Boy Out The City – a loved up lockdown lodging turns lonely for an actor needing to make peace with himself (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 21 April)

When Declan Bennett and his boyfriend moved out of London to rural Oxfordshire, their adventure was supposed to be a liberating side-effect of the Covid lockdown that was denying them of work as actors. A chance to live it up in cosy comfort. But the sojourn in picture postcard Watlington turned into an isolated prison when his other half suddenly had to fly out to film in Atlanta for six months. Sentenced to live alone, the demons of childhood trauma, adult addictions, and a tendency to overbake banana bread all had to be dealt with.

Boy Out The City documents Declan’s gradual breakdown as he finds himself with the space to finally process his teenage years in Coventry with the homophobic bullying and his attempts to suppress his sexuality. A significant health scare in his 20s adds to the distress he’s been bottling up. The enforced loneliness drifts into purposelessness and a boredom that invites introspection. Step into the Declan’s dark tunnel and wait to see if he can find the light.

The one act show starts out with pleasingly cocky energy as the audience get used to the unfiltered nature of Declan’s mind. Parts of the show are delivered almost as performance poems, albeit just a tad overwritten. The script is enriched with Max Pappenheim’s powerful soundscaping and Alex Lewer’s beautifully engineered lighting effects: Declan’s strobe-lit breakdown is mesmerising.

Declan delightfully swerves mid-sentence into an Oirish accent any time he needs to relay a conversation. His 84-year-old next door neighbour, Anne, adds colour to his seclusion: she profits from his overcooking while, later on, he benefits from her sense that not all is well.

Unusually for this genre of self-discovery show, there’s a lot of room for faith. Declan’s nurture in the Catholic traditions brings comfort and liturgy, even if the public face and actions of the church have unpicked his confidence in the institution. The language of surrendering is familiar, and while that faith parallel can’t be stretched too far, there’s a spiritual openness that adds to the vulnerability of the storytelling.

There are plenty of laughs: toothy vaginas might not be to your taste but Declan’s short 12 Days of quarantined Christmas nightmare is a well-executed sequence. Sometimes the narrative feels like a learner driving swerving on black ice. But within minutes, the sense of direction returns and the plot’s twists and turns are never tortuous.

Declan’s performance has panache and passion and the preachy finale feels justified and authentic given the hour of honesty that has gone before. Directed by Nancy Sullivan and using every surface of Reuben Speed’s cottage outline set, Boy Out The City continues its run in the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 21 April.

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That They May Face The Rising Sun – rural rites and a sensory thrill (QFT from Thursday 25 April)

An author and an artist relocated from London to rural Country Galway a few years ago. Middle-aged but younger than average, they are seen as useful newcomers. But they’ll probably always be classed as blow-ins, “a pair who came in against the tide”.

Joe (played by Barry Ward) in particular has an outsider’s perspective, looking under the placid surface of the seemingly idyllic, slow-paced farming community to see the quiet turmoil and unspoken secrets that are at play, even a spot of forbidden love. Friendships can be severed in a sentence, and restoration could take months of patience.

As Joe observes and takes inspiration from those around him for his new book, Kate (Anna Bedeke) is unexpectedly beckoned back to the bright artistic lights of London. Which way should any of them face to truly feel at home?

That They May Face The Rising Sun is character-driven. The people are the story rather than the rites of the harvest, weddings or wakes. The passing seasons may alter the temperature and the landscape’s palette, but no character will ever veer too far from their thran, opinionated and often philosophical way. While Lalor Roddy’s Patrick steals scenes as a hard-to-pin-down handyman, and Brendan Conroy’s Bill provides a glimpse of the moral undertones that persevered even in 1980’s rural Ireland – while religious rituals are often mentioned there’s no priest to be seen – it’s another outsider, Jamesie’s brother Johnny (Sean McGinley), who returns home at intervals from England and unlocks the audience’s understanding of the community’s finely tuned sense of what it means to belong.

The cinematography lingers on people’s reactions to what is being said rather than watching the person speaking. We’re like Joe, sizing up the rustic personalities who flit in and out of the couple’s farmhouse as if they owned it. But Joe and Kate couldn’t manage the farm without every bit of help and advice they can garner. Even if they’re unpaid caterers, chaplains and caregivers for half the neighbourhood.

Hats off to Bob Brennan, Wayne Brooks and a myriad of other creatives in the background for capturing and editing together such a vivid – and loud – soundscape that brings every action to life. Not only the sound of cutlery banging harshly on the melamine crockery, but the buzzing bees, the wind rustling the leafy branches, the car with a trailer in a distance coming down the lane. Combined with Irene and Linda Buckley’s melancholic piano score – beautifully played by Ruth McGinley – experiencing Pat Collins’ film is a sensory thrill with much to stimulate even before you take in Richard Kendrick’s visuals.

With a screenplay by Eamon Little and Pat Collins, the film takes its inspiration from John McGahern’s sixth and final novel, relocating the action from Leitrim to Galway, and thinning out the cast of characters (though you’d be forgiven for not believing they’d lost anyone the adaptation). Though given the older age bracket, women are few and far between in the panoply of well-drawn individuals.

That They May Face the Rising Sun is being shown at Queen’s Film Theatre from Thursday 25 April. The 18:00 screening on Friday 26 will be followed by a Q&A with director Pat Collins.

Sit back, relax and enjoy a slower way of life.

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Back to Black – Amy Winehouse’s autobiographical lyrics tell the story as effectively as any dialogue (cinemas from Friday 12 April)

Biopics of musical performers have chequered histories in my book. Elvis encapsulated the essence of Presley’s performance but over-sanitised his life. One Love captured the rhythm and soul of Bob Marley’s music but not the man. Miles Ahead went wild with a plot about a fictional version of Miles Davis that the excellent music couldn’t redeem.

A personal highlight was the documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me, a devastating portrayal of Houston’s live and the negative impact of her inner circle. And Maestro’s depiction of Leonard Bernstein for once rejoiced in the full wonder and weirdness of an artist’s life, loves, compositions and musicality.

