Ireland
DVD: GlasslandFriday, 14 August 2015
For sheer, visceral performances we’ll be lucky if we get anything as strong this year as the central roles from Jack Reynor and Toni Collette in Gerald Barrett’s Glassland. Their mother-son relationship has such an almost unbearable intimacy to it... Read more... |
Wild Ireland, ITVTuesday, 14 April 2015
“A place of ravishing beauty that would completely stop you in your tracks.” So said Christine Bleakley as she introduced the first episode of this six-part series, during which she travels along the Wild Atlantic Way on Ireland's west coast, from... Read more... |
The Irish Rock Story: A Tale of Two Cities, BBC FourSaturday, 14 March 2015
When a documentary about Irish rock music starts with footage of late-period Bono shuffling about awkwardly dressed in black, my first impulse is to check my iTunes in case he’s surreptitiously shat another album into my computer. The second is to... Read more... |
Lippy, Young VicSaturday, 28 February 2015
How do we respond to a tragedy of infinite mystery? We investigate, we speculate, and we seek to impose meaning, to produce a story that safely contains unfathomable horror. However, those hoping for such reassurance via a traditional theatrical... Read more... |
CD: Altan - The Widening GyreMonday, 23 February 2015
Taking its title from the opening line of WB Yeats's The Second Coming, this new album from legendary traditional Irish band Altan sees them decamp to Nashville for an imaginative, celebratory exploration of the links between traditional Irish and... Read more... |
Imagine... Colm Tóibín: His Mother's Son, BBC OneWednesday, 03 December 2014
Watching this edition of Imagine… on Colm Tóibín, it was impossible not to be reminded of Graham Greene’s dictum about childhood being the bank balance of the writer. The key event in Tóibín’s childhood came at the age of eight, when his father’s... Read more... |
Dara Ó Bríain, TouringWednesday, 26 November 2014
It's always an education to see a comic – now a part of the British comedy establishment – performing a gig in his own backyard. And Dara Ó Bríain, at the Royal Theatre in Castlebar, Co Mayo, was just that; he had, as ever, done his... Read more... |
CD: Gemma Hayes - Bones and LongingWednesday, 19 November 2014
Since Gemma Hayes' Mercury nomination in 2003, the Irish singer-songwriter has largely experienced the familar indie fate of meagre commercial returns but increasing cult appeal. How appropriate then, that for her most recent adventures in folk and... Read more... |
Coolatully, Finborough TheatreFriday, 31 October 2014
Ireland has had not just an economic meltdown in the past few years, but also a social one. The country that thought it had seen the back of emigration going back several generations has had to deal with its young people once again leaving in droves... Read more... |
CD: Hozier - HozierTuesday, 30 September 2014
All lovers of music have styles they're drawn to and others they loathe. For me the continuing rise of the whiney, vulnerable, male singer-songwriter, his falsetto-flecked voice emoting non-specific but all-encompassing woes, is anathema. Poor old... Read more... |
This World: Ireland's Lost Babies, BBC TwoThursday, 18 September 2014
We think we know the story. As recounted in Philomena, in the 1950s and ‘60s the Irish state and Catholic Church colluded in putting children born out of wedlock up for adoption. A small minority was sent to America, causing a lifetime of trauma and... Read more... |
Ballyturk, National TheatreWednesday, 17 September 2014
In his masterly essay in the programme for Enda Walsh's latest play, Colm Tóibín warns against attempting to pin his work to a particular philosophical position, but simply to read into it a metaphor for humanity's efforts to cope with life while... Read more... |
