Chicken – feathery fantasy with a cocky critique of the acting profession (Belfast International Arts Festival at Lyric Theatre until Sunday 10 November) #BIAF24

While the show begins with a wordless Bouffon-style entrance – fluffy chest puffed out, head nodding, pecking at the audience – Chicken soon switches to a surreal story of a Kerry cock (who is “a proud Irishman”) with thespian ambitions.

Physically hunched over with bent knees for the whole 50-minute performance, Eva O’Connor draws the audience into the cockerel’s world. We grow comfortable with the normality of chickens interacting with humans as peers. Sure wasn’t Buzby able to make and receive telephone calls, so why not chickens?!

From an obscure start as a feathery Christ-child in the school nativity, Don Murphy – the Kerry cock in question – is soon on a feature film set, starring in scenes with Michael Fassbender’s pecker (don’t worry, it’s all very dignified) before sniffing one too many lines of ketamine in New York, falling apart at the Academy Awards, facing up to a performative chicken vagina (not quite so dignified, but still very funny) and returning to Kerry to work on Martin McDonagh’s remake of Chicken Run.

Away from the chicken capers, the performance is also a critique of the puffed-up film industry, full of consideration of body image, the abuse of power, casting couch #MeToo moments, snorting your way to stardom, not to mention the British tendency to appropriate any Irish on-screen success.

Sitting in the round – just 72 seats are arranged around the four sides of the square stage – O’Connor struts around in circles for the whole performance. It’s intimate but never intimidating, though part of the joy is being able to watch the reaction of audience members sitting opposite you to the most surprising moments in the story.

The script is gently puntastic, and a range of accents and mannerisms allow O’Connor to morph into Pablo the Glaswegian pigeon living in the Big Apple, and ‘Hairy Arms’ (Don’s agent) amongst many other characters.

With a relatively short runtime, Chicken doesn’t try to overegg its pudding. At times, the sheer mix of ingredients threatens to scramble the story, pulling the audience’s thinking in all sorts of directions, including some commentary on animal rights and the poultry industry. But overall, the allegorical absurdity is a success, and we stand in awe of O’Connor’s craft and Hildegard Ryan’s writing and direction. Chicken finishes its run at the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 10 November. And the Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 26 November.

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Yerma – Lorca’s classic tale reimagined to rural Ireland with a novel staging (Tinderbox Theatre Company in Lyric Theatre until Sunday 3 November) #biaf24

Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca’s story about a childless woman living in rural Spain has been shifted to rural Ireland in Tinderbox’s exciting new production. Yerma is desperate for a child. But five years into her marriage, conception is illusive.

The women that Yerma meets in Lorca’s original text have morphed into her younger, more fertile sisters and her mammy. It all kicks off at a nephew’s christening in the parish church. The baby’s blanket symbolically unravels as Yerma’s sense of wellbeing collapses: everything gets too much and she retreats to the car park. From there, it’s a heady mix of partying, love, loss and violent retribution for holding secrets.

Tinderbox are building a reputation for reimaging and retelling plays in modern contexts. Their vibrant retelling of Eugène Ionesco Rhino in last year’s Belfast International Arts Festival wowed audiences and has been deservedly shortlisted for a UK Theatre Award.

Yerma boldly places a yellow Suzuki car (a pre-2003 Ignis) in one of two parking spaces painted out in the middle of the Lyric Naughton Studio stage, using the vehicle’s back passenger doors as the theatre’s wings, with an impossible number of characters appearing out of the back of the Tardis-like city car. Traversing locations, say from the hotel reception out into the car park, involves actors moving through the back of the car. It’s quite a funny concept at first, but the constant opening and closing of doors does wear thin towards the end of the performance.

What doesn’t wear thin is the gripping performance of Caoimhe Farren as the angst-ridden Yerma. A woman who is maligned and judged by others, constantly blamed and shamed for her circumstances, while struggling to process her emotions and get to grips with her physical and mental health. Despite all this pressure being piled on top of Yerma, Farren still allows her character moments of comedy, laughing – even if it is hysterically – in the face of failure and criticism.

