SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE – Staged Reading by Andrew Bennett from Four Rivers Theatre

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Richard Connolly – Thursday December 12th, 2024

The minimalist stage setting of Four Rivers reading of Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novella ‘Small Things Like These’ enables audience focus to centre on a performance and delivery of a text that is economical, yet rich in descriptive detail. The story harps back to the eighties, a bleak time in Irish history when Ireland was a grip of an economic recession and dominated by Roman Catholic ideology. The author’s use of poetic fallacy to depict this time is effective with frequent references to the cold, Christmas winter. The harsh and chilly weather also reflects the coldness and inhumane treatment of a girl locked away in a Magdalene laundry. The tale centres around Bill Furlong, a fuel merchant and married man with daughters. He is a basic everyman who has had a problematic childhood, one in which lends to an empathetic nature. It is this empathy that leads him into a crisis of conscience after he encounters the imprisoned girl in a coal cellar attached to the laundry

Bringing Keegan’s novella to the stage is a challenging endeavour, in view of the condensed prose. Although the text possesses moments of drama, there is no use of hyperbolic language that would give the text a dramatic impetus – as would be the case in a Marina Carr or Tennessee Williams play. Despite this, director Ben Barnes presents a reading that is riveting. Andrew Bennett (no stranger to the work of Claire Keegan having appeared as Seán in the film An Cailín Ciúin) imparts a subtle performance, suitably conjuring up the story through his convivial delivery, spot on pacing, and modulation of tone. Bennett resists the temptation to mimic the characters, and instead conveys them through his own authentic voice. In essence, he comes across as being relatable, which helps to draw and hold the audience’s attention.

Interspersing and sometimes overlaying the delivery is Eleanor McEvoy’s live adoption of electric guitar, violin and electronic keyboard. Atmospheric and sometimes gentle, McEvoy’s musical arrangement helps to underscore the piece’s emotional temperature while not being intrusive or distracting from the main performance.

Although set in the past, ‘Small Things Like These’ is a reminder that it takes courage to stand up to injustice, no matter the circumstance or period, and that fear impedes change. It also chillingly illustrates a societal complicity when it comes to institutional cruelty; evident in a few of the characters’ attitude towards the nuns and Magdalene home in the novella. A quote from the Irish constitution at the end of the production crushingly underscores the pervasive hypocrisy depicted in the performance.

THE SKY’S THE LIMIT – Kevin Lawlor, Phil Robson & Andrew Csibi

The Sky & The Ground

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday December 7th, 2024

Despite the best/worst efforts of storm Darragh, a sizeable band of jazz stalwarts made their way to  the intimacy of the The Sky and The Ground venue for an early bird helping of fluid, inventive jazz lead by Derby-born Roscommon-based award-winning guitarist blend his fluid electric guitar playing with the ever-inventive work of  Kevin Lawlor  on drums and Lawlor’s regular playmate Andrew Csibi on double bass.

Robson is no mean composer too, and the warmth of his ‘Astral’, from his 2015 album f The Cut Off Point, was a refuge from the storm outside and his musical wit was evident in his own ‘Misunderstood King Canute’ with Lawlor’s and Csibi’s contributions egging him on. Of the non-originals, their run-through of the be-bop tune Chompin’ At The Bit’ from Robson’s 2006 album Impish, skipped gently and merrily along, while ‘the late Wayne Shorter’s emotional tribute to his wife ‘Ana Maria’ (minus Tessa Souter’s tender lyrics) was imbued with delicate Latino edgings and they gave the Cole Porter standard ‘Love For Sale’ an elegant outing at an uppity lick without losing any of the subtleties in the melody.  

Arguably the key piece on the gig was ‘Estaban’,  inspired by the short-story ‘Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ by Gabriel García Márquez which the trio re-told in musical form to considerable acclaim.

This event, promoted by the Wexford Arts Centre’, deserved better weather. Let’s hope Robson comes back when the sun shines.

FROM CLARE ISLAND TO HERE – Niall McCabe/Donal Moran

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday November 28th, 2024

As both singer-songwriters made reference to the population of their native Clare Island, a little jovial clarity might be justified.  According to the 2022 census the island’s current population is 138. That means that 1.5% of the entire population of the Clew Bay island was actually onstage together at the Wexford Arts Centre tonight.  These are things we need to know. We also need to know that these islanders have an abundance of talent, stage-confidence and self-effacing banter that might mask a sort of nervousness but the audience seemed to take both singers to their collective heart unconditionally.

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Donal Moran kicked off proceedings with a set that would have raised few objections had it been a bit longer. He has a full-bodied voice capable of a wide range of emotions and as a guitarist he’s no slouch either. His evocative ‘It Must Have Rained Last Night’ is inspired by the old aisling poems and he brings his a highly-charged personal approach and engagements with the everyday to a song like ‘Even When The Car Won’t Start’ which he began while living in a caravan in Scotland.

Niall McCabe has a fine bag of songs of equal pedigree and if he might be accused of erring on the downbeat side of human affairs, he takes the precaution of leavening the mix with self-deprecatory humour. His style occasionally evokes Paul Brady and Declan O’Rourke to fine effect. He scored big with ‘Little Sister’, a countrified look at parental break-up, while ‘The Ritual’ with guitar flourishes a la John Martin comes from his album Rituals, described by Hot Press as a “sentimental, soulful debut’. It also contains some other fine works, especially ‘Borders’ and November Swell’ which also went down a treat with the WAC audience.

Niall was joined towards the end by Moran and his banjo and vocal harmonies that we could have heard more of. Both artists are card-carrying islanders whose lives, heads and songs are awash with the wild Atlantic Sea. They imbue their performances with storied glimpses into the real life of Clare Island. One might hope that the warm reception they got from the Wexford Arts Centre audience will entice them back for another show another time.

MYSTICAL SINGING FROM A DISTANT CONTINENT – Indian Classical Music Night

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday November 16th, 2024

The use of an Indian sitar by George Harrison on the Beatles’ song ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ in 1965, as well as the growth of interest in Yoga and Hinduism, were probably key starting points from which countless people around the world developed an interest in Indian culture in general, but especially its unique music. So much so that there is now an Indian Classical Music Society dedicated to sharing its beguiling beauty through performances, cultural events and classes in Ireland.

This event at the Wexford Arts Centre was billed as “An Evening of Melodious Bliss” and that’s exactly what the Hindustani singer Ustad Amjad Ali Khan delivered in an hour-long recital that comprised three items.

Those unfamiliar with this style of improvised singing will have marvelled at this illustrious performer’s vocal acrobatics and improvisational expertise as he sang tunes far long longer than we might expect from, say, an Irish trad singer giving us a bit of diddley-eye-den-ooten-eye” or the scat singing we associate with jazz.  

He was accompanied throughout by a prominent drone effect and by Wexford-based Rupak Pandit on the tablas, a pair of drums shaped like clay pots and which can often supply a melodic quality of their own.

Their combined musical expertise had an overall hypnotic and meditational effect that enthralled a Wexford Art Centre audience comprising a mixture of seasoned devotees and enquiring newbies. I suspect that many of the latter will be back for more.

SINNOTT SERVES UP AFTERNOON DELIGHT – Declan Sinnott with Evelyn Kallansee

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday November 2nd, 2024

Declan Sinnott’s guitar-playing is a delight at any time of day, but when you spice it up with the unforced velvet voice of Evelyn Kallansee from Curaçao in the Caribbean you’re in for a special treat, which is just what they served up for the latest afternoon event at the Wexford Arts Centre.

Their performance, with added vocals from Sinnott, included several tracks from the duo’s album Make for Joy, already selected as an RTE 1 ‘Album of the Week’.

They brought a jollity to ‘Half of the Moon’ with its appealing jazz inflexions, ‘Who Has Coloured You Blue’ has a sympathetic warmth and ‘Walking’ ambles along with its carefree air. Their voices blend deliciously on ‘River’ with Sinnott’s playing evoking movement and the outdoors and they did a handsome take on ‘I Love Everything I See’ written by Sinnott with Eoin O’Brien. Tasteful covers included ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’, written way back by Robert Dwyer Joyce, and ‘Goin’ Back’ as covered by The Byrds among many others.  

While the music was often tightly-focused and intense, the show was leavened by some casual on-stage reflection on the songs and life in general. Sinnott especially relished the fact that “old age is great” because you can drop all the bullshit and say exactly what you like, non-PC or otherwise. We should also be grateful to him for introducing us to the remarkable talents of Evelyn Kallansee.

All in all, not a bad way for the Wexford Arts Centre audience to relax their way into the afternoon in the presence of such talented folks.

A SUPERGROUP BY ANY OTHER NAME – The Devil’s Spine Band

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday November 1st, 2024

The line-up of The Devil’s Spine Band reads like a veritable who’s who of the Irish rock scene over the last half-century. Trevor Knight (keyboards, vocals, and a CV that takes in Auto da Fe, Paul Brady, Philip Lynott, Mary Coughlan, Naima, and more), Honor Heffernan (versatile singer of jazz, rock and pop and, on the night, a wearer of a fine array of masks), Ed Deane (slick guitarist for Skid Row, Granny’s Intentions et al,) Garvan Gallagher (sure-fingered bassist for hire) and the inventive drumming of Tom Jamieson.

And what they delivered was a suitably eclectic mix of sonic inventions that straddled the rock spectrum in its broadest sense. Along the way I caught echoes of The Doors, West Coast Psychedelia, Tangerine Dream, Mercury Rev, Frank Zappa, The Shadows, Oscar Wilde, High Noon and more. Expect the unexpected was the motto for the (k)night.

After a dark, Doorsy opener in ‘Madam Moustachio’ they slipped effortless into a knees-up called ‘The Leadville Polka’. ‘Down Below the Snakeline’ held strong hints of sixties rock, ‘The Devil’s Rodeo’ was a glorious slice of cowboy punk and ‘Captain Moonlight’ explored soundscapes at will. And so it went on, with Knight and Heffernan merging on vocals whenever, with assistance from Gallagher and Deane. A backdrop video showed us a man struggling to get out of his own body and there came ‘Devil’s Own Brigade’ inspired by Oscar Wilde and his ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. With compositional duties mostly shared by Knight and Deane, the band’s precision playing held the attentive WAC audience spellbound. If one were the carping type one might argue for a greater use of Heffernan, but even then we had proof that The Devil indeed has the best tunes.

POLISHED MUSICAL ARTISTRY AT THE WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE – U.M.A.N/Ayda

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday October 19th, 2024

UMAN (it stands for U Must Act Now, although it doesn’t say about what or why) are a six-piece band with the classic rock line-up of rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums, keys plus a back-up female singer. When all six were fired up with the full-on vocals it was a truly exhilarating experience.

The band’s repertoire is mainly original tunes in the AOR vein with added Gospel and Christian undertones. It did not escape some rapt listeners at the Wexford Arts Centre that with such polished arrangements they might be headed for the adult American Christian market in due course. Their own songs ‘Bonfire’ and ‘When It Rains’ offer an upbeat, positive philosophy, while ‘Listen To Your Children’ was a timely choice when kids are being slaughtered in Gaza.

‘Duel At The Crossroads’ was inspired by the possibly apocryphal tale of blues legend Robert Johnson and his pact with the devil. The old Gospel favourite ‘Travellin’ Shoes’ was finger-clickin’ good and ‘River’ got a slower Gospel-flavoured outing. Most notable modern covers included ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ and a moody version of ‘I Don’t Wanna Fall in love with You’. All were delivered with impeccably tight arrangements that showed the benefits of serious rehearsals. Watch them go.

Earlier, Ayda opened proceedings with a handful of her own well-crafted songs sung in her own confident style. ‘Training Session’, ‘High School Crush’ and ‘Home’ (her current single) all drew enthusiastic applause from a highly appreciative audience. Ayda may be only 16, but she already knows how to turn in a performance like a seasoned veteran. And keep a sharp ear out for some new recordings from her produced by Gavin Glass.

EAMONN COLFER’S THE MERCY SEAT

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Richard Connolly – Wednesday October 2nd, 2024

It’s a brave theatrical practitioner who stages a serious play. Although humorous in places, Eamonn Colfer’s “The Mercy Seat” addresses themes such as euthanasia, men’s mental health, and the pervasive influence of technology, in particular AI technology. Reminiscent of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone,” the plot is centred in the near future when euthanasia booths, referred to as ‘Mercy Seats,’ have been installed in every town. A malfunction in one of the booths prevents a young man from using it, and a technician is summoned. The encounter ends up being an enlightening experience for both men.      

Eamonn Colfer’s direction is fluid and the script’s adoption of Aristotle’s three unities (unity of time, place, and action) enables this fluidity, which helps to serve up a play that is not only tight with respect to execution, but also one that fizzes with an effervescent power.

The cast is strong across the board. Phil Lyons plays Eugene Mullins, a man who is terminally ill and has decided to use the ‘Mercy Seat.’  Phil is an experienced trouper, and it shows. He brings a pathos to his character that is both sympathetic and believable. It has been a while since Lee Kelly – who plays the technician, Frank Pearson – has appeared on the stage, but he certainly has not lost it as an actor. Lee navigates and steers his character’s narrative arc successfully, flushing out all the nuances that combine to reveal Frank Pearson to be a complex and multi-faceted everyman; one whose gallows humour hides a deep psychic wound. This is accomplished seamlessly and is an indication of Lee’s talents as an actor.

Very often one encounters gifted actors, but it is refreshing to watch one that not only possesses flair, but also stage presence. Right from the word go, Eoghan Kirby – as the troubled Danny Fielding – captures the audience’s eye, successfully conveying a sensitivity and depth needed for his part.          

Dominating the stage is GAL (an acronym for Guide to After Life). Cold looking and metallic, GAL’s feminine voice (as articulated by Hayley Crosbie) softens the AI’s ominous protocols. In many ways she is like a siren soothing and coaxing her clients towards their deaths. But her attempts at sanitizing and presenting the Mercy Seat as a pleasurably journey towards a perceived afterlife are illusionary. The true horror of what happens to GAL’s clients is depicted when Eugene Mullin steps into the booth.  The audience does not see what is happening to Eugene, but instead hears the whirring of GAL’s mechanics. This has a chilling effect, prompting the audience into imagining his incineration. It also hammers home that GAL is not an angel of mercy, but rather a programmed killing machine.

While watching this play, I was reminded of another artist, Robert Graves. His seminal piece of work, “The White Goddess,” posits the hypothesis that The White Goddess must be present in pieces of art. This triple-headed goddess represents the three stages of a female life cycle (maiden, mother, and crone). Similarly, the three male characters in ‘The Mercy Seat’ could be representative of the three stages of the male life cycle with Danny Fielding being the young man, Frank Pearson the middle-aged man, and Eugene Mullins being the elderly man. Interestingly, Eugene Mullins and Danny Fielding seem to bookend this lifecycle. Both men are well read and are students of philosophy. In many ways this illustration of the three stages of the male life cycle presents a picture of masculinity in crisis. Despite this, the message at the end of the play is hopeful. It suggests that the solution to this crisis is through men sharing their difficulties with each other. Furthermore, it intimates that compassion is a force for healing.

“The Mercy Seat” is a thought-provoking and a deeply humane piece of work, reminding us that it is our imperfections that make us human. It also serves as a warning against societal indifference; a phenomenon that can enable the nefarious use of AI technology.

RELIGIOUS MUSIC FROM THE ROOF OF THE WORLD – Tibetan Monks from Tashi Lhunpo Monastery

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday September 14th, 2024

Religion and music have not always been best friends. The Taliban and other regimes in the Middle East seem terrified by the stuff, and in the middle of the 1900s the Catholic Church in Ireland campaigned against the evils of Jazz.  After the polka was invented in Bohemia around 1830, Cardinal Cullen advised Irish Catholics against engaging with it. Not that it matters, as music generally tends to win in the end.

This performance of ritual music, mantras and dance from a team of eight Tibetan Buddhist lamas from Tashi Lhunpo Monastery was introduced by Wexford Mayor George Lawlor who welcomed the monks on their first visit to the town and linked it eloquently to the recent visit of thousands of music fans for the Fleadh.

The ensemble started with two musicians playing didgeroo-like instruments called dungchen (long horns) that emit extremely deep, rattling vibrations. Each piece performed formed a different part of Buddhist religious ritual and was introduced by a speaker who explained each item succinctly. The musical repertoire ranged from meditative and mesmerising chanting to heavily masked dancers wearing strikingly colourful costumes and accompanied by ringing bells, clanging cymbals and percussion. Some of the sounds may have been challenging for new listeners, but process can also be worthwhile. As with other forms of religious music, such as Christian Gospel hymns, the music could be enjoyed for its own artistic values.

The Wexford Arts Centre audience listened intently to every piece in silent reverence. It made an exhilarating addition to the Centre’s 50^th anniversary celebrations, and was made even more significant with the revelations that the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery was established by the first Dalai Lama, and later became the base for the Panchen Lama, another important spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism. 

Those who relish similar sounds from other cultures should also note the workshop and concert of Indian Classical Music by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan here on November 16.  

FABULOUS AND FAULTLESS AVEC JOIE DE VIVRE- Melanie O’Reilly Trio

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Wednesday September 11th, 2024

This thoroughly enjoyable afternoon show was a beguiling taster for Melanie O’Reilly’s Jazz Quartet event planned for November 2^nd. It will have a French jazz theme, especially appropriate now given the singer’s recent appointment to a key post with the Wexford-Normandy Cultural Association.

The turn-out proved that the Wexford Art Centre’s innovative series of afternoon events has its eager fans, and O’Reilly, with Carole Nelson (formerly of Zrazy on piano) and Adrian Jackson on double bass, saw that their time was more than well spent. The relative sparseness of the accompaniment and the intimacy of the venue allowed the quality and expression in O’Reilly’s voice to shine and sparkle. What’s more, the audience loved it.

Sticking close to an agenda of classic jazz songs and allowing generous space for Nelson and Jackson to display their soloing credentials, O’Reilly delivered faithful interpretations of songs from the last century and penned by some of the best-loved songsmiths of that era.

The musical menu ranged from a cool ‘Skylark’ from the pen of Hoagy Carmichael to ‘Beginning to See the Light’ recorded by Duke Ellington and many other stalwarts of the genre. Those who only know Billie Holiday as one of the finest vocalists of all time were reminded of her songwriting skills with a version of her ‘Rocky Mountain Blues’ delivered with class and conviction, while Fats Waller’s ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ came in an upbeat version a la Anita O’Day.  The sun outside had to compete with the warmth generated inside via some bossa nova as in Antonio Carolo Jobim’s ‘Wave’ and Kenny Dorham’s ‘Blue Bossa.’

Other standards to delight the audience were ‘Autumn Leave’, ‘Cheek to Cheek’ and ‘Fly Me to The Moon’. Their afternoons well and truly swung, they left, no doubt with November 2^nd evening performance and another Swing into the afternoons session on December 4th already in their sights.

POPULAR RTÉ SERIES BROUGHT TO THE STAGE – Songs of Ireland with Mike Hanrahan and Pat Shortt

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday August 22nd, 2024

As the word “craic” insinuates its way into the language of more and more countries, more and more people wonder what exactly the term means. The easiest response would be to bring them to this Hanrahan and Shortt show. They will instantly understand that “having the craic” refers to an Irish social gathering with a mix of stories, quips, music, laughter, lies, insults, facts, friendships, observations, verbal skirmishing and songs to be sung both lovingly and lustily. On the night, all we missed was a crackling turf fire and a jug of punch.

But that’s what the full house at the Wexford Arts Centre signed up for and that’s exactly what they got as the two lads brought their tv series Songs of Ireland to the stage with added portions of irreverence. This was not the place for those of a sensitive nature or champions of political correctness. And the audience loved it.

After kicking off with ‘From Clare to Here’ they told us that the woman in the song ‘There Was an Old Woman from Wexford’ wasn’t from Wexford at all, and as for ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’, while the lyrics say he was born and raised in Ireland in a place called Castlemaine, that place is in Australia. Three songs in and there was enough material already for a Donnybrook or two.

The audience joined in for ‘I’ll Tell Me Ma’ with gusto as they did with ‘The Star of The County Down’. We got a tasteful instrumental version of ‘Down in The Sally Gardens’ and the duo also excavated the full emotional content in ‘Raglan Road’, ‘Spancil Hill’, Tommy Makem’s ‘Four Green Fields’ and Shane MacGowan’s ‘Rainy Night in Soho’.   

Shortt decorated many of the songs with his warm sax playing and Hanrahan repeatedly showed he’s a fine guitarist in his own right. They ended with songs from their personal careers, Hanrahan opting for ‘Walk Away’ and ‘Beautiful Affair’ from his career with Stockton’s Wing and Shortt with his hilariously over-the-top hymn to ‘The Jumbo Breakfast Roll’.

Anyone who didn’t leave the WAC with a smile on their face might be beyond hope.

EXHILERATING BILINGUAL NIGHT OF POETRY, MUSIC, DRAMA AND GOOD HUMOUR – So Say So, Fleadh Special

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday August 8th, 2024

Attracting regular full houses to poetry sessions is a not easy, but Dublin poet Stephen James Smith, now domiciled in Wexford, has been doing it with his So Say So sessions at the WAC for months now. Part of their impact stems from Smith’s jovial ringmaster persona, not to mention his wonderful poetry, his astute choice of guests and the ubiquitous presence of Lorcan and Cillian from Basciville who improvise appropriate flourishes to flesh out the performances.

Smith kicked off this mid-Fleadh gathering with an aptly-chosen reading of his own ‘An Ode to Tony McMahon’ about a night of musical mayhem in the accordionist McMahon’s house “when Kerry came to Dublin”. He also read a fine new work that cleverly links the ancient Greeks with the current Olympics, French electronic wizards Daft Punk and the wit and poet Oliver St John Gogarty.

There were more musical references when Sarah Clancy came on, with Johnny Cash, The Indigo Girls and Kd Lang all getting name checked. Clancy wears her queerness proudly and is humorously self-deprecating. Her subjects ranged from the personal, one about a “fuckin” mermaid”, while also touching provocatively on issues like Gaza, AI, Syria, being feminine, the housing crisis, preppers, and a stinging look at the 1916 centenary. I hope she comes back soon.

Then we were joined by the eloquently bilingual performance poet Siobhan de Paor and Kila man Ronan O Snodaigh on bodhran for a drama segment in which de Paor brought a cosmic Gaelic dimension to proceedings with her dramatic tribute to the Cow Goddess/mise bohane. This was mesmerising even to those with less than the cupla focal.

The full house remained spellbound throughout, proving yet again that when an event is as challenging and as rewarding as this, Wexford Art Centre audiences are only too willing to show up.

The next in the series is on August 15th – featuring Maras Mathias in partnership with the French Embassy in Ireland. Book now.

21^st CENTURY GENOCIDE AND WAR CRIMES – GAZA a FILM production film by Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday July 25th, 2024

In 2006 the American singer-songwriter Patti Smith debuted a song called ‘Qana’, her response to an Israeli government air strike on the village of that name in Lebanon that killed around 60 people, half of them children. Since then, nothing much has changed in the Middle East. Today, the Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is murdering children, pregnant women and elderly men in Gaza, with the assistance of weaponry supplied by the US government.

Gaza the film may make many observers feel that there’s really no difference between Hammas, Hizbollah, Isis and the Israeli government as savage, indiscriminate murderers.  

While its stark, upfront footage exposes the savagery of the Israeli terrorists who have imprisoned 2 million innocent civilians in a narrow strip 25 miles long, the resilience of their Palestinians victims outshines them. Young men and women still harbour hopes of going into business or playing the cello, while parents struggle relentlessly to feed their families under the most atrocious man-made conditions. That they still find the energy and the inclination to dance, sing, tell stories and make fun is in itself quite extraordinary, and the bravery of their medical workers is even more inspirational.

That this oppression is being actively carried out with weapons supplied by the USA (“the land of the free” and self-appointed guardians of world democracy) is a further affront to any notion of civilisation. In truth, people in Gaza are being murdered daily by two regimes bloated by their own self-regard and their fantasies of moral superiority.

It is indeed chilling to think that while the packed theatre at the Wexford Arts Centre were watching defenceless unarmed civilians being shelled by Israeli troops, their leader was being feted in the USA like some kind of hero rather than the genocidal maniac he truly is.

We must be indebted to the makers of Gaza for bringing us inside the warzone so that for an evening at least we were all Palestinian prisoners.

The Screening of Gaza was hosted by Wexford Arts Centre, with all proceeds donated to the Amjaad Charity which is working on the ground to provide assistance and aid to thousands of families in the Middle East.

ANOTHER TRIUMPH FOR BILLY ROCHE – A Handful of Stars by Billy Roche

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday June 7th, 2024

The gestation of Billy Roche’s A Handful of Stars dates from the mid-eighties and in this production uses carefully-selected music to conjure an earlier time when our pop kids were menaced by the likes of Roy Orbison and Dickie Rock and youths could be misspent in the Snooker Hall when the pubs weren’t open. Roche’s characters are people we feel we know almost as well as he does, possibly encountering them in our normal day-to-day situations. But underneath the normality rumble universal issues of greed, alienation, envy, struggle, disappointment, love found and misplaced, amid a townload of macho swaggering and swearing as the lads vie for supremacy in the snooker room and about town.

Central to it all is Jimmy, played to full intensity by Dermot Murphy as he loses control of his life and his rage at that loss and everything else, including latest girlfriend Linda (Eilish McLaughlin) who refuses to be casually used by him. Jimmy’s hate figures include Conway (Brian Doherty) whose relative success he despises, and he belittles his placid snooker pal Tony (Tiernan Messitt-Greene) who is about to be wed. Jimmy is being hotly pursued by Swan (with Gary Lydon receiving a spontaneous burst of applause when he first entered the stage) for his bad behaviour around the town.

