Movie News - New Movie and Film News

Irene Kelleher in Wake at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf, until Saturday November 19

Wake at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf: portrait of grief and denial at a mother’s wake too lightly sketched

Lily is preparing to host her mother’s wake alongside her father, and she is dreading it. In a complicated state of denial about her mother’s death from cancer, she refuses to go into the “good room” where the corpse has been installed. Instead, she tucks into a bottle of red, puts on a “slut top”, gets sloshed and makes a pass at someone.

Funnyman Karl Spain: ‘I’ve seen people meet very famous comedians and just be incredibly rude’

Limerick-born Karl Spain studied communications and TV production. He is a regular on the Irish and international comedy circuit and writes for other comedians. He lives in Limerick with his girlfriend, Rachel, who he met 17 years ago on the TV show Karl Spain Wants A Woman.

Brett Polegato as Guillaume Tell and Amy Ní Fhearraigh as Jemmy in INO's William Tell. Photo by Pat Redmond

William Tell at the Gaiety: Bucolic tale fails to hit moving target of imperial aggression

Italian composer Gioachino Rossini’s final opera Guillaume Tell is a morally fierce engagement with Swiss patriotism. It was first performed in Paris in 1829 and is based on a Friedrich Schiller play from 1804.

Annabelle Gormley (4) pictured with the giant version of Patrick O’Reilly’s Wolfhound, which will be unveiled as part of a unique sculpture garden at Art Source in Dublin’s RDS running from November 11-13. Photo: Holly Carr

Giant bronze Wolfhound worth €110,000 to stand sentry at RDS art fair’s sculpture garden

A giant version of one of Ireland’s most famous sculptures, Patrick O’Reilly’s Irish Wolfhound, is to make its first public appearance at an art fair.

Michael D Higgins and Martin O’Malley, right, with John Drever and Rosie McGurran yesterday. Picture by Andrew Downes

Ashes of cherished artistic couple Tim and Mairéad Robinson are scattered in the sea

The late writer, cartographer and artist Tim Robinson once described the Aran islands, the Burren and Connemara as “the ABC of earth’s wonders”.

A house full of paintings can lead to an explosion in art

Though Olivia O’Dwyer’s father – an artist and signwriter in Limerick – died when she was 10, she vividly remembers his work and his studio.

Hila Baggio as Miranda and Giorgi Manoshvili as Calibano in 'La Tempesta' at the Wexford Festival Opera. Picture by Clive Barda

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Voices rise above the many gimmicks in La Tempesta

Director Roberto Catalano describes his concept for Halévy’s opera La Tempesta (O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House) as a “construction site of nostalgia” wherein the painful past is ultimately healed. This will allow the wizard Prospero to bury his dark powers forever, and consign the future to the love between his daughter Miranda and Fernando, the noble son of Prospero’s old enemy.

Paul Mescal will star in 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in London. Photo: Matt Alexander

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Paul Mescal prepares to tread the boards on the West End and in the footsteps of many a screen star

Well over a month before curtain up, and the new production of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams at the Almeida Theatre on London’s West End has already sold out.

From left, Blair Gibson, Dalton Wood, Ryan Heenan and Christopher Short in Jersey Boys. Photo by Birgit and Ralf Brinkhoff

Jersey Boys: Oh, what a night — catchy songs and a story of fame and friction

Returning to Dublin on the latest leg of its tour, this jukebox musical is brimful of retro charm.

Andrew McCracken as Michael Dunlop in The Safety Catch. Photo by Al Craig

The Safety Catch at The New Theatre: Racing along the road to glory and the grave

Playwright Nick Snow takes the story of the Dunlop family as the basis for this illuminating look into the world of motorcycle racing. Racing legend Joey Dunlop died in a crash aged 48. His brother Robert was similarly killed aged 47. Robert’s son William died aged 32. Here, Liam Beckett, lifelong friend of Robert, tries to persuade Robert’s other son Michael to give up racing and retire: “No more laurels and no more wreaths,” Liam pleads. “The road always wins in the end.”

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How Peter Dreher raised repetition to an art form and meditation

When German artist Peter Dreher painted this work – dated, just above the rim of the glass, 22.9.82 – he had been painting the same thing, from the same distance, for eight years. Created between 1974 and 2013, in all there are 5,000 versions of an empty life-size cider glass on a blank surface against a plain, white wall.

Michael James Ford, Bairbre Ní Chaoimh and Kyle Hixon in 'Lost Hearts'

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Ghosts from Halloweens past haunt both Lost Hearts and Solar Bones

When author MR James wrote Lost Hearts in the 1890s, he set it in 1811. And as ghost stories went, it was both ghoulish and grisly, featuring as it did the ghosts of two children who died by having their hearts cut out… while still alive.