Niamh McAllister plays ‘Herself’, a happy-go-lucky single mum who is fighting through fatigue with her newly first born and has the most empathy for her big sister. Sophie Robinson – labelled ‘Mammy’s Favourite’ in the show’s programme which is styled as an order of service – has been busy breeding a big brood and is disappointed by and dismissive of Yerma. Hazel Clifford is the final sibling, a fine songstress who is untroubled by the lack of pockets in her dress and is endlessly pulling balloons, vapes and fertility-enhancing herbs out of her cleavage. And Mammy should not be forgotten. Laura Hughes portrays a powerhouse of a mother who can feed, mollycoddle, chastise and embolden her chicks before engaging in some dark arts as a siren-like enchantress.

The men in the show get actual names, though the script pencils their personas in much lighter detail. Yerma’s husband John (Stefan Dunbar) is a farmer, a gentle brute of a character who could be played more sympathetically at the start to allow a greater and more dramatic descent into his later hateful state of quietly immutable obstinance. Matthew Forsythe plays Victor, a mysterious man who drifts in and out of scenes, and the unrequited love of Yerma’s life.

On the surface, the play is about the pain of involuntary childlessness, but at a deeper level it also about what it’s like to be so trapped and isolated that you begin to doubt yourself. Yerma is a woman of integrity – unwilling to pursue a more charming and emotionally available man – and is as harsh on herself as her nagging sisters. In the spirit of so many playwrights throughout the ages, Lorca gleefully pushes a character’s sense of powerlessness past their breaking point, resulting in an almost inevitable Pyrrhic victory.

Tracey Lindsay’s car-centred set is bold, with the front bonnet opening up to deliver yet more surprises. Mary Tumelty’s stadium-like backlighting is complemented by a tight spotlight that brings the front seats of the car into focus, helped by changes in the texture of the soundscape and micing inside the car interior that directs the audience’s attention into the confined space before a word is said. Garth McConaghie once again plays with live sound effects, a karaoke sequence that delights, and some original songs that place the action in rural Ireland and showcases the great voices of the cast.

Tinderbox’s collaborative method gives the cast and the full creative team a lot of latitude to play with the text and the production during rehearsal. Patrick J O’Reilly pulls everything together as director and writer/adapter. Though the handprints of his producer, marketing and business development colleagues at Tinderbox can be seen all over the work too: it really feels like a team effort.

This imaginative reset of the story is rich and intriguing. However, the runtime exceeds some audience members’ bladders, triggering disruptive coming and going in the stalls. (Maybe not an artistic priority, but still a practical one that is worth considering.) The set with its crazy entrances and exits is novel and will be memorable. The story is compelling. The casting – particularly Farren in the titular role – is excellent. Some of the best moments come when the whole family clamber over the car in exhuberent celebration but I just wish that there was a greater gradient to the sense of doom and foreboding that would make this into a real helter skelter race to the bottom and the finale.

Yerma is produced by Tinderbox Theatre Company and is part of the upcoming Belfast International Arts Festival. The run continues in the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 3 November.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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Rear Windows – smashing windows and creating new theatrical possibilities (Big Telly online until Sunday 5 November) #biaf23

The Rear Windows company are keeping rather too close an eye on how their products are performing in people’s homes. Perhaps looking through them more than they’re looking at them. But when they can’t get to the bottom of why windows are being continually smashed, the new temps – us in the audience – join the regular staff to investigate.

The interactive and immersive experience uses Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 similarly titled thriller Rear Window as its jumping off point. Aficionados may spot some of the minor characters getting an extended life in Big Telly’s new work.