Roche hardwires into his play’s development an overwhelming sense of foreboding and a growing realisation that things may not pan out well for Jimmy. Director Conall Morrison plays it straight and tight so every word and gesture requires your full attention throughout this staging by Four Rivers. Morrison had at his disposal the talents of John Olohan as the put-upon Snooker Room manager Paddy, as well as Michael Power as Stapler to add to those already mentioned. To judge by the standing ovation from the full house at the end, this was another triumphant night for Roche, the Wexford Arts Centre and all concerned.

A Handful of Stars is the first part of Roche’s Wexford Trilogy, with readings of the other two, Poor Beast in the Rain and Belfry, also due soon at the Wexford Arts Centre, as well as a conversation between Billy and director Conall Morrison chaired by Tom Mooney at the same venue on June 16th.

WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE CELEBRATES 50th ANNIVERSARY – A Handful of Stars by Billy Roche

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Liam Murphy – Friday June 7th, 2024

Wexford Arts Centre celebrated its 50th Anniversary in style with the usual bells, whistles and a reception. But also presented Four Rivers stellar production of the Billy Roche play A Handful of Stars. It was a glorious and, in some ways, a nostalgic occasion, as pre-Garter Lane, Wexford, was the inspiration and ambition to have an arts centre in Waterford. A Handful of Stars is the first play in the Wexford Trilogy, and back in the eighties, I saw a Wexford production, then called The Boker Poker Club, and I had forgotten that a young Billy Roche was in that production.

I remember the emerging Waterford professional Theatre Company, Red Kettle, considering staging that play, but it got ‘lost’ in a discussion about recreating the Wexford accent.

Ben Barnes, the artistic director of Four Rivers, assembled a stellar cast under the direction of Conal Morrison to almost ‘terrorise’ the audience with a frightening and feral production with pounding music from the jukebox in a shabby claustrophobic pool hall with smelly toilet, a ‘one-armed bandit’ slot machine, a pot-bellied stove and a frame Sacred Heart overlooking the simmering angst and potent, cruel gossip, bravado and talk, cutting down people to size. The young rebellious ‘god’s gift’ shook with resentment as he raged against any authority of the smalltown, small-minded older figures. Dermot Murphy as Jimmy Brady was the tortured young man, a rebel against too many causes, and his feral ego could not prevent his headlong rage into a vortex of carnage. There were times when he looked into the audience, and it was frightening. He was frightened too, like a wounded animal backed into a corner, as he lashed pool balls around the small illuminated table.

It was great to see two Waterford actors, Michael Power as Stapler, the fading but angry boxer, who saw his early self in Jimmy. Brian ‘Dots’ Doherty was the factory supervisor, full of spite, and his belittling remarks cut into Jimmy and Jimmy’s taciturn friend, Tony (played with dogged devotion by Tiernan Messitt-Greene).

Eilish McLoughlin’s performance as Linda, Jimmy’s dissatisfied girlfriend, was a powerful reminder of how social values and the need for danger and attention shape people’s lives.

Other strong performances from John Olohan, and Gary Lydon as the repressed detective who understood smalltown values and hierarchies, and he would not be defied.

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PICNIC SERVES UP BANQUET OF NOURISHING ART – Muldoon’s Picnic

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, May 16, 2024

Newbies to this particular brand of picnic may well have been expecting a sedate discussion about an artist’s trials and tribulations and a run-through of the state of their particular genre followed by a worthy segment of their art itself. Instead, the night opened with a brilliant couple of songs by Rogue Oliphant, a mighty rock outfit including the terrific guitar-work of one-time Bob Dylan cohort David Mansfield and Cait O’Riordan, late of The Pogues, on bass and fine vocals. The message was received loud and clear. Put those preconceptions away.

Paul Muldoon then ambled on and read poetic lyrics over the electrifying backdrop of the band in full flight, drums and two additional guitars in tow.  He has described these events as “omnium-gatherums”, but this was a few leagues about that description. Donal Ryan read from his work, hilarious to boot, one extract about a character based on his mother who didn’t recognise herself when she read, and a hilariously ham-fisted marriage proposal that failed, proving that art does not always come po-faced.

Nithy Kasa, born in Central Africa and raised in Galway from her teens, she too sensed the fun in the air but still delivered several thought-provoking poems and made light-hearted references to her problems with accents. The audience warmed to her from the off and seemed especially drawn to her ‘The Herbalist’ and ‘We Dance from The Hips’ from her collection Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho. Sile Denvir from the Connemara Gaeltacht delivered sean-nos singing to which the first-class sound system in the Wexford Arts Centre brought a rare clarity in a live context. She’s no mean harpist either and the picnic ended with her joining Rogue Oliphant into whose melodic rock she knitted in a neat harp solo.

Supported by Poetry Ireland, the Arts Council and Culture Ireland funds, this was a remarkable experience of music and words linking three continents (at least) and several centuries that demands a repeat night. To Muldoon’s credit he did not try to hog the footlights, perhaps knowing the breadth of the players he had conjured up meant he could hover in the shadows as the mood took him.   

A MOTHER’S VOICE

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – May 8th, 2024

This was an evening of contrasts at the Wexford Arts Centre, as this unsettling, thought-provoking event was preceded by a reception in honour of Billy Roche ahead of the Wexford Arts Centre’s month-long celebration of his work, starting with a staging of his acclaimed play A Handful of Stars from June 6^th to June 16^th. As Mayor John Hegarty pointed out, while we often refer to prophets not being recognised in their own country, that does not apply to the reverence and admiration directed towards Billy within the arts community in Ireland, especially in his native Wexford.

In a separate part of the building, A Mother’s Voice opened with the sombre sounds from a foursome of musicians using strings and synths, before a series of off-stage voices succinctly conveyed the inhumane treatment of women in the infamous mother and baby homes in Ireland. The point was made that these homes, and the often-aggressive mistreatment of those forcibly housed in them, resulted from collusion between the Catholic Church and the Irish State, but it was also sustained by the see-no-evil approval of members of the “flock” who could always plead that they were merely following orders.   

Some might argue that there is little new to be said about the subject, but we need to be constantly reminded of what can happen when we, the public, turn our eyes away from what is going on around us and avoid asking the obvious questions. So this production of A Mother’s Voice was an essentialreiteration that there is no limit to the savagery humans are capable of foisting on each other. To that end much credit must go to Musici Ireland, Beth McNinch and Jane Hackett as creators and directors of this staging which, although comparatively short, conveyed much in the time chosen.

The voices of Deirdre Wadding, “Cait” and Sheila O Byrne were most effective in illustrating the reality of what went on behind those tightly-closed doors. Indeed, it might be argued that the disembodiment of their voices was as accurate a reflection of the devaluation of the abused women as their spoken testaments.  

WEXFORD CELEBRATES WORLD JAZZ DAY – Kevin Lawlor plus Three

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – May 3rd, 2024

Given the day that was in it, it was fitting that this superb concert turned out to be a convergence of Jazz Past, Present and Future. Not that there was anything Scroogelike in the fine fare that was on offer.

The opening act, The CWSM Student Jazz Ensemble 2, directed by Kevin Lawlor, took American guitar veteran Kenny Burrell’s ‘Chitlins Con-Carne’ and gave it a good night out. Their impressive line-up consisted of Damien Allen (guitar), Mia McDonald (piano), Christy Philpott (bass) and Niall Taaffe (drums).

Their stablemates Jazz Ensemble 1, also steered by Lawlor, opted for an inventive take on ‘Breathe’ by the English jazz-meets-hip-hopper Alpha Mist. With an all-female line-up made up of Sofia Zipoli (vocals), Julia Berthet-Agnese (piano), Alisa Puskova (guitar), Meg Lowney (bass) and Kelly Roche (drums) they too offered ample evidence that jazz is very much a potential musical option for musicians of the future.

Next up was drummer Lawlor’s foursome with Chris Colloton (guitar), Luke Howard (piano) and Florian Kockott (double bass). They effortless demonstrated why Wexford at present has one of the most rewarding jazz centres in the land.  Their opener ‘Minor Blues’ by Kurt Rosenwinkel featured tasty solos from all four and set the bar high for what was to follow.  Lawlor’s own composition ‘Lighthouse’, from his fine album Stramash, came with a languid dreaminess that drew some fine piano from Howard. They reached back to the early sixties for a striking version of Joe Henderson’s ‘Punjab’, and there were some skittish rhythms too running through ‘Riser’ that did justice to the Mammal Hands original, sophisticated but never slick.  

The standing-room-only Wexford Arts Centre audience was rivetted throughout the quartet’s set and as one fan was overheard saying on his way out, “it rarely gets any better”. Once again tribute must be paid to the clarity of the venue’s sound system that added to the pleasure and gave us an International Jazz Day to remember.

A HAPPY/SAD TOUR de FORCE – The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – April 20th, 2024

The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey is the third and final episode in Mikel Murfi’s trio of one-man plays about the cobbler Pat Farnon and his dear departed eccentric wife Kitsy. This final part reveals that before she passed on, Kitsy found a clever way of communicating with the mute Pat from beyond the grave.

Not having experienced the first two instalments proved no barrier to appreciating the happy/sad third shot, Murfi not only exhibited a wonderful feat of memory on stage for the best part of ninety minutes, but his ability to switch character almost in mid-sentence in exchanges with his friend Huby was equally impressive.  

Living alone in a small town, Pat only has Huby to connect with as he tentatively investigates a suitcase that Kitsy refused to let him explore when she was alive. In the process he makes some new discoveries as to who and what she was, yet his love for her remains undimmed. Despite his muteness and his illiteracy, he communicates with the audience by the clever device of revealing his inner thoughts, some of which increasingly dwell on the inevitability of his own demise, giving us some clever musical and animal sounds along the way.  As a convincingly nervy third age citizen he masterly mimes basic chores such as making tea.

All three parts of Sligoman Murfi’s trilogy have gained wide praise on both sides of the Atlantic. As both author and performer he has the ability to flit from one emotion to another with grace and ease and a dash of comedy, not least when he engages with a ventriloquist’s dummy towards the end.  This is powerful stuff.

THERE’S MAGIC IN HIS MUSIC – Andy Irvine

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – March 30th, 2024

This was not merely a journey back through recent and distant history, but Andy Irvine’s exploration of folk songs took us around the world, from Clare to Dublin to New Zealand, the mines of Montana and the forests of Romania.

The word “legend” has often been misappropriated to the point of losing its currency, but Irvine has been a towering presence in Irish folk music through his pioneering contributions to such legendary outfits as Sweeney’s Men, Planxty and Patrick Street, plus his work with Paul Brady. So, switching from guitar to mandola and harmonica as a song required, Irvine turned in a set that belied his age and saw him weave his dextrous fingering around his equally fluid and pacy vocal style.

 This concert had a real sense of timelessness about it. Irvine sticks faithfully to the folk tradition in both style and song content, and dipped into a repertoire that stretches around the globe. ‘My Heart’s Tonight in Ireland’ came from his Sweeney’s Men days and took us to County Clare. With ‘Prince Among Men’ he pays homage to the coal miners. ‘The Close Shave’ is a witty ditty about gold miners, drinking and prostitutes that comes partly from the pen of Bob Bickerton of New Zealand. ‘Baneasa’s Green Glade” was composed by Irvine following a spell living in a forest in Romania, and ‘The Blacksmith,’ thought by many to be an English folk song, took us back to his stint with Planxty. Along the way we heard mentions of Michael Davitt, and a terrific song about the sixties music scene in Ireland that mentioned musical heroes of great renown. He drew laughs with ‘My Son in Amerikay‘, while ‘Here’s a Health to Every Miner Lad‘ even got a lusty chorus going. The quality of Irvine’s singing and musicianship were matched by the intimacy and impeccable sound quality of the WAC theatre, so this was a valuable reward for getting out of the house to admire a legend in his natural habitat.

STANDING ROOM ONLY FOR BIRD VISIT – Wallis Bird

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – March 29th, 2024

It was a stroke of genius to invite Wallis Bird, native of Enniscorthy but residing in Berlin, to help celebrate the Wexford Arts Centre’s 50^th anniversary. With her gloriously relentless rhythms and her way of engaging with a jampacked audience she quickly turned the theatre into a place of celebration.

Accompanied mainly by a drummer/harmony vocalist and an occasional guest, Bird became a font of sheer energy and excitement, with her impassioned vocal, fiercely rhythmic guitar playing and a bunch of songs that seem to be born of life lived and observed at close quarters.

After a quietly up-tempo stretch ‘As the River Flows’ was enriched by her high, piecing frantic voice, and ‘Go’ from her album Hands, was given a vigorous workout.

With a solo version of ‘Home’ she reduced the venue to complete silence, such was the emotional power of her delivery of a song described as a love-letter to Ireland. Guest Saoirse Duane added her hot guitar licks to ‘Fantasy’ and Bird brought her brother Stephen on to add his solid drumming to a segment that segued into a raucous version of The Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ and the Creedence Clearwater Revival hit ‘Proud Mary’. Rachel Grace joined her to lower the temperature on ‘The Dive’ as a real party atmosphere took hold. It was one of those nights.

Before Bird landed in our midst, we had a short but wonderful set from local singer Ayda. She shows a maturity in her stage confidence, her terrific vocals and engaging songs that belie her mere fifteen years. Working with Gavin Glass has added a sheen to her performance, especially with ‘High School Crush’ and ‘Tide of Tears’. She’s been compared to Susan O’Neill and Laura Marling and its’ quite clear why.

A NIGHT OF BILINGUAL DELIGHTS – Lifting the Gate

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – March 16th, 2024

Although appropriately scheduled for the convergence of Seachtain na Gaeilge with our National Holiday Weekend, Lifting the Gate is an event to be enjoyed in its own right at any time or place. Those frightened by the threat that part of it might be in Irish had nothing of substance to fear.

The main event was amiably piloted by Ben MacCaoilte who can slip seamlessly from English to Gaeilge and back within the same sentence, and the show’s warm mix of music, poetry and captivating monologue was a welcome respite from the relentless wet weather.

Proceedings began with a set of songs by Patrick Stefan accompanied by his own deft guitar playing. A self-confessed Irish Dutchman, he gave us a bunch of songs, most notably one based on a Chinese poem and ‘Just Another Love Song’, written by his father, Jack Groenland. Stefan’s songsmithery owes a little to Paul Simon and his flexible vocal style has echoes of John Martyn, but his fluent guitar-playing gives his repertoire its own stamp. He was joined by Laois-born harpist Erin Lalor for a travelling song ‘Head Voices’ that had a touch of Africa in it.

When MacCaoilte took over Lalor contributed harp and fiddle as the mood dictated. He dedicated his poem ‘Saltees Skies’ to Basciville who themselves have enlivened many a poetry session at the WAC with their delicate musical improvisations. The Kilkenny man’s poems and tales are rooted in reality, with ‘The Scart Rose’ emerging for his time as an archaeologist.

The sound throughout was impeccable as we’ve come to expect whenever Olchan Kirwan is at the controls, and the night finished with all three joining forces shamrock-like for a collaboration on ‘My Sculptor’ and ‘Oak Tree’. By then we were well ready for St Patrick’s Day.

CLANCY’S LEGACY BROUGHT TO LIFE – Clancy’s Kitchen

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – March 1st, 2024

Irish folk and ballads are enjoying a new lease of life. We have the elegant musical explorations of Lankum and Oxn, the resurrection of the Bothy Band and ballads getting a merry walloping thither and yon. So, it’s hardly surprising that a new generation of Clancys would join the fray.

Clancy’s Kitchen is a fourpiece featuring Roisin Clancy (daughter of Bobby), Donal Clancy (son of Liam), Ryland Teifi (Welsh husband of Roisin) and Brendan Clancy (honorary family member).  As you might imagine, staples from the Clancy’s catalogue were given lusty airings, including ‘The Holy Ground’, Brennan on The Moor’, ‘I’ll Tell Me Ma’ and Will You Go Lassie Go’, all going down especially well with the Wexford Arts Centre audience and making full use of the fine vocals of Roisin, Donal and Ryland both solo and in harmony.

They also gave us a heartfelt rendition of ‘Peggy Gordon’ as a tribute to Sinead O’Connor, and his ‘The Broad Majestic Shannon’ was sung in memory of its composer Shane MacGowan. Brendan’s lively run through of ‘The Mason’s Apron’ got toes a-tappin’ and his fiddle playing in general proved that the ensemble’s artistry is not limited to their vocal excellence.

Dylan Thomas’ fans in the audience (and we know who you are) were delighted with Ryland’s sonorous recitation of the opening section of Under Milk Wood before he led into a Welsh folk song that emphasised the musicality of that other Celtic tongue. Before he embedded himself in the Clancy Clan, he was already a revered figure in his native land and also excelled on keyboards in the second half of the show.

The informal nature of the concert was further in evidence in the various memories they imparted about Sarah Makem, their famous forebears amid others.  Those too young to catch them, or who weren’t paying attention the first time The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem did the rounds now have a second chance to discover what it was all about.

FRANK’S FOR THE MEMORY – Kevin Lawlor Trio

Frank’s Place

Report: Jackie Hayden – February 22nd, 2024

Most Kevin Lawlor gigs are uniquely different and not short of surprises, and this session featuring Colm Lindsay on electric guitar, aided and abetted by Lawlor’s regular sidekick Florian Kockott on double-bass, was no exception.

Offering an electrifying mix of jazz, funk and rock, these three musicians at the top of their game romped through an eclectic mix of items culled from the repertoires of Herbie Hancock, Larry Carlton, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis’ bandmate Mike Stern and American guitarists Brene Mason and Stevie Ray Vaughan. We were also treated to a number of tasty originals, including Lawlor’s own ‘AK97’ and a couple by Lindsay, including the funked up ‘Gratitude Thing’.

Their energised take on Mason’s ‘Hot Wired’ fairly ripped along like a demented Buck Owens country tune that had heads nodding so eagerly they were risking whiplash and the trio still kept space for an effective Lawlor solo. Stern’s ‘Chromazone’ featured some neat interplay between Lawlor and Kockott, and Lindsay brought a swampy feel to Larry Carlton and Steely Dan’s ‘Josie’. Indeed, Lindsay dominated the evening.  His dexterous guitar drove ‘Late For The Train’, written by himself and Adam Nolan, with frantic flurries of notes. Hancock’s ‘Cantaloupe Island’ had some nice loping bass while ‘AK97’ was underpinned by prominent bass riffs. Jimi Hendrix’ ‘Little Wing’ displayed the trio’s collective brilliance.

With superb sound throughout, the capacity crowd soaked it all up from start to finish, suggesting that Frank’s Place now offers the right level of intimacy, sound and warmth to do this sort of thing regularly.  I suspect we’ll all be back.

CARS & SEX – How I Learned to Drive – Wexford Drama Group

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – February 15th, 2024

Cars and teenage sex have a long association, as with the early songs of the Beach Boys and others, but rarely has that link come with the underlying menace that gives this play its unsettling forward thrust.   

Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work is based on a few simplistic cliches- men are untrustworthy predators, women are helpless victims, and rural American families are not always safe places. But under Paul Walsh’s tight direction the story carries you forward with a mix of curiosity and trepidation. Could Uncle Peck (Fintan Kelly) be as kind and considerate as he seems? Does the young girl Li’l Bit (Seona O’Connor) want his company for the wrong reasons? Meanwhile, the rest of the family have a hillbilly approach to sex in open discussion. The driving lessons Peck gives her separate the scenes while adding dashes of innuendo that indicate serious trouble further down the road.

Set within a conservative family in Maryland in the 1960s the play is enlivened with songs from the era, including hits by the afore-mentioned Beach Boys, Danny and the Juniors and The Mamas and Papas.

Actors Sophie Blaney Parslow, Sean Byrne and Sarah Byrne combine to convey an uneasy balance of humour and danger.  The play’s disjointed chronology adds to the audience’s sense of Li’l Bit’s confusion, and some left the theatre wondering if she and Peck actually had sex or not. Meanwhile Peck’s wife Mary seems oblivious to his activities, or maybe she doesn’t care or is too scared to notice?   A play like How I Learned to Drive underscores the universality of the issues it confronts and helps us to confront too. Whether there’s any remedy is a matter for another arena, but in the meantime this play can add much to the conversation.

CLASSY CHAMBER FOLK MUSIC AT THE WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE – Scullion

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – February 10th, 2024

The increasingly widespread trend for bands from the past to reunite attracts two distinctly different tribes. Nostalgists and long-term fans can revisit their past and, as in Scullion’s case, celebrate their impeccable taste. Newbies can learn what all the fuss was about. Scullion’s audience at the WAC seemed to be a healthy mix of both.

The magical interplay between the guitars of Robby Overson and Sonny Condell, plus Condell’s and Philip King’s captivating vocals and King’s haunting harmonica and a bunch of brilliant songs, including some deftly-chosen covers, gave the theatre the intimacy of a small, cosy room. Not a lot of people can do that.

Scullion songs have a poetic density and a melodic maturity that demands repeat listens too, especially those inspired by travelling thither and yon. ‘Down In the City’ and ‘Eyelids into Snow’ will never wear out either.  ‘Condell’s ‘Dream Sailor’ inspired some appealingly brittle electric guitar work from Overson. Other winners on a night without losers included ‘Evil’ and ‘The Ocean Floor’ (inspired by the Corrib in Galway).   The covers included a robust shot at the National’s ‘I Need My Girl’, a less-convincing ‘Hanky Panky Nohow’ from John Cale’s Paris 1919, a warm version of John Prine’s ‘I Remember Everything’, a terrific rendition of the Rolling Stones’ Play with Fire’ and ‘John the Baptist’ (a superb revisit to a John Martyn song). King also beautifully recited the poem ‘Where Everything Is Music’ by the poet Rumi. Written in the 13th century in Persia and still striking a chord here as well as there. A reflective take on Dylan’s ‘Girl from The North Country’ brought it all back home before they ended with a stomping acapella blues shouter that brought the WAC audience to their feet. It was one of those nights.

Earlier, the audience enjoyed the surprise bonus of Stephen James Smith reading his evocative poems. ‘An Ode to Tony McMahon’s Den’ is a heart-warming work about a lot of Kerry people having a party in Dublin. He followed that with ‘Dublin You Are’ which served up a realistic mix of both the positive and questionable aspects of his own city, and he ended his short stint with a tribute to his domicile in Wexford.   Watch out for his popular So Say So monthly events at this here theatre.

A POSITIVE PEEK INTO THE TEENAGE WORLD – Our View –

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – January 26th, 2024

Much adult stuff about teenagers is bad. When they’re not noise-making irritants they become wordlessly sullen, barely speaking a complete sentence for years. So, the Our View show at the Wexford Arts Centre made a welcome change, giving us a small group of smart, articulate, literate and humorous teens the opportunity to showcase their poetry and music skills.

In the poetry corner were the event’s driving force James Bates and Alicia Fortune. Both are confident, mature readers of their own work and they know how to inject new thoughts into obvious, but no less worthwhile, topics. Those subjects included the challenge of school exams, individual resilience during the pandemic, addiction, self-worth and self-criticism. They were accompanied by Jesse Sludds and Ruben Meadows on improvised acoustic and electric guitars.

The second half was all about the music, with Sludds and Meadows joined by Charlie Carley on drums and Alex Kehoe on bass for full-on rock covers of well-known songs by Radiohead, Johnny Cash, Ed Sheeran, The Cranberries, Bob Dylan, and Oasis, plus the American folk song ‘House of The Rising Sun’. They easily engaged the eager young audience in outbreaks of singing, cheering and clapping. In frontman Jesse Sludds they may have a man born to be on the stage and the experience will have given them all some seriously useful stage time.

All in all, this was a worthy move by the Wexford Arts Centre to encourage young people down creative paths with a format that could turn out to have as healthy a life as Stephen James Smith’s So Say So poetry series.

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE Read by Andrew Bennett, with music by Eleanor McEvoy

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – December 14/16th, 2023

This Four Rivers presentation of the acclaimed Claire Keegan novella saw director Ben Barnes take an appropriately less-is-enough approach to Keegan’s compact prose. Bennett (Seán in the film An Cailin Ciúin) voiced the text in his clear, warm style without needing to imitate the speech of different characters, while McEvoy’s musical interjections on electronic keyboard, electric guitar and violin, were, like the ideal film soundtrack, mood enhancing but not distracting.

Those who have read the book, set in a Wexford town in the eighties, will know that the story focuses on decent, hard-working fuel merchant Bill Furlong and his appalled reaction to what he observes in the local convent and where he discovers a distraught girl locked away by the nuns.  His loving relationship with his wife Eileen is severely tested by his protestations against her treatment, while his wife takes a “let’s not rock the boat” stance, aware of how much the Furlong family depend on the convent for business. This is a neat reversal by Keegan of the tough businessman/caring wife stereotypes in such stories.

Hearing Keegan’s words read in a male voice also gives her prose a different feel, especially in the reading of the scene where the Furlongs have what might be their worst disagreement of a long and loving marriage as he struggles with his conscience.  It all played to the versatility in Keegan’s language with which she fills her simple tale with maximum drama.

As the story climbs to its climax McEvoy uses her musical dexterity to add to the tension and Bennett leaves us hanging on the cliff before a telling quote from the Irish constitution is projected on the screen. All in all, this was an exhilarating and challenging experience for the three full houses it attracted to the Wexford Arts Centre. It will doubtlessly send many of them back to Keegan’s wonderful book.   

JOHN SPILLANE – THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, November 30th, 2023

The news had broken earlier in the day of the passing of Shane MacGowan, so there was a palpable sense of gloom over the music scene which John Spillane, with his appealing collection of songs, humour and anecdotes, helped dispel for a while. Entertainment tradition says the show must go on, and it did, and then some.