Back to Black takes on the tragically short life of Amy Winehouse (vividly played by Marisa Abela). Screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh and director Sam Taylor-Johnson make no attempt to assign blame to any one person or circumstance that may have led to her death. There’s no moralising. Instead, they lay out the many internal and external pressures that Winehouse faced, and allow the audience to process the swelling tragedy and leave the cinema mulling over the chances that the singer/songwriter’s life could have taken a different path if her demons had been tackled.

While her father’s influence (warmly captured by Eddie Marsan) comes to the fore later in the film (including reference to his initial reluctance to address her addictions with rehab), it’s the musical and fashion inspiration of another family figure, her grandmother (the brilliant Lesley Manville), that brings a warmth to proceedings.

Through a remarkable performance by Abela, we see a Winehouse who was forthright and exhibited an in-your-face attitude to everyone she encountered – particularly the men who dominated the record business – whether they were there to help her or not. The influence of jazz over her vocals and song writing gives the film a real soul.

One scene superbly imagines her first meeting with ‘bad boy’ Blake (Jack O'Connell who is nearly back in Skins territory) in a pub: he’d become her on/off boyfriend and husband. The paparazzi fascination with recording her distressed everyday movements is both clear and overwhelming. As is her out-of-control relationship with alcohol, soft drugs and Class A substances.

The artist turned her suffering into art. It’s obvious that the intense songs – and growing collection of tattoos – were linked to episodes in her life. On-screen renditions of the autobiographical songs by Abela tell Winehouse’s story as much as any imagined dialogue, with fervent vocals that sit forward in the sound mix, punching the Winehouse’s vibe and anguish into your heart.

Back to Black is being screened locally in the Queen’s Film Theatre and most other local cinemas. While I came into the film screening knowing that Winehouse was (to borrow her own phrase) “no fucking Spice Girl”, I wasn’t a particular aficionado of her sound or back catalogue. Over two hours, Back to Black tells a powerful story – albeit greatly simplified from it’s real life twists and turns – backed by brave lyrics, that can capture the attention of non-fans as well as those who still grieve her death aged twenty-seven. Recommended.

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Sunny Side Up – unsentimental, informative and shocking insight into the world of fertility (Cheesy Grin Productions at Lyric Theatre until Saturday 20 April)

Sunny Side Up is Diona Doherty’s new show that charts a woman’s struggle to have a child. And to be clear, fertilised and healthy is how Erin would like her eggs. Before long we learn how she and wee Stevie met, how their bonktastic bedroom antics didn’t lead to an easy blue line on a pregnancy test, and how they ended up in Prague to beat the three-year wait for IVF on the NHS.

It’s a story of ups and many downs. There’s heartbreak and tragedy alongside the whimsical asides – the friend on a hen night who thought she was a potato waffle deserves a whole show of her own – and the banter about Stevie’s shortcomings.

Diona paces across a giant calendar, returning at intervals to the crucially circled ‘test day’ that reveals whether Erin’s dreams will be one step closer to fulfilment. A tree looms to one side of the page-to-a-month floor, ominous and unmentioned until after the interval when its significance will bring a tear to your eye.

Sunny Side Up could easily have been a 50-minute Edinburgh Fringe-type one-woman show with Diona leaning on a mic stand and delivering the material as pure stand up. Countless comedians have used breakups, unusual families and heartfelt situations as vehicles for belly laughs and giggles. Yet the sheer myriad of amusing characters who pop up in Erin’s life, together with Patrick J O’Reilly’s direction that makes Erin/Diona inhabit the whole calendar, the rather classy sound and lighting effects, and the insistence on an interval, all suggest that this is aiming to be something greater than just comedy.

Erin opines early on in the show – “imagine if we knew then what we know now” – and probably for most in the audience, fertility isn’t something widely spoken about. (While a consultation on adding Miscarriage Leave and Pay to Northern Ireland’s Parental Bereavement Leave and Pay legislation closed in December 2022, it’s unlikely to become law until a number of other changes to employment rights for employees and employers have been co-designed and implemented over the coming months and years.)

Sunny Side Up helpfully goes where many shows wouldn’t dare to be honest and up front about the uncomfortable conversations couples have with medical professionals and how the IVF process can mess with your mind.

Diona and husband Sean Hegarty have been very open in media interviews over the years about their own fertility journey. So this audience member found it hard to disassociate Erin and Stevie from Diona and Sean, with the hunch that much of the best material will have been autobiographical (albeit accentuated for comic effect) but never quite sure what else was just dreamt up to spin a good yarn.

Sunny Side Up is a largely unsentimental, informative and at times shocking explanation of the unspoken world of fertility treatments. Diona connects the audience with her character Erin and the spermtastic and eggstraordinary tale. It made me laugh out loud – no mean feat as John Bishop probably didn’t realise in the SSE Arena back in October 2017 when I sat unmoved while much of the audience rolled in the sizeable aisles – and it made me cry. The show continues its run at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 20 April.

Photo credit: Rebekah Hutchinson

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Stuck in the Middle with You – uncovering the deep trauma carried around in the back of an RUC landrover (Bright Umbrella until Saturday 20 April)

The crew of a police landrover have been thrown in with each other for an evening in September 1996. There’s plenty of tension outside on the streets of Belfast. But sweep aside the bonhomie and Dunkirk spirit, at times you could cut the atmosphere with a knife inside the back of AO83 as the overlapping backstories are unearthed.

Stuck in the Middle with You is Sam Robinson and Trevor Gill’s latest play, the same team behind One Saturday Before The War. It examines how police on the ground reacted to the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, and it’s fair to say that Lord Patten comes in for a lot of criticism in the script’s dialogue. Though one officer who transitions from the RUC to the PSNI does eventually reflect with more balance on the changed dispensation.