James Wafer as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr and Thomas Birch as Henry James in The Master. Photo by Pádraig Grant

The Master: Colm Tóibín’s story couched in moving music as Henry James confronts his unlived life

With a libretto by Wexford native Colm Tóibín, composer Alberto Caruso gives memory an operatic shape as writer Henry James looks back at the troubles of his life.

Giorgi Manoshvili as Calibano in La Tempesta. Photo by Clive Barda

La Tempesta at Wexford Festival Opera: Shakespeare’s enchanted island gets a youthful and slick spin

Wexford Festival Opera continues its tradition of producing the more neglected full-length operas, and this version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by French composer Fromental Halévy meets this criteria neatly. It premiered in London in 1850 to acclaim but is never revived. It is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

Janet Moran stars in Heaven by Eugene O'Brien. Picture by Ste Murray

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It’s a long way from Heaven in Eugene O’Brien’s predictable midlands affair

Maybe it’s time for Eugene O’Brien to get out of the midlands.

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John Kindness serves up a fine feast with Potato Man

John Kindness’s working-class Belfast background – his father was a shipyard driller – influenced his art. But, he says: “My mother’s family – Scottish freethinkers, radical and eccentric – were more influential.”

Venus Patel scooped the top prize at the 2022 RDS Visual Art Awards

Venus Patel wins top prize at RDS Visual Art Awards for her experimental short film ‘Eggshells’

Trans artist Venus Patel has scooped the top prize at the 2022 RDS Visual Art Awards for her experimental film that explores her own experience of a transphobic attack.

From left: Michael James Ford, Bairbre Ní Chaoimh and Kyle Hixon in Lost Hearts. Photo by Jeda de Brí

Review of Lost Hearts: ghost story tries to have it both ways

Halloween is almost upon us and Bewley’s Café Theatre has dug up an 1895 short story of the strange and supernatural by English writer MR James, adapted by Stewart Roche and Michael James Ford in a classical manner.

'Jerry' by Paul Cadmus. Image courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. © Jon F Anderson, Estate of Paul Cadmus

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A centenary of Joycean fumbling between the covers

Like Mount Everest, everyone knows about Joyce’s Ulysses – but not everyone has tackled it.

Brendan Gleeson, Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell at the Irish premiere of ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’. Picture by Stephen Collins

‘They rejected me’: Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh on why he bears a grudge against the Abbey Theatre

Oscar-winning writer and director Martin McDonagh has said he will never lose his “grudge” against the Abbey Theatre, after they rejected a string of his plays in the early stages of his career.

Rapper with Belfast trio Kneecap Naoise Ó Caireallái pictured in the Broadway area of west Belfast off the Falls Road.

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‘I was in so much debt — any way to get cash, I was doing it’ — Naoise Ó Cairealláin on the reality of life as a gambling addict

"Do I have a gambling problem?” reads the programme of Minimal Human Contact, the new play by Naoise Ó Cairealláin (28).

Adam Woodyatt as Alfred P Doolittle in My Fair Lady with Jenny Legg, Sinead Kenny and Dammi Aregbeshola. Photo by Marc Brenner

Review of My Fair Lady: George Bernard Shaw’s battle of the sexes gets a delightfully riotous revival

The primary credits on My Fair Lady are to composer Frederick Loewe and lyricist/book writer Alan Jay Lerner, but the presiding genius of the evening is George Bernard Shaw, from whose play the musical is adapted. His biting social intelligence still dazzles over a century after the Pygmalion was first staged.

Andrew Bennett and Janet Moran in Heaven by Eugene O’Brien. Photo by Leo Byrne

Review of Heaven by Fishamble: Drama of a small-town couple and a big lie

Mal and Mairead are married and 50. Their friendship is strong but the romance, such as it was, has ebbed. Their 19-year-old daughter just left home. They travel to Mairead’s midlands hometown for her sister’s wedding where she meets a former flame and the hole in her life suddenly feels like a gaping chasm. Mal soon lets us know what the problem is. He has always known he is attracted to men but that “wouldn’t suit the way I wanted to live”.

Ruairí Heading, Brian Gleeson and James Doherty O’Brien in A Whistle in the Dark. Photo by Ros Kavanagh

A Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy at the Peacock: a knockout explosion of toxic masculinity

This is a fantastic revival of Tom Murphy’s great play from 1961. Putting this huge, macho fist-fest into the small Peacock space, further constricted by Cordelia Chisholm’s tight boxed-in set, serves to compress the power here into a dramatic explosion that sets your hair on end.

