sometimes against their will – into a darker evolution of the paramilitary world that her husband is still serving time for being part of. Blue Lights has its Tina McIntyre (Abigail McGibbon). Lost City has Briege Barrett, played as a cool criminal mastermind who isn’t afraid to direct violence towards her supposed enemies.

While women are sometimes credited with de-escalating tension in the Troubles, this isn’t part of the narrative of Lost City. Two thirds of the way through the film, with nothing else to lose, Ciara takes back control even though her action is likely to provoke further violence. A pyrrhic victory of sorts, but a powerful moment of truth telling and standing up to a bully.

“What good is to continue this all now?” 

Murray’s New Lodge doesn’t disguise it’s past. Paul’s flat is in a tower block that has painted over graffiti about Simon Byrne (former PSNI Chief Constable) and messages of support for POWs and Óglaigh na hÉireann. Although the torture scene hints that some ‘investigative’ techniques live on, it’s a story that shows how the old rules of engagement between rival gangs no longer apply, as demonstrated by a laconic Stephen Rea cameo.  

Declan Gallen’s industrial soundtrack is peppered with rappers, along with hip-hop tracks from local rappers like Jon Tzu (Born in Belfast).

Real life creeps into Lost City, with elements of the plot inspired by the life – and death – of Dublin hitman Robbie Lawlor (who coincidentally once planned to kill the actor playing this film’s main mobster). 

Lost City is a confident debut for a director better known for his documentary features. It’s beautifully shot by Kevin Treacy, and there’s much merit in some of the artistic editing choices by Lisa Creaney and Dara McKeagney. The Balls on the Falls have never looked as good as the opening shots. Lost City is expected to get a theatrical release in the UK and Ireland in early January.

Lots more cinematic gems to come in the Belfast Film Festival which runs until Saturday 7 November.

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Annie – a big hug of tuneful nostalgia with great performances by the young cast and Claire Sweeney’s Miss Hannigan (Grand Opera House until Saturday 31 October)

It doesn’t feel like three years since I last saw the stage musical version of Annie in the Grand Opera House. And a mere 44 years since seeing the film (1982) – amazingly based on the 1977 stage show! – in the New Vic cinema that stood on the site of the theatre’s entrance hall.

This is a well-oiled, confident, touring production which is packed full of feel-good moments … once you ignore the very contemporary-feeling rags-to-riches billionaire who thinks he can just send his assistant (Grace played by Tanisha-Mae Brown) to bring a child home from an orphanage with zero paperwork and has the ear of the US President!

Precocious, wise, endearing Annie was played this evening by Sophia Sarananan. She exudes a big stage presence, charming her wannabe adopted father, bald tycoon Daddy Warbucks (played again on this tour by Alex Bourne), and demonstrating a great emotional range. Their second act dancing and duet are tender moments.

Miss Hannigan has a whistle to control the seven girls in the orphanage and Claire Sweeney knows how to blow it loudly. She’s terrific as the lush matron who hates children, and her outrageous flirting with every man on stage – bar Franklin D Roosevelt (Carl Sanderson) – is hilarious but never distracting. Sweeney throws herself at the role and wows with super comic timing, as well as great high kicks in the second act.

The President’s prompt for Annie to speak up – “Go ahead, my dear. It’s still a free country” – has added poignancy in 2026, while the historical rewriting of the foundling and the close harmony reprise of Tomorrow to inspire FDR’s 1933 New Deal works well as a theatrical confection. Sanderson’s empathetic breaking of bad news to Annie is a great moment of compassion in his character’s arc.

About two thirds of the musical numbers are very familiar from the film, adroitly performed by the eight-strong orchestra in the pit. The orphans really establish the show’s energy and tone in their almost adult-free run of Maybe and It’s the Hard Knock Life right at the start of act one. The remaining stage songs that didn’t transfer to the cinematic adaptation have a certain charm about them although NYC is a strange number that links Warbucks, Grace and Annie together with the audience’s first sight of Rooster and Lily, and then morphs into a big Broadway musical in the Rozy theatre. One song does a lot of lifting over five or six minutes.

