Music For Domes – a midsummer melding together myth, memory and music from Ireland and Cambodia (Armagh Planetarium until Friday 27 June) #docsireland7

Melding together myth, memory and music from Ireland and Cambodia, Music For Domes creates a meditative and an almost hypnotic experience with its poetic on-screen narrative (Paul Doran) in English, Irish, Khmer and French with a soundtrack by Irish folk artist RÓIS and Barry Cullen that weaves together different cultural techniques, and visuals that evoke oppression and shared (cosmic) space.

The immersive documentary by Dawn Richardson leverages NI Screen archive footage is projected onto Armagh Planetarium’s star dome, utilising 360-degree footage and the powerful sound system that normally only gets turned up for rocket launches.

Much of the 45-minute film is therapeutic and poignant (the rendition of Bread and Roses) though there are also surreal scenes of RÓIS floating in a giant pink flamingo and an unforgettable moment from the UTV archive when Gerry’s People visited the Armagh Planetarium in November 1988. (Host Gerry Kelly welcomes viewers to the outside broadcast and introduces the show’s opening number, three dancers from X Appeal shaking their ‘heavenly’ bodies to a remix of the Doctor Who theme. I doubt that so much buttock and thigh has been broadcast on local TV since. Hopefully the dance troupe were able to attend the premiere screening on Friday evening!)

It’s a shame that the documentary’s captions don’t linger on screen to allow the three translations to be appreciated: there are fascinating glimpses at familiar spellings and sometimes enormously long French translations to encapsulate what can be expressed in short phrases in the other languages.

Music For Domes demonstrates how creative work can take advantage of the wrap around screen in a planetarium that almost hugs the viewer, with its carefully controlled environment designed to lift people out of the busy world and into far flung places. In this case, a fusion of the cosmos around us, the history of conflict that we carry with us, and music that can inspire. Hats off to Hosta Projects, Docs Ireland, NI Screen and the archives for making it possible.

You can catch the final two screenings of Music For Domes in the planetarium on Sunday 22 at 4pm and Friday 27 at 3pm.

And there’s lots more to look forward to when the main programme of Docs Ireland festival of international documentary film begins officially on Monday 23 June.

 

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Docs Ireland – documentaries of every shape and size from home and around the world (23-29 June 2025) #docsireland7

For a week at the end of June, the Docs Ireland festival of international documentary film brings real life stories to silver screens around Belfast with over 50 films.

Here are some picks that caught my eye and imagination from the bulging programme.

Tuesday 24 June

From Ground Zero takes 22 short films of varying forms and formats from 22 Palestinian directors about the untold stories of people living in the Gaza Strip amidst the devastating war. Queen’s Film Theatre at 20:30.

Wednesday 25 June

Filmed over ten years, North Cormorant Island explores the impact building a road had on a village who population sharply declined in Japan. A film about time, place, mortality and human relationships with the land and the sea from a director John Williams who also reflects on his childhood in a village in Wales. Queen’s Film Theatre art 13:00.

The Negotiator looks back at the life and work of Senator George Mitchell, best known locally for his involvement in the talks that led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, but also involved in many other times and places. Directed by Trevor Birney. Cineworld at 18:30.

Doppelgängers³ offers an experimental vision of a future diaspora beyond Earth. Three doppelgangers attempt to answer the question if humanity is destined to live in space, how can we form a society that doesn’t replicate the same problems here on Earth? A psychedelic science fiction documentary with music by Pussy Riot, Colin Self, Mirrored Fatality and Asmodessa. Beanbag Cinema at 18:30.

Thursday 26 June

Atlantean is a quartet of films in which director Bob Quinn wonders – somewhat against the accepted wisdom – if the inhabitants of Ireland had much in common with the western seaboard of Europe and North Africa. It’s a musical, playful, and enjoyable romp. Queen’s Film Theatre at 13:00.

The Shadow Scholars – Patricia Kingori – the youngest woman and Black professor in Oxford University’s history – investigates the hidden ‘fake essay’ industry. If the world’s elite can pay for degrees they didn’t earn, and educated Kenyans cannot find jobs outside this industry, what is the real value of education? Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:00.

A State of Passion – after working around the clock for 43 days in the emergency rooms of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah emerged to find himself as a face of Palestinian resistance. This documentary includes news footage of the pale and shell-shocked medic – this was his sixth ‘war’ in Gaza – talking about the targeting of medics and hospital facilities. Why does he do it? Where does he find the strength to face it again and again? How does it impact his family? A film about passion. Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:15.

Latina Latina – a moving hybrid-documentary that looks at Italian fascist political ideology through the objects and buildings it left behind. Queen’s Film Theatre at 20:15.

Friday 27 June

Sane Inside Insanity: The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror explores what propelled Richard O’Brien’s concept from a modest stage plat to a cinematic and theatrical sensation. Released to coincide with the film’s 50th anniversary. Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:15.

Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror – the definitive story of the stage show and film exploring their groundbreaking and transgressive themes, iconic performances and epic songs that took over popular culture. 