In a sense, Spillane is in the tradition of the troubadours of old who travelled around singing songs and offering mobile geography and history lessons as well as imparting titbits of gossip and news. Many of his songs are about places local to his native Cork, but Spillane has such an eye for detail that he reveals the universal in the local. Thus, songs like ‘Passage West’ or ‘Under That Old Clare Moon’ travel effortlessly beyond the places that inspired them.

The Corkman’s cod-self-hyping sometimes acts as a virtual running commentary on the progress of the gig so far, and adds a disarmingly comic dimension to the party too, as with Johnny Don’t Go to Ballincollig’ and its apologetic cousin ‘Beautiful Ballincollig’. ‘Dunne’s Stores Girl’ and ‘The Ballad of Myles Byrne’ have Spillane dipping into political issues generations apart but with equal aplomb, while ‘The Dance of the Cherry Trees’ shows how he can conjure a wonderful song from the kind of street furniture ordinary mortals might pass every day without a second glance.  

Songs of the calibre of ‘Prince’s Street’, ‘The Dawn Chorus’ and ‘The Streets of Ballyphehane’ had the audience spellbound and they were more than willing to join in as instructed on ‘The Lee Swim’. Spillane’s melodic guitar playing also added much to songs that make the most of his literate lyrics and his easy way with ear-catching tunes. He claimed that this was his first time to draw a full house in Wexford, but on this showing you could bet it won’t be his last.

SJ MCARDLE’S PORT

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday, November 18th, 2023

Port is a welcome case of a songwriter thinking outside the box and constructing a show from a suite of songs inspired by the history of Drogheda’s old port (as in harbour, not an 1877 vintage from the cellar).

Those songs were composed by Drogheda singer-composer SJ McArdle and presented free of introductions and explanations, a tactic requiring the Wexford Arts Centre audience to pay close attention to McArdle’s evocative lyrics as they ranged over historical personages and events with the sea as their theme.

The works were brilliantly delivered by a compact band. McArdle himself, on vocals, guitars and harmonica, has a warm natural voice and played some deft guitar too. He was ably assisted by Wexford-based vocalist Carol Keogh, plus singer John Ruddy who added dramatic percussive effects. Trevor Hutchinson (double bass), Barry Kieran (fiddle) and Graham Henderson (accordion and keyboards) were never intrusive and there was no showboating.

Most of the songs were slow, melancholic and introspective, although ‘Brig Manley’ shifted up a gear for a vivid replay of a failed sea rescue in 1871. ‘All for the Sailing Tomorrow’ told of starving Famine folk escaping through Drogheda to Liverpool. ‘The Porcupine’ explored the notion that ships from Turkey brought aid to Ireland through Drogheda, with a love story adding spice to the tale. ‘Recovery’ paid due homage to voluntary sea rescue services, and the stirring ‘Shore Leave’ told of the death of a sailor driven crazy from being confined on a vessel and dying trying to get off.

If you were unfortunate enough to miss this gig, its songspiel forms the basis of McArdle’s new album Old Ghosts in the Water and includes the fine musicians who brought these terrific songs to Wexford. Go fetch.

PILGRIM STREET

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday, November 17th, 2023

This was my fourth time to see Pilgrim Street in County Wexford and it continued their upward trajectory with their most polished concert to date.

The band hail from Navan, and with seven accomplished musicians toting a shopful of instruments, four of whom can sing solo or contribute to rich four-part harmonies, they delivered another rich cocktail of Country, Bluegrass, Folk and Americana, plus classy originals by the band themselves.

That they did it all so effortlessly and with such good humour added to the pleasure, with nothing over-cooked and nothing underdone.  Brendan Kelly’s accordion added plaintive tones to their own ‘Jimmy’s Deflation’ and guitarist Peadar Farrelly’s unerring lead vocals, while their heartfelt ‘Hurt People Hurt People’ saw the band built up a fine head of steam, with some tasty slide guitar from Mark Lynch to boot. Another notable original was ‘How Can a Man Be Happy’ based on a true-life incident in a pub.

Pilgrim Street have an uncanny knack of picking the right covers, including a thoughtful reworking of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Emerald’.  Eoin McDonnell on mandolin and vocals took Albert Brumley’s 1920’s hymn ‘I’ll Fly Away’ to another place, and they did trusty favourites ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’ and ‘Roll in My Swet Baby’s Arms’. They encored with their slow, emotive twist on ‘When the Saints Go Marchin’ In’.

It can be a novelty to hear Irish musicians sing American songs without resorting to counterfeit twangs. In other hands, their line-up of banjo, bass, accordion, mandolin, fiddle and three guitars might result in clutter, but not tonight.  To a full Wexford Arts Centre, Pilgrim Street brought music from the heart that touches the soul. It was a great night, but they’ll be back, won’t they? In the meantime, they have their second album due for release to keep us all occupied.

They extended their gratitude to Olchan Kirwan on sound and John Stokes on front of house without whom etc.

ABRIDGED TOO FAR – The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” Wexford Drama Group

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, October 26th, 2023

Imagine a collision between slapstick, Monty Python, The Goons, Father Ted and er, Mr Shakespeare and the carnage that would ensue, and that gets you maybe halfway towards an understanding of Wexford Drama Group’s hysterical and hilarious presentation.

Did it have a plot, or did it have too many plots? Either way it was a laugh-a-second stew that had its three performers, Dylan Walsh, Ruth Donegan and Pat Sinnott, taking a totally irreverent dip into bits of The Bard’s works as well as matters that had nothing to do with him at all. And the audience were too busy laughing, and even joining in as requested, to care.

Any student thinking it might be useful to get them through their Leaving Cert English Literature exams would be advised to think again. Some mature scholars are believed to know Shakespeare’s work backwards, but tonight we had some of it actually performed backwards in a special segment towards the end. At times we were taken through bewildering sequences of costume changes and inexcusable bouts of gross overacting that left one quite breathless.

Nor did we have time to note how many of Shakespeare’s 37 plays were actually quoted from or abridged within its timespan of two hours, including a most essential break, presumably in accordance with health and safety regulations. Totally implausible props, horrendous wigs and very bendable swords and daggers, added to the merriment. Titus Andronicus was presented as a cooking show and that may have been an attempted rendering of bits of Macbeth but was too incomprehensible to be sure.

This might well have been the funniest show ever presented live on an Irish stage, but the only way to be sure would be to catch any time you see it on. You owe it to yourself.

TO BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING – Brian Brody and the Ghost Ensemble

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday, October 21st, 2023

It’s a treat to encounter new artists at the Wexford Arts Centre who have the talent, ambition and the vision to avoid the obvious. Such was the premier performance of Brian Brody and the Ghost Ensemble, incorporating Musici Ireland and Simon Quigley.  

It was hard to believe that he had only rehearsed with Musici Ireland for the first time that day as the interplay between the quartet, Brody’s guitars, especially the electric, and Quigley’s versatile keyboards often wove a magical spell. For two numbers they were joined by Wexford singer Anita Mahon who brought yet one more dimension to the event.

Brody has a winning on-stage persona allied to a rich baritone voice and an impressive bag of songs. Apart from a short segue into The Beach Boys ‘God Only Knows’ and a faithful version of Scott Walker’s ‘Duchess’ all songs were originals dealing with serious subjects, from love to mental health issues. A beguiling cello lead the way into ‘Alone’, a lockdown song about serious depression, while ‘Against the Demons’ dealt with a similar topic and Quigley’s swelling synth breathed real fire into ‘This Hell I Roam’. ‘To Die with A Smile’ linked some Leonard Cohenisms with Edith Piaf, while ‘Black Romance’, Painting Skies’ and ‘A Lover’s Lullaby’ were all big winners with the Wexford Arts Centre audience, as was Quigley’s own ‘Secondary Citizens’, laden as it is with relevant contemporary social and political observations.

Brody’s work has been compared with Elvis Costello’s Juliette Letters but he has a broader vocal range than Costello and a warmth that takes him closer to the afore-mentioned Cohen and Walker while retaining his artistic individuality.  There was every sense that those who attended the first staging of these songs were in at the beginning of something quite intriguing. We will be watching where it all leads.

MASK – A Play by Paul O’Reilly

Presentation Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, October 12th, 2023

It’s often the little things that emphasise how dramatically times have changed. This one-man monologue by Fintan Kelly had a blow-up doll in a passive, supporting roll, possibly the first time such an object has been visible in what was a convent chapel when the Presentation Centre was ruled by an order of nuns.

As Oscar Wilde said, “Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth”, and Paul O’Reilly’s play underscores Oscar’s observation, as “Buster”, wearing a mask throughout, uses a visit back to his hometown to explore his past and confront some demons, not least when he encounters memories and disappointments prompted by his former childhood home.

Other unsettling thoughts are evoked when he plays taped recordings from his past while also dealing with his feisty Italian girl-friend Lucia who is pregnant with their child. In some respects, you suspect that Buster’s career as a clown in a circus might in some ways act as a barrier for his unwillingness to grow up. Behind every clown often lurks a sad person, and Kelly caught O’Reilly’s character right, adding in a few treble-entendres and funny asides as if to further cloak the reality behind the mask.

The piano music in the background captured the shifting moods of the text and The Presentation audience were rapt from start to finish, granting Kelly a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.  It takes a particular kind of magic to hold an audience for that length of time with no let-ups. Kelly did it.

CASSIOPEIA WINDS – French Lessons from Superb Wind Ensemble

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday, September 30th, 2023

The relatively new policy of scheduling events for the afternoons is proving to be a surprising hit for the Wexford Arts Centre to judge by the audience responses each one has so far attracted, and this latest recital by Cassiopeia Winds was yet another unqualified success. This quintet of Ireland’s leading wind players from the classical field, (on flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn), also gave the attentive audience the relatively rare opportunity to hear the natural sounds of those instruments played free of technological enhancement, not least because none was needed.

Cassiopeia Winds’ approach was focused on exposing the melodic aspect of a varied selection of works by French composers from the current century back to the late 1800s. They brought a particular delicacy to two works by Maurice Ravel, ‘Pavane pour une infante défunte’ and ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’. They also included pieces by Claude Arrieu, Jean Françaix, Francis Poulenc and Jean-Michel Damase. Poulenc’s ‘Novelette’ had a spiky wit to it offset nicely by the homeliness of the ensemble’s playing.

Members of the quintet were generous in their explanations of the backgrounds to the pieces played, a practice that other ensembles might wisely adapt when playing works outside the scope of classical music’s greatest hits. All in all, this was a super experience that both the musicians and the audience seemed to enjoy in equal measure.

NO CROWS – Another Away Win for The Wickham Wanderers

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday, September 16th, 2023

Towards the latter part of the band’s first ever gig in Wexford, Steve Wickham sang his own fine song ‘Fearful Man’. It could make a perfect anthem for these times when just about everything is presented to us as something to fear, not only foreign people, but even plants from abroad are now “invasive”.

It’s straight rock-folk style contrasted with an enthralling set that was much lauded for the extravagant dexterity of the six band members on fiddles, guitars, mandolin, cello and vocals. Although the tunes were nearly all originals, they were spiced with influences from abroad to form a genuine Euro-trad style that linked Sligo with Russia and Turkey and cultures in between.

‘Troy’ was inspired, if that’s the word, by a visit to a Turkish nightclub, and the audience were encouraged by Felip Carbonell to join in a Catalan tune. Wickham delivered a song in a convincing French style about a man he met called Pascal. Carbonell opened the second half with an emotional version of a Victor Jara song to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary to the day the Chilean poet and singer was murdered by the dictator General Pinochet.   

Singer and mandolinist Anna Houston explained how lockdown spawned the creation of a frisky jig written within sight of Knocknarea Mountain in Sligo and named in the mountain’s honour. The song ‘Rosaleen’ had a touch of Scullion about parts of it and other gems from the night included ‘The Serpent’s Head’, The Sleeping Giant’, ‘Blame It on The Good Times’ and ‘Cormac’s Fancy’, the last-named a reprise of a track from their first album 18 years ago. It was a good one.

SO SAY SO featuring Steven Camden – Poetry in Motion

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, September 14th, 2023

Dublin poet and Wexford-based rhyming ringmaster Stephen James Smith has struck a chord with the reading public with his monthly series So Say So which features a guest star poet each time and invariably sells out in advance. The five-word audience participation open-mic section also seems to have its keen fans.

But this time the star attraction was Steven Camden, Birmingham-born and now resident in London, whose individual blend of story-telling in verse, rap poetry, disarming observations and humour had the Wexford Arts Centre riveted throughout his 45-minute performance.

For this indeed was poetry in performance, rather than merely being read, as Camden was aided and abetted by the inventive musical backdroppings of Cillian and Lorcan Byrne of Kilmore Quay band Basciville using electric guitar, keyboards and percussion. In fact, Camden’s graphic visual imagery allied to their playing at times was almost like seeing an improvised film in the making.

Our own dear Patrick Kavanagh made much of the importance of the local, and Camden also spins literary gold from the minutiae of normal life in poems like ‘It’s About Love’, ‘Anyone’ and ‘First Day’, the last-named about his first impressions of school, including the imposing building itself.

And if some older members of the audience failed to catch the references to contemporary rap culture then they’ll just have to pay closer attention, won’t they?

The next So Say So will take place on October 12th and will feature Ceara Conway whose performances mix traditional Irish and World music folk songs with contemporary vocal compositions and visual art.

BUNNY BUNNY – Down the Rabbit Hole

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday, September 9th, 2023

Nora Kelly Lester’s one-woman show was that rarity, an event that in itself was so captivating that questions as to what it was about or did it have a message or was it some kind of commentary on the lot of women in today’s society, were outshone by the sheer exuberance of her performance and the delight the enraptured Wexford Arts Centre audience took from it.

Lester was dressed throughout in a one-piece bathing costume, a functional hat that a cook or chef might wear, a pair of heels and a clown’s red nose. She brought us a remarkable repertoire of funny noises that turned a scene with a baby (played by a small teddy-bear) into one of wonderful hilarity.  She uncannily conjured even more laughs with another scene in which she told an imaginary child a story in Danish. Was it really Danish or was it an ersatz language decked out with extraordinary noises? Did anyone care? It was fabulously funny either way.

At times Lester played a woman lost and confused about her possible choices, at others she was dealing with relationships with men she didn’t want, or did but maybe they didn’t want her, but who knew. At times she engaged the audience in helping to word letters to people who might have been real or mere phantoms. That didn’t matter either, as the hour-long show was so appealing that your eyes and ears were riveted on her throughout.

Not for the first time I was captivated by a presentation at the WAC that I did not fully understand and may even have missed its central point. But then there are many aspects of life I don’t understand but that doesn’t seem to matter much either in the overall scheme of things.

So if you get the chance go see Bunny Bunny and prepare to love both it and Nora Kelly Lester. It’ll do you good.   

THE REAL MERLIN – The Magic of Music

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday, September 1st, 2023

It’s become a questionable cliché, but sometimes it’s true that music has enormous powers as a unifying force across all sorts of human boundaries, and this was one of those experiences that proved it.

With a sextet of musicians drawn from various parts of the Celtic realm, this multi-lingual presentation was part theatre and story-telling held together by some wonderful music and songs.

Sean-nós singer Lorcan Mac Mathúna played a key role, and the Welsh dimension was represented by singer-poets Twm Morys and Gwyneth Glyn, ably supported by Maeve Mackinnon and Dave Tunstall from Scotland, alongside Andy May from Northumbria.

Merlin features in the cultures of the Celtic nations under different names (in Ireland he appears as Mad Sweeney, once king of Dal Araidhe), and whose stories tend to intertwine and echo each other in parts. And the music was similarly woven together into a delightful tapestry with pipes, percussion, keyboards and guitars, not to forget the knock-out harmonies in Irish, Gaelic and Welsh. Not to be outdone, the Wexford Arts Centre joined in as requested with lusty noises from the animal world, even if some of those animals might not have been heard much around here, or anywhere!

I suspect we might have learned more about the real Merlin as well as the provenance of the musical instruments and the songs through a more conventional presentational structure. Yet nothing can detract from the quality of the performances and the blending of music from several cultures that made it all a magical experience that the Wexford Arts Centre audience truly relished.

CLASSICAL FIREWORKS ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON – Anton Jablokov (violin) with – Stefano Moccetti (guitar) and special guest – Vladimir Jablokov (violin)

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Sunday, June 19th, 2023

That Slovakian violinist Anton and Swiss guitarist Moccetti featured several brilliantly executed Irish tunes, including ‘King of The Fairies’ and ‘The Star of the County Down’, was an unexpected bonus during a magnificent concert of virtuoso performances. Guest brother Vladimir joined them for a very expressive ‘Danny Boy’.

But then the wizardry of this duo, and guest brother Vladimir (long resident in Ireland) is rapidly spreading far and wide, so much so that they attracted a full house to the Wexford Arts Centre on a sweltering hot Sunday afternoon. Anton wooed the audience with his technical expertise allied to an ability to add drama and emotion to his playing at every turn.  His modesty and playfully self-deprecating manner endeared him to the audience even more. Moccetti was equally adept on guitar, appearing to anticipate instinctively Anton’s every twist and turn.

Together they gave us memorable performances of works by de Falla, Albeniz, Saint-Saens and Paganini among others, and also proved their virtuosity on the original composition front with a couple of sparkling originals. Indeed, not only did they treat us to an exquisite piece by Paganini but Anton gave us a history lesson about the composer’s visit to Ireland in the 1830s for gigs at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Another less common feature of classical concerts came when Anton asked the audience for questions which they duly delivered.

The duo ended with a couple of South American favourites, bringing what was a veritable musical tour to an exciting and satisfying close.  That all three musicians made no secret of their enjoyment of the music and the occasion was another added bonus. This was a hot one in more ways than one!

RADIO GAGA – The Last Stand

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, June 8th, 2023

Mining the style of a standard shock-jock radio programme, The Last Stand broadcast revolves primarily around megamouth jock Tom Hooks, energetically played by Morgan C. Jones, whose provocative stance is designed to bring tempers to boiling point and beyond. He’s also the recipient of bad news yet manages to make fun of his plight as he launches into his last programme. His technical assistant, more spare part than sidekick, played by Dylan Kennedy, gets a few laughs too. Callers to the programme, played by Michael Dunbar, Sharon Clancy and Jack Matthews, are convincingly authentic foils and targets for Hooks’ abuse, jokes and knowallisms.  

Directed by Ben Barnes for Four Rivers Theatre Company, the witty script by Dominic Palmer comes replete with stock expletives but nicely balances its humour with serious topics. Perhaps unwittingly, it challenges the “it’s good to talk” philosophy and actually underscores the view that getting those with opposing views to share their thoughts can just as often stir up enmity and widen, rather than heal, societal divisions. This occurs with Hooks’ on-air confrontation with fictional caller “Keith from Wexford” which soon degenerates into the by now traditional bout of name-calling. But what most seemed to catch the ear of the WAC audience was the role of caller Carol as played by Sharon Clancy who injected a hysterical level of hilarity to create a character who deserves to be developed elsewhere. And Clancy wasn’t even on the stage!

So far so funny. But matters move up a few notches when Fair City star Fiona Browne as Hooks’ sympathetic and arguably wittier partner Sarah, gatecrashes his fiefdom to turn the tables by interviewing him and getting somewhat under his skin.  Just as he does with his listeners.  

IMELDA KEHOE WINS HEARTS AND MINDS – Imelda Kehoe and Kevin Lawlor Trio, with Mick Egan

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, May 18th, 2023

There’s a charming homeliness about an Imelda Kehoe concert that almost has you expecting a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. And we even got to sing a collective “Happy Birthday” to Kevin Lawlor’s grandnan!

Kehoe also brought us a taut selection of songs, mostly her own creations from her three much-acclaimed albums, hinting that her earlier nomadic life left her with an acute draw towards places and people. Thus, we had ‘Thirty Miles West of Denver’ and ‘Ohio’, the latter inspired by Sebastian Barry’s novel Days Without End. Her relatively recent composition, the haunting ‘Morecambe Bay’, came as a tasty duet with Mick Egan, and her country pop offering of ‘Chicago’ worked a treat too. Another impressive “song of place” was ‘House of Flowers’, arising from a visit to the memorial house in Belgrade for the late Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito.

There’s a compassionate human truth at the core of all Kehoe’s own work, not least with the emotional ‘75 Beats’ that memorialises the passing of a sibling. But she showed how she could just as effortlessly apply her skills to a number of covers. Her version of the Everly Brothers ‘Let It Be Me’ captured the spirit of the original while also making room her own stamp. Even more impactful was her take on Michael Murphy’s excellent ‘Where to Now’, also duetted with Egan.

Nearly all songs on the night were on the slow and thoughtful side apart from the planned finale ‘Best Hire Amy’ which had a welcome touch of Tamla Motown about it. We could have done with a couple more.

Aided and abetted by the accomplished Kevin Lawlor Trio and guitar maestro Egan, Kehoe’s easy stage presence and confident delivery made for an intimate musical experience that the audience lapped up. All in all, this was a concert well worth leaving the house for, even without the tea and biscuit.

A M COUSINS GOES OUT

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, May 18th, 2023

Wexford poet AM Cousins came up with a neat format for her poetry recital What We Wear When We Go Out at the Wexford Arts Centre, linking her openly accessible poems about everyday love, life and lore to a selection of specific items of clothing such as her mother’s wedding dress and her grandfather’s overcoat. Photo visuals included such poignant items as a Garda hat, and a holy medal.  There were occasional segments of music to create a room brimful of warmth for an eager audience who were enthralled throughout the forty minutes.

In her clear and companionable voice Cousins recites her poems (and one essay) like she loves every sinew and bone of them. She can skilfully distil the key moments of her life into poems that once said stay said. ‘Cowhouse’ hints at routine farmyard duties running through an undercurrent of family love. ‘Mac’, recalling anxious nights rescuing her teenage daughter from late-night discoland, evokes some good-humoured laughs, ‘Tarmac’ is a chilling memorial to the shooting dead of Garda Adrian Donohoe and ‘Once’ recalls what her husband was wearing when they first met. But most provocative of all was ‘Baby Clothes’, recounting the meeting of a birth mother and her adopted daughter which shows how not all gaps can be bridged no matter how earnestly we try. Pathos is added by the tiny Babygro garment with a rabbit design in which the mite was dressed pre-adoption.

The short musical inserts included perennial favourites such as the Rabby Burns song/poem ‘My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose’ and ‘True Love’. Olchan Kirwan’s skills on sound always add to the pleasure of an occasion, but it was Cousins and her honest clarity that made this such a human and memorable event. I was not the only one hoping that the Wexford Arts Centre might put on more events in the during daylight.  

ONE WOMAN TOUR DE FORCE – Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom

Performed by Aedin Moloney, Adapted from Ulysses by Aedin Moloney and Colum McCann

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, May 4th, 2023

Yes. This three-way collaboration (Joyce, Moloney, McCann) is based on the final section of Ulysses, but so vivid, humorous and human is Aedin Moloney’s performance that Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom at the WAC requires minimal prior acquaintance with Joyce’s once-banned “durty buke”.

All you have to do is watch and listen, and she takes you wherever you need to go.

Throughout the show Molly is dressed only in a simple light white dress as she recuperates in her boudoir after a day and a night of sex. She internally reminisces about her early years in Gibraltar, her life as a woman, the strangeness of men, her singing, her desires and her relationship with her husband Leopold “Poldy” Bloom.

In the process she circles around from frustration to bawdy humour amid explicit street references to body parts and idle gossip. Whereas Joyce’s vulgar language so disgusted Ireland’s moral guardians that it was not a good idea to admit that you had any knowledge of the book at all, in Moloney’s astute rendering it all comes across as colourful banter as if she was gifting us the liberty to enjoy it. Which we certainly did.

Moloney’s performance is an impressive feat of memory over a non-stop stretch of ninety minutes. She has the flexibility to inject the script with an endless variety of nuances that turn it into verbal music as her monologue becomes a kind of release for Molly.   

Moloney can sing too, hardly surprising given that her father was the late Paddy Moloney who composed a backdrop of subtle Irish tunes to accompany this work.

In lesser hands than Moloney and McCann, the final 40-odd pages of Ulysses could have become a tedious, literal transference from page to mouth, but instead Moloney delivers a Molly brimful of as much humanness as one body can contain. All you can say is “yes”.

KEVIN LAWLOR TRIO – A MEETING OF JAZZ GENERATIONS

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Sunday, April 30, 2023

Before the main event we were invited to meet the new generation of Wexford jazz musicians, in the form of two combos comprising Senior Jazz and Youth students from the County Wexford School of Music. The former gave us an impressively fluid ‘Blue Bossa’ by Texan Trumpeter Kenny Dorham, rearranged for sax, piano, bass and drums, before the latter supplied a slinky rhythmic treatment to ‘Red Room’ by Australian jazz funksters Hiatus Kaiyote. Their line-up of drums, bass and piano also included a vocalist of serious promise.   

They made way for drummer Kevin Lawlor, Welsh pianist Dave Jones and German bassist Florian Kockott, each of them already popular figures with the Wexford Arts Centre audience. They kicked off with Lawlor’s own early composition ‘Talk to Me’, and quickly settled into their comfort zone. They took the late American saxist Wayne Shorter’s ‘Juju’ across the borders of romanticism into a slightly more exploratory field.

The trio were joined by Melanie O’Reilly who proved she can apply her warm and expressive voice to contemporary numbers as impressively as she does to the standards. Her ‘Wonderful Time for Love’ by Norah Jones was truly superb. She played up the cheekiness of Eryka Badu’s ‘Green Eyes’ to entertaining effect and the WAC audience loved it.    

Lawlor’s own ‘Jugglers Despair’ and Jones’ ‘The Leopard’ added further to the event’s pleasures and another fine night of jazz in Wexford was complete, with many kudos deserving to go to in-house soundman Olchan Kirwan. Lawlor has a welcome instinct for presenting jazz in an accessible way without making the slightest concession to the highest standards, and he has an unerring knack for picking ace musicians to play alongside. He’s a real local treasure, and the Wexford Arts Centre audience know it.