The set is dominated by the shape of a landrover, minus the wheels, sides, roof and bonnet which is mounted on a trolley. The lack of heavy doors and the big step up to get inside leave the coppers jumping in and out of it like someone stepping on and off an escalator.

Richard McFerran plays Norman, a sergeant who once ran informers but has fallen from grace and is now deployed on more mundane duties. As well as taking on the role of an English journalist who is writing about the real experience of RUC officers, Christine Clark plays Gayle, the crew’s designated driver, an officer who has little option but to join in the sexual ribaldry with her male colleagues. ‘4 Bellies’ Marty is brought to life by PJ Davey whose reputation of eating everything in sight is masking other insecurities that slowly come to light. Policing and tragedy run in Winston’s life (Wilson McDowell) and the WB Yeats-quoting gun-toting officer has a personal score to settle on the east of the city. Meanwhile, Officer Ciaran (Glenn McGivern) must suffer abuse and suspicion as a west Belfast recruit in the largely protestant RUC.

Like the modern-day TV series Blue Lights (season two begins on Monday 15 April), there are insights into police humour and behaviour – ask around and you’ll find out what they draw inside each other’s caps – that add authenticity to the accounts.

Over two hours the cast skillfully live out the everyday effect of their characters’ accumulated trauma. Troubles-related episodes from childhood inform adult behaviours on top of the violence and loss experienced while serving. At times the scenes lurch from one anecdote to another, with an officer often recounting their memories while looking out into the distance over the heads of the audience. Would there really be a shouting match between handler and informer in St Anne’s Cathedral? The sudden musical outburst of Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan’s Stuck in the Middle with You cements the play’s title but dramatically comes out of nowhere.

The standout scene comes before the interval when we catapult forward in time, post-Belfast Agreement and post-Patten. Norman is enjoying a quiet pint in a Ramelton pub in Co. Donegal when he recognises an old IRA foe Michael (played by Glenn McGivern). There’s a sense that both men are isolated from their colleagues and trapped together in the room. As the blood pressure rises, their tetchy exchange becomes unfiltered and they become quite honest about their own backgrounds, their discomfort with their changing situation and their hopes for the future. It’s a well-written and well-acted encounter.

The ending is very poignant and reinforces the build-up of repeating trauma that many police officers live with. What happens next to each of them is not fictional, instead anonymised from real officers serving in the mid-to late 1990s.

The script doesn’t dodge collusion and how the police related to loyalist paramilitaries, and were sometimes targeted by them. Neither does it pretend that sexism and sectarian prejudice amongst RUC officers didn’t happen or were excusable. Bright Umbrella are based in a theatre that is just across the road from the interface with Short Strand. It’s good to see local theatre tackling real issues with a sense of openness and responsibility.

Bright Umbrella’s Stuck in the Middle of You finishes its sold out run at the Sanctuary Theatre on Saturday 20 April.

Photo credit: Melissa Gordon

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Civil War – brutal, bloody and compelling (UK cinemas from Friday 12 April)

Alex Garland’s new film Civil War is at first glance a sober warning shot across the bows of US citizens. Push the boundaries of mutinous action against the forces of government too far and widespread, uncontrollable insurrection could follow.

Three photographers and a print journalist set out on a six-hundred-mile journey to secure what could be the biggest interview of a civil war that has rapidly escalated across much of north America.

A picture emerges of militia defending their turf, of people replying on large sports arena shelters for food and security, of one-time army forces clearing buildings of other one-time now enemy troops, and of redneck soldiers putting any type of American or non-American they don’t approve of in the ground with a layer of quicklime on top.

It’s a brutal, bloody, but not unimaginable vision of what could happen in a country with more guns than people.

Civil War is also an ode to the other shooters in a conflict: war photographers. It unpicks their motivation to capture the reality of war (an enhanced sense of being alive amongst the overwhelming sense of fear), and interrogates their philosophy of who and what to shoot. What does it mean to be a ‘good’ journalist in a place of conflict, a place that is also your home?

Kirsten Dunst plays the tough-as-nails photographer Lee Smith, renowned for images taken of leaders abroad but now keen to get a shot of the US President before Western Forces capture Washington DC. Wagner Moura plays the print journalist Joel who wants the vital interview. New York Times veteran Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) plans to tag along for part of the journey from New York to Charlottesville.

It’s a coming-of-age road trip for a young wannabe snapper Jessie who weasels her way into their company. Versatile actor Cailee Spaeny – recently seen playing the titular role in Priscilla – depicts Jessie growing in confidence and technique with the help of her at-first unwilling coaches. It’s a crash course in tradecraft and staying alive in a warzone.

Civil War reminded me of hearing war photographer Paul Conroy speak at Belfast Festival ten years ago about his work with Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin.

A rocket fired by Syrian government forces hit their building in Homs and “removed a room”. Conroy’s instinct was to run to get his camera to get a shot. Another rocket eliminated the corridor. He found his friend and journalist Marie Colvin, dead in the rubble, just 200 miles from where they’d first met 13 years before.

His book Under the Wire, along with the 2018 film about Marie Colvin’s life and death A Private War (review), and Lindsey Hilsum’s painfully beautiful biography In Extremis back up the feeling that Civil War is portraying the leading characters authentically even if they take shortcuts with the precise camera technique.

Dunst’s ability to emotionally withdraw her character from the fray serves the film well. Casting Nick Offerman as the US President, rehearsing his opening lines for a televised address to what’s left of the nation about a ‘great victory’ (while staring down the barrel of defeat) really feels like Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson has been promoted to his level of incompetence. The film’s final exchange of dialogue – with black humour permeating the deep sense of tragedy – is a fine way to wrap everything up.

Somewhat unexpectedly, given that it isn’t a superhero film or franchise, Civil War turns out to be a film that benefits greatly from viewing in an IMAX theatre. While the cinematography is visually compelling with an enhanced attention to detail in the composition of the foreground and background of shots, it’s the sound that really comes to life. Not only do bullets whizz from side to side with a control not possible in a normal surround sound screen, but the speakers behind the fine mesh screen pump the dialogue straight at you forcing the audience to become close bystanders in every scene. The repeated use of silence is all the more stark in the soundproofed IMAX theatre.