How To Build A Library – Over eight years, two Nairobi women transform an old whites-only library into a vibrant cultural hub and confront the lingering ghosts of Kenya’s colonial past. Beanbag Cinema at 18:30

Sunday 29 June

Hunting Captain Nairac follows the search by an ex-republican prisoner for the undercover British soldier, one of the Disappeared. The screening of this film – still in the edit suite at time of writing – will be followed by a Q&A with director Alison Millar and some of the film’s contributors. Queen’s Film Theatre at 15:15.

The closing film of this seventh Docs Ireland is directed by Myrid Carten who took part in the pitching event in the first year of the festival. A Want In Her is an immersive, first-person account of the cost of love, and how difficult it can be to escape with artist Carton turning her camera on her missing mother, an alcoholic who has run away, exploring the decades-long clues in her family archives that have led to this moment. Queens Film Theatre at 18:00.

Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol looked at the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now 2000 Meters to Andriivka turns Chernov’s camera on Ukrainian soldiers fighting their way through two kilometres of harsh landscape to liberate a village. The futility and abject sadness of war. Queen’s Film Theatre at 18:15.

And that’s not all ...

Orbiting outside the main festival week, Music for Domes: A Planetarium Documentary is playing in the Armagh Planetarium’s dome, an immersive film exploring how myth, memory and music shape shared patterns of belief and grief across time and sky. With music by Róis, it’s sure to be a beautiful experience. Friday 20 June at 19:30 (sold out), Saturday 21 at 16:00, Sunday 22 at 16:00, Friday 27 at 15:00.(reviewed)

28 Years Later – after a long wait, both the zombies and the uninfected humans have evolved in worrying ways (UK and Irish cinemas from 19 June)

For anyone not old enough to have seen the first two films (2002 and 2007) in the expanding franchise, 28 Years Later opens with a recap of the awful effects of zombies staggering and at times running amok across Great Britain. Three decades later, the whole British ‘mainland’ is quarantined, coastal waters are patrolled by international navy vessels to make sure no one escapes to infect continental Europe, and some of the (mostly naked) undead have evolved to run and demonstrate almost superhuman strength.

The action shifts out of the city to a sizeable community who are now living on the tidal Holy Island (Lindisfarne) with its long causeway and round the clock watchtower to keep any ‘infected’ at bay. For his male coming of age rite, 12-year-old Spike accompanies his father over to the mainland to be blooded. Armed only with bows and arrows, the young lad passage into adulthood involves learning that much truth has been forsaken and he is being lied to. (Welcome to ‘Nation Building Under Duress 101’.) The bulk of the film then follows Spike’s quest to get his mother treatment for her feverish hallucinations and debilitating ill health.

I signed off my June 2007 musings about 28 Weeks Later wondering if I’d have the stomach to go a 28 Months Later sequel. (I speculated that it might be called Vingt huit mois plus tard, but Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have neatly side-stepped the viral spread to Paris.)

If there were any jump scares, they didn’t trouble me as a nervous cinemagoer who normally avoids anything remotely related to the horror genre. This morning’s early screening may have helped: 10am in Queen’s Film Theatre is a fabulous time and place to start your day with two hours of zombies.

Instead, 28 Years Later comes across as quite an intelligent film with Alex Garland’s script asking what love and a good death means in a brutal world, and looking through the eyes of Erik the outsider who has dropped into the madness and is coming to terms with the post-apocalyptic abyss. While the community is led by a woman, it’s the men who seem to be exclusively trained up as warriors. Zombies didn’t manage to kill off the patriarchy. You can also view some of the worldbuilding, nationalism and isolation fortress mentality though a post-Brexit and post-Covid lens.

Director Danny Boyle makes heavy use of flashbacks not only to fill in characters’ backstories, but to show centuries-old history repeating itself. Great performances from Alfie Williams as Spike, Ralph Fiennes as a maligned and misunderstood Dr Kelson (with a nuanced view on humanity that beautifully extends beyond everyone else’s ‘othering’), and Jodie Comer as Spike’s vulnerable mum Isla. Flawed father figure Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) will surely have to get his just comeuppance in a later episode.

Teletubbies are terrifying, a troubling cultish character is belatedly introduced with more than a whiff of a dead and disgraced DJ/TV personality (who seems to be set up for a major part in the second in the set of three sequels that are being made), and a few shots in the film have become a tribute to the now felled Sycamore Gap tree along Hadrian’s Wall. Young Fathers’ score perhaps tries too hard to accentuate already cinematic moments. Surround sound effects are used so sparingly that they momentarily divert attention from the action when they occur. The substantial filming on an iPhone 15 is disguised by the use of rigs with proper lenses and bullet-time kill sequences.

28 Years Later is released on Thursday 19 June and is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre as well as nearly every multiplex around.

 

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Famine Fortune – the one about the last potato in Ireland falling into the hands of a half-wit and his hungry brother-in-law (Steel Harbour Productions)

Titanic jokes are still poor taste in Northern Ireland, but new play Famine Fortunes tests the comedy water with famine-related humour and – according to Belfast audiences – passes with flying colours.