MCEVOY ENDS WORLD TOUR WITH WEXFORD TRIUMPH – ELEANOR MCEVOY

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday, April 29, 2023

Early in the set I wondered why I (and we?) often tend to compare solo artists with others of the same gender when I realised that Eleanor McEvoy has an ability to marry lyrics and words a la Paul Simon. How weirdly appropriate that the interval music at the Wexford Arts Centre turned out to be by the very man!

From the off, McEvoy had been in fiery form, delivering a set that was a rewarding mix of anger, joy, stories, fun, original gems and thoughtful cover versions, as she moved effortlessly from guitar to piano and fiddle.

The anger came straight off with ‘Found Out by Fate’, a song about infidelity co-written with Paul Brady for her album Gimme Some Wine and that hopefully helped exorcise that particular ghost. That album also provided ‘South Anne Street’, ‘The Spanish Word for Heart’ and Survival’ to an audience hanging on every word and note. She also dedicated ‘Scarlet Angels’ to Breda Murphy, a former neighbour in Tagoat.

From the piano we got the graphic tale of ‘Sophia’ struggling with anorexia, and ‘Harbour’, aching with vulnerability, while ‘The Way You Wear Your Troubles’ proved the white lady can really sing (and play) the blues.

The covers also offered evidence of McEvoy’s impressive ability to cross genres. Thus, we got a punked-up version of PF Sloan’s sixties anti-war ‘Eve of Destruction’, as relevant today as ever, as indeed is Curtis Mayfield’s soulful ‘People Get Ready’ offering a hopeful escape from endemic American racism. A more contemporary ‘I Got Lucky’ from Daft Punk came with added guitar percussion, we were treated to a gloriously dramatic run-through of Edith Piaf’s ‘Milord’ from the piano, and The Pointer Sisters ‘Slow Hand’ became a seduction tour de force.

Her dexterity at the fiddle on ‘Carolan’s Concerto’ wasn’t lost on the audience either, but she wasn’t going home without her flagship number ‘Only A Woman’s Heart’ and the audience needed little coaxing to join in. They’d be there still if they’d been let.

PRIME PRINE AT THE WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE – BRUISED ORANGE

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday, April 22, 2023

There’s a risk with tribute acts that they can become a parody of the act they are supposedly paying tribute to by trying to ape a singing style and exaggerate every vocal nuance. Not so with Bruised Orange when they delivered a delightful set of songs from the catalogue of the late Illinois country star John Prine at the Wexford Arts Centre.

Their frontman Mike Mack McGarry has a natural voice that fits snugly around Prine’s songs that offer a hard-headed view of white working-class America. In a dark room he could easily be mistaken for the late American country-folk singer too, such is his physical resemblance.

The full house at the Wexford Arts Centre lapped it all up. It helped that McGarry had a crack band (named after Prine’s 1978 album) who delivered faithful renditions of Prine’s work. Anthony Toby Cregan on lead guitar impressed with his crisply played fills and solos. Bandmates Derek Matthews on bass, Steve Milne on keyboards and Shay Carry on drums hardly put a note wrong throughout a generously lengthy set that was light on needless patter and heavy on sheer musical talent.

McGarry gave us some equally engaging solo efforts including the “agony-aunt” send-up of ‘Dear Abby’ and ‘The Great Compromise’, about female infidelity. Milne’s keyboards added pathos to the searingly anti-drug ‘Sam Stone’ before the band re-joined for a magnificent ‘Hello in There’. Other essential Prine gems treated to a fine night out in Wexford included his Bonnie Raitt duet ‘Angel from Montgomery’, the cheeky self-deprecating ‘Illegal Smile’, his song about rural decay ‘Paradise’, Please Don’t Bury Me’, Souvenirs’ and the Nanci Griffith hit ‘Speed of the Sound of Loneliness’.

I was disappointed not to hear ‘In Spite of Ourselves’, but all in all this was a superlative show on every level, and McGarry’s deferential modesty and lack of showboating made it even more enjoyable. Enhanced by the pristine sound production we have come to expect at the WAC, we had a tribute night that did what it said on the tin.

AMONGST MEN – Play by Eoghan Rua Finn

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday, April 6, 2023

It was timely that this play about the long-term hangover from the Irish Civil War was staged just when there much celebration about the 25^th anniversary of the now-fraught Good Friday Agreement. One might even speculate that while the latter might be unravelling, in some circumstances the Civil War goes on forever.

It’s 1969 and Aine, magnificently played by Noelle Brown, is an angry mother still fighting that war and living with her son Sean (Dylan Kennedy) who teaches at the local primary school. The school is governed by Father Connick (Arthur Riordan), a convincing throwback to the bullying power-wielding priest of yore whose disdain of the modern world is delivered with a typical “my way is the only way”, trampling on the views of anyone who opposes him including the likes of Aine. Into that fiery cauldron comes Goff the politician (Mark Lambert).

Aine did time in Cumann na mBan and holds to her beliefs in the face of all opposition. In her own way she’s as entrenched as the priest, while Goff is as pliable as the stereotypical opportunistic politician bending in whatever direction suits him. Hearing that the priest wants to allow Goff to address Sean’s class of 10-year-olds she demands equal time, and Sean reluctantly does so, landing himself in hot water with the priest who must be obeyed.

Given my own Catholic working-class upbringing I wasn’t convinced that her defiant use of foul language was acceptable in such quarters even at the end of the freewheeling sixties, but she had been independent enough to have had Sean out of wedlock.

The intelligent set design enabled the action to move swiftly from scene to scene, and the impeccable sound was an added treat. The Wexford Arts Centre audience gave it a much-deserved standing ovation.

The big question Eoghan Rua Finn’s gripping play pointedly asks is “when does any war end? Indeed, does it ever truly end?” Despite the somewhat stock characters, Finn’s dialogue demands your attention through every word and gesture, and Deirdre Dwyer’s taut direction deserves equal credit on that front. The Wexford Arts Centre gave it a much-deserved standing ovation.

NORTHERN VOICES MAKE TRIUMPHANT WEXFORD DEBUTS –

JOSHUA BURNSIDE/CIARA O’NEILL

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden  – Saturday, April 1, 2023

It was truly satisfying that for their Wexford debuts Joshua Burnside and Ciara O’Neill from Northern Ireland attracted such a sizeable and appreciative audience.

O’Neill from Belfast set the scene with a set of fetching songs delivered by her warm and expressive voice. She has a relaxed stage persona and the ability to make the listener feel that she not merely sings them but actually inhabits her songs. Admitting to a fondness for themed EPs and accompanied for the most part by her own acoustic guitar and Laura Quirke on cello, her most memorable efforts were ‘La Lune’, ‘Sister’ and ‘Mother’, the last-named written with Ciaran Lavery.

BLUES AT ITS BEST AT THE WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE – DON BAKER

Wexford Arts Centre

Report by Jackie Hayden  – Saturday, March 11, 2023

UKRAINE DUO ENJOY WEXFORD DEBUT – Krapka; KOMA plus guests

Wexford Arts Centre

Report by Jackie Hayden  – Friday, March 10, 2023

First out of the traps for this all-female show was local singer/songwriter Ayda. She sang her current single ‘Training Session’ and ‘Love’s Consent’, both having previously impressed, but she also revealed a worthy new work in ‘A Thousand Songs’. For Ayda, whose confidence seems to grow with every gig, surely the only way is up.

Ayda was followed by the electronic duo Pixi Ink and Betty Boo who presented a dazzling mix of treated vocals, electronica loops and beats, triphop and alt-Pop, adorned with live vocals against a backdrop of swirling fast-paced images. Most of their presentation on the night was admirably anti-cliché, arhythmical and decidedly non-mainstream.  

Krapka;KOMA, comprising Ira Lobanok and Alona Kovalenko, are a versatile duo from war-torn Lviv in Ukraine. They both sing and they use electronic drums, keyboards, synths, guitar, and trumpet. They make it all blend into a mesmerising melange of songs that often float free of any restrictive conventional structure. Along the way the appreciative Wexford Arts Centre audience seemed enchanted by their electronic soundscapes tinged with elements of trip-hop, indie electronica and jazz. The songs that best connected with the audience included ‘Times Not Real’, ‘Sweet Distraction’, Kaleidoscope’ and ‘Standing Firm’. Both members played, spoke and sang with good humour and a sense of enjoyment often missing from some exponents of indie music.

THE FATHER-INSIDE THE WORLD OF DEMENTIA

Wexford Arts Centre

Report by Jackie Hayden – Thursday February 16, 2023

Traditionally regarded as a family embarrassment best kept concealed, Dementia has become one of the topics of the day, from the central character Elizabeth in the Conor McPherson/Bob Dylan musical Girl from The North Country, to to-night’s presentation of The Father by Florian Zeller directed by Paul Walsh for Wexford Drama Group. 

Arguably, Dementia is the main character in this play. The eponymous father Andre, played superbly by Andy Doyle, is an old man in Paris struggling with a world slipping beyond his comprehension. Seona O’Connor plays his dutiful and stressed daughter Anne at a loss as to how to deal with his diminishing grasp of reality. In turn, her husband Pierre is more detached and eventually his lack of patience turns to violence against the hapless Pierre. Bronagh Hogan plays a nurse who convincingly seems able to cope with Andre’s apparent unreasonableness.

Under Walsh’s direction we get a clear sense of the divided world the sufferer lives in, with Andre’s view of reality not helped by his fading memory and his inability or unwillingness to cope with a succession of nurses he’s convinced he doesn’t need, or even to remember where he left his watch.

The lack of real glimpses of the world outside Andre’s apartment emphasises the claustrophobic nature of dementia.  It also, one assumes deliberately, parallels his increasing sense of bewilderment with our own as we alternate between sympathy and irritation at characters at sea in a situation beyond their control. Scenes are divided by short bursts of flashing lights and appropriately abrasive noises.

The play serves as a useful and timely reminder of what can lie ahead for all of us, whether as sufferers, spouses or family members. The cast deserved the fulsome standing ovation the Wexford Arts Centre gave them.   

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ALL THAT JAZZ, AND MORE – THE LAWLOR-LEIGHTON-KOCKETT TRIO

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday February 4, 2023

This event attracted a full house at the WAC for what was not just a memorable evening of jazz but a musical experience par excellence.

Drummer Kevin Lawlor has built up a solid jazz following in the south-east, mostly through gigs that are provocatively creative while working mostly within the flexible confines of modern jazz. To-night’s gig saw him join forces with Derry guitarist Joseph Leighton, the veritable new kid on the Irish jazz block, and German bassist Florian Kockott.  They presented a tight programme of original tunes and interpretations of works drawn from the canon of popular music that held the audience spellbound.   

Leighton was highly impressive throughout, his calm confidence, the absence of showbiz bluster and his fluid playing belying his youthfulness. He can slip so seamlessly from complex chordal sequences to intricate lines of melody to take the listener somewhere else. His talents as an inventive writer were explored on his own ‘Mindsweeper’ and ‘Submerged’, the latter kick-started by expressive solo work. His fiery playing on his own ‘Doggy Dreams’ cut loose beyond the jazz realm into Jimi Hendrix/Radiohead pyrotechnics to the delight of the audience.

There was a balance too with Kockott and Lawlor able to match his guitar wizardry at every turn. Kockott shone through on Joe Henderson’s ‘Serenity’ while Lawlor stepped up for his own ‘Socks’ and was also riding high on Arthur Altman’s ‘All Or Nothing at All’.  The trio collectively brought a winning bossa nova style to the oldie ‘You’re My Everything’ too.

The clarity of the playing was an added highlight emphasised by the impeccable in-house production that added to the overall experience. That the show concluded with a spontaneous standing ovation from the Wexford Arts Centre audience was clear evidence that this had been a night to remember.   

Songs in the Key of Life – SARAH McQUAID

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday January 26, 2023

When pressed about their songs being about real experiences, performer-songwriters tend to explain that they’re a mix of reality and fantasy. But Sarah McQuaid, once of Co Wexford and now residing in Cornwall, openly explains how some of her songs were inspired by real events and people, often setting the scene for a song by retelling its source of inspiration. Perhaps it’s that sense of real life that gives them their immediacy.

One of those songs was a highlight of her return visit to the WAC. ‘If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous’, recorded for its eponymous album, was inspired by watching her young son through the kitchen window as he dug a hole in the garden. It has a repetitive hookline that takes up residence in the brain. Another gem from that album is ‘The Silence Above Us’ which she also delivered with her appealing brown voice. It celebrates the night sky while also being conscious of what’s happening down here on the ground. She dipped into her recent sixth album, the live The St Bunyan Sessions, for a fetching piano-based take on Michael Chapman’s ‘Rabbit Hills’ and went back to her third album for a co-write with Gerry O’Beirne called ‘So Much Rain’ (yes, much of it was written in Ireland).

Apart from her sumptuous singing, McQuaid is also renowned for her acoustic guitar playing, especially in the DADGAD tuning, and piano.  But tonight she added electric guitar for a whole new parcel of sonic options, including the instrumental ‘The Day of Wrath’.   

She was supported on the night by local singer Ayda who is inordinately talented for a 14-year-old, most notably in the vocals and song writing departments. Her new single ‘Training Session’ impresses more with each hearing, and her other songs, including one written mere days before the gig, proves she’s no one-trick pony, and the Wexford Arts Centre wasn’t slow to show their appreciation for her, as they did for Sarah McQuaid.

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FURLONG’S WARMTH DRIVES THE COLD WINTER AWAY

Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday January 21, 2023

Despite the travails brought by the lockdowns, musicians are still happy to perform charity gigs, and this one in aid of the County Wexford Hospice brought a deservedly standing-room-only audience. They were well-rewarded with a performance by local boy Ronan Furlong that was full of warmth and passion channelled through the dexterity of his guitar playing and his supple vocal styles.

But first up was Shane Ryan, from the band Yola Woods, setting the mood with a handful of songs that were ideal vehicles for his sturdy and expressive voice. His own ‘Foolish’ and ‘Senseless’, as well as a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’, scored well with the audience.

Furlong’s set was a classy mix of songs from his own five albums and covers.  Of the originals, ‘Redeemer’ (from his latest album The Hive Mind’s Holiday) is arguably his most instantly accessible track, while ‘Mystic Mountain’ enables him to share his emersion in music from the Middle East and thereabouts. ‘Seneca Said’ was inspired by the writings of the ancient philosopher and reflects Furlong’s interest in Ancient Rome. In contrast, his ‘The King of Leaves’ comes with lyrics that make it enormously relevant to climate change issues.

The flexibility of his voice in both the upper and lower registers also shone through Furlong’s range of covers culled from several genres, including pop, country, folk and heavy metal, all delivered with style and panache. Of these the stand-outs were ‘Kathy’s Song’ from the Simon and Garfunkel catalogue, ‘The Night Visiting Song’ (Luke Kelly), Wind of Change (Scorpions), ‘A Boy Named Sue’ (Johnny Cash) and ‘Will You Go, Lassie, Go’ (Liam Clancy).

Furlong is arguably Wexford’s best-kept secret. His music regularly features on international on-line stations and the BBC have also dipped into his catalogue. Here at home, three of his albums have featured in the end of year “best ofs” in Hot Press, Ireland’s premier music magazine. However, the warmth of his reception at the Wexford Arts Centre suggests that this prophet is finally been honoured in his own county. For further evidence check out his video for ‘Redeemer’ with its tantalising shots of the Wexford countryside. And stay warm

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BUDDY WAKEFIELD

Wexford Arts Centre

Report by JACKIE HAYDEN – Thursday 12th January, 2023

Buddy Wakefield is an American poet who has been described as the performance poet who has toured most (punk-poet John Cooper Clarke might challenge that), but he’s a poet whose work comes alive on stage, not always the case with poets more at ease in print.

His visit to the WAC was part of the So Say So series hosted by Stephen James Smith before a packed theatre, suggested that the demise of live poetry has been exaggerated. Smith kick-started the evening with two fine readings, Kevin Higgins’ last work ‘I Always Thought I’d Live’ and Pat Ingoldsy’s ‘It’s Okay’. As both deal with aspects of well-being they fitted well into the Therapy Sessions programme supported by First Fortnight.

Wakefield is a striking on-stage presence, and he established a winning rapport with Cillian and Lorcan Byrne from Basciville whose fluid guitar and keyboards added atmospheric shifts that were spot-on for Wakefield’s set and worth hearing in their own right.

The poet came to Wexford as a triple world slam champion and Wexford was ready for his mix of surreal, emotional, and intense delivery, with many laughs dispensed along the way. Pieces as provocative as ‘The Waiter,’ ‘The Snack’ and ‘Farmly’ drew warm applause from the audience.

Sometimes his patter and his work merged seamlessly, and his overall schtick could leave you questioning assumptions in a way that evoked thoughts of the main female character in Cormac McCarthy’s novel Stella Maris. At times he seemed overwhelmed by it all, with moments of anger and dismay at the state of the humanity balanced by humour, determination, and hope. He was open too about his struggles as an adoptee and growing up a gay man in southern USA.

That the WAC audience included acclaimed local poets Peter Murphy and Joe Neal speaks volumes for his importance to modern poetry. All-in-all, this was a rewarding way to kick-start the new year in poetry. The next event in the So Say So series at the Wexford Arts Centre will on February 9^th and will feature Polina Cosgrove originally from Russia but now resident in Arklow, and author of My Name Is.

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LIGHTS OUT-A SEARINGLY INTENSE EXPERIENCE

Wexford Arts Centre

Report by JACKIE HAYDEN – Friday 29th October

Those who have never experienced a traumatic experience of a sexual nature may understandably struggle to fathom the impact it has on the survivor, but such powerhouse performances as the unremitting intensity of Sadhbh Malin (as Dawn) may move them an enlightened step or two closer. That she could remain so firmly in character for a demanding 80 minutes with no interval suggests a talent with much to offer in the years ahead.

Her character Dawn is a former boxer who is clearly carrying a deep, sometimes uncontrollable rage inside her, and so vicious it led her to committing a crime and ending up in jail. She is visited in jail by a “resting” therapist Sorensen, convincingly played by Anthony Brophy. The entire play consists of a series of “rounds” in which the two face off, and you feel so engrossed in the many heart-stopping moments and the interplay between them that you dare not miss a word or a gesture. Those rounds ended with flashing lights and startling and short bursts of drumming a la Paul Simon’s ‘The Obvious Child.’

With illuminating direction by Ben Barnes supported by a new and inventive production team from the south-east called Four Rivers, Lights Out is a chilling debut by local playwright Hannah McNiven. A special nod is also due to lighting designer John Comiskey.

All told, the staging was a fitting work to let the world know that the Wexford Arts Centre is truly back in rude health after a long break for Covid and refurbishments. The new stage lay-out adds to the pleasure and serves as a reminder of how uplifting and enlightening real theatre can be in the right hands and at the right venue.

VALDA CONCERT A DELIGHT

Wexford County Council Offices

Report by JACKIE HAYDEN – Monday 31st October

Sometimes in music the simple things work best. Valda’s lunchtime Halloween concert promoted by the Wexford Arts Centre at the Wexford County Council Offices open space was a classy display of what the human voice can do on its own with no adornments. It also offered clear evidence of how the popular octet’s expressive vocal talents can be gainfully applied to songs from different genres and music from several centuries.

The eight singers lifted spirits of the less obvious kind for a Halloween event to be remembered with a repertoire that ranged from the contemporary pop field to medieval madrigals, from the serious to the light-hearted. The modern songs ran from Crosby, Stills and Nash’s ‘Our House,’ to Enya’s contribution to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, and a compelling run through of Yazoo’s hit ‘Only You.’ They blended splendidly with pieces by Rachmaninov, Benjamin Britten, Thomas Morley, John Gardner et al.

FOR COLM TÓIBÍN FROM ENNISCORTHY, OPERA-TUNITY KNOCKS

Wexford Arts Centre

Report by JACKIE HAYDEN – Thursday 20th October

It was especially appropriate that one of the first major names to visit the newly refurbished Wexford Arts Centre was local hero Colm Tóibín, in town for the premiere staging of the opera The Master, written in collaboration with the Italian Alberto Caruso. The work is based on Toibin’s acclaimed novel of the same name, an imaginary version of the life of its author Henry James.

Tóibín was as loquaciously self-deprecating as ever, not least in his re-telling of a meeting with the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, who was rather dismissive of Tóibín’s novel but was particularly interested in a scene from the novel that focuses on clothes being dumped into the sea near Venice before floating eerily back up to the surface. Sadly, nothing emerged form that meeting apart from giving Tóibín a story to riff on.

He also told of his own introduction to opera when he was living in his native Enniscorthy and attending St Peters School he spent three afternoons listening to The Pearl Fishers by Georges Bizet and was immediately smitten with the whole opera thing.  

His eventual meeting with Caruso yielded a more positive outcome than the Bertolucci encounter, and he described their working method so well one could imagine the work gestating and mutating as they batted ideas back and forth until they eventually arrived at the work as we can now hear it.

Caruso provided some clues as to what that might be, as he played and sang several excerpts which whetted many appetites for hearing the complete work. His deft piano playing provided a generous sample of the angular musical nature of the work as a whole.  

Tóibín read extracts from the novel that many regard as his finest work. He is an engaging, and often funny, raconteur and his reminiscences even took in references to ‘Diamonds and Rust’, the song Joan Baez wrote about Bob Dylan, and he laid waste to the notion that opera is only for snobs.    

Meanwhile, it was good to experience the substantially more accessible entrance to the Wexford Arts Centre and its modernised staging area too.

PILGRIM STREET CONVERT ENNISCORTHY

Presentation Centre, Enniscorthy

Report: JACKIE HAYDEN – Friday 7th October 2020

As Ireland’s finest Bluegrass band turned into the final lap of their Enniscorthy debut, they delivered an extraordinary slow, touching version of the old chestnut ‘When the Saints Go Marchin’ In’ that could erase all other knees-up versions from your memory. (Stay-at-homes can check it out on-line).

As with the rest of their repertoire, it benefits from the band not only having seven accomplished musicians but four are fine singers whose voices blend magically together as required. They are adventurous enough to adapt a rocker like Thin Lizzy’s ‘Emerald’ and make it sound like an authentic bluegrass hit, but they also deliver rejuvenated versions of old staples such as Leadbelly’s ‘Goodnight Irene’, Tom Waits’ ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up’, an upbeat shot at Hank Williams’ ‘I Saw the Light’, a hymnlike ‘I’ll Fly Away’, and ’Song of The South’ among other gems. They play a tight version of ‘The Lakes of Ponchartrain’ actually taught to banjoist Eugene Donegan years back by Paul Brady himself.

But they don’t just stick to impressive covers, as they also have fresh material of their own that fits seamlessly into the show. They include ‘My Little Blackbird’, ‘Jimmy’s Deflation’ and ‘How Can a Man Be Happy?’, the latter having been inspired by Donegan’s dad and a man in a pub.    

Without ever sounding formulaic, each song is enhanced by whatever instrumentation works, and being free to add accordion (Brendan Kelly), banjo (Donegan), mandolin (Eoin McDonnell), bass (Francis McGinn), dobro (Mark Lynch), guitar (Peadar Farrelly) and fiddle (Cathal McQuaid) at will makes for a varied and enjoyable evening. Their on-stage patter is light-hearted but never forced and they somehow make the Presentation Centre as intimate as your sitting room. I would have welcomed hearing Lynch’s dobro playing a bit higher in the mix, but few bands across any genre can make such wonderful playing and singing look so easy and sound like you want more.

THE MURDER OF MICHAEL COLLINS

The Presentation Centre Enniscorthy

Report: JACKIE HAYDEN – Friday 2nd September 2022

I arrived at Presentation Centre assuming I had a working knowledge of the assassination of Michael Collins, the JFK moment of Irish history. I left not only accepting that I knew nothing about it but that nobody else does either, especially those who claimed to be there or thereabouts.

Historic entertainer Paddy Cullivan has indeed worked a wonderful demolition on all the theories and the assumptions surrounding the shooting at Béal na mBlath, in Co Cork in August, 1922. Using a mix of supercharged lecturing, audience participation, a marvellous array of relevant photos, a few original songs, tales of missing bullets, an impressive gathering of lies and contradictions, as well as his finely-tuned wit, Cullivan created not so much a whodunnit but a “did anybody do it at all?” That he nailed the attention of the enthralled Presentation Centre audience for over two hours is a tribute to his own animated and mystified fascination with the whole scam. The story has more plot turns than the Chelsea Flower Show and I’m not sure if any of the participants in the debacle emerged smelling of roses either.   

Whether Collins had a secret son in London was a mere distraction. There was as much pointless speculation as to what his intentions were re the Anglo-Irish Treaty too. Then again, if the Anti-Treaty side did for him, why did the Free Staters engage in a complex cover-up? Given Collins’ profile at the time, it’s bizarre that there was no autopsy, no investigation, and no death cert, all lending credence to Cullivan’s request to have the body exhumed and examined.

In the end you could be forgiven for thinking that maybe Collins wasn’t shot in Cork at all, that perhaps he’s still alive and working in a chip shop like Elvis. Or is his death less comparable to Kennedy being shot, but akin to another great Dallas mystery-Who Shot JR?  Either way, it was another home win for the Presentation Centre.

ENNISCORTHY BACKS LOCAL DRAMA TALENT

The Presentation Centre Enniscorthy

Report: JACKIE HAYDEN – Saturday 27th August 2022

It was standing-room-only for Enniscorthy Drama Group’s presentation of Farsiders, the debut play by Enniscorthy writer and producer Fintan Kelly who has also appeared as an actor in Fair City.