Beginning in Zoom, the audience then click through to a virtual environment where we can wander around the various rooms looking for clues. There’s a shifty creative guy who’s been made redundant as his job has been replaced with AI. Wonder what we’ll find in his flat …

The virtual world is populated with assets that were derived from public engagement workshops. There’s lots to explore once the navigation system has been mastered. Gluing together these different collaborative technologies – Zoom is fairly industrialised, but the virtual environment is a playful platform – is both experimental and bleeding edge. The cast demonstrate good improv skills while compensating for the odd technology fail and dealing with audience members’ random answers to the questions they throw out.

While I’m not sure I grasped every detail of the story, the scripted elements were engaging and the whole thing made me grin. The themes of surveillance and automation were contemporary and well considered. Online theatre has come a long way since the beginning of Covid. It’s great to see that the sector is continuing to innovate and find new ways of exploring old and new stories. Good theatre can overcome a lack of polish and the increased risk that comes from having so many moving parts. And it’s encouraging to see new performers getting experience of how to perform remotely.

The final performances of Rear Windows are on Saturday 4 November at 8pmo and Sunday 5 at 2pm and 4pm as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

GUTTER – a nuanced dissection of populist news, celebrity culture, and reducing everything to the level of gossip (Off The Rails Dance at The MAC until Sunday 29 October) #biaf23

Some of the strongest work featured at Belfast International Arts Festival has been that (like Rhino) which embraced the imagination and creative power of an ensemble to produce something that was greater than the sum of the already talented individuals involved.

Off The Rails’ GUTTER follows this trend with its takedown of modern journalistic excess and audience bias towards news and commentary that fits their own agenda. It looks at the collision point between populist journalism and the celebrity status endowed upon and enjoyed by some presenters. What happens when you’re surfing along the wave of likes and the crest collapses and you tumble into the deep waters of cancellation? Are the viewers and readers and social platform users as complicit in this madness as the producers of the news who kowtow to the desire to gain shock-jock approval ratings? Have we created a world of gossip-mongers?

GUTTER does this very accessibly through the medium of dance. In a series of scenes that eventually come round full circle, Kevin Coquelard takes on the role of presenter, taking instructions from an unseen director to learn how to stand out, work an audience, and have presence on screen. At first diffident, he embraces the need to be a showman.

Soon he turns into a stage manager and we realise that even the adjustment of the studio furniture can be a non-neutral act of performance. Cameras are positioned and Conan McIvor’s live and recorded video mastery adds another dimension.

Recognisable classical themes are appropriated and pleasingly subverted with social media sound effects by Garth McConaghie. Sound from above the heads and behind the audience keeps our skin in the dangerous game being acted out in front of us. One incredibly powerful scene sees a robust debate (real audio from recognisable voices) being conducted as if the speakers (represented by pairs of shoes using Sarah Jane Sheils’ precision spotlighting to animate their voices) were instruments in an orchestra.

Artistic director and choreographer Eileen McClory introduces nuance through repetition which exposes how what plausibly starts out as good technique can quickly get twisted and hyped out of hand, leading to instability and catastrophe. Raising the tempo of a repeating routine is another device that underlines how easily the intelligibility of the message can be lost as something spins out of control. News is breaking in more than one way.

GUTTER suggests that some journalism and some audiences no longer value facts and integrity over performance and approval. Coquelard’s intimate dance with a camera hints at narcissism and the neediness of some Instagram/TikTok reels. As an audience, we’re never allowed to stray far from our own involvement in the vicious circle though both unwilling and quite knowing manipulation.

There’s a coherence to the multi-disciplinary storytelling of GUTTER that uses just 50 minutes to make its pitch. Hats off to dramaturg Hanna Slättne who’s helped keep the performance sharp and to the point. Coquelard’s relentless movement and lipsyncing is a delight to watch. But his on-stage antics are significantly enhanced by the quality of the beautiful sound, light and video work with which he interacts.

Just two performances of GUTTER remain at The MAC on Sunday 29 October (14:30 and 19:45) as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. It’s another example of international quality work that has been made in Northern Ireland but is not constrained to speaking to local audiences. The physicality, the video clips of news output, and the lure of gossip over impartiality is universal. 

Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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work.txt – clock on for a 60 minute shift, there’s no show if no one turns up to work (The MAC until Wednesday 25 October) #BIAF23

work.txt is an ensemble piece of theatre. With a difference. The audience are the ensemble. A set is built. One member will unwittingly be written into the whole evening’s dialogue and become a recurring central character. The rest of us will say a line when prompted by the words on the black backdrop: people who hate Mondays, Geminis (we’d all sat in one corner of the stalls), ushers, the stage manager, people who meet all kinds of criteria. Printed pages of lines may also be provided … and if the stage office printer breaks down, there’s a contingency plan. The work must continue. This is the gig economy. There’s no switching off, you’re always on.

Over 60 minutes – it’s quite a short shift! – you’ll learn about labour (and withdrawing it); about bosses, leaders, mindless tasks and robots; about reward and compensation; about respect (and the lack of it); about what makes work enjoyable (and what makes nice moments in an otherwise frustrating day). And you’ll get to clear your lungs and sing. It’s okay – you’ll be among friends fellow workers.

Writer Nathan Ellis and his team of dramaturgs, creatives and tech wizards have crafted a funny, somewhat self-aware, tour through a working day. One scene contrasts the skills and daily routine of a gallery attendant and the artistic curator. Totally different perspectives on what is normal. The central use of audience participation is very much in keeping with Roger Bernat’s Pending Vote which wowed in the 2013 festival.

work.txt is both whimsical and profound. Is anyone in charge? Do we have agency in our workplaces? Does attendance count as consent to participate in work (as well as theatre)? Are we trapped by our own choices? Is it about money? Or satisfaction? Or wellbeing? Well worth catching the final performance on Wednesday 25 October at 19:45 in The MAC as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. It’ll only be a play with no actors of no one turns up!

Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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Fiq! – what happens when circus meets gymnastics and tumbles into a DJ set: it’s magnificent or rather magni-Fiq! (Grand Opera House until Saturday 21 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #biaf23

Take 15 acrobatic bodies that bounce and flip and spin, one DJ who provides a constant live soundtrack, a circling motorbike, 48 or more red Coca Cola crates, and a dance floor and billowing backdrop that rips apart, than add gymnastic talent, circus skills, passion and energy and you have something magnificent … magnifique … or just Fiq!

That’s the name of the energetic, tumbling and breath-taking show by Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger from north Africa (though troupe member Jemma joins via Scotland!) who are performing for two nights in the Grand Opera House as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. ‘Fiq’ translates as ‘wake up’.

I can close my eyes and imagine being able to do a cartwheel. However, during Fiq! I see performers effortlessly cartwheel on the spot, spinning themselves around in almost a blur. My imagination has nothing on their reality.

What begins like a dreaded school gym beep test, quickly becomes a playful dance exploration of how running back and forward in a straight line can be distorted and made a lot more fun. But the sight of the fifteen performers, dressed in blank, darting back and forth across the stage is only the start of the strenuous activity. Soon the long drapes are being pulled down, the dance floor is being ripped up, the costumes are becoming more colourful, performers are being flung in the air with a human trampoline, and we’re hearing about and watching expressions of freedom, strength in numbers, a fair distribution of wealth, and what happens when you give people autonomy over their bodies.

This is the kind of show that puts a grin on your face that lasts for the whole hour and a half of the performance. Magical Apple AirPlay allows us to see a performer eye view of being tossed around in the air. Even DJ Dino is taken for a spin and elevated out of the way like a magic carpet on the rise when the dancers take back control.

Fiq! is multi-disciplinary, multi-talented, and multi-lingual (with English surtitles conveniently projected above the performers for those moments when you want to check that you’re picking up the right message from the movement). It’s a very accessible expression of dance. Children and adults spontaneously applaud and cheer encouragement. Circus is a great gateway to dance. It emphasises the strength of performers and the remarkable repeatability of their movements.