The conceit behind Jamie Phillips’s play is that two Irish working-class men have come into possession of the last potato in Ireland during the famine. It presents a great opportunity to escape the blight forever, and a huge challenge not to be severely punished by the spud’s previous owner.

Jimmy and Mickey (Tyler Barr and Jay Green) live in the same small dwelling. Jimmy labours. His brother-in-law Mickey is widowed, work shy and (humorously) naïve. Working shifts for a boorish Englishman is their only chance of earning enough to survive. Otherwise, they have no food, no jobs, no prospects and no hope. Their home is sparsely furnished, and the cupboards are bare of everything other than a candle and some matches that regularly get lit in memory of their departed sister/wife.

The comedy is a bit patchy during the first few establishing scenes, but then the laughs reach pleasingly farcical levels when the English baddie appears on stage: George Glasby dressed in a bright red coat and modelled on an extravagant pantomime-sized John Bull. His presence – and his search of the compact property – leads to anatomical humour (there are only so many places you can hide a small potato) which delighted the Black Box audience. The arrival of Dopey Joe (Jamie Phillips) introduces further mirth and pathos as the village idiot and willing scapegoat takes the fall for desperate Jimmy and eejit Mickey.

Phillips has great comic timing as Joe, while Green has fun exploring the consequences of Mickey’s string of ill-advised actions. Famine Fortune is at its most effective when it wholeheartedly embraces its anti-English sentiment and bounces the rest of the cast off the impressively cartoonish Glasby. The sense of exploitation is cemented when the one-hour performance concludes by playing Sinead O’Connor’s song Famine.

Directed by Luke Mosley, Steel Harbour Productions recently toured Famine Fortunes through Armagh and Belfast.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life – a whimsical and heart-warming romcom (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 13 June)

Laura Piani’s new film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Jane Austen a gâché ma vie) is a swooning romcom that diligently pays homage to the works of Jane Austen. By day, Agathe works in the English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Company in Paris. By night, she’s a left-handed author who has moments of vivid inspiration but mostly struggles to overcome her writer’s block. A colleague applies on her behalf to attend a Jane Austen writing retreat in England.  (Attendees of writing retreats will either feel seen or misrepresented!)

Setting a film in a literary environment is a great move even before Piani’s script for her feature debut picks up on so many tropes from Austen’s oeuvre: unrequited love and a friend who wants to become a lover, a man travelling long distances to make a big statement to a woman, sparky dislike turning to sparky amour … not to mention an opportunity to wear a corset, a Regency ball, and a lot of self-loathing. There’s even a modern reinvention of travelling by horse and carriage. Not sure that the llamas have a Georgian parallel.

Don’t panic if you’re not familiar with a detailed knowledge of Jane Austen. Agathe’s encyclopaedic familiarity with Austen quotes and phrases is used very gently. Camille Rutherford reaches into her character’s backstory as the survivor of a fatal car crash to create a sense of vulnerability that explains her sadness. The self-described “old maid” is prone to accidents that charm the audience. Her French friend (Félix, played by Pablo Pauly) is endearing until we realise he’d sleep with his reflection and lacks any form of commitment. Her needling English chap (Oliver, played by Charlie Anson) is modelled on Hugh Grant, at first snobbish, later a fellow drifter on Agathe’s wavelength.

While neither suitor induces a sense of panic or destiny, in a world that is tearing itself apart, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a whimsical and heart-warming romcom. It’s being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 13 June.

 

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The Importance of Being Earnest – boisterous behaviour, bunburying and brilliantly bonkers entertainment (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 6 July)

Oscar Wilde sends up Victorian attitudes and social norms around gender in his 1895 play The Importance of Being Ernest. The Lyric Theatre’s new production is very much a case of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Men are economical with the truth and duplicitous in order to woo women. Their patriarchal noses are put out joint when women place barriers in the way of their half-baked plans. Yet Wilde doesn’t write women as solid feminist icons: they turn out to have red lines (like abject dislike of a name) that are as flimsy as the men they’re meant to be looking down on, and morals that can turn on a dime.

The success of Jimmy Fay’s direction is allowing every aspect of the play – the characterisation, the costumes, the props, the soundtrack, the scene changes, and, to a lesser extent, even the set – to be exaggerated. While a strong sense of a brewing farce is maintained throughout, the performances still retain an element of subtlety, never allowed to descend into an overly camp free-for-all.

Wilde’s script is full of phrases that are often quoted outside the context of the play. Conor O’Donnell revels in his role of Algy, whose assertion that “the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple” is backed up by the use of an imaginary friend Bunbury as an excuse to escape unpalatable social events. O’Donnell relishes building up Algy as a figure of fun, demolishing plates of cucumber sandwiches and muffins, and rolling his eyes at the audience. His foundling friend Worthing (Adam Gillian) has a double life, using the name Ernest (his imaginary brother) when he’s gadding about in town, and reverting to his own name as Jack or John when at home in the country.