Whether taken as a warning, an elegy to war photographers, or just another action film, Civil War is a compelling watch, particularly in an IMAX cinema. Available in UK cinemas from Friday 12 April, with an Irish release on Friday 26 April. 

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The Ferryman – love and hate: who will pay the price for freedom? (Bardic Theatre)

A man who disappeared is found dead in a bog after ten years of sporadic not never terribly reliable reports of sightings. It’s no mystery how Seamus ended up there. But those responsible can’t afford for it to be spoken about in case the narrative around the dying hunger strikers is disrupted.

Set in 1981, this tragedy and the impact on an extended Carney family sets the scene for Jez Butterworth’s play The Ferryman which recently received its première on the island with a production by Bardic Theatre.

The play has the heft of a five- or six-part TV miniseries with three acts and two intervals stretching over three hours. The first act contains some gorgeous writing that reassures the audience that Butterworth can tell a story, eking out details and context just in time but no earlier than absolutely necessary.

The opening scene with a County Armagh parish priest summoned to a dubious location in Derry establishes that menace goes hand in hand with secrets that are as yet unshared. The rest of the action is centred in a rural kitchen. Stuart Marshall’s set comfortably holds 20 of the 22 actors at one point. It’s cosy but never cramped. New characters drift in during the first act like an extended visual joke: you think you’ve met them all and then a door opens or another pair of legs appear at the top of the stairs.

It’s a farmhouse as full of regrets as the barn is stuffed full of hay bales. Love abounds, along with a steady supply of hatred.

We meet a gregarious but controlling man who has long regretted encouraging his brother to join the IRA.

His wife regrets opening her home up in someone’s hour of need.

A widow regrets who she married but works around her the house like a slave tending to an adopted family that will never truly be hers.

A bitter aunt is a staunch republican whose forlorn lust never turned into proper love.

A doting aunt is prone to a spot of prophecy when she’s lucid (and has the singing voice of an angel).

Young girls mull over what a happy life would look like, and older sisters who must soon plan their escape.

A babe in arms is passed from sister to aunt and never held by his mother. Brothers work hard and play hard on a farm only one of them can inherit.

A son has lost his father but might be caught in the same gravitational trap of destruction.

A bore can’t help telling stories even when no one will listen and heed the warnings amongst his ramblings.

A whole household pulls together to bring in a good harvest and secure their finances for the coming year.

A priest who carries the secrets of confession along with the secrets of his own sins.

A young lad who might yet regret stepping onto the conveyor belt that will carry into the next generation of gangster.

And well-formed but trite and insincere phrases trip of a paramilitary leader’s tongue as he tries to regain control in the face of truth.

Much is familiar and everything is enticing.

Oh, and there’s a killer living on the farm, but does anyone know or care?

Like nearly every play in this troubled genre, the final scene is merely the opening of the next tragedy. (Except for the steady trail of people who had booked lifts and taxis far too early and prematurely took their leave from the auditorium, taking with them with a much gentler ending before the deadly denouement. Though these same exiting theatregoers also managed to disrupt the moment we finally learned more about the play’s title.)

With an intergenerational cast of 22 stretching from a babe in arms, to children, young, middle aged and elderly actors, there’s no professional company on the island that could find the finances to stage The Ferryman. But fear not, for this amateur production did the play justice. The cast and director (Bugsy McMahon) has a firm grasp on the darkness and the light.

Claire McCrory plays Seamus’ widow Caitlin as a woman who has been through the emotional wringer and can fight no more. She never stills, serving the Carneys who have sheltered her and her sullen son Oisin (Seán Óg Ryan) these past ten years. Bugsy McMahon plays a domineering Quinn, brother of Seamus, dictating the next steps of everyone in his presence, young and old. The only man to challenge him is the sinister Mr Muldoon (Peter Cunningham) from the Derry IRA.

Quinn’s children get a long scene with their infirm Aunt Maggie (Catherine Herron) that ups the madness of the past, present and future. While the eldest Quinn daughter, Shena (Brianna McGuckin at the performance I attended), walks around listening to punk tracks like Teenage Kicks on her Walkman headphones, her acerbic Aunt Pat (Julie Deery) is listening to the news, silently until she can take no more of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s pronouncements about republicans and she inflicts it on everyone in the room. The Carney and visiting Corcoran boys are given time on stage to explore how the next generation might chose to hold their republican ideology: it’s sobering to hear such a range of opinions and views on what is just.

The theatre audience are entertained and unsettled in equal measure. The only Englishman in the village (Tom Kettle played by Brian Mills) steals scenes with his Doctor Doolittle presence. There are laughs – the appearance of a live rabbit as well as a goose whose rhythmic honking leaves just enough time for Mills to utter his lines into the gaps – and moments of sadness. Late night blindfolded Connect 4 is played with surprisingly good strategy. Everyone wants to be free of something. But can any of them bear to pay the price to break free from the sins of other generations?

The characters’ drinking – adults, youths and even children – is relentless and the constant refilling of glasses does become a distraction. A bit more variation in the light outside kitchen’s lone window could have better established the changing time of day. But these are mere niggles.

Bardic Theatre’s production of The Ferryman deserves to be on the main stage of the Lyric Theatre every bit as much as Brian Friel’s Translations back in 2022. It was an ambitious choice to produce – albeit one which Bardic alumni like Fra Fee have starred in – but the creative team together with the cast succeeded in bringing Butterworth’s story to life. It’s an amazing achievement.

“This is not the conversation we should be having” is a blocking response that Mary Carney (played by Rachel Molloy) is accused of using when her husband Quinn wants to talk about matters of the heart. It’s also a possible rebuttal to Butterworth’s play. Do we need to talk about the disappeared? (Yes.) Does this play represent real life? (It might, but it doesn’t have to as it’s art, and making us think is even more important than absolute authenticity.) Will we see this play again? (Probably not unless someone makes it into a film.) Questions and conversations that were as apt and necessary in 1981 when the play was set, nevermind when it was first performed in 2017 or still today.