Sandy the dog was played this evening by Dizzy, stealing so many scene changes as she bolted across the stage enthusiastically wagging her tail. The first rendition of Tomorrow is heart melting, and that emotion is multiplied with Sandy is on stage. As well as the pats and treats that appear from cast member’s pockets, you may even spot Dizzy wolfing down a bowl of dinner during one crowd scene as her lead is passed from person to person.

Colin Richmond’s set rather pleasingly moves large pieces of motorised furniture from the stage into wings and while Ben Cracknell’s lighting design makes good use of back lighting to add a lot of atmosphere to some scenes. However the jigsaw motif in the set – meant to represent Annie piecing together her life story – totally flew over my head.

Persistence and optimism abound as Annie and FDR tackle their respective depressions. Disappointingly, unlike opening night in 2023, audience members hadn’t come in fancy dress with ginger wigs this evening. But that might change over the half-term break as Annie continues its run at the Grand Opera House (with lots of family-friendly matinees) until Saturday 31 October.

Photo credit: Paul Coltas (note supplied images of child cast members may not match the performers in Belfast)

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The Glass Menagerie – an intense yet surprisingly traditional revival of Tennessee Williams’ classic play (Tinderbox at The MAC until Tuesday 27 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival)

Tinderbox’s artistic director Patrick J O’Reilly has a track record in recent years of finding the essence of old plays and making them vital for contemporary times: Rhino (2023), Yerma (2024), Animal Farm (2026).

This revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is a much more straightforward affair than might be expected, preserving the playwright’s original time and place. The text seems relatively unabridged with the deep south St Louis drawl almost dictating the unhurried two-and-a-half-hour pace. (Playwrights wouldn’t get away with that duration today!) The production does pick up on and play with the references to cinema within the play, with the majority of the house set within a big screen and movie posters being used as chapter headings. Paul Keogan’s set is then extended by slabs of light that create the boundaries of rooms downstage, though the technique is used more strikingly in the first act than after the interval. Daniel Quigley provides live accompaniment of scenes from his piano stool, as if emotionally grounding a silent movie.

Single mum Amanda lives with her twenty-something son Tom and her slightly older ‘fragile’ daughter Laura. As part of Amanda’s desire to find a “gentleman caller” for shy Laura, Tom brings home colleague Jim. Sparks fly between Laura and Jim when the power goes out, but after Jim reveals more about his personal life, Tom gets it in the neck from his Mum, and soon follows in the footsteps of his long-absent father (who lurks around the house like a ghost).

The quiet mirroring of costume colours (designer Rosie McClelland) reinforces the sense that the mother’s temperament has been passed down to daughter Laura, together with her desires and dashed dreams. Amanda’s glass is perpetually half empty. Yet she can be quite extrovert, sometimes to the point of mania (her friendliness becomes outright flirtation feeding off the energy of a visitor to the house), while young Laura expresses her anxiety through shyness, withdrawal, and nerviness to the point of being sick.

Úna Kavanagh brings a delicate touch to her stylistic manipulation of invisible props throughout the two acts, a key part of Tinderbox’s sense of physicality. Yet, in an instant, she can blow a fuse and deploy mother Amanda’s favourite tool of coercive control.

Louise Parker’s Laura is comfortable with familiar people, capable of talking back cheekily to her mother and brother, while initially very edgy around her ‘gentleman caller’. There’s a warmth to Parker’s performance and her second act candlelit scene with visitor Jim inspires such hope ... before all positivity is smothered.

Thomas Galashan is outstanding as the narrator Tom, the breadwinning son of the family, and also performs the tasks of a stage manager in his memory play. His portrayal of Tom leans into the young man’s motives and means to escape the Wingfield home. Sadly, his sister is even more trapped. Tom’s actions may not always be wholesome or entirely positive, but they are heartfelt.

Into this uneasy setting steps Jim O’Connor, unwittingly visiting the Wingfield home under false pretences. Actor Jacob Baird has the measure of this bumptious hustler: if he was any more pleased with his self-advancement, he’d twin-pack himself. Yet this cocksure smugness is also paired with a self-awareness that the one-time big player in school is now a fallen star who has more ambition than opportunity to grow. 

In Tennessee Williams’ memory play, things have a habit of working out worse than badly. This production doesn’t overly explore the unreliability of looking back to post-justify Tom’s action. But Tinderbox has created an incredibly intense version of The Glass Menagerie with a mother who would drive a saint to despair, who lacks empathy towards her daughter’s disposition, and is actively curating her household’s misery.