Allison Harding plays Lady Bracknell, a woman who is formidable, upright, straight-talking and no nonsense, and could probably be portrayed as being even more brusque and belligerent to add to the comic effect. Her mind is quickly made up on issues – until she changes it to suit her family’s circumstances – and believes that the proper place for men is at home. Given Lady B’s feeling of superiority over menfolk, little wonder that her daughter Gwendolen (Meghan Tyler) throws demure stereotypes out the window, draping herself over the furniture to take control and reel in the much-besotted Worthing, later physically circling her prey with her long nails out, and pronouncing one particular word with mischievous boldness (to the audience’s delight).

The second act switches from Algy’s home to a manor house in Hertfordshire where we meet young heiress Cecily, Worthing’s ‘ward’. Calla Hughes Nic Aoidh bounces on her toes as her impetuous Cecily gives into the charms of Algy who is pretending to be Ernest Worthing. Her giddy exterior and colourful attire (she’s an early adopter of last year’s big bow trend) is matched by her intense diary-keeping and expression of forthright views. After the interval, Cecily and Gwendolen alternate between love rivals and confidants, and Hughes Nic Aoidh energetically flings herself on the floor in ever-increasing gestures of forlorn disappointment. (There’s also a “never, never, never” that channels her inner Ian Paisley.)

Jo Donnelly appears as Cecily’s governess Miss Prism who has long carried a secret and harbours clandestine romantic intentions towards the local rector, Dr Chasuble (Marty Maguire), a man with a very flexible policy towards drop-of-a-(top)-hat Christening ceremonies. Across the three acts, Neil Kerry has fun playing Algy’s butler Lane (slow and precise, loyally covering for Algy) and the manor house butler Merriman (poker faced, quietly observing the madness around him).

Catherine Kodicek’s lush costume designs are ambitious, bright and detailed. Gwendolen and Worthing share matching dark stripes during their first attempted betrothal. Algy works his way through a progression of ever more outrageously pink outfits, twinned in the second and third acts with Cecily’s dress and boots. Worthing’s patterned suit and outlandish stovepipe top hat in Act 2 playfully add to the sense of his ridiculousness.

The show’s opening and scene changes are accompanied by Monty Python-esque animations from Neil O’Driscoll. At one point, a musical interlude demands that the audience join in. It’s totally over the top, but entirely in keeping with the mood that has been established. Garth McConaghie’s sound design ranges from buzzing bees to a spot of punk to finish the show. Stuart Marshall’s art nouveau set includes a playful garden maze, a detail that finally pays off during the third act.

The overall effect charms and delights, with thrilling humour on stage, yet with space to still appreciate the parallels between Wilde’s critique of attitudes in Victorian Britain (which he claimed were trivial) and modern Ireland (where they do not feel at all trivial). The wild ride of The Importance of Being Earnest continues at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 6 July.

Photo credit: Ciarán Bagnall 

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Ghost Stories – an all male tale exploring the ghosts of guilt and toxic masculinity (Grand Opera House until Saturday 31 May)

The producers of Ghost Stories make a plea to audiences – and also specifically to reviewers – not to divulge the plot and keep the show spoiler free … although the original writers and directors did themselves make a 2017 feature film based on the story of their 2010 stage play!

Suffice to say that in terms of structure, an overall narrative thread revolves around paranormal debunking guest lecturer Professor Goodman (who has a touch of Nigel Farage about his voice and his mannerisms), and is illustrated by three different ‘ghost stories’ before a neatly circular conclusion that ties everything together and for which the clues have been staring everyone in the face for much of the previous 80 minutes in the exploration of guilt, poltergeists and locked-in syndrome.

The show’s reputation and marketing leans heavily on selling the “spine-tingling” experience as “a truly terrifying theatrical experience… with the buzz of a thrill-ride, delivering something truly unique”.

Theatre can be really chilling in terms of the story and the telling. Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman is deeply disturbing and always leaves my heart cold and my sleep disturbed (both the Decadent Theatre version and the more recent, excellent staging by Prime Cut/Lyric Theatre). The opening scene of Nancy Harris’s Our New Girl (which finished its run in the Lyric Theatre at the start of May) saw a young child alone on stage attempting to disfigure himself. A really frightening start orchestrated by director Rhiann Jeffrey. Back in 2014, Jimmy McAleavey’s Unhome (a Tinderbox production in The MAC) achieved both menace and ghostly apparitions that startled audiences.

Ghost Stories uses special effects to play with the audience’s senses even before the show even begins. Although I’m blessed with no sense of smell, people near me reported the smell of fresh carpet and damp before the curtain went up. The bass subs which continue to rumble as if you were in a cabin on a sea ferry throughout much of the show. Surround sound throughout the auditorium throws voices in unexpected directions. The lighting design (mostly lateral from the wings) and the forced perspective sets allow props and people to lurk in the darkness towards the back of the stage.

For me, the tales of “three apparent hauntings” felt quite mundane: I’ll not lose any sleep over the details. The night-watchman’s experience demonstrates good stagecraft. A teenage boy’s late-night account includes a great physical stunt. And there’s good prop control as we listen to “a businessman awaiting his first child”. However, the element of fright almost entirely revolves around loud noises, bright lights, and strobed glimpses of unexpected characters or objects. A sound-track of loud screaming accompanies these moments, making it seem like the whole audience is panicking when the number of vocal percipients is actually much lower. It’s like a sophisticated version of the Ghost Train at Barry’s (Curry’s) in Portrush without the dangling fronds touching your shoulder.