The Ferryman finished its run at the Lyric Theatre on Saturday 6 April after performances in Donaghmore, Armagh, Derry and Cookstown. 

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Shrek The Musical – family-friendly musical theatre hits high notes in stylish new production (Grand Opera House until Saturday 6 April)

As musical theatre adapted from children’s/family-orientated films goes, Shrek The Musical is at the top of my list. There’s nothing dumbed down or phoned in about the production values or the performances. The heart and soul of the full cast feels like it’s poured into the story’s theme of stereotyping, tolerance, friendship, diversity and inclusion. And there are plenty of references to other films and naughty nods to unspoken/understated innuendos to amuse the adults.

The green ogre wants to drain his swamp of internally displaced people and build a wall around it to protect himself is back in the Grand Opera House. While Shrek The Musical has become popular with amateur companies – who generally do a good job with the full or junior versions – this is the first UK touring production to reach Belfast since 2018.

Co-directors Nick Winston and Samuel Holmes (who played Lord Farquaad in the previous UK tour) have totally revamped the set, costumes and choreography in this new version. Farquaad (played this time by James Gillan) no longer walks around on his knees: we can finally concentrate our laughs at his personality deficiencies without cheap jokes about his height. The freedom to move expands the king’s role and removes the one-dimensional feel of his character. A couple of layers of video projection and screens bring scenes to life and replace traditional painted backdrops. They’re very tightly cued and enhance rather than distract from the live action. That said, some lovely elements that you might expect have been dropped like the exploding bird and Pinocchio’s telescopic nose.

As the curtain rises, we are introduced to the tradition of sending ogres out to fend for themselves in the swamp at the tender age of seven. The Scottish Rs are rolling, though that attention to detail sometimes slips from accents later on in the show. “When you are grotesque, life is Kafkaesque” is an example of David Lindsay-Abaire’s masterful lyrics in the opening Big Bright Beautiful World. Jeanine Tesori’s score works in a pleasing mix of musical styles during the first act.

Antony Lawrence towers above most of the rest of the cast as the titular ogre. The hyperactive and scene-stealing Donkey benefits from Brandon Lee Sears’ incredibly soulful voice and street dance moves. Joanne Clifton brings a great theatrical vocal quality to the caffeinated and sassy Princess Fiona, introduced as the eldest of a trio of princesses who sing I Know It’s Today.

After the interval, the element of crisis comes from Shrek misconstruing the meaning of a partially overheard conversation between Fiona and Donkey. This production chooses to play that moment for disappointment rather than outright hurt. Soon after, the trio reach Duloc, and it’s time for a wedding, a pot of regicide, and a resetting of Shrek’s understanding of friendship.

The dressing rooms must be busy with the ensemble switching between fairy tale characters, guards, knights and puppeteer costumes. The spectacular movements of the large-scale dragon are matched by Cherece Richards’ voice for This Is How A Dream Comes True. Special mention for Gingy’s stratospheric top notes by high soprano Gerorgie Buckland who also gives the edible snack lots of lip and stage presence.

This version of Shrek The Musical has a lot of moving parts and technology powering the production. With a seven-piece band playing live in the pit and countless fart sound effects to weave into the dialogue, hats off to Nim Green for delivering a great audio mix on her first night as Head of Sound for the tour.

With the modern-day context of Freak Flag pretty obvious, and one fairy tale character’s casual admission that he’s “a crossdressing wolf” ringing in our ears, there’s an emotional edge to the final celebratory number I’m a Believer which hammers home the show’s message about playing well with everyone in whatever swamp we find ourselves in.

The kids around me seemed to love the show. Most of the adults seemed to be glad they’d had the excuse to attend the performance too. And the merchandise stall was doing a hot trade in Gingy hand puppets. But aside from the hype, there’s an ambitious piece of theatre unfolding on the stage and it’s delivering two and a half hours of high quality, family-friendly entertainment.

Shrek The Musical is in the Grand Opera House until Saturday 6 April and after a week in Birmingham will be back on this side of the Irish Sea for a week in the Millennium Forum from 16-21 April.

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This Sh*t Happens All the Time – invisible and vulnerable yet seeking to be safe and recognised (Grand Opera House until Saturday 30 March)

Amanda Verlaque’s autobiographical monologue has lost none of its shock and potency in this latest production. This Sh*t Happens All the Time relates to her experience as a university student, falling in love and receiving a death threat for her trouble when her relationship unexpected turns into a prickly ménage à trois. It’s a tale of male violence, police distrust, invisibility and vulnerability.

It is rare to see three different versions of the same play. But it’s a treat when it happens to discover how different directors in different venues with a different cast can use the same script but adapt the tone and throw light in different places.

The original 2019 Outburst Arts Festival outing was a rehearsed reading in a packed Black Box’s Green Room. Paula McFetridge directed a vibrant Nicky Harley whose accents and mannerisms completely held the audience’s attention.

The play returned as part of Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics this time last year in the Lyric Theatre studio, set up with a wide thrust stage and seating on three sides. Rhiann Jeffrey directed a very stylish and immediate production, starting with Caoimhe Farren’s sharp green jumpsuit. Garth McConaghie’s big soundscape blasted club tunes into scenes. Sarah Jane Shields’ powerful and atmospheric lighting clearly delineated the scenes and even created a propless university quad that Caoimhe could pace around.

This latest production couldn’t be more different. The neon sign is all that remains. The tiered seating in the Grand Opera House studio looks down on a thin sliver of stage: the audience feels much closer to the action than the thrust layout and more voluminous wooden floor of the Lyric. Nicky Harley is back – wearing a crumpled denim jumpsuit. Rhiann Jeffrey creates an atmosphere that this time is much more retrospective: a woman looking back at the awful events in her past rather than flashbacks to being in the moment. Everything is striped back. The musical cues are gone: Harley hums a few tunes when they’re needed for the script. If anything the simpler lighting is too bland: the changes don’t often appreciably help alter the mood.