Patrick Kavanagh was spot-on with his belief that local issues are as important as the big international events. So too with Farsiders,a simultaneously reflective and humorous play that mixes barbed office banter with the challenge facing young men and women learning about each other, as well as the darker issues of local hostilities, suicide, bullying and violence. It’s set in an unemployment office in 1981, in a town divided by a river at a time when the local disco and the pubs were key social media, and John Travolta was a major male role model.

Bizarrely, the official programme only gave the actors’ first names. But all seven of them acquitted themselves admirably and sparked off each other to dramatic effect. So, Roisin, Brendan, Maeve, Tim, Anthony, Podge and Bronach deserved their standing ovations. Indeed, at times they set off audience laughter that rendered the following lines difficult to hear.

Kelly’s astute handling of character worked well in the interaction of the three workers in the dole office. Chopper, Hawk and Red are distinctly different chaps who do a bit of work when they’re not fantasying about the upcoming rugby club disco. Chopper has his eye on Mary, but lacks the confidence to approach her since he reckons, she’s way too good for him. Meanwhile, he has to contend with the thuggish Corrigan who has been lording it over him since their schooldays and has warned Chopper to stay away from Mary. So, from early on the play draws you in to see how matters will be resolved. But I’m not telling!

But it’s also arguable that since Farsiders portrays a realistic slice of local life the world over, I came away from the theatre musing as to how well it might play overseas.

TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION

The Annexe Courtyard @Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Tom Mooney – Thursday 4th August 2022

Magic realism and the phantasmagorical imbue the One Voice Festival 2022 offering of Shadows and Street Corners, eight solo performances of eight new works across six nights at the Annexe Courtyard adjacent to Wexford Arts Centre.

Two hours of monologue, punctuated by original music by Gary Stephens and bookended by Sheila Forsey’s Ghost Bridge and debutant writer for the stage Danielle Fortune’s Shadows of the Sidhe, pay homage to the insight of the late director Peter Brooks: anything can happen on a stage.

Building on the impressive Tales From the Quay last year as a platform for new writing, Shadows and Street Corners is a different beast altogether: as if prompted by director Paul Walsh, the writers have pushed the envelope to use Wexford past and present as a palette for the weird and the wonderful.

With a nod to Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, each monologue segues the past and the present to unfold a story suffused by occasionally sinister and comedic undertones, sometimes with an unexpected twist ending, and sometimes not.

On a Beckettian stage by Pip Firman, there are no props, except Wexford itself, which permeates the writing as both omnipresent background, as when Peter Murphy in Ghost Voltage cites literary emporiums like Red Books and Readers Paradise, and mirage, the spectral town on the other side of the ghost bridge visited for the first time by Phil Lyons’ industrial school survivor in Forsey’s Ghost Bridge.

Historical settings – the Annexe is in the shadow of the old town wall – provide a pretext for two outings, The Falling Republic – recollection as reportage – by Thomas O’Leary and Fortune’s wraith-like Shadows, while murder and mayhem on a Midsomer Murders scale filter through Looking Back by Gerard Young, One Two Zero by Hannah McNiven and An Audience at the Crossroads by Dominic Palmer.

The success or otherwise of some of the plays depend on an absolute suspension of disbelief: as the evening light fades in the Annexe, the atmosphere turns duly ominous with narratives of madness and terror in the supernatural and enigmatic spirit of Sheridan Le Fanu.

Although the body count reaches double digits in Looking Back and One Two Zero, the mood was lightened considerably by Peter Murphy’s writer, for whom the removal of writer’s block is compared ‘to the expulsion of a bad spirit’, and by the poet Ronan Berry in his eponymous Shadows and Street Corners, who deploys inner rhyme to comedic effect to relate the fate of an old flame, Julia from Puglia, who had a bambino with Gino from Torino. Interestingly, Berry’s character is dressed as Artie, the Wexford sacristan in Billy Roche’s Belfry, a play about what lies beneath the surface of ordinary lives. Shadows and Corners is about what lies beneath the surface of extraordinary lives.

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SECOND HELPING OF EMERGING LOCAL STARS

The Annexe Courtyard @Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday 29th July 2022

The second of two Summer Sessions showcasing new local talent proved to be as varied and as stimulating as the first one, again attracting a full house to the new Courtyard Annexe at the Wexford Arts Centre. The series comes with the invaluable support of Music Generation Wexford, Waterford and Wexford Education and Training Board, and Wexford County Council.

If anything, the sound was sharper and the performers were younger that the opening session! The first three acts, Ella Dempsey, Aoibhe Reville and Ayda, are 14, 13 and 14, and show an enviable confidence.

Dempsey, from Rosslare, was accompanied by Ger Griffin on piano and she’s surely destined for the musical theatre end of the spectrum. She delivered crowd-pleasing versions of ‘I Feel Pretty’ from West Side Story and the title song from The Sound of Music (The Hills are Alive), but she also tackled Abba’s ‘Thank You for The Music’ with equal aplomb.  

Reville from Wellingtonbridge has sung with the Danescastle Music Group and she took a softer, more introspective, approach vocally.  Her assured singing would be enhanced with the addition of another instrument to fill out her guitar. Songs like ‘I Got Your Letter’ and ‘Something’s Gotten into You’ shows she has an instinct for songwriting and she didn’t even let a couple of false starts throw her off. Also scoring big on the songwriting form is Ayda, with two promising originals ‘Hopeless Romantic’ and ‘Training Session’ accompanied by her own guitar. The latter is a very mature and witty observation about the perils of dating delivered with a wry smile in her voice. She moved to piano for a tasty version of ‘Dancing on My Own’ by Calum Scott.  

By comparison, Tayler Dench from Gorey is getting on a bit at 18. He picked up an award for his role in the Gorey Musical Society’s staging of The Sound of Music. He showed his versatility by turning in two songs requiring different approaches. His own up tempo ‘Apologies’ is an amusing and observant song about relationships. He makes it work really well live. We don’t get enough songs that bring a message and laugh in one package. But he takes a more sombre slant with ‘In the Light of Day’, inspired by a real-life murder of a woman in Ireland not long ago.

With more than a dash of wry humour, Ash Kiely told us how she recently decided she needed to knuckle down and start writing songs, so she wrote her first song in a week.  It’s called ‘White Butterfly’ and for a first effort it augurs for her songwriting future. She then gave us ‘That Funny Feeling’, her self-effacing on-stage persona will see her through.

As with the First Session, compere/host Rachel Grace had earlier started the ball rolling with her current single ‘Cry Me an Ocean’ followed by two fine ballads, ‘Lately’ and ‘Home’. Justin Cullen, music mentor and Frankenstein Bolts singer, wrapped it all up with two fine originals, his intriguing guitar chording and expressive vocals taking us to somewhere magical. It was that kind of evening.

EMERGING LOCAL STARS UP IN COURTYARD

The Annexe Courtyard @Wexford Arts Centre

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday 22nd July 2022

It was standing-room-only for the first ever gig at the new Courtyard Annex at the Wexford Arts Centre, the first of two Summer Sessions designed to showcase new local talent and with the invaluable support of Music Generation Wexford, Waterford and Wexford Education and Training Board and Wexford County Council.

The honour of being the first new artist to play this intimate venue fell to Dakota Venn Keane, a 17-year-old singer/songwriter/guitarist from New Ross. Although stylistically his own man, being the son of noted local rockmeister Brendan Keane hasn’t done him any harm. He has a strong confident singing style and his songwriting shows a maturity beyond his age.  ‘Dizzy from the Drama’ showed his keen pop instinct for a song that got message and melody across with minimum fuss. ‘Man on Fire’ is a worthy vehicle for his attractive vibrato and ‘Looking for Crossroads’ proved his natural voice requires no embellishments. Watch out for him.

Emmeline Turley has represented Wexford at the Community Games and should have her first single out by the end of the year. On her Summer Sessions performance she deserves to have a higher profile locally, given her repertoire of stimulating songs and a delicious voice that can do sturdy and delicate as the mood requires. Her opener had a dreamy waltzy feel to it that won the audience over immediately and her closer teased them with a tinkling keyboard intro. In between she proved how she can apply her truly flexible voice with admirable care for the material at hand.

Sean Power from Ramsgrange, aka The Cherry Orchard, and whose second album should be along in a minute, is not only a terrific songwriter and singer, but he also knows his way around a piano. ‘My Only Wish Was to Be with You’ strikes me as a fully-formed love ballad with hit potential. ‘In Another Life’ has an appealing wistfulness about it that could attract airplay from those with ears while ‘Blackberry Picking’ had a jolly rompish feel to it and was driven by charming music triplets. Another one to watch.

The last, but certainly not least, of the new talents on the night was Sasha O’Brien Philips whose experience to date includes a key part in the musical A Higher Love and being trained by Sharon Clancy and Marketa Malcova.  While there was a tendency on the night for artists to opt for slower, more reflective songs, Sasha stirred the pot a little with her faster-paced original ‘Between the Lines’ which she wrote when she was 16. It has a winning melody that contrasts neatly with her staccato guitar notes. She also displayed her versatility with a personalised cover of ‘Like A Stone’ by Audioslave that captured the atmosphere of the original to wrap up an accomplished set.

Those four new talents were bookended by two of Wexford’s more established talents. First, we’d heard compere/host Rachel Grace who kick-started proceedings with two of her own fine songs and her expressive keyboard work. The night ended with a brace of songs from mentor and Frankenstein Bolts singer Justin Cullen. He has an attractive guitar style to supplement his confident vocals on ‘Bad Impressions’, and he followed it with a song that came complete with some leisurely finger-picking that nicely reflected the warmth and balminess of a terrific night of music.

The Courtyard sure works as a comfortable music venue with easy access and clear sound. So, roll on Summer Sessions 2 on Friday July 29^th when the bill will include Ella Dempsey, Aoibhe Reville, Ayda, Taylor Dench and Ash Kiely. I’d strongly advise you get there early.

MEMORABLE NIGHT IN ENNISCORTHY

Presentation Centre, Enniscorthy

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday 22nd April 2022

So where did it all go right on the right? Well, put a bill together with unofficial Dublin poet laureate Stephen James Smith, local provocateur Peter Murphy, the musicianly Basciville duo, the warmth of the Presentation Centre and stand well back.

Smith began with Brendan Kennelly’s ‘Begin’, but for the rest of the gig delivered tracks from his new album See No Evil in the order they appear on that impressive release. The live experience confirms Smith as a first-rate poet best heard rather than read, and here he performs in his warmly expressive Dublin voice, avoiding both the Stage Dublin and DORT variants.

The short poem ‘No Other Way’ heartachingly evokes the vulnerability of a special needs boy. ‘The Gardiner’ is especially haunting as Smith explores family realities far removed from the dreamy poets of yore, more Patti Smith than Rod McEwan. Add in the title track, ‘I’ve Had Lovers’, ‘Dublin You Are’ and ‘Saintly Sister’ and you’re in no doubt that you’re listening to a poet who sees Ireland staring at him and dares to stare right back.

Each work was underpinned by a suitable electronic soundscape played live by Gareth QR and Thunderclap Murphy, with his emotional ‘Ode to Tony McMahon’s Dublin’ featuring a trad-tinged backing. Throughout, Steven Simpson’s live painting on a large backdrop added a further dimension. The gig showed why Smith has become the poster boy for Ireland’s vibrant live poetry scene and that status was reflected in the turnout in Enniscorthy. Although he might benefit from a master-class in proper cursing and swearing from Roddy Doyle.  

The Cursed Peter Murphy delivered an animated interlude with Basciville, including a poem with Cohenesque overtones that linked neatly back to the Brendan Kennelly opener and a track from his next album The Republic of Weird. It’s exciting to see Irish poets finding their own inventive ways of delivering their works instead of unconvincingly aping the verbal tics and gestures of America rap. If only it could always be like this.

LOOKING FOR AMERICA

Presentation Centre, Enniscorthy

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday 8th April 2022

Federico Julián González (aka Fede) and his monologue Looking for America came looking for us against the chilling backdrop of Russian troops that very day having murdered dozens of Ukrainian refugees, including mothers fleeing with their children from the savagery of Vladimir Putin.  It was an unwelcome reminder that the travails overcome by Gonzalez in his enforced itinerant life do not belong to the past but are haunting our present too.

With little more than a symbolic suitcase in his hand and a screen with simple words, maps, images and occasional moving footage, he told his personal story as he stumbled from the civil war in his native El Salvador with his family at the age of five to neighbouring Latin American countries undergoing similar mayhem. His tale is broken into seven “chapters”, each one divided by a mood-setting piece of Latino music with Fede casually dancing along. There’s one exception. When the story moves to Ireland, where Gonzalez now lives and works as an Irish citizen, the music comes via Kila.

The search for America in the guise of a Salvadoran ex-Guerrilla fighter called América took Fede and his aged mother to Cuba, although you can’t avoid imagining that escaping to that other America would have been as welcome. That issue could have been better clarified.

But the indomitable resilience of the human spirit shone through in his general good humour, and while his tale was stained with the blood of murder and torture there was room for him to marvel at the absurdity of life too. He details the twists and turns of his journey in a strikingly human way, not avoiding the gruesome discoveries en route, but not dwelling on them too long either. His journey mostly proceeds with a gleam of hope and with an unspoken assumption that going back is unlikely to be a safe option. 

To his credit, Fede never overplays the victim card. He’s been one of the lucky few, but, sadly, his story will not be the last.

WEXFORD DRAMA GROUP SHINE WITH SHEPARD PLAY

Report: Liam Murphy – Friday 25th February 2022

Wexford Drama Group has an excellent reputation for exciting, memorable, and often controversial productions. Paul Walsh directed the visceral and savage Sam Shepard play A Lie of The Mind at Wexford Arts Centre prior to going on the circuit to get a nomination to the All-Ireland Drama Festival. A cast of eight supported by a ten-person crew laid down a powerful ‘marker’ to merit that nomination. This play will be a must-see on the circuit.

It comes from a group of Shepard plays that delves deep into the dysfunctionality of American families and the impact of war values on a nation that supported the right to possess firearms. Shepard had a love-hate relationship with his military father where discipline veered into abuse, and there was toxic masculinity. The play was Shepard’s take on the Eugene O’Neill great family epics and his ambition to show the conflicts in American life. The disrespect shown to the American Flag added to the controversy, and it was a feature of plays about the Vietnam war.

It is complex, overwhelming, powerful and Paul Walsh exposed the savage mind of confused and damaged people, and his work with a stellar cast and crew showed his own ambitions to add to the cultural life of Wexford and theatre further afield.

It opened with a shock as a man pounded a phone against a kiosk, as he panicked and told his brother he had ‘lost it’ and killed his wife. Her screams in a hospital bed shocked the audience further to see the bruising and mental damage that was almost animal in its portrayal. This was Jake (Alan Fitzhenry) and his wife, Beth ( Danielle Fortune), and their story is horror, pity, and cruelty at the heart of an uncompromising love story.

It might be simplistic to categorise the women as being long-suffering and the males as swaggering masculinity with short fuses. However, this is a complex set of human interactions with passages near to madness, human love, unbridled lust, scalding family memories and a theatrical ‘reality’ that frightened the audience as well as confused them.

Ronan Berry was Mike the survivalist, deer hunter and his mood swings were powerful and scary. Hilda Conway played his mother with a muted scattiness while Andy Doyle was vital as the father, who displayed droll humour, which gave this production a light touch of contrast that was needed. Catherine Walsh was the excuse-maker, mother of Jake who knew the truth but didn’t want to wash the family’s rotten clothing. Seona O’Connor, as her daughter, gave a measured performance that impressed amid the savage histrionics of others. Her scene with Walsh was superb as they set out to burn the house and purge the memories. Eric McGuire was Jake’s brother who wanted to do the right thing and suffered for it.

This play can be seen on the circuit 11 March at Ballyduff West Waterford Festival and 23 March at New Ross Drama Festival.

RAGING AGAINST THE LIGHT

Report: Jackie Hayden – Thursday 24th February 2022

There’s a lot of relentless anger in Sam Shepard’s eighties play A Lie of The Mind. It’s been described as a masterpiece of theatre, but there are too many occasions when you’re thinking, “Yeah, yeah, we know all that. Move on”.

So, it’s all to the credit of the award-gathering Wexford Drama Group that they broke their two-year downtime with a Wexford Arts Centre production that was so enthralling despite Shepard’s stodgy bits. But then the play has served as a showcase for Harvey Keitel, Aidan Quinn and Geraldine Page.

The story is set in Montana and California, and centres around volatile husband Jake (Alan Fitzhenry) who thinks he’s murdered his wife Beth (Danielle Fortune), although she’s “only” brain-damaged. This event exposes a level of derangement throughout their respective families who seem incapable of communicating beyond confrontational rage.

Beth’s father Baylor (Andy Doyle), a no-nonsense patriotic rancher, gets more laughs than you think the story might allow as both families try to deal with the situation amid the endless round of antagonism. Meanwhile Beth falls for her husband’s brother Frankie (Eric McGuire) about which Beth’s brother Mike (Ronan Berry) does not approve. Nor does Frankie.

So far, so Whitehall farce. But there are serious issues like mental illness at play here too. The deranged Jake is bring “cared for” by his mother Lorraine (Catherine Walsh), who’s version of reality is worryingly unique, and his sister Sally (Seona O’Connor) who stoically bears her mother’s hostility.

So, what does a person like Lorraine do in such circumstances? She sets her house ablaze and she and Sally prepare for a trip to Sligo in the old country. As you do. That link with Ireland is delivered too late to explain the on/off Irish/Celtic feel to the music played at various points, although the relevance of Bob Dylan’s ‘One More Cup of Coffee’ was further beyond me and others in the loyal Wexford Arts Centre audience.

All in all, this not a case of the singer not the song, but of the cast not the play. So well done to the WDG and Director Paul Walsh for getting us through.  And great also to see another full house at Wexford Arts Centre.

AS WE RETURN FROM LOCKDOWN TO LOCK-IN ….

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday 21st January 2022

It may have been down to the happy coincidence that Carpet Theatre’s presentation of Breath, an inventive music play by Ciarán Taylor with Karl Quinn and Steve Wickham, opened at the Wexford Arts Centre within the same hour that the government was setting us free from the lockdown restrictions that had curtailed our lives for the best part of two years.

That coincidence might also have made it so much easier to look back on that overcast period and see the humour in it amid all the worry, frustration, confusion, stress, illness and death. For Taylor’s script captured much of that, and he was very ably served by Quinn, with the wicked Wickham always ready to chip in with some casual asides as well as some tasty musical interludes that included using a didgeridoo in a way its Australian inventors probably never envisaged. Indeed, his versatile contributions on fiddle would have been enjoyable on their own, but his mute asthmatic concertina not only gave us a few laughs but also encapsulated the core of the play.  

But Quinn was the main focus of attention, playing the role of a family man trying to get to grips with juggling the household chores, working to earn his living and coping with zoom meetings while also frantically trying to keep up with the new rules and regulations. Sometimes you expected him to crack under the strain, but he just about scraped by with a spot of Yoga, and he even took time to entertain us with what in the sixties they used to call “idiot dancing”. It was one of those performances that kept you riveted.

It’s hard to predict at this stage to what extent memories of the lockdowns will play into future cultural and artistic works, but the socially-distanced audience at the WAC eagerly lapped up every subtle nuance of Breath and went out into the night with a smile on their faces, optimism on their minds and, I suspect, breathing a little easier.

Eden – a tale of lost innocence, lust and longing for more

Review By Rob Wiggins

On the night of Thursday the 21st of October, 2021, the Wexford Arts Centre staged the acclaimed play, Eden, written by Eugene O’Brien, directed by Andrew Flynn and produced by the Decadent Theatre company.

The play tells the story of Billy and Breda, a married couple whose relationship is very much on the rocks, as they navigate the stormy seas of love over the course of an eventful night. Set in the rural Irish town of Edenderry sometime in the 1990’s, Eden charts the despair, delusion and dramatics of Billy and Breda as they engage in their own private fantasies; leaving the audience to wonder – Will they stay together or go their own way?

The production, on the Wexford Arts Centre stage, is a strictly intimate affair. A long bench spans the stage with a sparse, almost granite like backdrop behind, designed by Ger Sweeney. The excellent set design and construction conveys a closeness, while also capturing a coldness and hostility – which perfectly reflects the flawed relationship depicted and aptly directed by Andrew Flynn on stage. The incandescent effect of lighting draws out the dominant emotions that bleed through this play – a lustful red for Billy, and a despairing blue for Breda developing into a wider palette of colours to reflect their changing emotional states. Ciaran Bagnall’s lighting design along with his use of darkness and shadows helps to convey the brooding tone of the play and its visceral nature.

Billy and Breda are cast as the sole two characters on stage. Patrick Ryan delivers a stellar performance as Billy, a loose cannon, and a tormented figure, hell-bent on seducing a younger local, Imelda Egan. Maeve Fitzgerald offers us a wonderfully nuanced and layered performance of Breda, a troubled woman, who upon losing some weight, is gearing herself up to make a big comeback to social life at the pub.

The play functions as a set of two monologues – where one character will speak in turn, but never to each other. Both actors break the fourth wall, inviting the audience into their private lives and giving us two distinct perspectives on one fateful night. Billy and Breda circle the stage – always at a distance, backs to one another, and shrouded in darkness as the other spouse speaks. It’s a bold concept and credit must be given to the actors, Ryan and Fitzgerald, for executing it brilliantly, holding your attention throughout and making you feel every emotion they feel, capturing the true essence of the Irish storytelling tradition.

Bored and unfulfilled by the monotony of their married life, the couple decide to indulge long held fantasies that only ourselves, the audience, are privy to. Billy longs to emulate his friend James Galway, the man with the ‘golden flute’, in engaging his teenage dream of casual sex. Having grown weary of his wife, he fancies himself as a player who can successfully seduce Imelda, the young woman who will play a starring role in his sexual fantasy. Breda by contrast, equally desperate and lonely, yearns to make her husband fall in love with her again after living out years in the romantic wilderness together. She’s lost weight and has become more attractive looking – gaining the approval of her friends and onlookers at the pub – however, will it be enough for her to win back her man?

As the play progresses, their plans slowly begin to crumble on contact with reality. A good night out with friends at the pub soon unravels, shattering their illusions and breaking their hearts all at once. There are numerous biblical references to the Garden of Eden throughout. Namely, the ‘tree’ where Billy and Imelda will supposedly do the business and his line that one ‘shouldn’t be bringing apples to the orchard.’ Much like Adam and Eve before them, Billy and Breda have fallen out of paradise, descending from a place of innocence and bliss to their present human condition of sin, misery and death to the life they once lived as newlyweds.

Overall, Eden stands out as an exemplary work of contemporary storytelling – which continues to engage and endear audiences, twenty years on from its debut. I would highly recommend a trip to the theatre to see it – and if you do, be prepared to be entertained, disturbed and enlightened all at once in what is a fantastic production by Decadent Theatre Company. Eden is running for two more nights on the 22nd and 23rd of October before continuing its national tour.

Rob Wiggins is a participant in Wexford Arts Centre’s work experience programme as a freelance arts journalist and critic.  For more information on his blogs visit robwiggins.net

One Voice Festival: Tales from the Quay

Report: Tom Mooney – 13th August 2021

The One Voice Festival: Tales from the Quay at Wexford Arts Centre contributes abundantly to the long and rich tradition of the monologue on the Irish stage, seven writers – several new to the format – and seven performers who prove that composition and performance can be one and the same act.

Although the concept of personal stories waiting to erupt was conceived by director Paul Walsh seven years earlier, Covid 19 restrictions and lockdown have acted as a catalyst for bringing this project to fruition.

Two of Wexford Drama Group’s senior stalwarts, Phil Lyons, and Andy Doyle, persuasively bookend an evening of introspection and reflection, rooted in original material suffused with the cornerstone of any good monologue, empathy.

Wexford Town (Hello in There) is a humorous though heartfelt lyrical paean by writer and performer Lyons to his adopted town, whereas Doyle in Thomas O’Leary’s The Trip of a Lifetime eschews superfluous trimmings to confront the brass tacks of a pandemic: illness and loss. ‘No pubs, no hurling, no travel,’ he laments, resignation and irony laced with fortitude.

Wexford, specifically the harbour, is a central character. ‘Ah the marina. Thank God, we have it,’ says Doyle. Director Paul Walsh is keen for Wexford to be a strong personality in its own right, not merely a colourful backdrop, but throbbing with soul, refusing to age. Defiance is omnipresent.

These monologues are by writers steeped in an understanding of their own relationship to Wexford, performed by actors attuned to the nuances on the page and gifted in extemporisation before a masked audience. Strange times.

In Michelle Dooley Mahon’s Boots – the only outlier because it is set in the 1990s – John Crosbie’s edges are pared. He is embedded to his own patch like Beckett’s Winnie, complete with bag (of beer), a man whose colourful history Crosbie conflates into a controlled flow.

The past is a foreign country in Tales from the Quay: wistful in Wexford Town; a house of horrors in Eoghan Rua Finn’s Dei Gratia (with Jeanette Sidney Kelly); a lamentation in Boots; a suffocation in Carol Long’s Living Like a Fugitive (with Mairead Ryan); indecisive in Heather Hadrill’s Coming Home but dispatched like a frisbee by Danielle Fortune in Jack Matthew’s Revenge.

Stasis is the enemy of  electrifying monologue, so Fortune’s Vikki roams the stage like it’s a cage, her feral gait venomously dispatching great Matthew one-liners, recalling that she ‘guts sea creatures for a living’, and how she ‘threw away her virginity on the quay.’

And because these are real lives there is betrayal and exits and entrances, specifically in Dei Gratia, Boots, A Method in Menapia – Paul Walsh’s sitcom with a terrific Imelda McDonagh as social climber Pamela and a cast of dead paramours – Living Like a Fugitive and Coming Home, Stephen Byrne as Christopher nailing the swallow note of the migrant forever destined to return to the nest. Tales from the Quay is rich in character and incident, reconciling the past and the present, and unafraid to make the heart the centre of the world.