All of this ultimately builds up to a spectacular scene as the performance draws to a close with the – for once – totally unexpected arrival of a fifth cast member (which brought back fond memories of Patrick J O’Reilly’s Damage in the 2014 Outburst Festival). It’s the best effect in the one-act show and finally delivers a really thrilling moment that catches everyone off guard.

Worth noting that the content warning on the Grand Opera House website mentions “the use of smoke, haze, sudden very loud noises and moments of extreme shock and tension” but doesn’t highlight the strong reference to suicide (which seemed to be the trigger for a number of people to walk out last night). The location of a death and the victim’s age in the second story also has a tragic local resonance.

It’s relatively uncommon – but not surprising – to see a touring show with an all-male cast. (A child calling for her father and prolonged gasps of sexual satisfaction as a character watches a porn video are the only times women’s voices are heard during the play.) Taking my seat in the stalls 48 hours after the end of last weekend’s Front & Centre: Women of the North’s Playwriting Symposium, I did wonder whether the theme of toxic masculinity and the hint of male gullibility would be much weakened if the Professor (Dan Tetsell) or the young boy (Eddie Loodmer-Elliott) had been played by women. The remaining cast members are David Cardy (night watchman), Clive Mantle (businessman) and Lucas Albion (who appears on stage and understudies along with Simon Bass). Ghost Stories was written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, who also directed the play along with Sean Holmes.

Ghost Stories will continue to uncover its truth in the Grand Opera House until Saturday 31 May. The performances are good, the technical trickery is expert, but it was rarely as terrifying as it promised.

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The Salt Path – homeless but not without hope, a couple dig deep on an involuntary ‘Camino’ (cinemas from Friday 30 May)

Some people have the freedom to choose to take off and walk long distances. And they do so for many reasons. The Camino de Santiago across the north of Spain is a popular pilgrimage. A communal path that has company along the way if you want it, and space to be on your own if you value the time to think. Others enjoy going for a long hike and wild camping along the way.

New film The Salt Path portrays a semi-fictionalised retelling of Raynor and Moth’s real life experience (available in book form) of starting out from Minehead in Somerset to walk around the coastal path to Land’s End and beyond. As a couple they’d run out of choices. They lost their house on the back of debts following a poor business investment and a lack of legal advice. Moth had a recent diagnosis of a rare neurodegenerative disease (CBD): the prognosis was terminal albeit it not immediate enough to qualify for emergency housing as a newly homeless couple. Armed with a pair of rucksacks, a tent, some rice, pasta, and a paltry amount of cash, they set off to live on the coastal path and see where it took them.

“I can’t move my arms or my legs, but other than that I’m good to go.”

Gillian Anderson stars as Ray, a woman who perseveres, who simultaneously copes while not coping, who keeps putting one foot in front of the other, and exudes a practical and heartfelt love for her partner. Jason Isaacs propels Moth up hills and over uneven terrain despite a gait that impedes progress. Anderson’s character is relatively steady. However, Isaacs wobbles between being physically helpless, deeply morbid moments, and an almost superhuman shows of strength in the face of an emergency.

While the dialogue in one scene late in the film will bring tears to your eyes, the quality of the acting is never reliant on the delivery of lines but instead on the glances, gazes and sighs. The actors’ faces and their characters’ demeanours become weathered as the days become weeks and months: Moth’s symptoms mean they rest frequently, and progress is very slow.

Alongside Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s screenplay, director Marianne Elliott and cinematographer Hélène Louvart add a third major character: the stunning scenery and surroundings, with crashing waves, windswept and tide-damaged woodland, soaring birds and lolloping mammals, strong sunshine and horizontal rain. Close-up shots in the tent and in built-up areas they pass through are in sharp contrast to the wide vistas and drone shots capturing the pair walking through landscapes devoid of other humans.

Ray’s constant companion on the route is her much-annotated copy of Paddy Dillon’s Walking Guide of the South West Coast Path. Moth is reading through Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf translation, which becomes the punchline to a running gag about mistaken identity. Watch how those with plenty – individuals, families and businesses – treat the homeless and hungry, and how willingly Ray and Moth offer to share the little that they have.

The moments of human kindness are a tonic throughout the film. The 115-minute run time is perhaps the weakest element: so many scenes from the first half of the real Ray and Moth’s journey are squeezed into the narrative that the passage of time in the cinema does become noticeable.

The Salt Path is being screened in local cinemas including Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 30 May.

 

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When The Light Breaks – grief(s) observed in this beautiful Icelandic character driven study (QFT until Thursday 29 May)

Una’s spending the night at Diddi’s student digs. But she’s tired of sneaking around. He’s getting up early to head back home to Reykjavík to tell his girlfriend Klara that their long-distance relationship is over. Una wakes up in his bed, brushes her teeth, escapes out the window to avoid his flatmate discovering their affair, and goes to college. News slowly breaks that there’s been a devasting multiple vehicle crash and Diddi may be involved.