Due to due to the conflict and the closing of borders, Palestinian circus performer Esam Sultan wasn’t able to travel to Belfast to open the show with his In Between. Festival hope that he can be part of next year’s programme. In his place, local circus supremos, Tumble Circus, have stepped in to perform before Fiq! takes to the stage.

At the end of a long day, Fiq! was a treat. You can catch the final show tomorrow, Saturday 21 October at 7.30pm in the Grand Opera House. Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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Rhino – online gaming meets theatre in this dazzling adaptation of Ionesco’s classic (Tinderbox at Lyric Theatre until Saturday 28 October) #biaf23

It’s as if this was the definitive staging Eugène Ionesco had intended when he wrote Rhinoceros in 1959. Notionally it’s a story about rhinoceroses arriving in a small village and the conformity, paranoia and false logic that follows as people become entangled in all that the rhinoceroses begin to stand for. Everyman Bérenger must decide whether to join the masses or whether to resist the metamorphosis. It’s generally accepted that Ionesco was reflecting on how Fascism and Nazism rose in the build-up to the Second World War.

Tinderbox’s production of Rhino maps the characters into avatars in a multiplayer video game. Each demonstrates a very individual – and comedic – range of movements that are maintained all the way through to the final curtain call and walking off stage. Being virtual characters in an online game, they can’t touch. But that doesn’t stop them interacting with fighting moves straight out of the Way of the Exploding Fist that 8-bit ZX Spectrum and arcade game kids will remember.

While the physical movement is trademark Patrick J O’Reilly, the director also delivers an all-embracing concept to the production that absorbs the audience. You can nearly forget that you’re in a theatre, perhaps transported to watching a Twitch stream of these six players.

Set designer Tracey Lindsay provides portable walls on castors that double up as windows and smart phone screens as we navigate between the three levels/locations. Some of the spoken dialogue also appears in the form of a chain of instant messages. The younger and more hip audience members laugh in time with the writing on the screen, while the less smartphone addicted guffaw in sync with the spoken words.

Garth McConaghie’s score is akin to the sophisticated rolling music that underpins a modern video game with themes emerging for particular characters, and lots of game reward and bonus sound effects keeping the audience plugged into the gaming metaphor. LED light ropes define the character charging/resting zones while Mary Tumelty’s simple moving heads add dramatic red and green tunnels of light at key moments in the gameplay. The distinctly patterned black and white costumes by Rosie McClelland are like those you’d select when customising your character in a game, albeit it with a commedia dell'arte twist. All the while Eoin Robinson animates the screens and backdrop with computer graphics that are integral to the storytelling and never flashy distractions.

O’Reilly has helpfully taken a red pen to the original script and shortened it down to create a 90-minute no interval performance. Richard Clements encapsulates the vulnerability of the central character Bérenger, surrounded by enticing performances from Daniel Cunningham, Mary McGurk, Nicky Harley, Shaun Blaney and Vicky Allen who manage to interact with projected versions of themselves as well as each other without ever breaking character.

The racism present in the original script – one whole section riffs off Asian vs African rhinoceroses – results in characters receiving warnings and one being suspended for a period. Yet that doesn’t stop more and more people throwing their lot in with the new tribe of animals who have appeared and disrupted life in the town.

When you’re barely facing up to your own reality and other people are squeezing in with their spin on what’s going on. When dealing with your own internal trauma is exacerbated by waves of societal disturbance. How can you keep your head above water and not plunge under and allow yourself to be carried along?

Rhino could have been written and staged to comment on the online discourse around Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and Israel, or any number of other conflicts. And it taps into the spiral of conspiracy nonsense that can take over people’s thinking and their whole lives. And there’s an intelligent acknowledgement that people’s own unseen or unacknowledged demons can contribute to how they traverse the unexpected situations society throws at them.