EMERGING STARS SHINE AS ARTS CENTRE REOPENS

Report: Jackie Hayden* – Thursday 22nd July 2021

The Wexford Arts Centre reopened for live music last Thursday doing what it does best, showcasing local teenage talent, this time under the banner of Summer Sessions – Young Voices in association with Music Generation. The first of a month of Thursday showcases, the opener featured a slightly earlier generation of singer-songwriters already making their mark but making room for two local artists making their debuts.

Not that you would think of them as novices to judge by their consummate confidence.  First up was Lily Elizabeth, her grounded stage presence belying her 13 years. Slotting neatly into comparison with acts of the calibre of Lisa Hannigan and Susan O’Neill, she has the instinct of a Laura Marling in how she marries the right lyrics to the melodies they need. She delivered a beguiling performance with two fine originals, ‘You Pull Up the Worst of Me’ and ‘I Love You’ and was then joined by guitarist Kevin Weaver for a cool cover of ‘Broken Halos’ by American singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton. Lily will be well worth keeping an eye on as she moves up through the gears.

Next up was Taylor Dench who’s first single ‘Run Out’ is up on Spotify for the world’s delectation. It’s about Lockdown 2020, and he applies to it a flexible voice that can do featherlight touches as required. He swapped his guitar for the piano for ‘Alone’, a powerful song about rejection, with space to showcase his accurate falsetto. He described his ‘Collector’ as “an accidental love song.” If you want to know why, go see him next time he plays live.  

The show was compered with a light touch by Rachel Grace, still a teenager with a fine track record already, including a slot at Electric Picnic. She gave us a captivating slow blues and a love song called ‘Nancy’.  Karen Alice Dunbar who teaches singing and song writing with Music Generation Wexford, is no stranger to the Wexford Arts Centre with classy songs like ‘Almost’ and ‘Marionette’. Gayle Murphy, also a teacher with Music Generation Wexford, offered two covers, Hozier’s ‘Work Song’ and Rihanna’s ‘Stay’, before Rachel Grace closed with two more wistful originals.

So live music is back at the Wexford Arts Centre. Cue sighs of relief all round!

*Jackie Hayden is one of Ireland’s most respected music writers. He spent 29 years with Hot Press, where he interviewed artists of the stature of Mick Taylor of The Rolling Stones, Christy Moore, Sinead O’Connor, Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Ronnie Drew, Glen Hansard and Bob Geldof. He topped the Irish book charts with two editions of My Boy, his book about Philip Lynott. He has also written Love and Theft? Bob Dylan’s Celtic Odyssey, The Winner In Me (his biography of Don Baker), and the CD/book A Map Of Love – Around Wales With Dylan Thomas.   Prior to his writing career, he was marketing manager with Sony Music (then known as CBS), where he signed U2 to their first record contract.  He has delivered witty and informative addresses to various seminars around Europe, and in his lecture Dylan, Dylan and Me, talks about discovering Dylan Thomas via Bob Dylan and The Beatles. He has written for many overseas publications, including Sunday Times, R2, The Lampeter University Review, and Ninnau in the USA. In 2015 he was “writer-in-residence” at Tranas Literary Centre in Sweden, and spoke about Dylan Thomas as part of World Poetry Day at the State Theatre in Uppsala.

HELENA MULKERNS HOSTS A BEWITCHING LIVE ZOOM EVENT : THE CÁCA MILIS SAMHAIN CABARET

This Halloween, Saturday October 31st @ 8PM, you are invited to join Helena as she hosts THE CÁCA MILIS SAMHAIN CABARET. Secure your place asap by registering  here.

Once the kids have finished their virtual trick or treating next Saturday evening, parents might like a little Halloween treat themselves – and the “Cáca Milis Cabaret”, presented by Dalkey local Helena Mulkerns, is set to provide a fun and bewitching evening of the arts via ZOOM!

WHAT IS THE CÁCA MILIS CABARET?

Since 2009 Helena has hosted and coordinated The Cáca Milis Cabaret , which presents a blend of emerging and established artists in an eclectic evening of new music, literature, dance, spoken word, cabaret, circus arts, comedy, short film and more. Helena, as well as hosting and performing in the cabaret, is an author in her own right. Her first book, Ferenji, is published by Doire Press and is set in Africa and Afghanistan.

The Cáca Milis Cabaret was founded at the Wexford Arts Centre. The cabaret’s Dublin base has been at Arthur’s Blues and Jazz Club and it has featured at Electric Picnic and festivals around the country. This year, under Covid restrictions, you can see it from anywhere, now that its shows are live online via ZOOM. One of the recent cabarets featured Colm Tóibín, early music Diva Caitriona O’Leary, mime artist Carlo Jacucci and more. You can watch the video here.

THE FEATURED ARTISTS LINE-UP FOR THIS ENCHANTING EVENING

This Saturday at 8pm, watch out for a beautiful video made by Sandycove native Josh Johnston. A pianist and composer who is also the musical director at the Unitarian Church on St Stephens’ Green, the video features music from his new CD, where we’re standing now, and is filled with haunting visuals of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown!

Elsewhere on the bill, award-winning author June Caldwell reads spooky fiction, the Banshee screams from your screen in a short film by Conor McMahon, and there’ll be dance from New York with Darrah Carr and music from Michigan with Enda Reilly as well as some classic cabaret.

All ticket sales go towards supporting cabaret artists and the continuing work of the Wexford Arts Centre, a registered charity, whose work is more important than ever at this time.

JOHN SHEAHAN AND DERMOT BOLGER IN CONVERSATION

Wexford Trad and Folk Weekend
Report: Jackie Hayden Greenacres -– Saturday 29th February 2020

We all heard the warnings – under no circumstances, except the most essential, should anyone venture outdoors during Storm Jorge.
But maybe the possibility of being entertained by Dubliner John Sheahan and poet and novelist Dermot Bolger having a chat and a laugh together could easily be regarded as an essential reason for travel.

And the sizeable crowd that turned up at Greenacres for the event, organised by Craobh Loch Garman Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann and their PR man Senan O’Reilly, were royally rewarded for braving the weather with a ninety-minute mix of unscripted wit, humour, anecdotes, poems and stories, and, from Sheahan, some delightful music on tin-whistle and fiddle.

The two men clearly share an affinity, but maybe they work best together because they are different people too. Bolger has been a lifelong novelist and poet, with several accolades under his belt, while Sheahan has only came to poetry in recent years. Bolger is the more animated, almost becoming excited in his retelling of his upbringing and his connections with Wexford, his father working on steam packets plying out to sea from Wexford Quay. His poetry is generously long, with captivating twists and turns. By contrast, Sheahan is measured and laconic, his poetry crisp and focused, and his stories about the various members of The Dubliners never-ending.

He read poems about Ronnie Drew and told stories about the eccentricities of Barney McKenna. He was equally illuminating in explaining where tunes come from, demonstrating to the entranced audience how one tune started with him copying the four notes he heard from his son’s sighing yawn, and which he was initially tempted to call ‘The Yawning of The Day’. The audience hummed contentedly along to his renowned composition ‘The Marino Waltz’, and he displayed his dextrous fiddle-player by reinterpreting ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in a baroque classical style.

What was noticeable about both men was, despite their successes, a deep humility and an ability to laugh at themselves and each other. The audience at Greenacres laughed too and lapped it all up.

AS EASY AS APK

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday 15th February 2020

The third of a series of Jazz gigs organised by Kevin Lawlor at the Sky and The Ground saw the APK Trio, with Lawlor himself on drums, Alex O’Keeffe on electric guitar and Pat Molitor on keyboards, bring a jazz approach to a selection of modern popular music.
Active members of the Jazz Police look askance at the very idea of a jazz band tackling tunes by the likes of Gorillaz or Khalid, but to his credit, Lawlor has admirable form in this regard, with previous outing of his bands covering music by pop sensation Arianne Grande.

In reality, Lawlor’s bands are only doing what jazz bands of the forties and fifties did, interpreting the pop hits of the day, so there’s no need to be scared. In fact we could do with more of it, as for me, the highlight of the afternoon was APK’s take on ‘Dirty Harry’ borrowed from Damon Albarn’s semi-cartoon band Gorillaz. They brought a Snarky Puppy wah-wah funkiness to it, and the grunge anthem ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana probably had Kurt Cobain finger-clicking in his grave. Apart from its chorus it’s melodically less distinctive in a jazz format than other options, but it still afforded the trio space for some conversational musical interaction, with Lawlor’s intelligent playing bringing a playful wit to proceedings.

They turned Khalid’s ‘Talk’ into a leisurely saunter, with all three turning in effortlessly appealing solos, with O’Keeffe’s brittle guitar chording adding an extra dimension. To their credit, they made all these interlopers into the jazz realm work a treat,
Jimmy Smith’s ‘Lulu’s Back In Town’ got a more conventional treatment by comparison, and Jorja Smith’s (no relation) ‘Blue Light’s was a fine example of light-touch jazz. They ended with Molitor’s swampy organ starring throughout the perennial ‘Green Onions’. The sound was at all times impeccable, and sizeable audience were riveted were visibly delighted to hear that Lawlor plans a similar series for the Summer. Meanwhile, he will be with Melanie O’Reilly at the Wexford Arts Centre on April 24, and on April 30 will launch his new album Stramash at the same venue.

BLUEGRASS PILGRIMAGE TO THE WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Report by Jackie Hayden – Saturday 1st February 2020

​The Wexford Arts Centre has seen and heard some terrific musical performances over the last couple of years, (Saxology, Pierce Turner, Billy Roche’s band, Remedy Club, Kevin Lawlor’s various combos) but last week’s concert by Pilgrim Street was up there with the best.

The band hail from Navan, and with seven accomplished musicians toting a shopful of instruments, four of whom can sing solo or join in up-to-four part harmonies, they delivered a rich cocktail of Country, Bluegrass, Folk, Americana songs plus new originals by the band themselves.

That they did it all so effortlessly and with such good humour added to the pleasure, with nothing over-cooked and nothing underdone either. Brendan Kelly’s accordion added plaintive tones to their own ‘Jimmy’s Deflation’, with guitarist Peadar Farrelly unerring lead vocals , and Eugene Donegan on banjo and vocals lead the way on his own heartfelt ‘Hurt People Hurt People’ as the band built up a fine head of steam, with some tasty slide guitar from Mark Lynch to boot. Both songs are on their EP which also features a superb reworking of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Emerald’ and serve as a taster for the album Pilgrim Street plan for this year.

Pilgrim Street also have an uncanny knack of picking the right covers. They reached far back into the American folk and gospel tradition for ‘The Wayfaring Stranger’, with Donegan’s sturdy vocals and Kelly’s accordion to the fore. Eoin McDonnell on mandolin and vocals took Albert Brumley’s hymn ‘I’ll Fly Away’ to another place, and the trusty favourites ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’ and ‘Let Me Be Your Salty Dog’ were additional outright winners before they dipped into Tom T Hall’s back catalogue for ‘That’s How I Got To Memphis’.

The musicians named above had sterling support throughout from Cathal McQuaid on fiddle and Francis McGinn’s electric bass. With a full house, standing room only, Pilgrim Street brought us music from the heart that touches the soul. It was a great night, but they’ll be back, won’t they?

JEFFREY FOUCAULT AT THE WAC

Report by Jackie Hayden – Saturday 25th January 2020

On the surface, Jeffrey Foucault comes on like standard-issue production line American folk-country singer-songwriter seasoned with dashes of blues and rock. But dig a little deeper and you‘ll appreciate the slightly wry humour and his ability to pick the telling details from the landscape of relationships. His apocalyptic ‘War on the Radio’ from his album Blood Brothers also shows an engagement with the real world that often bypasses his more romantic rivals. That ‘Little Warble’ has the line “We shovelled horse shit for an hour” doesn’t take away from its power as an affectionate lovesong, and he pays his respects to his Dad in ‘Cheap Suit’.

Nor do you expect to hear Shakespeare quoted at such a gig, but the man from Wisconsin does exactly that, explaining that his album title Salt Is Wolves comes from Othello where the full quotation is “As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross, as ignorance made drunk.” He then delivers the song ‘Slow Talker’ from the album, a tasty track that reminded this listener of Mark Knopfler.

Foucault was accompanied by Ry Cavanaugh on harmony vocals and electric guitar. In the second half of the show they turned the heat up a little with some gritty, bluesy stuff, including a pointed version of Chrissie Hynde’s ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ and the slow and sultry ‘Blues for Jessie Mae’. He uses his languid guitar style to flesh out Foucault’s acoustic work without getting too flash or fussy. Earlier, Cavanaugh set the scene with tracks from his new album of songs composed by his late father, himself a country singer, with ‘Cold Wind’ a real treat.Both Foucault and Cavanagh have been spending time in Ireland and building up a staunch following for their fascinating take on American music and life in general. They both seem to like it here.

TURNER TURNS IT UP

Report: Jackie Hayden – 23rd December 2019

Pierce Turner’s latest album Vinegar Hill, a reworking of eleven folk ballads, has divided opinion among his fans, some seeing it as a retrograde step and others applauding him for breathing new life into old songs with his maverick approach to the sacred canon.

With his sold-out gig at the Wexford Arts Centre, Turner proved that those versions fit seamlessly into his own impressive catalogue, with his fractured piano playing, heavily rhythmic guitaring and that voice that has enthralled people as diverse as Christy Moore and Will Ferrell.

He brought an appropriate air of respect to tunes of the vintage of ‘The Parting Glass’, ‘The Gypsy Rover’ and ‘Bunclody’. If ‘Monto’ is unlikely to become an anthem of the MeToo movement, the men and women at the WAC sang along lustily all the same.

Of his own songs he delivered a version of ‘The Boy to Be With’ that was the pin drop moment of the night. ‘Ball and Chain’, ‘Thunderstorm’, ‘The Sky and The Ground’ and ‘Moonbeam Josephine’ were acute reminders of the strength of Turner’s back catalogue, and his sense of wonder at the absurd foibles of humanity were to the fore too.

Turner switched back and forth from piano to guitar, abetted by the ever-inventive Mick Egan on electric guitar, electric keys and harmonica, the latter particularly effective on ‘The Gypsy Rover’. For one extended intro the interplay between Egan and Turner was so mesmerising it deserved its own place in the set list.

I could have done without a perfunctory version of ‘Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, but as one man remarked to me on the way out, “I’ll go back to the Vinegar Hill set now with renewed interest.” And so, he should.

STORMY WEATHER OVER THE WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Report by Jackie Hayden – Thursday 6th December 2019

Before we took our seats for Brainstorm, billed as a new play about the teenage brain, members of the audience were given a card on which they were asked to write something to their teenage selves. With little time to reflect I jotted down my contribution, “But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” from Bob Dylan’s song ‘My Back Pages’.

As it turned out, those words often resonated with me through the show, consisting as it did of 14 world-weary teenage girls and boys struggling with their phones, mood swings, frustrations, parents, teachers, each other, their malfunctioning brainwear, bodies, truth and lies, and the rest of the world.

Of course, some parents of my acquaintance might regard the phrase “teenage brain” as a contradiction in terms, but recent dark developments, not least the crushing of young spirits by the ghouls on the Internet, have brought the real concerns of teenagers into the foreground. If there was one message coming from Planet Teens it was “please, listen to us”, and maybe that’s a plea that’s taken a long while to come through. It was evident from the performances that teenagers are presented with an adult population who assume they’re right, but the state the world is in now might suggest otherwise.

Presented by Bare Cheek Theatre Company and County Wexford Youth Theatre, Brainstorm focused on performers aged 13 to 18, and allowed about 75% of what they said to be personal and unscripted. That was a clever move, as it enabled the performers to make their points with remarkable confidence, honesty, anger and humour. The remaining 25% was written by Marnie McCleane-Fay, Ned Glasier and Emily Lim, with some energetic music, including Abba and The Cure, along the way. But one quibble. At times the background music was so loud as to distract from what the actors were saying.

There were also some moments of direct involvement with the eager Wexford Arts Centre audience, as if the adult world was being invaded by aliens, and the cast got a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.

Sure, teenagers aren’t always right, but neither are adults.

TAKING THE CURE AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday 22nd November 2019

There’s much of the bracing benefits of music in the material and stage presence of the Wexford-based duo Remedy Club, and it was clearly on view at The Wexford Arts Centre which they chose as the venue for their last gig of a very busy 2019 that included a tour of the UK and a trip to Nashville to record their new album.

Singer Aileen Mythen seems like she was born to live on-stage, and she has a way of not merely singing a song but living in it and probably re-arranging the furniture too. Her vocal strengths are matched by Kieran McEvoy who also shamelessly makes playing wonderful guitar in several styles look so easy. Their mostly original set on the night was a finely balanced mix of tracks from the new album, songs from their second album Lovers, Legends and Lost Causes, and some classy covers and stage favourites.

Most impressive of the new material were ‘Sweet Little Lies’, ‘Sweet Symphony’ and ‘Fire and Gasoline’, the last named written with their producer Ray Kennedy who has a CV that includes such luminaries as Steve Earle, John Prine, The Beach Boys and John Mellencamp. The selection sure whetted appetites for the album.

From their last album they included ‘Bottom of The Hill’ and ‘Big Old Fancy’, the latter capturing the worst aspects of the Celtic Collapse. They paid tribute to their musical heroes with ‘Django’, ‘When Tom Waits Up’ and ‘Listenin’ To Hank’. Further delights arrived with the Hank Williams classic, Tony Joe White’s ‘As the Crows Flies’ and they displayed their blues credentials with Elmore James’ ‘It Hurts Me Too’. Those who can’t wait for the next album should check out the new track ‘True Hand, True Heart’ on Spotify.
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The show kicked off with another male/female duo Union Avenue, although this time it was the woman doing the tasty guitar fills. All four joined forces, with some audience guests, for a rousing run-through of Tom Waits’ ‘Come on Up to The House’. So, a fine night all round.

ELMORE GETS BACK ON TRACK

Report: Jackie Hayden – Saturday 16th November 2019

If ever evidence was needed to prove the healing power of music, it was available in abundance last week when Enniscorthy singer-songwriter Elmore stopped off at the Wexford Arts Centre as part of his current tour. Mid-way through a riveting performance he explained that his Resurrection Tour had been so named because he’d suffered a serious bout of depression and a loss of confidence as well as the death of his father, that seriously interrupted his musical adventures. Fortunately, he had been persuaded back on the road as part of a healing process and, as we could all see and hear, it was surely working.

Although showing influences from acts as diverse as Ed Sheeran, Hudson Taylor and The Lumineers, Elmore is quite his own man, with a bag of impressive original songs, an expressive voice and a stage persona that kept the sizeable Wexford Arts Centre firmly focused. Songs like ‘Promise’, I’m Still Here’ and ‘Close to You’ are crisp and devoid of self-indulgent flab, while his version of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in The Dark’ showed he could take a cover to another place. His guitar accompaniment was more than adequate too. So now that he’s back on his pop-rock career trail, fresh opportunities may lie in wait, not least with his plan for an album in the new year.
Elmore topped an all-male bill of solo artists with another local hero Josh Cahill first up. His highly personal takes on the Oasis hit ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and the John Martin classic ‘May You Never’ went down a treat, but an attempt to turn ‘The Ould Triangle’ into a singalong only partially worked.

In between those two acts we had two more, including Lou, with a fine high voice, tasty songs and bouts of percussive interplay on his guitar. The quartet was completed by Londoner Sam Ali on piano with another batch of fine originals. All in all, it was a fine night for solo Irish acts and the audience lapped it all up and then some.

SAFE SAX

Report: Jackie Hayden – Friday 1st November 2019

There was a tingling air of anticipation from the full house in the Wexford Arts Centre for Saxology’s recital there last Friday lunchtime. This was the locally grown version of the saxophone quartet and not the variety of the same name from England.

They consist of Ann Wickham (alto), Patrick Lawler (tenor), Alan Mahon (baritone), and Louise Malone treble-jobbing on soprano, alto and public announcements. Indeed, Eagle-eared fans might be familiar with her deft contributions to local lad Ian Barry’s album The Adventures of Angel, Slash and Gunga Din.

Saxology’s lunchtime diet consisted of a healthy mix of classical, jazz, pop and rock, all delivered with aplomb and a generous helping of good humour, their take on ‘Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey’ working as a tasty appetiser for what was to come. They did a slinky run-through of ‘The Theme from the Pink Panther’ and served up a refreshing sense of playfulness in their interpretation of The Beatles’ ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’. However, their version of the same source’s ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was more predictable fare.

The quartet took tunes written for different types of ensembles and reinvigorated them with their upbeat tunefulness, in particular turning in a sparkling version of Wexfordman Liam Bates’ ‘Vivo’. It was written originally for strings but saxed up for the day by the composer himself who was present to hear the fruit of their combined talents. Like Louise Malone said, “no pressure, then.”
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But arguably the most adventurous treat was a riveting version of ‘Paranoid Android’ by rock superstars Radiohead in an arrangement generously donated by a Dublin-based quartet. Other noteworthy gems included J Matitia’s ‘Chinese Rag’ and a piece from the soundtrack of the film ‘La La Land’. The Wexford Arts Centre audience lapped it all up and left well sated. This indeed was lunchtime music with a smile on its face.

SESSION MEN AT THE WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Report by Jackie Hayden – Thursday 3rd October 2019

The world of Americana is often seen as insular, a blend of pure American folk, blues and country having little truck with the world beyond. So, let us praise the five men of the Boston-based Session Americana for confounding expectations by bringing to their set at the Wexford Arts Centre a mix of fine originals and covers that weren’t the almost obligatory folksy efforts but were often drawn from odd corners of the rock world. In fact, only their reverential version of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ might have been predicted.

Session Americana are about the sheer joy of making music together. They gather centre-stage in a tight group that adds to their togetherness, while a casual offhandedness adds a delightful human dimension to their not inconsiderable solo and ensemble skills, both vocal and instrument-wise. They swapped seats and duties too with effortless aplomb to play a selection of drums, harmonica, guitars and variants thereof.

One of the surprise covers was Pixies Here Comes Your Man into which they allowed some breathing space not available in the original. Jonathan Richman’s Roadrunner was another cool choice, and they also did songs by Jethro Tull and Morphine that fitted seamlessly into their set as snugly as Tom Rush’s ‘Merrimack County’.

One of their original songs, ‘The One Skinners’, was actually written on Inishowen in Ireland, and they slipped into a neat acoustic-electric groove for ‘Helena’. An original love-song called ‘Champagne’ went down a treat with the ever-engaged Wexford Arts Centre audience, and they kicked up some dust on ‘Mississippi Mud’ and ‘Making Hay’. Both the Irish and the Chinese are name-checked on ‘Great Western Rail’ which was boosted with some fine electric guitar and harmonica. Despite remaining chair bound throughout the set, this was a surprisingly lively gig, with a humour and a warmth that would probably have tamed Storm Lorenzo had it shown up.

ENNISCORTHY ROCK HEROES LAUNCH DEBUT SINGLE

review by Jackie Hayden – Saturday 30th August 2019

​All the rocky roads led to the Presentation Centre in Enniscorthy last week for the launch by four-piece local rockers Ten Ounce Mouse of their debut single ‘Echoes’.

The single itself is also very much a local affair, having been recorded at the Orchard Recording Studio and mixed by Brendan Carthy.

‘Echoes’ is a fine slice of intelligent pop-rock, with engaging vocals from Luc Power, and some big, anthemic drumming from Michael O’Connor. They’re both ably assisted by guitarist Brandon Murphy and Jags Denby Atkinson on bass. As if to prove that ‘Echoes’ is no fluke, they’ve coupled it on the CD with a classy live version of another original called ‘Atom League’. In all, you get eight minutes of non-stop quality rock.

The noted publisher, and long-time IMRO board member Johnny Lappin was at the gig and as a big admirer of the band he hopes to sign a publishing deal with them shortly. As he explained, “The guys approached me, and they agreed to do a showcase gig in Holohan’s live music venue in Enniscorthy. I was very impressed with their drive and enthusiasm, and I believe some of the songs showed great promise.”

The launch of ‘Echoes’ was preceded on the night by live performances by The Elephant Room and Foot Squeaker. Ten Ounce Mouse have an impressive live repertoire of around 17 songs, the vast majority of which are originals. Drawing their influence from acts such as The Smiths, The pixies, Motown Records and Joy Division, they also include revitalized versions of Sultans of Ping’s ‘Where’s Me Jumper’ and U2’s ‘I Will Follow’.

In the coming months, the band will be touring extensively around the South East, including Golden Discs outlet (Oct 4th), The Spiegeltent (Oct 9th), 31 The Athenaeum (Oct 31st) and Rogue Gallery (Nov 15th).

Lawlor Combo in Winning Form at Sky and the Ground

review by Jackie Hayden – Saturday 24th August
A Kevin Lawlor gig at any time generates a certain frisson of anticipation as well as more than a little heat, but even when it also comes hot on the heels of his five-piece band just arriving back from a gig the previous night at the Aberjazz Festival in Fishguard, they still managed to push the temperature up a few degrees. And thus, it was at the Sky and The Ground last weekend where a fair sprinkling of local jazz heads and eager fans assembled for some jazz on a hot summer’s day.

Lawlor gigs are often themed around legendary jazz figures of the calibre of John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter, but this gig consisted almost entirely of Lawlor’s own works, including all four tracks from his latest album Last Days of Summer.

He was ably abetted by a quartet of musicians known to Wexford jazz fans, namely Kelan Walsh (tenor sax), Pat Molitor (keyboards), Colm Lindsay (guitar) and Jack-Rufus Kelly on bass. As they’ve proven on stage and often, each of them can stretch a tune out without ever (col)lapsing into self-indulgence, and they emphasise this again with lengthy workouts on ‘Rise of The Right Wing’ and ‘Toucan Lullabye’. Meanwhile ‘AK 97’ comes with an infectious bass riff that invades your cranium and stays there forever. It all adds up to a gig brimful of loping rhythms, flurries of percussion and guitar fills, and swoonsome sax. A single tune can range from tightly controlled sections to expressive freeform, calling at all stations along the way.