The director hasn’t given in to the temptation to remodel the cut glass menagerie of creatures and vinyl records as a modern digital menagerie that needs polished and distracts us from the reality. The overbearing parenting style of Amanda and the socially anxious Laura are as familiar today as in 1944. While the changing weather is a constant refrain in the dialogue, the piano accompaniment can’t quite trumpet the change in precipitation as immediately or effectively as an actual sound effect.

Tinderbox’s The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams continues its run at The MAC as part of Belfast International Arts Festival until Tuesday 27 October. It’s the first professional production of the play in Northen Ireland for 20 years, so don’t miss out.

Photo credit: Lost Lens Caps

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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – an enchanted story of succession planning with puppetry, song and beautiful effects (Cahoots NI at Cityside Retail until Sunday 25 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival)

Cahoots NI have knocked it into the park forest with their latest production The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1797 ballad Der Zauberlehrling, Charles Way’s imagination has let rip and written a story about a town of wooden houses at the edge of a forest which is home to a sorcerer who looks out for them (and enchantingly delivers birthday presents). Approaching the winter of his life, he needs to hand his role and powerful spells across to a younger member of the community. Not every apprentice works out, but there’s a spark about young Gunda which gives her an inner integrity amid her mistakes.

There are a lot of components to capture the attention of young audiences. There’s Phillipa O’Hara’s Guanda, a grumpy teenager with loud music playing in their headphones who lives in a poverty with her working mum (Orla Gormley) and injured DIY-incapable Dad (James Grimm). Gormley and O’Hara’s singing brings huge warmth to the tale. The movement and use of a toddler Gunda puppet is an early emotional highlight in the production.

Step into the forest and puppetry brings an owl, a fox, and many more creatures to life. Soon it’s bewitched household objects, leading up to a scene in which teacher Miss Fumble (a bewigged Christina Nelson) defies gravity in a child-pleasing scene of classroom mischief.

O’Hara leads much of the storytelling, backed by Score Draw’s original music which runs throughout the production. The rhythm and timbre isolates moments of peril from hope. Nimshi Kongolo’s sorcerer is wise and never stern, a figure of opportunity who values redemption over banishment.

“… no success without failure … it’s all in the balance”

An earlier apprentice Marit lurks in the forest trying to throw off her young pretender with temptation and threat. Jennifer Hague’s vocals during her cello-backed solo were electric.

Director Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney is a past master at delivering seamless production effects with a skilled team, many of whom have worked on previous shows. It’s almost as if lighting designer Simon Bond has a giant iris between the audience and the performers controlling how far back in the stage we can see. (Spoiler: blue lights pointing towards the audience constrict our pupils along with haze, massive amounts of experiences and rehearsal, and the story directing our gaze elsewhere!) It allows the talented puppeteers (Iris Schmid and Emily Essery along with other cast members) to work out of sight, for larges props and pieces of set to disappear, for machinery to slip in for some of the larger practical effects, and even for one character to disintegrate in front of our eyes.

The vision of a ghosting flying on the back of another animal is going to be hard to forget. The effects may wow, but they’re never allowed to stand out in front of the story. A single falling snowflake or a smoking chimney on a miniature house can be as meaningful and effective as the larger chicanery. As the sorcerer says: “a mix of imagination and concentration, it’s very combustible”!

It’s an entrancing story which deals with themes of jealousy and not being cool, as well as grief and taking responsibility. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is longer than some of Cahoots NI’s previous productions and the interval may have been a welcome toilet break for some audience members, but the break in story-telling unsettled others.

Having already played at Buxton Opera House in June, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice continues its run in Cahoots’ Cityside HQ until Sunday 25 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival (many of the remaining shows are sold out) before heading across the Atlantic to New York’s New Victory Theatre in January.

Photo credit: Melissa Gordon 

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Faith Healer – high art with an ambitious script, compelling characterisation and captivating performances (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 14 November)

Brian Friel’s Faith Healer revolves around three people delivering extended monologues. Frank – Francis Hardy – is billed as a fabulous faith healer (“a ministry without responsibility”), but it’s been a long time since his heart was in his performance. His wife Grace has been tagging along as he criss-crosses Wales, Scotland and finally home to Ireland, offering hope to gullible residents who hope that his touch will sooth their pain. Promoter Teddy has been part of the never-ending tour for decades, accompanying the couple through good and (mostly) bad days.