“A short haircut and dungarees doth not a dyke make” still gets a laugh every time. Harley jerks in and out of poses and her hands fidget differently as she expertly switches characters. If you’re of a certain age then it’s a joy to be taken back to memories of Smokey Joe’s and Larry’s Piano Bar. I would have been passing through the Queen’s University quad as a student around the same time. But the moments of nostalgia are quickly pushed aside by Harley’s vivid portrayal of a young woman who sought safety and acknowledgement but was faced with coercive control, threats of violence and concealment.

No matter the production, the first moment of real hope and recognition comes in the shape of a university tutor who sees past his student’s flimflam excuses. Your eyes will well up at the picture of human connection that values this young woman. And you’ll think about today’s queer community and the intimidation and physical violence some still face. And you’ll wonder whether the police are more approachable and take hate crime more seriously today. And you’ll realise that much has changed, yet the same dangers still exist.

Verlaque’s This Sh*t Happens All the Time and Replay Theatre’s Mirrorball are almost companion pieces. While their local connection means they particularly resonate with Northern Ireland audiences, their universal themes of fear and hope should speak to audiences abroad.

This current run finishes in the Grand Opera House on Saturday 30 March.

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Give My Head Peace – familiar characters find mirth in an unreconciled society and political figures (Grand Opera House until Saturday 30 March)

The Hole in the Wall Gang are back and the audience know what to expect from the familiar characters and giddily revel in the banter. Give My Head Peace’s simple set – a sofa, a coffee table from a well-known Swedish emporium, and a dining room table – is accented with red/white/blue and green/white/orange lighting as the action flits between different sides of the community.

The Reverend Bobby Begbie (brother of the incapacitated Pastor Begbie who seems to have taken the name of his local Kneebreakers social club a little too literally) is having a crisis of faith and is troubled by God turning out to be more Catholic than Protestant. Marty Maguire ably steps into the Paddy Jenkins’ clerical shoes and has great fun bringing another thuggishly religious Begbie to life. Ciaran Nolan returns as Sandy the loyalist drinking den landlord. Their first song – the Wee Wee Blues, rhyming Sash with slash – gets the audience swaying with approval.

As the first act continues, we meet Da (Tim McGarry) and Cal (Damon Quinn), Dympna (Alexandra Ford) and Billy (Michael McDowell), and finally Ma (Olivia Nash). Da and Ma are still fighting the bit out. Dympna has had Kenough of hard work as an MLA and is rather enjoying the institutions being down. Cal is perturbed when he walks in on Da getting his leg over a petite blonde woman on the sofa.

It turns out that there are plenty of jokes that can still be squeezed out of the sectarian sponge, and while you may end up judging yourself for laughing at the simplistic stereotypes, the gang of writers also occasionally choose to play with expectations and ever-so-gently bend traditional tropes to challenge the status quo. But blink and you could miss it. The audience reward gags about Free Stayto, Paddy Kielty, Kneecap, Nolan, Jim Allister, Shane MacGowan and Gerry Adams, touts, more touts, and numerous mentions of Jeffrey and Jamie. The SDLP, Alliance and the Greens are nowhere to be seen. The political punchbags are Sinn Féin, the DUP and occasionally the UUP’s Robin Swann. By the end of the second act, we’ve had 25 minutes of topical stand-up from McGarry that includes a history lesson about Roger Casement, a spot of not-all-it-seems-adultery, and a surprisingly familiar new team heading up the Northern Ireland (I mean, Occupied Six Counties) Executive.

Hecklers: beware. You’re unlikely to be original enough not to receive solid pushback from the experienced team on stage. While the unreconciled divisions in society are a rich seam to mine, the possibility of an Irish Sea border and the characters of Jim Allister and Jamie Bryson provide the subject matter for the catchy songs to close to each act.

The Give My Head Peace 2024 tour finishes in the Grand Opera House on Saturday 30 March.

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Vection – virtual antenatal preparations aided by ... a panda (Headrush, Ireland at the Lyric Theatre)

Caitlin (Catherine Rees) and Danny (Simon Sweeney) are expecting a child. They’ve turned their back on possessions and seem to be living in a virtual reality environment that accepts verbal prompts – much like how a scene might be described to kickstart an AI image creation tool – to transport them to other places. As part of their antenatal preparation, they are working through a long list of emotions to find examples to feed into their child’s development. Caitlin values situations that they have experienced during their lives. Danny finds ancient history a rich source for his suggestions. Their virtual encounters only serve to amplify their discomfort with each other.

That’s what I think is going on in Jonathan M Daley’s Vection which favours ‘show not tell’ (which is a good thing) but also leaves a lot of ambiguity around how the setup should be interpreted (a less good thing). There’s also an elephant in the room in the shape of a large black and white panda sitting on the (presumably) virtual white sofa. At first Keith Singleton brings intrigue to the static figure, then turns into an enormous raised eyebrow as ‘Pan’ reacts in slow motion to some of Caitlin and Danny’s utterances, and gradually comes out of his shell as their companion’s full role and abilities are revealed.

It may help to know that ‘vection’ refers to the various cognitive factors that allow someone to perceive self-motion when in a virtual reality environment. Caitlin and Danny could be accused of experiencing the motion of going backwards as they race through the looming list of emotions to collect. Caitlin becomes increasingly exasperated by Danny, distrusting his frequent virtual excursions without her as Danny seeks cheap comforts as a way of avoiding Caitlin’s desire for collegiately and frankness. Rees balances a pleasing range of emotions as Caitlin lives through her pregnancy (real or virtual?) and survives spending time with Danny.