When The Light Breaks watches over a day as this young woman comes to terms with internally grieving for her first love while externally suppressing her true emotions. As a general rule of thumb, Icelandic films are always worth a punt. They tend to feature strong characters, in tense situations. Screenwriter and director Rúnar Rúnarsson doesn’t overcomplicate the story – or elongate the film’s duration – but instead lets the camera linger on Elín Hall’s expressive face (playing Una).

The awkwardness is explored, at first through a sense of personal grief greater than other friends (and supposedly secret from them), then extended through the presence and a closeness to official girlfriend Klara (played by Katla Njálsdóttir). As one person leaving my screening observed, “Diddi certainly had a type”: Una/Hall and Klara/Njálsdóttir could easily pass for sisters, facially so similar other than the style of their hair!

By the close of the film, more and more is left unsaid, leaving audiences free to imagine. Did Klara suspect Una was on the scene before she flew up to mourn? Has she since spotted Una’s familiarity with Diddi’s life? Does she find solace in being around someone else who knew him so well? You decide!

Grief is always hard to gauge. Difficult to define or predict. When The Light Breaks spends 24 hours in the life of students discovering how they will react. Well worth catching at Queen’s Film Theatre before Thursday 29 May.

 

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Chora - inaugural show from Luail delivers masterclass in trust and movement

Ireland’s National Dance Company, Luail, has made a very confident leap onto the stage with their first production. Chora – ancient Greek for ‘space’ or ‘being’ – is its inaugural work, a triptych that explores memory, patterns and interactions. Performed last night in the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, it had premiered in Dublin last Tuesday before a night in Wexford and will finish at the end of the month in Cork.

Against a live score of relentless harsh strings from the Irish Chamber Orchestra perched up at the back, the company dancers come on stage for Invocation (choreographed by Mututau Yusaf and composed by Julia Wolfe). One dancer is fighting against the oppression and goading of six faceless demons who swirl and snarl.

The black dance floor is rolled back to reveal a gleaming red mat underneath. From experience, rolling up dance mats is not something you want to do with an audience, but a string quartet give the stage reset a feeling of ritual before the (eight) company dancers and three guests perform Liz Roche’s Constellations.

The movement and the spacing and dynamic between dancers of both pieces feed naturally into the post-interval performance of I Contain Multitudes. Now circulating around a white dance floor, eight dancers fall into subtle shared rhythms, almost magnetically attracted to each other before breaking away into a pseudo-random path that will see them nearly collide in the next round. Guy Nader and Maria Campos have created a spectacular work that is both beautiful and breath-taking.

The score is an arrangement by Marijn van Prooijen of Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato, a piece largely based on quintuplets that is essentially in 10/16 time. The pace and the complexity of the interactions between dancers building up on stage is echoed by the orchestra is working through increasingly intricate layers of repetitions of the score, with rather essential conducting (counting) duties switching between a couple of players throughout the forty-minute performance.

If the music is elegant and mesmerising, the movement on the dance floor is even more so. An initial lack of touching is soon replaced with stylish holds, jumps and lifts. It’s so precise despite looking almost haphazard: a hand grabbed here, a foot twisted there, a tumbling over someone bent over behind. By the performance’s zenith, dancers are being hoisted into the air and falling sideways into the waiting arms of (unseen to them) colleagues in a show of trust that belies the company’s recent formation. Like zooming into a fractal, the patterns on stage are familiar and repeating yet constantly changing and unique.

Overall I Contain Multitudes feels like the kind of overseas work that would wow audiences at Belfast International Arts Festival. Katie Davenport’s flexible set – particularly with how the orchestra are kept in view without ever becoming a distraction – together with her billowy costumes add to the richness of the performance. Also understated but all the more powerful for it is Sinéad McKenna’s lighting design, with strip lighting descending to completely change the shadows cast on the floor for Constellations, and some beautiful shadow work during the final performance.

It bodes well that Luail has so quickly established its technical and performative prowess to tour this triple-bill of work. You can catch the final performance of Chora at Cork Opera House on Wednesday 28 May. Hopefully the company will return to Belfast before too long.

Photo credit: Luca Truffarelli

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Magic Farm – watchable satire about media ineptitude without any bite (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 22 May)

A New York documentary team travels to Argentina to capture their latest in a series of quirky subculture episodes. This time their plan is to feature an eccentric musician who wears a rabbit costume with big ears. But nothing quite runs to plan.

The opening minutes of Magic Farm feel like a spoof TV news show, and on paper, this could have been a cracking celebration of the perils of gonzo documentary making, the kind of youth TV that might once have played on late night weekend Channel 4. In practice, the movie that’s been made is a satire that lacks any bite and becomes a watchable droll character study of misfits on tour.