Grab a ticket to see Rhino at the Lyric Theatre while you can. This run ends on Saturday 28 October. It’s a modern twist that reimagines and enhances a play that still has something to say. Its quality is testament to the power of a really talented ensemble on stage working together with creatives who can translate their imagination into reality (albeit, in this case, virtual reality) to create a dazzling performance. Hopefully Rhino will have a life beyond Belfast International Arts Festival and will return, perhaps even stampede, towards a well-deserved reboot by Tinderbox in Dublin, London, Edinburgh or beyond.

Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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Burnt Out – tensions explode as a new bonfire casts a shadow over domestic and community harmony – Lyric Theatre until Saturday 4 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival #BIAF23

It’s the beginning of the summer, and hair stylist Cheryl (Kerri Quinn) and primary school teacher Michael (Terence Keeley) live in a modern and fashionable home opposite a field that has just become a bonfire site. Michael’s brother Donny (Caolán Byrne) has some influence in the loyalist community, though his girlfriend Lesley (Shannen McNeice) is the official bonfire liaison officer. A local resident is known to have complained to the police, but P.C. McGoldrick (Caroline Curran) has her own agenda when she turns up at the couple’s door. Counter complaints are now flying about, and tensions are rising faster than the stack of wooden pallets. Can the area reach the Eleventh Night without community tensions combusting?

Gary Mitchell’s Burnt Out is a play – his first since Smiley – that shows how persistent intimidation can corrode someone’s sense of wellbeing and either drive them down a helter skelter spiralling slide of antagonism, or else persuade them to pay out in a fruitless attempt at final resolution and reconciliation.

At the end of act one, I’d a sense that while this play was teasing out just how powerful the emotion of fear can be in shaping people’s actions, the actual source of community tension – in this case an unwelcome loyalist bonfire – could have been swapped out for any number of issues that could threaten to disrupt the peace in an area. It felt like the bigger message was going to be how people in so many different circumstances can wind up each other – and themselves – into terribly destructive no-win situations that so quickly reach the point of no recovery.

However, the second act waves away any ambivalence about the importance of the setting and immediately delivers a stream of sectarian bile from the mouth of Donny. A joke is cracked about the poor spelling in a piece of loyalist graffiti. Suddenly, it’s all about sectarianism and loyalist bonfire culture. And that’s before Burnt Out eventually jumps a shark or two with Donny’s rant against the dangers of feminism in an out-of-the-blue moment of pure toxic masculinity that suggests that this thug who so often resorts to violence is the character struggling the most to contain the fear pent-up inside.

Quinn and Keeley – reunited on the Lyric stage seven years after playing a fabulous Mary and Joseph in a Christmas show – are portrayed as a somewhat mismatched couple, albeit wearing matching pyjamas. They enjoy a smooch and a cuddle, but disagree on important matters like cats vs dogs, whether to try to have a baby, the importance of her salon business vs his job as a teacher, and importantly, how to deal with the real and existential threat from across the road. There’s an interesting class dynamic, with Cheryl very much grounded with her people-based business, while Michael has unquestionably escaped his working-class roots and is no longer comfortable hanging around in the same circles as his brother. The potential fault lines in this central relationship loom large even before the fissures and fractures appear at the behest of brother Donny, his maltreated partner Lesley, and the gloriously stubborn and unhelpful officer McGoldrick (played to a tee by Curran).

Coercion and threats just drip off Donny. Cheryl is more able for him than his wee brother, but that plays into Donny’s wicked sense of what’s right for him. While sextortion is fleetingly on the table with Lesley trying to lure Michael with her wily charms, she soon switches to the old-fashioned extortion of money to placate the misunderstood youths building the bonfire.