Faced with Emma Quin’s almost totally white set and just a few objects suspended in mid-air, the audience must imagine how the world is repainted by the often quite specific prompts that the couple give. Gentle lighting effects help establish the oft-visited nightclub. Pan is full of apt dance moves and makes a great bar man. Singleton’s level of control throughout the one act play – from barely moving to full exuberance – largely compensates for the absurdity of a panda being on set beside the couple. First Danny and ultimately Caitlin show their unlikeable sides, robbing those watching any chance if building up empathy with the characters.

Vection asks the audience to do a lot of thinking. We must look at the white set and imagine the boilersuit-wearing couple in a myriad of different vistas. We must differentiate between Caitlin and some of the other women Danny meets in his virtual wanderings. We must try and figure out whether Pan is a visual representation of Alexa or Siri, or alternatively is something simpler or maybe more sinister. We must ponder why the verbal prompts sometimes transport the couple together and sometimes alone. How they can revisit old memories, but also step into purely imaginary situations. And why is this high-tech system powered by such a strange (and silent) mammalian energy source?

Headrush, Ireland have produced another high-concept piece of theatre. (Previous work includes Sink or Swim and We Like It Here in 2018 and Assembly Required in 2019.) The performances are strong and the Lyric Studio space is well used (particularly one final reveal which opened a vista I hadn’t previously spotted in the 13 years since the theatre reopened.) The exploration of virtual reality without asking the audience to wear headsets or look at screens is laudable and timely. While the play asks whether virtual reality threatens to end the world as we know it, there is enough repetition in the plot that I can’t help wondering if the answer could be found in a tauter 50-minute play – or even a 20-minute short film – lurking in this much longer and needlessly more complicated script.

Vection finished its run at the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 24 March.

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Attila the Stockbroker – bringing politics, poo, poetry, crumhorn and recorder to Belfast on Wednesday evening (The Black Box as part of #ImagineBelfast)

Attila the Stockbroker certainly has stamina. Two John Peel sessions in 1982 have been followed by more than 40 years of performing in 25 countries* and over 4,000 gigs, not to mention 20 albums, eight books of poetry and his recent appointment as the Pooet in Residence at the National Poo Museum on the Isle of Wight.

This Wednesday evening he’s in The Black Box as part of the Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics, aiming to make people think, laugh and cry all in the space of about 75 minutes.

Attila (John Baine’s stage name) says he started out “as a kind of an angry ranting poet, jumping up on stage between bands at punk gigs”. Today, he’s “still an angry ranting poet, although I tend to jump up on stage between bands of punk gigs less than I used to”. But he continues to write and rant about politics, social issues, existential threats to the world, as well as deeply personal things related to his own life and family. After all these year, he’s still never lost his sense of punk and people coming together. 

 

Throughout the years, the performance poet and musician has repeatedly visited Northern Ireland, playing in the Errigle Inn, Queen’s University, the Rotterdam Bar, recording a live album in the late Warzone Centre, and even doing a turn at Lagan College. He speaks of previous gigs in Northern Ireland with great affection, so when he tells me “it’s one of my favourite places to gig in the world” I think he truly means it.

Attila works a lot of life experiences, hopes, dreams and frustrations into his music and poetry, but doesn’t see writing and performing as a form of therapy. Basically, “I don’t have an embarrassment gene: I have an over-abundance of self-confidence [and] it just comes out of me, I can’t stop it”.

“The reason that I love [performing] so much is precisely because I’ve done it on my own terms. I’ve never tried to fit in. I’ve never tried to become a celebrity by following the kind of career path where you get a PR person and they try and fit you in a category and sell you to people. I’ve never wanted that. All I’ve ever wanted is to write and perform, have an audience, and earn a living. And that’s what I’ve done and that’s what I’m doing. And I absolutely love it, now at 66 as much as when I started at 21. I mean, I can say no more than that.”

The running order changes between – and even during – shows. His upcoming Edinburgh run will be promoted as 14 completely different shows in 14 days, with no repeated material (and only delving into maybe a third of his back catalogue).

On Wednesday, expect to hear some of his early material as well as the latest work, and maybe even some scatological material. His role as Pooet in Residence isn’t just an excuse to make jokes about poo – though I fully expect him to take every chance to do so – but it offers an opportunity to raise awareness of bowel cancer. And as a bladder cancer survivor, Attila has already written a lot about the glories of flexible cystoscopy. (In the screenshot from our chat, he’s holding the museum’s mascot Poobert Turdock!)

And expect a wide variety of style and form with some early music, dub poetry, spoken word, and his own style of rap. While some might argue that his inclusion of live music featuring crumhorns and recorders in the show might require a trigger warning, he profoundly disagrees. But you’d expect the founder of the Recorder Liberation Front to say that even if the instrument “has been continuously played longer than any other musical instrument in Western culture”. In a moment of selling snow to Eskimos, he’s also bringing his fiddle with him on Wednesday. Just don’t expect any ukulele or techno music – those are properly beyond Attila’s pale.

His beloved Brighton & Hove Albion may get a mention too. The team won their last match in the UEFA Europa League 1-0 against Roma but lost on aggregate (first leg was 0-4). Still not bad for a that were Division 3 back in 2000 and whose league performance chart looks like a FTSE stock you’d want to avoid investing in.

Attila the Stockbroker is playing The Black Box on Wednesday from 8pm (doors open 7.30pm). Some tickets are still available through the Imagine! Belfast website. The next evening, he’ll be up in Sandinos Bar in Derry.

 * Attila has performed in French and German, and his ‘Informburo’ website was involved in the first ever punk performance in Stalinist Albania, and turned down playing in North Korea because he was already booked to tour ‘sensible’ Canada.

Drive-Away Dolls – lots of heart, soul and pleasure as two friends head south on a road-trip that will change everything (from Friday 15 March)

On the back of a bad breakup, extrovert Jamie joins her more introverted friend Marian on a one-way hire car journey from Philadelphia to Tallahassee in Florida. Due to a misunderstanding, the girls drive away in a car that was intended to be picked by a more criminally minded pair. And so begins a game of cat and mouse down the east coast of the United States, as a couple of violent goons try to recover the ‘gear’ hidden in the boot of the titular Drive-Away Dolls.