The hapless and clumsy team of five are nearly as professionally flimsy as their proposed content. Presenter Edna (played by Chloë Sevigny) senses that her show is on its last legs and a lot is riding on this episode. Her husband is exec producer Dave (Simon Rex), somewhat hands off on the details of what’s happening, but historically way too hands on with the crew. Day-to-day production decisions fall to producer Jeff (Alex Wolff) whose his lack of research and curiosity have landed the team in the wrong country. Sound man Justin (Joe Apollonio) is neither streetwise nor aware of his homoerotic aura. The most junior member of the team turns out to be the most competent: Elena (Amalia Ulman, who also writes and direct the film) successfully manages the budget and coordinates the chaos while dealing with her own personal issues. Her language skills can only partially counter the general feeling that everything is lost in translation.

The local fixer’s tree-climbing daughter (Camila del Campo) sees through the film crew’s antics, yet their presence in her rural village is a welcome break from terminal boredom. She’s probably the most interesting member of the ensemble cast, and more of her perspective on the unfolding madness and panicked fakery would have strengthened the storytelling.

The cinematography takes risks with bold 360-degree shots, strapping cameras to animals, brash colours, and eye-catching editing. But the comedy is sparse: a crew member falling off a skateboard is one of the funniest things that happens. Reference is made to someone having had an affair with the actor Gerard Depardieu. News broke minutes before the preview screening I attended that Depardieu had been convicted of sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021. As a consequence, his mention in the film felt very dark, beyond a laughing matter.

The punchline – sorry for the slight spoiler – is that there’s a health emergency developing in the area in which the team are filming. Their documentary skills could have captured what’s happening and told that powerful story, rescuing their reputations and careers. Instead, their self-absorbed incompetence means that they miss all the visible clues that they’ve been tripping over all week.

While Magic Farm doesn’t deliver on the ambition it seemed to promise, it’s still a fun 93-minute tale of media ineptitude. It’s being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 22 May.

 

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The Surfer – Nicolas Cage plays a lost soul descending into madness, chasing a pointless dream with a heavy price tag (UK and Irish cinemas from Friday 9 May)

The Surfer – a never-named divorcing man with a teenage son – returns to the scene of his youth, planning to buy his childhood home on a clifftop overlooking a surfing beach in Western Australia. This quest seems to be the only positive thing in his life, a humiliating notion that conjures up a whole range of possible problems. And that’s before he encounters the toxic masculinity of a local surfing gang who aggressively protect their beach from outsiders.

Set in the week leading up to Christmas, The Surfer a sunny antipodean affair, with zero festive cheer. A clean-shaven Nicolas Cage descends into fever dream insanity as he stubbornly refuses to cave in to the demands from the local hoods. Their evil leader, Scally (played by Julian McMahon), is wrapped up in a less than subtle red ‘dryrobe’, orchestrating rituals based on water and fire and demanding that his fervent disciples suffer to be part of his malevolent club.

The Surfer loses his dignity, his mind, his vehicle, his wallet (a mere symbol of his larger emasculation by financial institutions), and ultimately even his values and morals are on the line. Other than Nicolas Cage’s very committed performance, there’s nothing enjoyable about this catastrophe film – written by Thomas Martin and directed by Lorcan Finnegan – other than Radek Ladczuk’s lush cinematography (enhanced with wildlife close-ups and drone shots looking down at waves), all backed by François Tétaz’s sparkly soundtrack. It’s an act of anguish to watch the torment play out over 100 minutes. While the twice-daily tide may clean the sand, it cannot wipe away the blood that’s been spilt on the beach.

Hardly any women appear on screen (other than a helpful photographer played by Miranda Tapsell). This is all about men behaving badly. Bullying with more than a hint of historic criminal acts and police collusion. Topped with animistic behaviour and initiation ceremonies. The Surfer’s interactions with a beach bum who lives in the corner of a car park ultimately illustrates to what lengths the rich may go to increase their material possessions.

The Surfer runs in cinemas including Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 9 until Thursday 15 May.

 

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Tina: The Tina Turner Musical – struggling against serial coercive control to find her voice and success (Grand Opera House until Saturday 24 May)

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical is a story of struggle against coercive control: male violence, male oppression, and talent that didn’t neatly fit into the vision of those (men) running the music industry. 

The title role at Wednesday evening’s performance was played by Jochebel Ohene MacCarthy (who alternates with Elle Ma-Kinga N’Zuzi). Her powerful vocals were electrifying throughout, bringing the singer/songwriter to life on the stage of the Grand Opera House. The young Anna Mae (played by Chizaram Ochuba-Okafor and Chloe Angiama) establishes the potential talent and innate stage presence of the girl who will eventually wow tens of thousands in concerts.

By the time the interval comes round, we’ve watched a mother flee a violent home with one daughter, but leave her other child, the precocious and loud-singing Anna Mae Bullock, to grow up with her abusive father. We’ve seen 17-year-old Anna Mae be talent spotted by Ike Turner, an older music man who changes her stage name to Tina Turner and eventually leaves her no option but to marry him all the while not paying her a wage: marriage may be “good for the bank and good for business” but it isn’t good for Tina. And we see how Tina’s talent outshines his, leading to further confrontations and a big split.

While the second act eventually reaches the point where Tina Turner’s solo career takes off, she must first battle more strong-willed record producers to take back and assert control, while facing up to her mother and the hard-to-shake-off Ike, and meeting a younger man she’ll later marry on her own terms.