Gary Mitchell’s new play is very well planned, plotted, and constructed. Jimmy Fay translates throwaway quips on the page into on stage zingers that are rewarded with instant gasps and giggles. The audience are lulled into laughing at deeply serious and disturbing moments that in the real world would leave us shocked and appalled rather than full of mirth. Garth McConaghie’s techno soundtrack throws in musical puns with blasts of Insomnia and Bad Guy, while the bass subs dotted along the front of the stage add to the sense of unease and help announce the end of the first act. Conor Murphy’s acoustically-friendly set floats above a black stage, though the small cast rarely feel intimate in the cavernous front room. Neil O’Driscoll’s projections add a sense of what’s happening over the road as well as inside the heads of the protagonists.

Throughout the performance, there seemed to be heavy hints that Cheryl may be concealing a much more complicated role in the unravelling situation. Yet other than an animated shadows that might look like familiar but assumed lost ‘friends’ at the conclusion, the breadcrumbs of Cheryl deliberately taking back control felt like they turned out to be red herrings. Then the play ends twice. On opening night we spontaneously applauded after a dynamic scene that turned out to be penultimate one, with the action returning for one last check-in with the troubled couple. Like a lot of Bond films, it felt like one ending too many.

Burnt Out is an explosive psychological thriller that certainly adds to the library of loyalist noir, where the mere mention of a bonfire heralds certain death and destruction. Mitchell knows about being on the receiving end of intimidation. He fights with words not baseball bats or petrol bombs. His script emerges from personal experience and is likely to resonate with others who have been bullied, and with those who take on the role of gatekeepers to preserve cultural expression. But I’m not sure the young adults who build bonfires or the grassroots communities who feel that they’ve been left behind by their political representatives will hear or see themselves on stage. Other plays and other playwrights will have the opportunity to address those gaps.

Having opened Belfast International Arts Festival, Burnt Out runs at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 4 November. Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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Belfast International Arts Festival – some theatre, circus, dance, music, film and conversation highlights (12 October–5 November 2023) #BIAF23

Some highlights to look out for in the Belfast International Arts Festival, which runs for the 61st time from 12 October–5 November 2023.

THEATRE

Gary Mitchell’s new black comedy Burnt Out [reviewed] about a couple who move into a new home opposite a bonfire. That situation never ends well in any local plays! // Lyric Theatre // Wednesday 11 October–Saturday 4 November

Tinderbox Theatre’s Patrick J O’Reilly’s adaptation Rhino [reviewed]– which I last saw in a bi-lingual performance at Belfast Festival a decade ago – uses physical theatre and multimedia design in a performance that promises to add a Black Mirror vibe to Eugène Ionesco’s classic and problematic absurdist comedy. // Lyric Theatre // Wednesday 18–Sunday 29 October at 20:00

Welcome to the gig economy. The audience at work.txt [reviewed] will clock in, get short breaks, work in a team under their own initiative, and learn about financial instability in the absence of a performer. // The MAC // Tuesday 24–Wednesday 25 October at 19:45

Celebrated playwright, director and producer Jo Egan used community theatre to bring authentic voices and marginalised stories onto stages across Ireland. Along with Fionnuala Kennedy, Jo founded MACHA Productions, to ‘democratise cultural expression’. As part of a two-day Lay Up Your Ends at 40 celebrating the anniversary of Charabanc Theatre Company, The Linen Hall will be paying tribute to Jo Egan who died last Christmas with an evening of performances and reflections. // The Linen Hall // Thursday 26 October at 18:00

Pat Kinevane and Fishamble are regular collaborators at the festival. King explores prejudice, privilege and resistance through the eyes of an agoraphobic Elvis impersonator who lives in Cork and was named after the civil rights leader. // The MAC // Friday 27–Saturday 28 October at 19:45

Find out what happens to the minor characters at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller Rear Window in Big Telly’s online performance. Based on digital and physical assets, music and scripts developed through public engagement workshops. Big Telly were world leaders discovering how theatre could stretch and adapt performances to best exploit online platforms like Zoom during the pandemic. Rear Windows [reviewed] builds on that and takes it further. // Saturday 4–Sunday 5 November