After Frank’s opening remarks, we hear from Grace and quickly realise that these are unreliable narrators. Teddy’s recollections and spin on what are becoming familiar tales further undermines the veracity of their intertwined experiences. And by the time Frank returns for the fourth and final monologue, their present is under the truth-divining microscope as much as their past. Denials are shifty, doubt is cast, and all three repeatedly shy away from confronting painful situations or moments when they learned hard lessons.

Conleth Hill is back on the Lyric Theatre stage. His Frank is sanguine about success and failure, liberally reframing anything within his grasp (he calls Grace his ‘mistress’) and his acclaimed showmanship is more burnished. Unlike the production of Barnum I attended earlier this week, Friel’s faith healer may be familiar with chicanery, but Frank can’t guarantee a spectacle when he walks among the eager punters who turn up at his events.

Lisa Dwyer Hogg is transformed into Grace, a nervy woman whose mood can suddenly shift to animated distress as she remembers being on the road with Frank and the grief that accompanied her pregnancies. Having witnessed Frank’s consumption of liquid courage over the years, she’s now the one knocking back the whiskey. It’s a bravura performance by Hogg as she loosens the threads that Frank wove into the audience’s tapestry.

Originally staged without an interval, Chris McCurry has to resettle the Lyric audience after their 20-minute break with the perspectives of the faith healer’s acolyte. McCurry steps up onto the stage full of comedic energy and wild gesticulations that make him look like Del Boy entering a boxing ring. The audience are tickled by Teddy’s tall tales of hopeless artists he used to promote. McCurry goes for broke as Teddy talks the mundane up into the spectacular before dialling back the emotion as he remembers Grace giving birth in the back of their van. Behind the razzle dazzle, Teddy is also masking his true feelings. Perhaps unwittingly dim, Teddy may be the most honest of the three.

If Friel’s play is brave by relying on audiences being able to parse and analyse such long sequences of monologues, his often poetic play is also of its time with a few moments of dated language (‘retarded’).

I can’t help but wonder if Brian Friel had been writing his 1979 play Faith Healer today, might he have been expected to keep the three protagonists on stage, intercutting their dialogue like a fast-moving TV show director with a trigger finger who has consumed too much caffeine in the edit room. The couple and their promoter might almost be correcting and confusing each other’s imperfect recollections in real time. Precise spotlighting would illuminate the current speaker, and the characters might even turn as if to face each other, even though they aren’t in the same room.

    Stripping back theatre to create something that is engaging yet lacking in decoration takes a lot of effort and skill. The monologues may be delivered in isolation, and we only see the actors on stage together in the final curtain call, but director Emma Jordan has carefully crafted each person’s delivery so it’s believable that they all coexisted in real life. The weeks and weeks of rehearsal have paid off to create a show where Grace sounds and feels like she was married to Frank, and Teddy is revealed to be the bouncy tigger that matches up to Frank’s pen portrait of his unexpectedly loyal promoter.

Stuart Marshall’s dark set may look like a raised wooden floor with simple black wings, but there’s a sophistication to the shadowy locations. Paul Keogan directs beams through the stacks of distressed wooden chairs to create patterns on the back wall. Missing beams in the slatted ceiling allow shards of light through to the stage. The soundscape (Garth McConaghie) is relatively spartan, with period music covering the scene changes between monologues, and sound effects adding aural flourishes without distracting. There’s a level of almost invisible control with the actors able to drop their voices on stage yet still be heard across the auditorium.

Faith Healer is high art. The script is ambitious. The characterisation is compelling. The performances are captivating. The atmosphere is a precise piece of engineering.

Friel seems to have been careful not to weigh this work down with a single agenda. Self-imposed exile and the lure of home, the power/illusion of faith, and the rewriting of personal history are lumped in with hints of coercive control and untested attraction. The trio’s references to Frank’s nightly “performances” hints (as Friel opined in interviews) that the faith healer could be a proxy for a more generic artist losing their gift and their inspiration. That reading of the work didn’t jump out at me last night. Instead I was left impressed by the quality of the production, but confused about why it had been chosen out of Friel’s catalogue to be performed in 2026 as part of the theatre’s 75th anniversary programme.