The CD is very much a local creation too, superbly recorded by Ollie Dempsey at the Jerome Hynes Theatre in the National Opera House. And Lawlor has devised a clever marketing ploy, having released a limited quantity of numbered physical CDs before the album headed off to on-line streaming on platforms like Spotify.
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Lawlor has been rightly credited with creating a vibrant jazz scene in Wexford, centred mostly on the Wexford Arts Centre. That he is attracting attention at national level and overseas is long overdue and well justified.

Aja – Steely Dan Tribute

Review by Jackie Hayden – Saturday 10th August 2019
Tribute band shows have a number of advantages. They enable fans to engage with some of their favourite material, and they allow newbies to imagine what a live concert by the band might have sounded like. This is even more important when one or more key members have departed, and so it was with the Steely Dan Aja tribute show at a packed Wexford Arts Centre last week.
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A warm-up trio of band faves, including faithful run-throughs of ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ and ‘Green Earrings’ whetted the eager audience’s appetite for what was to come.

The highly skilled band moved to the centrepiece of the night’s agenda and delivered a spot-on version of the entire Aja album in the order the songs were originally released on vinyl. Given the consistency of the playing and singing it might seem wrong to pick out individual tracks, but ‘Deacon Blues’, Aja’ and ‘I Got the News’ (the latter dedicated to RTE’s former Wexford newsreader Anne Doyle) still resonated the following day.​

But I’m not convinced that the sequence of tracks that works on a double-side vinyl release automatically translates into the right order on stage, and it might have worked better to have interspersed those songs with the other Dan tracks they rendered equally impeccably.

After the break they sampled nuggets for the Dan’s significant catalogue, with ‘Gaucho’, ‘My Old School’ and ‘Haitian Divorce’ going down big with the Wexford Arts Centre audience. As the night approached its climax, we even had a spot of impromptu dancing. The fans joined in on ‘Pretzel Logic’ and luxuriated in ‘Babylon Sisters’ and a feisty version of ‘Reelin’ In the Years.’

Local hero Colm Lindsay on guitar was a more-than-capable replacement for the late Greg Boland, but the full ensemble had bassist/vocalist Tommy Moore, and lead vocals from Johnny Graham who had brilliant support from the underused Sinead Stone who did a fine job on ‘Dirty Work’. Drummer Alan Cunningham, saxists Mark Wilde and Serge Stavila, and Gerard Farrelly on keyboards more earned their keep too.

Rabbit Hole – Wexford Drama Group

Review by Liam Murphy
​It’s All-Ireland Drama Festival time for the next month or so, as amateur theatre and drama groups go on the ‘circuit’ to be adjudicated at regional festivals to gain the necessary points to compete in Athlone for the All-Ireland title. The word ‘amateur’ only applies to the fact that these performers and directors do not get paid, but their ambition and delivery is as professional as you might want.
Wexford Drama Group, one of the top ten groups in Ireland, are touring Rabbit Hole, an American Pulitzer Award-winning (2007) play by David Lindsay-Abaire ( he wrote the book and most of the lyrics for Shrek The Musical).
A cast of five under Stephen Byrne’s direction explored the painful and often grief and guilt-laden story of the aftermath of a 4-year old boy, Danny, who chased the family dog into the street and was tragically killed by a car driven by a young student. The cast was impressive as the play in a very cluttered set at Wexford Arts Centre, where Danny’s room was untouched was a painful reminder to the audience as well, of the shrines of memory people create online, on video or in photo albums of loved ones.
Very quickly the story moves with a good dollop of humour as the father and mother distance themselves with unspoken but visually obvious internal and external howls of rage, grief and bewilderment. The well-meaning advice of family and friends can be very toxic and perfunctory as people are at a loss and feel they should say something that becomes a painful cliche.
Theresa Boyle was in denial as if she was in a parallel universe (accessed via ‘rabbit holes’) as the mother Becca, cooking treats and washing children’s clothes, trying to establish a coping normality. Danielle Reck played her younger sister, Izzy, newly pregnant by a possibly, ne’re-do-well, musician boyfriend and brought spiky vitality to the play. Adrienne Meyler was their mother and her busy actions his how she coped with the death of a son from a drug’s overdose. Some might say that this was very contrived in the writing, but Meyler drives home a poignant message with studied ease.
Michael O’Gorman played the young student, Jason, who drove the car and he was finding it difficult to cope and come to terms, and he wanted to explain to the family his remorse, regret, and wishes to write a story about Robots, dedicated to Danny. He is closest to the author’s alter-ego, and Lindsay-Abaire was one of the writers on the animated Robots (2005) movie. O’Gorman was luminous in this difficult role.
Paul Walsh played the often bewildered husband, Howie, and this was an emotional pressure-cooker of a performance. He stood there, and the tension drained from his features and then his rages enabled the audience to reach out to comfort him. He was outstanding as he caught the pauses, the hesitations, that would have pleased Harold Pinter. This play got under my skin in a way that made me bluster, get angry and lapse into things I didn’t want to remember.

The Scourge

Review by Clara Mallon

​Clara Mallon is a drama tutor/lecturer with the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin.

“I have become a mother in a way I never thought possible”. This is one of the main sentiments running through Michelle Dooley Mahon’s one woman show, The Scourge, which comes to the Civic Theatre Tallaght as part of this year’s First Fortnight Festival. Mahon’s piece tackles the emotional complexity and often unspoken pain of caring for an elderly parent, in Mahon’s case, her late mother Siobhan. The role-reversal of child to parent of our parent, is both touching and universal in its reach. But Mahon’s personal tale is injected with a specific urgency, anguish and intricacy, as Siobhan suffered with the merciless and insuppressible Alzheimer’s disease.

Mahon’s autobiographical piece is an adaptation for stage from her first book (titled Scourged: A Memoir), yet the performance certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of theatricality. Ben Barnes’ direction combines subtlety with gusto, as Mahon commands the nearly-bear stage, occupied only by a few props and a wardrobe. Though inspired from the page, her debut drama is marked by Mahon’s unique stage presence, energy and delivery that warrants praise and admiration.

Like much autobiographical solo theatre, Mahon’s piece is embedded in the realm of personal memory. Her monologue seamlessly takes us on a tempestuous voyage, weaving in and out of different places, spaces and times in both her and Siobhan’s personal histories. From the family home, to the nursing home, car rides to birthday parties, Mahon’s lyrical dialogue effectively transform the stage space into the deep pockets of her recollected consciousness. Alongside detailing the pains and torments of this progressive disease, Mahon’s prime focus lies in her own struggles as care-giver. Bravely recounting her challenging yet tireless role as primary-carer during her mother’s demise and death, Mahon poetically and aptly describes the experience as “losing a mother and a child at the same time”.

The death of a parent is one of the most personal moments in anyone’s life. The Scourge bridges the gap between private and public, as Mahon shares the finer details and intricate moments of her life during this intimate time. Fears of abandonment and death, life and issues of mental health, and youth and old age, combine as just some of the thematic concerns of the solo piece.

There is balance at the core of this one woman show. Finding humor in tragedy, Mahon’s personal testimony creates a lightness in even the darkest hours. Tender moments of softness and pain are carefully juxtaposed with more lighthearted humor. Some of Mahon’s unique descriptions remain seared into one’s memory long after we have left the theatre.

Alzheimer’s disease is one that ruthlessly strips everything from an individual, usually beginning with memory. One cannot help feeling that Mahon’s performance is a courageous stance against this relentless disease. The solo piece gives voice to the unspeakable, and succeeds in keeping the touching memories of her beloved mother alive.

The Scourge

Review by Peter Crawley

When sorrows come, observes one Shakespearean character, they come not single spies, but in battalions. In the case of Michelle Dooley Mahon, who cared for her mother Siobhan, a Carlow woman, over 10 years as she suffered from Alzheimer’s, while dealing with her own depression and diabetes, sorrows nestled themselves into sorrows. That, however, did not dim the wit and affection with which Dooley Mahon wrote of her experience in Scourged, a self-published autobiographical novel that recounts life in small-town rural Ireland with emotion and humour.

Last year, her memoir became the substance for a solo work for the stage, performed by the writer. Produced by Wexford Arts Centre and directed by Waterford Theatre Royal’s artistic director Ben Barnes, the performance recreates the tone and tenor of a family struggling to cope with their mother’s illness, one that has robbed her of her voice, visiting her in the nursing home where she has spent the last years of her life. Now the production returns to feature in the First Fortnight Europe Mental Health Arts Festival. Often a gruelling time for people with depression, the first weeks of the new year host a time to come together and share experiences, to dispel the chill of isolation with warmth and fellow-feeling.

The Scourge

Review by Frank L

Mahon has adapted her debut book “Scourged” to create this 80 minute piece for one actor. Its subject is the relationship between a mother and her daughter with the emphasis on the period where the relationship has become that of a person suffering from dementia and that of her carer. Mahon was the primary carer for her mother and kept a chronicle of the day-to-day happenings as her mother declined both at home and in institutional care. That careful chronicling has given her a fine text which is rich in detail. Mahon skilfully brings the audience on a panoply of emotions as she relates the story.

The set is unusual but it works. It consists of a large wardrobe with two doors, standing on one side of the stage. From it, Mahon emerges. Within it is a treasure trove of memorabilia which relate directly or indirectly to her mother including a folding table, a doll, a miniature chair and bed, a bunch of flowers, a half drunk bottle of Jameson and much else besides. Mahon disappears into the wardrobe from time to time to bring out onto the stage various cherished items. Although the objects are disparate they create the visual clues which illuminate the story. Mahon uses them to telling effect as the mother gradually succumbs to the complexities of dementia. The immense love of Mahon for her mother imbues the entire story but she does not shy away from the moments of fear and frustration which inevitably confronts an individual whose role is that of primary carer. There are many moments where the only sensible reaction is that of a benign smile.
Mahon in creating this piece wishes to encourage a wider discussion about individuals suffering from dementia or other mental illnesses. The sensitivity, intelligence and humour of Mahon’s storytelling delivers a sound foundation on which to build just such a wider conversation. With the rise in longevity of life, it is increasingly likely that more people will face issues associated with mental illness. This is a loving piece of theatre which will help us to understand the everyday challenges that arise on this particular journey. It makes for an absorbing evening.

BAT THE FATHER RABBIT THE SON

Review by Jackie Hayden Thursday 22nd November 2018

Donal O’Kelly’s one-man play Bat the Father Rabbit the Son, despite having celebrated its 30th birthday, is wearing extremely well. O’Kelly’s catalogue of voices and faces enable him to splendidly and comically evoke the Haughey era, the world of commerce and a particular style of direct Dublin wit that can simultaneously express fondness and as abuse.
Rabbit and Bat are two of the characters O’Kelly brought to life on the Wexford Arts Centre audience before a fully-appreciative audience as the show flitted from scenes of unsentimental business dealings to comical banter, some ill-advised sailing around Dublin Bay and occasional touches of Joycean-style playing with language.
Rabbit is a self-made man in the haulage trade with little sympathy for those who haven’t climbed the greasy pole as majestically as he did, an achievement that gives him carte blanche to belittle those less fortunate, including his hireling Keogh. Meanwhile his father Bat is dead, but no less a presence in Rabbit’s life for all that. The sparse but effective stage props included an aluminium table and chair designed by Robert Ballagh that was imaginatively magicked into a punt to propel Rabbit and Keogh around the Bay.
Not that Bat the Father Rabbit the Son was a cosy return trip down Memory Lane. Many, if not all, of the issues that beset us back in 1988 are still with us, provoking the thought that they may be part of what we are.
O’Kelly’s energetic and versatile performance offered ample evidence as to why the show had earned him Best Writer and Best Actor nominations in the Irish Theatre Awards. While others have praised the ending, I thought it a little abrupt and the use of a song struck me as a contrived way to bring such an imaginative piece to a conclusion, but maybe all endings are contrived anyway?

​TALKIN’ BOUT OUR GENERATIONS

Review by Jackie Hayden – Saturday 17th November 2018

​Jilted Generations is not a documentary in the style of, say, a David Attenborough, but is instead a multi-disciplined disco-based sprint over half a century of tribal youth sub-cultures. Naturally the main focus is the music, backed with partly informative and often impressionistic back-projected film, some live guitar and vocals, and two active painters. The main participants at the Wexford Arts Centre were DJ Jeff Furlong, DJ Ronan Buggy, Andrew Kingshott and Mirona Mara, and they attracted a sizeable crowd, some of whom were even tempted to throw a few creative shapes on the dancefloor.
Naturally it would be impossible to attempt anything overly comprehensive in the time available, but Mods, Northern Soul, Punks, Disco, Dub Ragga, Soul Weekenders, alternative 80s massive, Hip Hop and various ravers got their slice of attention. Much of the visual footage featured street demonstrations involving fans at worst behaving badly, and the police from several countries like uncontrolled savages.
The night began with authoritarian warnings about the evils of jazz, appropriate since 20th century Ireland saw strenuous efforts by the Catholic Church, Leitrim priest Father Peter Conferey, and the ultra-conservative Gaelic League to ban on “the devil’s music”. In fact, one of the impressions you might have come away with was how decidedly non-threatening much of the music now sounds with the passing of time.
But the mix of fractured sounds and fragmented visuals created a fast-moving collage and served as a timely reminder of times when music, revolution and rebellion were regular bedfellows, establishment figures were scared of anything they didn’t understand and fans were willing to risk beatings and worse by taking their feelings to the streets.
Much music that didn’t impinge on disco culture was mostly ignored and the visuals came with their obligatory quota of intrusive apostrophes. But this is a concept that can grow. The sound quality at the Wexford Arts Centre was seamlessly terrific and in many ways Jilted Generations showed what can be achieved with wit, imagination, skill and hard work. I hope they do it again and again.

The Scourge

Review by: Richard Connolly Saturday October 20th 2018

I didn’t want The Scourge to ever end.
In a humbling tour de force performance over 90 minutes MDM captivates her audience, blurring the lines between Mother and Child, and life imitating art imitating life.
The soundtrack should be on a CD.
The author’s bipolar disorder was excellently depicted from the off, making her solo performance all the gutsier.
“The Scourge” – a play on the scourge of an illness and an affectionate nickname her parents gave her as a young child was skilfully paced and beautifully lit by director Ben Barnes who has created an unforgettable actress in her stage debut, the show bringing an audience a steady and balanced mix of pathos and humour and hitting all the right notes during the protagonists seamless switches of mood and costume.
A simple set which consists of a wardrobe, not only allowed fluidity of pace and action, but also placed focus solely on the performer.
In many ways Michelle is similar to the heroine “Lucy” in C.S. Lewis’s classic novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as she steps in and out of a latter-day version of a magical Narnia. And also, her tales of a young girl and her siblings’ adventures. Every time MDM emerges from the wardrobe, she takes the audience on a journey through a realm of her life, captivating them through her memories and her loving relationship with her ailing mother, Siobhan. The play has a childlike feel to it, with Siobhan– depicted as a doll – slumped in a small chair or lying in a tiny bed.
This very successfully illustrates the childlike and helpless state that afflicted sufferers succumb to. Dooley Mahon despite being 54 is childlike herself in an oversized dress and there are times when it feels almost invasive to be privy to such intimacy.
It is indeed rare for a production to get a standing ovation on a preview night however MDM achieved this in Wexford Arts Centre in March of this year.
Every time that she has performed it since the Premiere and now re-run it at The Wexford Festival Fringe the audience has stood, many in tears.
On the night I attended for the second time the whistling and shouts during the ovations were unrestrained for this extremely brave performance.
This is not only a testament to the power of the material and her delivery, but also an innate ability to connect with an audience, her main strengths being a gifted raconteur and comedienne, as well as possessing a genius for a comic turn of a phrase – ie: a face that would turn a funeral up a side street.
Her lampooning of institutions through humour serves to soften her rapier-like observations of same. During the course of the show Michelle articulates an incident from school which conveys the fact educational establishments in the 70’s were unaware of how to deal with students who could not be classified.
Another example of institutional “bloody mindedness” is when she outlines her “Cuckoo’s Nest” rebellion against some of the more preposterous edicts of the HSE and a Hospital, fighting tooth and nail for the rights of a vulnerable woman and becoming immersed in the life of the patients in the blue and white ward.

“On the 181st day you were gone to a ward like Mumbai when I came in to feed you and found your blue bed, empty”

Thus, on a deeper level the audience can see how the person can be ignored by people who subscribe to institutional norms: the uniqueness of each individual and their story becoming eclipsed by a one size fits all mentality.
This play has contemporary and universal resonance in view of the current state of the health service which alienates the individual, and in this case the patient. Thus, MDM’s writing is very clever and layered, subliminally and overtly planting seeds in the audience’s mind without hitting them, metaphorically, over the head with her points of view. Hence, despite the humour this is a deeply serious play that delineates the detrimental impact of illness upon the sufferer and their loved ones. The play is also full of philosophical musings that posit the notion that there is no white bearded God looking down on us and that the true nature of spirituality is the very air we breathe.
In that sense, The Scourge is a profoundly compassionate play that is not only a truly personal account of one’s life, but also a celebration of our shared humanity, the beauty of imperfection which makes us human, and the “fragile temporal nature of all life”
It is also because of this, I believe, that audiences have connected so well with this work, giving her the standing ovations, she richly deserves.
Bravo!

Richard Connolly October 31st 2018 ©

Richard Connolly has reviewed regularly for The Wexford Echo. He holds a MPhil in Theatre Performance from Trinity College Dublin and a BA in Drama & Theatre Arts.

PROVOCATIVE PLAY EXPLORES CONCERNS OF TEENAGE GIRLS​

Review by: Jackie Hayden 8th October 2018

Although I’ve never been a 12-year-old girl, the power of the acting, the strength of the script by Marnie McCleane-Fay and the tautness of the production of Rate Me at the Wexford Arts Centre were all so honest and convincing that I feel I now have more of a handle as to what that world might be like.
In many ways it resembles a war zone, with kids at a most vulnerable age revolting against being in the firing line of abuse from parents, boy-friends, patriarchy, adults, the media, nonebrity culture, and the fashion and diet industries, but just as much from each other. Noticeably, and quite bizarrely, teachers are exempt from comment, never mind a hint of blame, as the girls trounce their perceived abusers with screeds of anger, menacing chants and the realistic use of foul language.
The performances by the teenage cast of 20 were remarkably assured and convincing, but the play focused primarily on four girls maturing from 12 to 18 and beyond in the tangled world of post-Catholic modern Ireland. They confront a bewildering array of issues, including lesbianism, girl-on-girl body-shaming, bullying, porn, self-harm, abortion, sexual assault, real and imagined sexual experiences, and that ugly pressure to conform in both body and mind.
The production by Bare Cheek Theatre Company was so compelling that you dared not miss a word or a gesture, yet amid the anger and rage there was room for humour and many tender moments, as well as a sprinkling of thoughtful music and outbreaks of liberating, joyful dancing.
It struck me as a pity that the Wexford Arts Centre audience was almost totally female, as men need to see these issues played out from a young female perspective, even if they find some of the angles one-sidedly simplistic. Either way, Rate Me is such a provocative work it should be staged in all boys’ secondary schools. Sadly, it won’t.

MAKING A MEAL OUT OF COMEDY

Review: Jackie Hayden – 25th September 2018 – Photo: Patrick Hogan

It’s not often you go to a show at Wexford Arts Centre and end up eating some of the contents of the night’s entertainment, but that’s exactly what happened at the recent George Egg-DIY Chef show at the venue. As part of a very funny show, Egg cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner and kindly allowed the audience to eat them afterwards.

The premise of the entertainment is that George has taken refuge in the family shed where he applies considerable ingenuity to some basic ingredients and a range of DIY gadgetry, from a blowtorch and a wallpaper stripper to a coal shovel, the inside of a wine box, a paper shredder, plastic buckets and a toilet brush . With them he miraculously conjures up a trio of edible dishes, and all because he visited his doctor over some chest pains resulting in his wife banning him from using their kitchen.

Each key utensil is introduced to the audience like a proper guest star and given their full make and model number, such as the Energer ENB484 Wallpaper Stripper which he uses to steam a kipper and an egg sealed in bags like the ones you “buy drugs in”. The blowtorch is applied to a beautiful steak and the meal requires a shovel to be used as an ersatz frying pan. It’s all done so convincingly that a warning not to try this at home might actually spoil a lot of domestic fun.

In between, Egg treats us to a selection of poems with questionable sell-by dates, an endless stream of jokes and some quips about heavy metal bands. The Wexford Arts Centre lapped it all up, in some cases literally.

All in all, this is a hilarious and hugely inventive show, delivered by a truly chatty and witty man. And he’s not a band cook either.​

EVA CASSIDY REMEMBERED

Review: Jackie Hayden – 20th September 2018

American songbird Eva Cassidy had such a versatile, appealing voice that it earned her a remarkable posthumous international reputation, and the attendance at the Wexford Arts Centre for Eva Cassidy The Story, a show in her honour presented by singer and guitarist Elsa Jean McTaggart, suggested that that appeal is still intact.
Cassidy sang songs she simply loved to sing, from standards to folk, blues, soul, heavy metal and country, her main concern being that the song worked for her. McTaggart, from Perthshire in Scotland, accurately evoked the quality of her heroine simply by using her own voice and deft guitar-playing in front of a backdrop of photos. Ably assisted by Mister Lister (her husband) on keyboards, instead of merely imitating Cassidy she, thankfully, allowed her to inspire her own singing, much to the credit of both.
In fact, the show hadn’t gone too far when you became enthralled by McTaggart’s own rejuvenation of such staples from the Cassidy repertoire as ‘Autumn Leaves’, ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘True Colours’. ‘Over the Rainbow’ is the song Cassidy is probably most connected to, and McTaggart delivered a touching version of that standard. Switching easily from electric to acoustic guitar she did masterly work with virtually all of the songs, especially Sting’s ‘Fields of Gold’, an emotional ‘What a Wonderful World’ (the last song Cassidy ever sang) and a funked-up ‘Wade in The Water’. All went down a treat with the captivated Wexford Arts Centre audience.
McTaggart’s narration retold Cassidy’s life as a backdrop to her music, including her lack of confidence, being bullied and her dithering over which route to take with her music. But arguably the most poignant moment came when she sang harmony to a video of Cassidy singing a live version of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s ‘Tall Trees in Georgia.’ I suspect spines are still tingling.
Cassidy died at only 33 from cancer, but her musical legacy looks certain to last for some time to come. If so, Elsa Jean McTaggart will have played a considerable part in that.

PADDY CASEY LIVE REVIEW

Review: Jackie Hayden – 28th July 2018 Photo: Patrick Hogan

The singer-songwriter genre comes with a reputation for deep reflection and introspection over serious issues, but Paddy Casey is one of its few practitioners who consistently breaks that mould. And so, it was with his recent gig at the Wexford Arts Centre in which he established a witty banter with the audience who went along with him all the way, making for much merriment all round.
Not that Casey’s work is not to be taken seriously. Backed only by the versatile Fiona Melady (keyboards and backing vocals) who could have been given more room to shine, he and his guitar took the eager audience through a sizeable chunk of his catchy chorus-laden back catalogue. “Promised Land” animated the happy clappers early on, and he sparked many sing-a-longs, especially “Want It, Can’t Have It” which had the full house on their feet and “Whatever Gets You True”. Casey has the happy knack of endowing his songs with short and snappy choruses that embed them in your head forever, and he delivered ‘The Lucky One’, ‘Fear’, ‘It’s Over Now’, ‘Livin’, ‘Hold On’ and the rest with his characteristic wit and aplomb.
With ‘There will be Love’ and the Paul Simon-tinged ‘Sweet Suburban Sky’ Casey showed he can do the finger-picking thing too, but his real skill came to the fore with ‘Times are Tough’. It’s from his forthcoming album and, while dealing with the realities of the modern world also had the fans singing along for what sounded like a potential radio winner.
PWC Spotlight artist Alice Lynskey opened proceedings with a quartet of songs, including her new single ‘Lovesick Rollercoaster’, a tantalising, slow love song with a twist. Her Red-Handed Woman’ is a graphic self-penned murder ballad about love gone tragically wrong. Alice had actually kicked off with her recent single ‘The Devil In Me’. Given that it received generous airplay from RTE Radio 1 and a thumbs up review from Hot Press, maybe Alice could stop apologising and just enjoy her not inconsiderable talent as much as her Wexford Art Centre audiences do?

BARNES AND PARLE IN FINE FORM AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden – 14th July 2018 Photo Credit: Patrick Hogan

Internationally-acclaimed guitarist Clive Barnes and award-winning singer/songwriter Luan Parle have enjoyed considerable success as solo acts, both on record and in live performance, but their emergence as a duo has introduced us to an act that takes their solo career adventures in new directions while remaining steadfast to their individual roots .
The initial sections of both halves of their recent Wexford Arts Centre showed Parle offering convincing evidence that her absorption into the pop and rock mainstream has obscured her talent as a creative country music performer of considerable power and expression. Indeed, her vocal style runs the gamut from Dolly Parton to Emmylou Harris, with some self-effacing and humorous chat in between.
‘Roll The Dice’ was one of the highlights, a smooth uptempo country-rock offering par excellence, with Barnes’ coaxing delicious complementary phrases from his electric guitar while Parle showed how to give a song a decent night out. They repeated that formula for such winners as the sturdy ‘Day Is Done’, ‘Losing My Mind’, from her recent EP, and ‘Why Baby Why’ with its subtle nods towards Buddy Holly. Her ‘You Don’t Get It’ is an acerbic take on her unhappy encounters with the music industry, proving there’s more on her lyrical palette than issues of love either lost and won, and they duetted lustily on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’.
Barnes took a solo run that showcased his riveting bottleneck guitar playing, especially when he shifted up several gears on ‘Kitty Twist’. He dedicated ‘Lawn Dogs’ to fellow local musician Gordon Barry, and along the way regaled us with some of his trademark tall tales, even admitting that he had once broken part of the Wexford Arts Centre stage while in a heavy metal band. His fluid guitar playing on both slide and conventional guitar made a serious case for him as this country’s leading guitar man, but he also exercised his trademark smoky vocals on ‘Highway 61 Blues’ from the canon of the blues legend Mississippi Fred McDowell. For the Wexford Arts Centre patrons who had sacrificed the beach, this was a rewarding musical night.