Jamie (played by Margaret Qualley) has an opinion about everything and isn’t behind the bush about sharing them. Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is much more reserved. Her sexuality to date is more intellectual than physical, but Jamie proposes some stop-offs as the pair head south to give Marian the opportunity to take things further. Needless to say, Marian’s quest for authenticity jars with Jamie’s need for experience … right up until the friendship is fundamentally reset.

Expect comedy beatings, comedy dildos, a comedy dog, incompetent thugs, psychedelic pizza, and the reading of Henry James’ The Europeans.

What works is the film’s sense of humour. Director Ethan Coen (and co-screenwriter Tricia Cooke) allow the characters to have tremendous fun with the simple premise. While there’s plenty of intentionally lecturing dialogue, there are quips that leap off the screen, and even I was provoked to laugh out loud. It’s hard not to fall in love with the lesbian roadtrippers who are full of hope and brio.

What doesn’t work so well are the interstitial dream sequences, half of which contribute to the backstory or inner thinking of the main characters, while the remainder distracted and bemused me in equal measure. The 84-minute run time is laudably short, but the story nearly trips over itself in its hurry to get to the end, wrapping up far too quickly and much too neatly.

While there’s strong language, strong sex and a bit of nudity, there’s also a lot of heart, soul and pleasure in this four-wheeled caper. Drive-Away Dolls opens in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday 15 March.

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An Officer and a Gentleman: The Musical – overcoming working class odds with 1982 sensibilities and a 1980s playlist of hits (Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 March)

Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley is taking the class of 1982 through their 12-week officer candidate training course in Pensacola, Florida. Not everyone will make it to the end, and fewer still will get a coveted place learning to pilot a navy jet. Many will end up ‘flying a desk’. There’s tension between the military and the townsfolk. The them and us mentality can be felt in the local bars. Foley warns his candidates that the local women will try to entrap them by becoming pregnant to escape the area with its low paid factory work and little hope of advancement.

An Officer and a Gentleman: The Musical is adapted from the popular original movie by the film’s screenwriter Douglas Day Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Cohen. The plot is interrupted by songs from the 1980s. Shoehorning in a militaristic side drum-heavy version of The Final Countdown towards the finale – the lyric “We’re leaving together” fits the graduation ceremony – is either an act of genius or completely misplaced. The performance of Material Girl feels like it’s gone completely Ken and Barbie with pink jackets and a pink skirt … though it does also echo Madonna’s music video. With 22 songs to get through in less than two hours, everything is condensed and there’s probably an over-reliance on crash key changes to build emotion and keep the rev count needle firmly in the red.

Zack Mayo (played by Luke Baker) is overcoming the odds of a dysfunctional upbringing to take a crack at becoming an officer, something his navy father never managed. Zack strikes up an unlikely friendship with Sid Worley (understudied by Danny Whelan with considerable aplomb on Tuesday night) is the son of an admiral, reluctantly stepping into the family business.

I’d expected this review might comment that many in the Grand Opera House auditorium had come to enjoy the sight of men in their pristine navy white uniforms. And the evidence of whistling and cheering did strongly confirm that hunch. But I also wondered whether the same audience might also be faced with an uplifting and challenging second storyline about the local women that would run parallel to the tough training course.

Zack’s eye is caught by student nurse Paula Pokrifki (Georgia Lennon, no stranger to Grand Opera House pantomimes). They deliver a very sweet first act duet I Want to Know What Love Is and Lennon impresses with her solo numbers. Nikolai Foster’s direction includes a superbly awkward meal when Zack is invited to dinner with Paula’s parents. Sid falls head over heels in love with Paula’s fellow factor worker Lynette (Sinead Long).

Early on in the first act, It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World sets up the theme of sexual inequality. Later, a powerful rendition of I Am Woman tries to push it further. But the 1982 sensibilities haven’t been updated, so entrapment is still the order of the day, leading to the tragic death of one character. I Am Woman’s lyric “I am invincible” is somewhat undermined when it is quickly followed by the statement “I want to marry a pilot to get out of here”.

Ultimately, the gender struggle is resolved by a working-class officer physically lifting a working-class girl out of her factory enslavement. It recreates an iconic image from the film, but also ignores her ambition to be a nurse in the act of carrying her off into his future. The song might be Up Where We Belong but the storyline reinforces the notion that marrying a sailor is the only true aspiration a woman can aim for if she doesn’t want to “stay in the box” she was born into.

Jamal Kane Crawford shines every time he marches on stage as Foley. He quickly establishes his no nonsense approach as the candidates start their three-month journey, and his singing voice is as strong as his parade ground hollering. After the interval Foley’s character is given depth and we learn about his motivation for pushing some of the candidates to their limit. There’s tough love hiding amidst the swagger and bullying. The extended fight scene is one of the more convincing pieces of musical theatre fight choreography in recent years. Olivia Foster-Browne packs a vocal punch and her character’s tricky relationship with Foley has a good pay off at the end.

Belfast is just the third destination of the UK tour. The production is still finding its feet and there is room for improvement. Having uttered “We don’t have to talk at all” a couple walk off visibly chatting. Kitting out two stage hands with racing crash helmets to push a partial car prop around the stage was a somewhat random production design decision

While the plot almost trips from lines of dialogue into song, the sound mix sadly loses some of the softer vocals even in the live band’s more mellow moments. The cover versions are usefully far removed from the original arrangements, tonally adapted for the musical rather than being pure jukebox numbers. There’s some rather fine artistry on display, none more so than during the beautifully (and deliberately) discordant Kids in America. It’ll be a dreamy track on a cast album.

An Officer and a Gentleman: The Musical faithfully reproduces the film’s plot. The musical elements show off the cast’s talent, even if some of the numbers fail to move the story along. The production continues its run in the Grand Opera House until Saturday 16 March.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

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