Faith Healer continues at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 14 November.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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Belfast Film Festival preview – 10 days, 30 countries, a myriad of perspectives and stories (Thursday 29 October to Saturday 7 November)

Ten days of cinema from at home and abroad beckons with the Belfast Film Festival screening films from 30 countries from Thursday 29 October through to Saturday 7 November. Here are some of my picks from the programme (PDF) … get booking!

Thursday 29 October

Lost City is documentary filmmaker Seán Murray’s first foray into fictional features. Expect boxing, violence, a Limerick gangster, a woman with a troubled past being protected, and a starry cast in this film that opens the festival. Cineworld at 19:30 and additional screening at 20:00.

How To Divorce During The War is set in Vilnius as a married couple decide to divorce right at the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Tensions and hypocrisy play out as the war impacts their separation. Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:20.

Friday 30

Wild Horse Nine sees Martin McDonagh turn his cinematic compass towards 1970s Chile as two CIA operatives (John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell) are dispatched to Easter Island. A black comedic political allegory. Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:00.

Saturday 31

An afternoon of Competition Shorts, screened in four batches, contain some likely gems including Sarah Gordon’s witch-trial Mary Got Fingered and Thomas Bennett’s The Galley. Queen’s Film Theatre from 11:30.

Sunday 1 November

A wee shout out for Escape Routes, one of the first New Irish Shorts being screened, adapter from a short story by Lucy Caldwell about a young girl growing up in 1995 Belfast who is fascinated by the computer game Zork! The Black Box at 10:30.

Yesterday The Eye Didn’t Sleep is Rakan Mayasi’s feature debut. Set against the backdrop of the Lebanon–Syria border, when a man accidentally kills a member of a rival clan while searching for his missing cousin, his sisters are traded to preserve the peace. Queen’s Film Theatre at 15:15.

Monday 2

Our House is the debut feature by screenwriter and director Peter Young. Where there’s a will there’s a … row which in this dark comedy, turns out to be bitter, absurd and even deadly when a solicitor reveals that his client changed her will to split her house between three children rather than passing it onto the son who had cared for her in later years. Odeon at 18:30.

Tuesday 3

A Long Winter follows the all-male household in a remote mountain home after the disappearance of the mother figure. Snow curtails the search parties, yet the trauma is tinged with liberty until the thaw threatens the new dynamic. Directed by Anthony Haigh adapting Colm Toibin’s short story. Queen’s Film Theatre at 17:45.

You’ll Never Believe Who’s Dead is director Dallan Shovlin’s feature debut. When the Cosgrove family fall on tough times, a whimsical suggestion results in them robbing one of their neighbours. A heist with a keen sense of the pressures facing contemporary Ireland. Cineworld at 19:00.

Wednesday 4

Dry Leaf captures the rich rural landscape of post-Soviet Georgia on a Sony Ericsson phone as a man searches for his photographer daughter. (I was a big fan back in the day of the P800 and P900 models, though this was filmed in glorious 144p on a Sony Ericsson W595.) Expect a pixellated natural world with an impressionistic aesthetic. Beanbag Cinema from 18:00.

Skintown adapts Ciaran McMenamin’s novel to tell the story of two recently unemployed lads. Flute bands, rural raves, risky opportunities woven together with familiar locations in the titular Enniskillen as well as Portrush. Directed by Kieron J Walsh with a stellar cast. Cineworld at 18:30.

Thursday 5

Faraway Home is directed by Terry Loane. Karl and Rose are Jewish children who escape Nazi-occupied Vienna via kindertransport and are brought to the Millisle refugee farm. Odeon at 18:00.

Star Nhà East presents The Inseminator, a magic realism portrait of patriarchy as a father weighted down by his own mortality becomes fixated on the idea that his son with an intellectual disability will never find a suitable wife to continue the family line with a male heir. Tradition, rural life, fear and care in Bùi Kim Quy’s film that was banned soon after its release in Vietnam. Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:00.

Friday 6

The Peril at Pincer Point sees an easy-going sound man is sent to record some location audio and finds himself caught up in prophesies and missing persons. A new handmade horror film with crustaceans and cardioid microphones. Queen’s Film Theatre at 21:00.