Karen Ardiff and David Rawle in The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin at The Gaiety Theatre. Picture by Ros Kavanagh

‘Blackwater Lightship’ illuminates the dark crevices of life

The Blackwater Lightship

A self-limited palette: ‘I try to not get lost in the colours’

Tibor Halla’s architect father and beautician mother “have a sort of interest in aesthetics” – but, he says, he did not grow up in a family with “a special interest in art”.

Julie Sharkey and Paddy Slattery in No Magic Pill. Photo by Emilija Jefremova

Review of No Magic Pill: A funny, fierce show about disability activism

It isn’t often that you experience a show that is completely refreshing, but this play, written by Christian O’Reilly, is so brilliantly packaged that the result is an evening of transformative theatre that compels as much as it entertains.

Genevieve Hulme Beaman as Lucia Joyce in Edna O’Brien’s 'Joyce’s Women' at The Abbey. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

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Genevieve Hulme Beaman steals the show in Joyce’s Women at the Abbey

One suspects that the last thing Edna O’Brien would want as a reaction to her work is: “Isn’t she amazing at her age?”

'Woman walking on South Circular Road, 2015' by Lorcan Finnegan

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Lorcan Finnegan: Dublin’s candid cameraman captures the real soul of the streets

Lorcan Finnegan, photographer and filmmaker grew up in Howth – “it was countryside back then” – where at Bracken Hill playschool he made friends for life, who are “now working across creative fields like film, TV, sound, music, painting.”

David Rawle and Karen Ardiff in The Blackwater Lightship. Photo by Ros Kavanagh

Review of The Blackwater Lightship: Colm Tóibín’s story of terminal illness becomes an emotional furnace

An Irish kitchen setting, a family forced to confront its divisions when faced with a terminal illness: Colm Tóibín’s Booker-nominated novel of 1990s life is here neatly transformed into a classic-style Irish play. Declan (David Rawle), in the later stages of HIV/Aids, returns to the house of his grandmother Dora (Ruth McCabe) in Co Wexford as a sort of end-time pilgrimage.

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Theatre & Arts

November 2022

Wake at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf: portrait of grief and denial at a mother’s wake too lightly sketched

Funnyman Karl Spain: ‘I’ve seen people meet very famous comedians and just be incredibly rude’

William Tell at the Gaiety: Bucolic tale fails to hit moving target of imperial aggression

Giant bronze Wolfhound worth €110,000 to stand sentry at RDS art fair’s sculpture garden

Ashes of cherished artistic couple Tim and Mairéad Robinson are scattered in the sea

A house full of paintings can lead to an explosion in art

Voices rise above the many gimmicks in La Tempesta

Paul Mescal prepares to tread the boards on the West End and in the footsteps of many a screen star

Jersey Boys: Oh, what a night — catchy songs and a story of fame and friction

The Safety Catch at The New Theatre: Racing along the road to glory and the grave

October 2022

How Peter Dreher raised repetition to an art form and meditation

Ghosts from Halloweens past haunt both Lost Hearts and Solar Bones

The Master: Colm Tóibín’s story couched in moving music as Henry James confronts his unlived life

La Tempesta at Wexford Festival Opera: Shakespeare’s enchanted island gets a youthful and slick spin

It’s a long way from Heaven in Eugene O’Brien’s predictable midlands affair

John Kindness serves up a fine feast with Potato Man

Venus Patel wins top prize at RDS Visual Art Awards for her experimental short film ‘Eggshells’

Review of Lost Hearts: ghost story tries to have it both ways

A centenary of Joycean fumbling between the covers

‘They rejected me’: Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh on why he bears a grudge against the Abbey Theatre

‘I was in so much debt — any way to get cash, I was doing it’ — Naoise Ó Cairealláin on the reality of life as a gambling addict

Review of My Fair Lady: George Bernard Shaw’s battle of the sexes gets a delightfully riotous revival

Review of Heaven by Fishamble: Drama of a small-town couple and a big lie

A Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy at the Peacock: a knockout explosion of toxic masculinity

‘Blackwater Lightship’ illuminates the dark crevices of life

A self-limited palette: ‘I try to not get lost in the colours’

Review of No Magic Pill: A funny, fierce show about disability activism

Genevieve Hulme Beaman steals the show in Joyce’s Women at the Abbey

Lorcan Finnegan: Dublin’s candid cameraman captures the real soul of the streets

September 2022

Review of The Blackwater Lightship: Colm Tóibín’s story of terminal illness becomes an emotional furnace

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