Tina Turner’s back catalogue, along with other tracks from the period, are intelligently woven into the linear narrative. Like most jukebox musicals, there’s a background hum of wannabe karaoke singers in the audience adding to the talented on stage backing singers. Mark Thompson’s fabulous set plays with depth and favours soft focus backdrops on the video wall that eventually lifts to reveal the band for the final numbers.

The wigs are awesome. The home aquarium is stellar. The costumes (also Mark Thompson) dazzle, although some of the on stage quick-changes felt close to being exploitative, and seem very prone to delay. Bruno Poet has arranged an extraordinary number of light fixtures facing the audience to create the concert atmosphere for specific moments in the production. The choreography is good, although dancing in slow motion with wooden chairs and an odd creative decision to freeze frame Ike while Tina sings around him felt flat.

Granting boyfriend Raymond (Kyle Richardson) the lead in Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together creates a very solid duet. Giving a wife-beater (Ike played with commitment by David King-Yombo) who hits his children a song with the lyric “Be tender with me, baby” is certainly poignant (and a bit icky). Gemma Sutton gives a great rendition of Open Arms as Tina’s assistant-turned-manager Rhonda. The audience particularly love River Deep Mountain High, I Don’t Wanna Fight, Proud Mary, and the final much-anticipated arrangement of What’s Love Got to Do with It.

The musical’s book by Katori Hall, Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins pulls no punches when it comes to depicting the painful life of the singer who would become world famous as Tina Turner. Fans of the artist will be in heaven. Fans of good jukebox musicals will also be impressed with the solid biography.

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical continues its three-week run in the Grand Opera House until Saturday 24 May, after which the tour decamps to Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre between Tuesday 27 May and Saturday 14 June.

PS: Note to audiences: talking loudly during the songs is not what others paid to come to the theatre to hear. It’s a long production and won’t finish until quarter or twenty past ten ... although one man behind me said his loud goodbyes and left ten minutes before the interval! And if anyone beside you proffers a misogynist heckle during an emotionally stark and vulnerable scene – “you can stay at my house” was neither smart nor funny – feel free to lecture them when the lights come up at the end.

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Murder For Two – 90 minutes of absolute musical theatre mayhem and mastery (Bruiser Theatre at The MAC until Sunday 11 May)

Buckle in for Murder for Two, a non-stop roller coaster ride over 90 minutes as Officer Marcus Moscowicz arrives on the scene of the murder of novelist Arthur Whitney.

Bruiser Theatre Company has a long history of performing fast-talking, fast-moving, physical theatre. But they’ve somewhat outshone themselves with this two-handed, multi-roled whodunit with four-handed piano playing, dancing and a big disco number.

Stuart Marshall’s vaudeville theatre set sits on the MAC stage, with coloured string hinting at a detective board mapping out the suspects and the clues. While the set is more elaborate than some of Bruiser’s previous work, its doors, coat stand, and convenient baby grand piano, are very well used.

While Rob Gathercole (playing the officer who hopes this tragedy might be his step up to becoming a detective) snoops around the apartment, Will Arundell swaps between the victim’s wife, party guests, and even some nine-year-old choristers who lurk in a back room. Will a firm grasp of investigative protocol be enough to solve the case? Will the author’s wife ever get to return to the stage and perform her big number? Will the cast make it through two-show Saturdays? Can the crew get the set and lights in and out of five different theatres in five days after the run at the MAC? All will be revealed in good time.

Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s script is full of slapstick back-and-forth wordplay. On top of that, the actors have to switch accents, posture, hats and props as they bring to life a growing list of people loitering in the flat, many of whom have a pleasing habit of bursting into song. The talented pair, accompany themselves and each other on the piano, producing a crazy, camp, and very entertaining night at the theatre. If just left to the performers, the quick fire routines could be routine. But combined with so many synchronised lighting and sound effect cues, it’s quite a feat to pull off such a well-crafted and solid performance.

It’s a riot, and Lisa May’s direction never lets the energy lag. Gathercole and Arundell have built up incredible stamina during rehearsals and are as nimble on their feet as with their fingers. In what feels like a musically-infused Agatha Christie mystery transplanted to 1950s small-town America, anachronisms abound, with a mobile phone replacing a traditional landline, and a crowd-pleasing mention of Larne! Name another show that could rhyme diarrhoea with IKEA and Mamma Mia. There are plenty of knowing meta nods to musical theatre, numerous subplots, and a pleasing moment of improv involving an audience member who helps with one scene.

In the past, I’ve been unmoved by some shows with elaborate physical theatre. Being clever and well-executed is not an end in itself. But Murder for Two is in a different league. Bruiser’s interpretation of this play left me as giddy as the rest of the audience with its 90 minutes of absolute mayhem rewarded with a satisfying finish.

Murder for Two runs at The MAC (co-producers with Bruiser) until 11 May before touring through Lisburn (Wednesday 14), Letterkenny (Thursday 15), Newtownabbey (Friday 16), Armagh (Saturday 17) and Derry (Sunday 18) ... tour details on the Bruiser website. There’s no excuse not to see it.

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