Saturday 7

Mouse explores a multi-generational friendship that forms out of grief after the death of a teenager’s best friend. Sweet and brave with huggable characters. Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:00.

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is directed by Clio Barnard, written by Enda Walsh and adapted from Keiron Goddard’s novel. Five childhood friends in Birmingham face their 30s against a backdrop of a housing crisis, gentrification, increased responsibilities and tested friendships. Cineworld at 19:00.

Another two BFF events to note that will happen after the official close of the festival.

Sunday 8 November

The Librarians looks at the culture war struggles of librarians in Texas, Louisiana, Florida and beyond who have united to combat book banning demands from pressure groups. A timely documentary given the current DfC consultation on Libraries NI. Screening will be followed by a Q&A with director and production team. Queen’s Film Theatre at 12:30.

Wednesday 9 December

75th anniversary screening of Brian Desmond Hurst’s 1951 film Scrooge (A Christmas Carol). Alastair Sim plays the title role in perhaps the most faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novella. A rare chance to see the prolific east Belfast-born director 1951 film on the big screen. Odeon at 18:00. Tickets don’t seem to be available yet.

The full programme (PDF) is available on the Belfast Film Festival website.

Barnum – aerial routines, live music by the cast, and the spectacle of PT Barnum’s undulating career and private life (Grand Opera House until Saturday 17 October)

The name Phineas Taylor Barnum conjures up the image of showmanship and spectacle, and the musical playing at the Grand Opera House this week certainly delivers on that promise with colourful entertainment that fills the height and width of the stage, live music, and the entwined stories of Barnum’s marriage and his most noteworthy productions.

To use the showman’s own words, Barnum is a story of hype and humbug. Matt Rawle reprises the lead role, starting out as a shabby looking entrepreneur with stacks of ambition and the chutzpah to pull off regular miracles. He has an easy rapport with the audience, and is an energetic presence throughout.

Monique Young impresses as Barnum’s straight-talking wife, Charity (usually shortened to ‘Chairy’ which sounds like ‘Cherry’), a woman of substance who ribs her braggart husband (she calls him ‘Taylor’) while gently steering his path towards more realistic goals. Young’s smooth voice lights up three first act numbers before Barnum’s layers upon layers of deceit threaten to jump from his work to his private life with the appearance of Swedish siren soprano Jenny Lind (Penny Ashmore) who at one point exits stage left on the shoulders of a strongman wearing a leopard print leotard!

The plot takes in key moments in the Barnum journey: reframing freakish performers as people with special talents, his successful curation of an American Museum (until its fiery end), a spell as tour manager for the aforementioned Jenny Lind (“Phineas, I'm a soprano, and we flirt!”), a thwarted political career, and a return to his circus roots.

Dominique Planter plays the world’s oldest woman (who is knowingly far too nimble) before her powerful voice returns in the second act song Black and White that’s sees a subdued Barnum lose his sparkle. Fergus Rattigan shows off his fine tenor voice as the diminutive General Tom Thumb blasts out Bigger Isn’t Better.

Have I mentioned the contortion, juggling, close magic, stilts, tightrope walking, and a giant elephant? Bill Kenwright’s presentation of this Watermill Theatre’s production throws everything at the show and the careful direction (Jonathan O’Boyle), choreography (Oti Mabuse and Matt Nicholson) and circus routines (Amy Panter) bring some control to the boisterous piece of musical theatre.

You can spot a consistent look of glee in cast members’ faces throughout the show. This ten-month tour finishes at the end of October. Their continued visible enthusiasm is heartwarming and infectious. The show’s subdued finale is anticlimactic in wake of the exuberant 11 o’clock number Join The Circus which creates the biggest sound of the evening, with almost discordant notes hinting that Barnum’s is still grieving and his soul is in turmoil.

Lee Newby’s set creates a circus tent with a proscenium arch which allows a couple of plush on-stage boxes to be shoehorned in to look down on proceedings in the ring below. Musical director Ben Scott mostly plays drums off stage before donning his peaked cap and jacket and appearing in some numbers alongside the talented multi-instrumental musicians. At one point six hands are playing two pianos, while the barnstorming post-interval number Come Follow The Band fills the auditorium with rich brass and rhythm.