CIRCUS & DANCE

Expect a mix of parkour and circus comedy in Taroo & the Cabinet of Curatrocities as Said Mouhssine fuses acrobatics, pole work and urban street moves. // CS Lewis Square // Saturday 14 October 13:30 and 15:30 // Free

Group Acrobatique de Tanger are cart-wheeling onto the stage with Fiq! [reviewed], their colourful and magical acrobatic routines, breakdancing and freestyle football, all to the beats of DJ Dino. Also featuring Palestinian circus performer Esam Sultan. // Grand Opera House // Friday 20–Saturday 21 October

Craving gossip and fed by tabloid journalism where free speech, false news and integrity collide. GUTTER [reviewed] is a new dance piece created and choreographed by Eileen McCrory and brought to life by Kevin Coquelard exploring the reader’s role in the war for attention and ratings. Sound design by Garth McConaghie and dramaturgy by Hanna Slattne. // The MAC // Saturday 28–Sunday 29 October

Drop into Queen Street Studios and catch Maiden Voyage Dance’s new performance installation Good Times Never Seemed by Vasiliki Stasinaki and Sarah Gordon. Skate boarding. Jumping into puddles. Getting trapped inside bubble wrap. Experiments in collaboration. // Thursday 2 November (15:00–2000), Friday 3 and Saturday 4 (12:00–17:00)

MUSIC

An Evening with the Belfast Ensemble and Marc Almond begins with a concert version of Abomination: A DUP Opera, a verbatim work based on the words of politicians. After the interval, and ten years after his last performance of the work, Marc Almond reprises the intense song cycle Ten Plagues. // Grand Opera House // Tuesday 17 October at 19:30

Friend of the festival and this year’s featured artist Nicholas McCarthy is appearing at Glitter of Waves, playing two stunning piano works for left hand only (Britten’s Diversions and Ravel’s Concerto) along with the Ulster Orchestra. // Ulster Hall // Friday 20 October at 19:45

And Nicholas McCarthy is back a week later for a free performance with the Ulster Orchestra and Acoustronic on Friday 27 October and is in conversation about cultural leadership at Ulster University on Thursday 19 October.

During the festival there are also performances of Canadian country music (Saturday 14 October), Cara Dillon (Wednesday 18 October), Ex-Isles (Thursday 19 October), Squid (Tuesday 24 October) and The Waterboys (Saturday 28 October).

FILM

Films from the creative partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger will be showcased in the Cinema Unbound strand at Queen’s Film Theatre: Black Narcissus (Monday 16 October at 18:15), A Matter of Life and Death (Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19, Sunday 22), I Know Where I’m Going (Friday 20–Thursday 26), Suspiria (Saturday 21 at 20:15), A Canterbury Tale (Friday 27 and Sunday 29 October, Wednesday 1 November), and The Tales of Hoffmann (Saturday 28 at 15:00).

Irish film music and its role telling stories over the last 100 years will be celebrated at From the Quiet Man to the Quiet Girl, an evening of conversation and performance. // Strand Arts Centre // Thursday 16 October at 19:30

A screening of the classic 1922 (silent) film Häxan – a documentary about witches and more – will be accompanied by a commissioned score composed and performed live by Nick Carlisle. // Queen’s Film Theatre // Thursday 2 November at 18:45

TALKS

Journalist and broadcaster Gary Younge will be talking about his new book Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter, a collection of his journalism covering four decades of reporting from Britain, the US, and South Africa. // Ulster University // Tuesday 17 October at 19:00

Mick Herron is author of the Slough House series of spy novels about a washed up team of spies. They have been adapted for by Apple TV+ as Slow Horses. // Crescent Arts Centre // Friday 20 October at 18:00

Technologist Dr Eleanor Dare, artist Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice, and Big Telly Theatre’s artistic director Zoe Seaton explore AI & Creativity. An illusion of novel thinking, or able to exhibit creative behaviour. // Ulster University // Saturday 28 October at 15:00

Lots more in the full festival programme.