Musicians gather on the balcony at the back of the big top and down at floor level. Instruments are swapped mid-song. Soaring above the singers, the six-strong muscly circus troupe perform aerial routines (with no safety wires). Good to see local lad Lennin Nelson-McClure shimmying up ropes and hanging upside down from the trapeze. The seesaw routine with performers flying up towards the lights is visually arresting and unlike anything you’ll see on the Grand Opera Stage again, even during panto season.

While Barnum undeniably takes advantage of the paying public, this production’s portrayal gently nods to his exploitation of performers without emphasising the showman’s darker side (which always seems to be sanitised). With The Greatest Showman Musical heading to the London West End in spring 2027 after an eight-week try-out in Bristol, this may the final outing for the 1980 musical Barnum before it is overshadowed by the toe-tapping songs of the hugely popular film. Yet Cy Coleman’s music, Michael Stewart’s lyrics and Mark Bramble’s book feel fresh and set the bar high for other theatrical Barnum shows.

Barnum is a big, brash musical that had me humming some of the shows soaring themes as I headed up Great Victoria Street towards the car. The show continues in the Grand Opera House until Saturday 17 October, before heading to Eastbourne and Malvern. Roll up, roll up. Catch it while you still can.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith Photography

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Hello Charlie – Derry wans processing their past and grasping for future hope (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 18 October)

Hello Charlie is a vibrant play seasoned with equal measures of hilarity and heartbreak. It eavesdrops on two periods of Maeve’s life, exactly a year apart. She’s an actress from Derry who is living in London. She loves a good time, but when Maeve drinks to excess, her fun-loving danger-dodging alter ego ‘Charlie’ takes over. Maeve’s out of work, out of sorts, and life has almost become one permanent bender. All of this is set against a backdrop of alcoholism in the home she grew up in, as well as the trauma and guilt that consumes her immediate family over the circumstances of her mother’s death.

Originally developed as part of the Lyric Theatre’s New Playwrights Programme, Caoimhe Farren’s script is fast-paced, edgy, full of banter and cutting asides, and manages to set up and sustain several jokes that deliver larger and larger laughs as the punchlines are revisited at half hourly intervals.

Farren’s Maeve is agitated, a hair-fiddler who drowns out the world with soul music pumping through her noise-cancelling headphones. Coming out of a seven-year relationship, she’s spending time with Alan (Callum Payne), many years her junior. The young diffident film buff’s uncertainty about Maeve’s desire for violent sexual roleplay creates comedic moments. What’s uneasy for the big teddy bear of a former squaddie is simply a “run of the mill Provo rape fantasy” for Maeve.

Older sister Kate (Clare Monnelly) grew up in the same household and has been touched by the same family trauma. But the expression of its impact is less overt in her life. Kate and Maeve are well-practised at sibling bickering, and anytime they appear in the front room together, there’s a wonderful (and cruel) sense of anticipation that one of the pair will ultimately explode.

Maeve’s language (and Farren’s pen) is full of colourful simile and witty retorts. After the interval the lights go down and instead of immediately returning to the flat’s sofa, Farren delivers an extended monologue that reveals a more sober Maeve who is grieving the absence of good time Charlie and is struggling with being estranged from so many of her family members and old drinking buddies.

The arrival of the sisters’ father (played by Vincent Higgins) brings the audience back to Charlie’s genesis, and offers the hope that one generation doesn’t have to follow in the exact footsteps of past ones.

Sinéad Owens’ set starts out as a front room in disarray. Bottles and left over carryouts litter the floor. Even the patron saint of a good night out traffic cone is lying prone, resting its head on a pizza box. A pair of Chekhov’s white wooden doors – crying out to be slammed (spoiler: they are) – lead off into the wings.

Having heard a rehearsed reading of an earlier version of the work a couple of years ago, it was a delight to see a full production of Hello Charlie at the Lyric last night. Few plays make it out of early development and into a full production.

Hello Charlie is being produced by SkelpieLimmer, Front & Centre, and An Grianán Theatre and is presented in association with Pavilion Theatre, Fishamble: The New Play Company, and the Lyric Theatre Belfast. The show’s Irish tour began in the Pavilion Theatre (Dún Laoghaire) for one night in September, before a brief run in An Grianán Theatre (Letterkenny) and now on stage in the Belfast Lyric from 7-18 October (part of Belfast International Arts Festival).

Those last two sentences reinforce how it takes a village of funders and supporters in order to stage new writing in the current precarious cultural economy. More power to the many elbows that have made this happen for Hello Charlie.

Farren’s work is written from her own experience of alcohol and sobriety, and the authenticity screams out even during the most extreme moments of heightened drama. Her performance in the central role of Maeve is phenomenal and mesmerising. Faced with such a big character to act opposite, Monnelly keeps pace during the intense sisterly sparring.

Co-directed by Gina Donnelly and Seón Simpson, Hello Charlie plays up a succession of unexpected entrances. The material is dark and the language holds no bars. The themes are relevant but never set on a worthy pedestal. Expect to hear gasps from the audience as Maeve makes shocked utterances and goes where most playwrights would fear to tread. Maeve’s profession also throws in some delicious jokes about acting that won’t alienate the general theatre-going audience. The sisters and their dad are incredibly Derry without laying it on too thick. A wee joke about Strabane is perfectly judged.

The 70-minute first act can function as a standalone play (albeit without the examination of sobriety). The hour-long second act brings a lot more depth to the characters (although my inner editor would chop off its beautiful opening monologue for sake of shortening the runtime).

A number of local plays have tackled the issue of consent while drunk (Wasted, Belfast Boy and Myra’s Story) but Caoimhe Farren’s nuanced tale of a woman on the road towards sobriety takes a different tack. Hello Charlie is a real treat and continues at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 18 October. 

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Extra Geography – simmering inferiority complexes, co-dependency laced with envy and betrayal (QFT from Friday 2 October)

Flic and Minna are two best friends at a north of England boarding school, the kind of rural establishment where PE includes lacrosse. One comes from a privileged background (Minna played by Galaxie Clear), the other (Flic played by Marni Duggan) is a scholarship student with working class roots. They’re normally as thick as thieves and we join them as they begin to search for a new summer project. Classmates beware: their peers don’t always benefit from these side quests.

Extra Geography is set in simpler times and some suspension of disbelief is required. Mobile phones and social media aren’t available. The delights of the internet haven’t begun to sully all-too-young minds. The pair of 15-year-old BFFs are worried about not getting into Oxbridge. They think boys are horrid and adults are boring. They’re adolescents but still very naïve. Sex ed advice is provided by a girl from the year above.

Falling in love as a means to be more “worldly” becomes their self-appointed challenge: “I want to be as good at love as I am at maths”. At one level it’s almost a pre-pubescent fever dream, but the pair’s charisma and earnest striving towards their goal in the face of potential humiliation is quite endearing. (And the unspoken question of whether they’ll ultimately realise they could conceivably already be in love with each other is left hanging.)

Miriam Battye’s screenplay – adapted from Rose Tremain’s short story and directed by Molly Manners – digs into the girls’ anxieties, their craving of attention, and introduces a sense of competition to see how they will react.

One external threat to their joinedness-at-the-hip is a production of Midsummers Nights Dream (which is almost a tiresome go-to play to add drama within another drama). This device also adds a supply of boys (and their attitudes towards each other and women) from another school into the equation … though the girls’ summer project longings are aimed elsewhere. Casting decisions expand the wedge that has already been created by their shared object of desire.

Minna and Flic’s girlhood almost lives in its own bubble. We rarely see how other girls judge their crazy BNOC-lite behaviour. Classmate Phoebe (Aoife Riddell making her debut) is a consistent third wheel, the unknowing victim of a previous project who tries desperately hard to befriend the pair. Geography teacher Miss Delavigne (Alice Englert) becomes entwined in the ‘project’.

Girls’ boarding schools are ripe for rarefied cinematic studies of friendship, bad behaviour and lesbian activity. But this is no St Trinian’s. Minna and Flic’s bitchiness has limits. A US-produced version of this film would surely have sexed the whole thing up, ending with blood dripping down the dormitory walls? But Extra Geography settles for something more subtle with simmering inferiority complexes, co-dependency laced with envy, and a lip-trembling episode of betrayal as tiny molehills are made into mountains in the teenagers’ minds. The strong and unshowy performances make this all about friendship with feelings turned up to eleven.

Extra Geography opens today at Queen’s Film Theatre, and there’s a Q&A with local actor Aoife Riddell after this evening’s screening.

 

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