CURSED MURPHY AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden – 13th July 2018 Photo Credit: Patrick Hogan

If you needed a break from predictable guitar band fare, singer-songwriter angst or pop nonebrities, the place to be last Friday night was the Wexford Arts Centre for the latest outburst from Cursed Murphy, with his accomplices Dan Comerford on electric guitar and Bloco Gorman, a four-person drum crew.
Murphy – alias music writer novelist Peter Murphy – set the mood with an intense performance of Louis MacNeice’s poem ‘Prayer Before Birth’ that leapt off the page and thoroughly rattled and hummed through the venue. From his novel Shall We Gather at the River the Cursed One gave us a forlorn extract called ‘Lost Alice’, abetted by Comerford’s chiming guitar while the drums added a mix of menace and awe.
Later, a spoken piece took us into a rap and drum-driven ‘Foxhole Prayer’ that may be destined to become the central focus of Murphy’s stage outings. It took us somewhere beyond despair, teased out with Comerford’s jagged guitar and a nod to Beckett. And it didn’t get any lighter either. ‘We Are Dead Stars’ enveloped us in a post sci-fi world that offered little relief, but then if we’d wanted sunshine and hope we’d have gone to the beach.
Murphy has become a magnetic performer who enables us to marvel at the generally unacknowledged celebratory power of the written word when performed rather than merely read. There are even rumours of an album in the making. Now there’s something to be hopeful about.
He was followed by the Cork-based American Lady Grew, a multi-tasking act who takes in rap, comedy and song. Much of her material is inspired by her life in the sex industry, and she’s an eloquent champion of sex workers’ rights in Ireland. She started off with a biology class about the differences between male and female bodies, and then sang a song about a BDSM session that went wrong. Her artistry reflects a freshly irreverent strand of Feminism that may not earn many gold stars from the bully-girls currently demeaning that admirable movement. That aside, she could also do well with those who binge on re-runs of Benny Hill.

JOSH JOHNSTON IN HIS OWN RIGHT

Review By: Jackie Hayden – 30th June 2018 Photo Credit: Patrick Hogan

​Well known to Wexford and national music fans via his sterling work with the Caca Milis Cabaret and artists of the stature of Stewart Agnew and Pierce Turner in a career stretching over two decades, last week it was Josh Johnston’s turn to enjoy a spell in the spotlight at the Wexford Arts Centre.

The heatwave and the World Cup conspired to affect audience numbers, but he still gave us an intriguing set that included several items from his new album The Art of Saving Lives. The Dublin pianist and singer-songwriter was joined for most of the set by guitarist Eoin O’Brien, and occasionally by singer Carol Keogh, both of whom make valuable contributions to the album.

But Johnston launched proceedings with a solo dreamy Elton John-ish piano piece leading into a thoughtful re-working of Bob Dylan’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. That wasn’t the only cover on the night, as they gave us an impressively languid interpretation of Loudon Wainwright’s ‘Strange Weirdos’ and Chris Wood’s atheist spiritual ‘Come Down Jehovah’. But the rest of the set focused on songs by Johnston, either solo or in collaboration with O’Brien, Doug Kinch and SJ McArdle. The combination of punchy guitar and fluid piano worked a treat for ‘Moon Landing’, and Keogh added exquisite vocals to ‘Missed Her on the Road’, ‘Completely’ and ‘Rain’, the latter inspired after Johnston got caught in a downpour in Paris. She also took the lead for ‘Silent Harbour’, from Johnston’s album about Dun Laoghaire. Meanwhile, O’Brien added understated touches on both electric and acoustic guitars throughout the evening, most notably on ‘Midsummer with Anja’. All three combined for some tasty harmonies on the semi-confessional ‘Scattered’, and O’Brien got a chance to exercise his solo tonsils with his own song ‘The Legend of Slim Slick Sly’ delivered with a convincing American accent.
All told it was a pleasant set that made its mark on the Wexford Arts Centre audience who seemed much taken with Johnston’s admirably downhome, non-showbiz style.

The Diary Of Maynard Perdu​

​Review By: Liam Murphy – June 2018
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The premiere of a Billy Roche play The Diary Of Maynard Perdu at Wexford Arts Centre was a high energy occasion. The auditorium was reconfigured into seating on three sides like in the old Garter Lane original set up. This diary was a fantasy work full of theatrical tricks, misdirections, fakery and fun. Peter McCamley brought a manic energy to the role as the narrative ranged from a circus tent in Amsterdam to the port of Wexford and other places where tall tales have truth, and lies and trickery are the entertainment.
Billy Roche also directed this fifty-minute production that has a great use of lyrical, declamatory and farcical asides as well as music and singing (essentials in a Roche play). At one stage, the setting was a ship in a storm and McCamley was high up on a mast like Robin Williams in Popeye and his performance was crazy out. He went up the mast somewhere between Amsterdam or Marrakesh and when he came down he was in Wexford.
The changes came with mindblowing rapidity and a trunk full of hats was like a cornucopia of entertainment.
Maynard Perdu was a force of nature, a ‘Jack the Lad’ or in this case ‘Jim the Boyo’.. Mark Redmond’s inventive set was a revelation of drawers, compartments, little mirrors, nooks of wonder and crannies of deceit and legerdemain. McCamley’s dexterity, physically and verbally, was of a high order and I laughed a lot.
This was a show about a showman and McCamley excelled and entertained. I hope this play gets to tour to festivals and it could be a wow in a tent or in the open air.

A DRAMATIC TRIUMPH FOR BILLY AND PETE

Review: Jackie Hayden – June 2018

Oscar Wilde said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. … Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” Well, sometimes, but his words occurred to me during the staging of The Diary of Maynard Perdu at the Wexford Arts Centre as a one-man show based on Billy Roche’s novella of the same name.
To describe it as a mere one-man show understates the versatility and flexibility of actor Peter McCamley, coincidentally the equally multi-tasking drummer in Billy’s band. His ability not only to remember 90-minutes of fast-paced dialogue but also all the gestures, singing, changes of accents, endless bits of stage business, conflicting moods and whatnot was a feat to behold.
McCamley played at least two versions of the eponymous main character, and left you wondering which was the real one, or even if there was a real one. Was it the charming chancer who fancied himself as a genius in various endeavours, not least in his ability to attract a beautiful woman, after having matured into a cultured, articulate performer from low beginnings? Or had he always been that downbeat, under-confident peasant who merely hammed his way through his adopted bohemian vagabond lifestyle in order to gain whatever he desired, be it status, work, or the oft-mentioned beautiful woman?
Roche’s script played with the audience as much as with the characters, locating the play in the Spiegeltent familiar to us from its annual appearance on Wexford Quay. But this time the mirrors were ​

SOME GUITAR PLAYING AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden – 31st May 2018
​A Remi Harris live gig is akin to a visit to a well-stocked guitar shop. No mere jazzman, Harris comes with a shopful of styles and genres that stretch way beyond that simple description.
Aided and encouraged by double-bassist Mark Green and second guitarist Steve Astin, Harris took the Wexford Arts Centre audience on an exhilarating journey through a set-list that stretched from straighahead jazz interpretations of well-known tunes to flashes of gypsy swing, all on acoustic guitar, while also diversifying for some remarkable electric blues. That they’d finally pitched up in Wexford after a gruelling tour schedule that had started out in the Yardbird Arts Club in the Worcestershire countryside at the end of February, was evident in a sense of mutual confidence that enabled them to take the audience with them all the way.
It seemed that no matter what style Harris turned his fingers to he could still make magic, including when he lovingly introduced his ukulele for ‘All Of Me’. The trio’s brisk take on Lennon-McCartney’s ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and a slinky version of ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ underscored the Fab Two’s melodic gifts, and The Meters’ percussive swamp-funk tune ‘Cissy Strut’ was given a tasteful make-over too.
Harris drew subtleties from his electric guitar that we rarely get to hear, not least on a version of the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Need Your Love So Bad’ that was so brimful of solid blues-rock that you didn’t notice the lack of a drummer. He took to his 12-string guitar for a casual, but no less mesmerising, run-through of the Nat King Cole hit ‘Nature Boy’.
Harris comes across as a modest, generous man, and for ‘Pennies From Heaven’ he created space for Mark Green to own the spotlight for a while and managed to slip in a snippet from ‘Duelling Banjos’ too. Whereas some jazz soloists reduce the music to a mere exercise in speed-playing, Harris uses his nimble fingers to serve the music. No wonder the Wexford Arts Centre audience stayed on message through this gig so as not to miss the fluid flourishes that also evoked Django Reinhardt, Jimi Hendrix and even Charlie Parker. He’s some player and it was some gig.

IMPRESSIVE TURN-OUT FOR BILLY’S ALBUM LAUNCH

Review: Jackie Hayden – 18th May 2018
An impressive cross-section of Wexford’s finest turned out at Wexford Arts Centre last weekend for the launch of Billy Roche’s new CD album Dead Man’s Shoes.
In a generous move, Billy gave a complimentary copy of the CD “to everyone in the audience”, and then delivered superb live versions of most of the tracks in cahoots with Mike Odlum and Pete McCamley. Inventively fleshing out the sound behind Billy’s impressive guitar and voice, the boys turned their hands to a shopful of instruments, including bass, keyboards, various items of percussion and flute, as well as adding impressive vocal harmonies.

Odlum used a tamboura to add a touch of Indian magic when Billy felt the urge to head east on the infectious ‘I’m Gonna Take You Home’. There’s more than a hint of the Orient about ‘Three Wheels’ and his open string playing on ‘Yearning’. Meanwhile, the eerily catchy murder ballad ‘Three Lovely Ladies’ has all the sinister menace of an old style melodrama, and Billy’s famous red guitar came into its own on ‘Lost’.

In spite of his reputation as a wordsmith across novels, plays and tv dramas, Roche’s songs are no mere vehicles for his lyrics, but come brimful of infectiously catchy melodies, as with the delicious Beatlesque ‘Lisa Lullaby’. He can also bring an intimacy to universal themes such as the impassioned pleading of the dramatic ‘Don’t Go Down’.

The Dead Man’s Shoes CD has these tracks and more, a cohesive work lightly buffed to a studio sheen that never masks the core of the songs. And the night wasn’t all about the album, as the trio’s generous set had the audience singing lustily along to ‘That’s All Right When You’re Young’. Billy threw in some nice slide guitar touches as they turned up the heat for ‘Sweet Little Lady’, and the bluesy ‘Napoleon’ was suitably driven by McCamley’s martial drumming.
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Billy’s songs don’t hang about either. They say what they have to say and then vacate the stage, leaving the Wexford Arts Centre audience with a pocketful of good vibes and memories of a thoroughly magical experience.

JMA BRING YOUNG AND DYLAN TO ENNISCORTHY

REVIEW: JACKIE HAYDEN – 11th May 2018
The high ceiling in the concert room of the Presentation Centre in Enniscorthy can make it a hard venue for some acts to fill, but there were no such problems for JMA for their tribute night to Neil Young and Bob Dylan last week. With the tight harmonies of Anne and James Meyler, the incendiary guitar playing of Mick Egan (who added tasty harmonica and gutsy vocals too) as well as the thundering tight back two of drumsman Keith Devereux and fluid bassist Mick O’Brien they filled the hall, and then some.

After previous gigs by this impressive outfit I expressed the view that I thought they did Young better than Dylan, perhaps because Egan’s no-holds-barred approach to the guitar seems to suit the former’s songs better. But this was a more seamless set, with such a sense of cohesion to the sound throughout the performance that you could barely see the join between one classic songwriter and the other. It was almost as if they had decided to do Dylan as Neil Young would. I could ask them but they might not tell me, but whatever it was it worked from start to glorious finish.
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In truth it would be hard to nominate stand-out songs, but from the Neil Young canon ‘Cinnamon Girl’, ‘Cortez the Killer’ and ‘Like A Hurricane’ were especially dynamic, and the great slabs of guitar washes that Egan tore from his guitar during ‘Powderfinger’ drew enthusiastic bursts of applause from an appreciative audience. From Dylan’s back pages they plucked ‘One More Cup of Coffee’ and ‘Oh Sister’, but the outfit proved they were willing to go even further beyond the obvious with a superb shot at ‘Senor (Tales of Yankee Power’). Egan and Anne Meyler harmonised splendidly on an emotional ‘Just Like A Woman’, while James Meyler took masterful control of ‘Forever Young’.

So with the Presentation Centre’s stained-glass window as a backdrop, JAM delivered a two-hour set of music that was made from pure crystal.

SNOWPOETRY AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Ironically, Snowpoet’s concert originally scheduled for the Wexford Arts Centre earlier this year was kiboshed by the snow, thus becoming more a case of Nopoet, but the sextet fronted by Lauren Kinsella insisted on returning and we’re now so glad they did.

There’s something tastefully subdued and politely restrained in Snowpoet’s approach to their brand of indie-jazz fusion, as if they can say all they want to musically without resorting to grandstanding. Kinsella’s vocal is often mixed into the ensemble sound like another instrument rather than the band merely functioning as her backing outfit. And they made a formidable team, Kinsella plus multi-instrumentalist Chris Hyson, Josh Arcoleo (saxophone and bass), Nick Costley-White (guitar), Matt Robinson (piano) and Dave Hamblett (drums).

The absence of song titles in Kinsella’s stage announcements had the strange effect of luring the listener into each piece without pre-conceptions, and the similar mood in most of the works almost created a sense of them comprising one complete piece, each individual work a stop along the route through a succession of beguilingly delicate soundscapes.

Fittingly, ‘Snow’ was one of the stand-out tracks on their second album Thought You Knew, and live it grew to its full stature. It’s short and compact, yet brimming with nutritional goodness. ‘Pixel’ was another real gem, deliciously gentle guitars opening a widescreen backdrop and Kinsella’s voice at its most convincingly expressive. ‘Waves’, with which they opened, comes from their self-titled debut album, and it allowed Kinsella’s voice to weave in and around guitar figures that drew one towards a whirling centre that touched the enthralled Wexford Arts Centre audience. The folksy ‘Little Moon Man’ is taken at a friskier pace and makes the most of their twin keyboards.

Kinsella’s vocals are appealingly edgy and expressively rich, and often evoke Liz Fraser’s contributions to The Cocteau Twins or Bjork at her less mental. Where similar ensembles can rarely resist the temptation to overdo it, there’s a collective discipline to Snowpoet that kept the playing on message at all times. That policy suggested a desire to use music as a means of communication rather than as an opportunity to show off. I suspect that’s what the Wexford audience liked most about it.

A NIGHT OF TUNEFULNESS AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

There was more than a dash of magic to Liam Merriman’s gig at the Wexford Arts Centre with his impressive bag of tuneful tracks, mostly from his recently- released sixth album Acoustic Rivers. All were delivered with his assured melodic vocal style and backed by the tasty interplay of his guitar with that of Bill Stuart. Stuart is a serious new find, his dexterous fingerplay often drawing magical fills from his fretboard, while also adding his vocal harmonies in support of Merriman for a match made in musical heaven.

The impeccable opener ‘It Could Be So Good’ laid down a standard for a set that included ‘Mizzy Mizzy’, a jaunty song about busking, while there’s a clever cyclical logic to ‘Girl on A Train’. ‘Miss You’ has the ghost of Tir na nOg about it, and ‘The Bicycle Song’, complete with an outburst of whistling from Merriman, has a cheery outdoor feel. Inspired by his boyhood holidays in Kilmore Quay, the instrumental ‘Summer and The Boy’ neatly marries two trad tunes, and their instrumental take on Jimmy MacCarthy’s ‘Bright Blue Rose’ lets new light into a familiar work.

The duo then gave the stage to Jody McStravick who was visiting Ireland from his domicile in France, and he brought with him a mix of original songs and covers and one in French (which he might actually have given us more of). His covers included fine interpretations of ‘Wonderful Baby’ by Don McLean, Shay Healy’s ‘Just Another Year’ and the Louis Armstrong hit ‘Wonderful World’. McStravick has a warm voice which he also applied to some of his own songs, many of which are inspired by real life. ‘Talking’ is about just that, and his ‘Paris Blue’ is a classy evocation of that city and a perfect fit for his forceful but flexible voice. ‘True Love’ was inspired by an old movie, and he added tasty guitar fills to ‘London’ too.
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As an encore, all three joined forces for a relaxed sing-song that the Wexford Arts Centre audience lapped up, ranging from David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ to ‘Paul Simon’s ‘Song for America’. It was a suitable way to end a night that had tunefulness all over it.

​​QUINTESSENCE AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review; Jackie Hayden

After spending most of the last year with various ensembles paying tribute to giants of jazz such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and the famous Blue Note catalogue, drummer Kevin Lawlor was this time back at Wexford Arts Centre with his quintet and a bunch of mostly original tunes for a concert that in jazz terms was as good as it gets. That Wexford Arts Centre was full to standing room only is further proof of the growing number of disciples Lawlor is attracting.

Matters kicked off in promising style with the County Wexford School of Music Jazz Ensemble delivering a laudable take on ‘Bohemia after Dark’ by Oscar Pettiford by way of Cannonball Adderley that only hinted at the delights to come.
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Lawlor’s instinct for picking apt sidemen has truly paid off, and with Colm Lindsay (guitar), Pat Molitor (keyboards), Adam Nolan (sax), and Jack Rufus Kelly (bass) he demonstrated his own ability to coax and cajole the best out of them without ever becoming overly intrusive or dominant. Most of their set were Lawlor originals, with ‘AK97’ boasting a truly infectious bas riff in search of a Pink Panther-style soundtrack. It was arguably the outstanding piece on the night, not least for Lindsey’s biting guitar, Molitor finally getting a chance to stretch and the band clearly enjoying it as much as the audience were.

Another original, ’Exodus’ from Lawlor’s first album, set a smouldering mood which the drummer stoked along with remarkable subtlety, while there was a languid, bluesy feel to ‘Bag of Cans’ that took us close to modern rock territory. ‘Last Days of Summer’ drifted and floated with touches of ‘Favourite Things’-era Coltrane, Nolan’s sax brought a Charles Lloyd mood to ‘Toucan Lullabye’, and there was an appropriately ominously relentless martial undercurrent to ‘Rise of the Right Wing’.
Covers included a frisky take on the Ariana Grande hit ‘One Last Time’, with the ensemble blowing hot and cool as the mood took them. Lawlor’s next outing is to Tinahely Courthouse on May 4th with his quartet when they’ll reprise their rather excellent tribute to John Coltrane.

​TELLING TALL TALES AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden

Perhaps without always appreciating it, we’re surrounded by stories. Not only are television dramas, plays, films, interviews and even news broadcasts and documentaries ultimately based on stories of one kind or another, but most of our daily conversations are too. But there’s a knack to the art of storytelling, particularly of the fictional kind, that often reaches uncharted heights when we’re taken into the company of a live Irish Seanchai such as Feélim Ó Flaithulach (superbly played by Gary Lombard) as he delivers Eamonn Colfer’s new show at Wexford Arts Centre.

Immersed in Colfer’s vivid material, Lombard has the ability to make you feel he’s taking you, and only you, into his confidence as he unfolds enthralling, eccentric, and occasionally ribald, tall stories. Indeed, Lombard’s approach recalls the all-time great Seanchai Eamon Kelly, with a twinkle in both eyes and a charmingly unhealthy liking for devilment. He talks about Jaco, a versatile shepherd who trebles as a ballet dancer and a relentless pursuer of women, as if he knew him intimately. He follows that with a story about a Peeping Tom indulging in a spot of masturbation, literally behind the scenes, as the would-be lothario observes the delectable Rita, the disrobing actress. Could that be a first in the Seanchai tradition?

His final story, ‘The Completionist’, is a little longer than the first two and has a quaint quirkiness a la Flann O’Brien, as we follow the adventures of a man who takes on the job of putting the finishing touches to such supposedly incomplete objects as the Eiffel Tower and the Mona Lisa. As for how he ends up, I’m not telling.
What’s arguably most illuminating about the show is that a truly captivating story needs neither fancy technology nor stage trickery to carry you off to wherever an imaginative writer like Colfer wants to take you. The equally gifted Lombard was ably supported by harmonica wizard John Murphy who played majestically between stories.

Only one complaint. It was too short.

MOTHER COURAGE AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden
See Video of The Scourge

For me, the overwhelming factor in Michelle Dooley Mahon’s one-woman show The
Scourge at Wexford Arts Centre is her courage. Based on her factual book Scourged, the stage version sees Dooley Mahon face fearlessly and head-on into her feelings as she struggles with her mother Siobhan’s descent into Alzheimer’s and death, but she also has the courage to expose her own battles across several fault-lines.

Elizabeth Whyte’s production and Ben Barnes’ direction make maximum use of a
minimalist set, using an on-stage wardrobe for costume changes and a few small items in including a symbolic doll. They also break up the narrative with snatches of evocative recordings by Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, The Pogues, The Stunning, The Beatles,Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd among others.

Dooley-Mahon’s sometimes scattershot delivery demands you stay focused, and her
descriptive language of hospitals and care homes veers from chilling accuracy to
hilarity. And while you can only sympathise with her experiences, you marvel at her
resilience and her relentless efforts to see that neither herself nor Siobhan succumb
through indifference. In fact, Dooley Mahon doesn’t do indifference about anything,
and some of her wistful asides about growing up in Wexford are a characteristic blend of wit and wicked powers of observation, and all delivered in a language that is at times quite poetic. And in there too is a stimulating mix of a heart-aching sadness, anger, and despair, all tempered again by her indomitable humour.

It’s sadly arguable that few families could not relate to the issues of health and the
elderly, so despite the Wexford setting, there is a universality to Dooley Mahon’s
narrative that suggests that this is not just a magnificent local work but one that will
resonate nationally and internationally too. At times you feel she could be a truculent
customer, but a likeable one for all that. And it’s no harm to be reminded that some
situations demand a serious level of truculence.

Dooley-Mahon is the kind of compassionate and feisty woman you’d want on your
side when the chips are down, as they often were for both her and Siobhan, together and alone. But as for The Scourge, the only way is up.

The Scourge

Review by Tom Mooney – The Rest is Jazz
therestisjazz.com

Have words, will travel.

Before the premiere of Under Milk Wood in New York, Dylan Thomas chided his fraught cast. ‘Love the words.’ Michelle Dooley Mahon loves words. Her eponymous book, from which The Scourge is adapted, is a paean to language. Given free rein, her verbosity has the cyclic rate of fire of a Kalashnikov. The Scourge that we know is an unbridled pyrotechnic flow of metaphor and onomatopoeia, bookended by covers. But she had to up her game remoulding The Scourge for the stage, because this is not a play. This is real life. The quotidian morsels of everyday living laid bare.
The curtains pulled back.

Hesitancy occurs in the writer’s performance at Wexford Arts Centre, but that’s natural. She can’t help but smile at her own humour, and then remembers she’s on stage. Playing a part. Or is she? Ben Barnes’ biggest challenge as director must have been curbing that infectious enthusiasm, like lunging a horse before hacking out.

The wardrobe is Narnia’s portal, from which the paraphernalia associated with the theme of The Scourge, a long day’s journey into death, emerge. They are Dooley Mahon’s Songlines, a personal braille to maintain the confluence of her story, and time. And yet I could picture her sitting on a stool, like Dave Allen, alone under a light, glass of whiskey in hand, but without the props and the Desert Island discs, and being demonstrably as effective.

Because Dooley Mahon, in a hugely courageous performance, reminds us that art and life co-exist and emerge from a single source to assemble coherence. To stand guard against chaos, said Kenneth Tynan. This is flesh and blood writing, sentient and animate, rooted in grief. And as Dooley Mahon knows only two well, grief has two acts: loss, followed by the remaking of a life.

‘What good amid these?’ asked Whitman. Dooley Mahon provides an answer, ensuring that the powerful play goes on.

The Scourge

Review by Liam Murphy Munster Express

This afternoon in Wexford Arts Centre I was moved and almost overcome by the humanity, hilarity and heart rending of The Scourge. Written and performed by Michelle Dooley Mahon this eighty minute performance without interval raised me up and plunged me down on an emotional rollercoaster. A wonderful set of a large wardrobe that contained performer, props and costumes with a sound design by Jamie Beamish worked so well as Michelle (named after a Beatles song not a saint) told a poignant tale of her mother’s twilight seven years of Alzheimer’s.
People cried in the theatre.

I came out in a daze after that surge of emotion and a standing ovation.
Ben Barnes directed with control and artistry. I hope this play tours and makes it to WATERFORD.
Running until 7 April.

Risk pays off with ‘The Scourge’Raw, witty and poetic, Michelle Dooley Mahon’s ‘The Scourge’ had a huge impact, says Anna Hayes

​A large crowd gathered for opening night of Michelle Dooley Mahon’s one-woman play ‘The Scourge’, which was performed at Wexford Arts Centre for ten days.
The show was commissioned by Wexford Arts Centre with support from Artlinks. ‘The Scourge’, which is directed by Ben Barnes and stars the playwright, focuses on the relationship between mother, Siobhan, and daughter, Michelle, and the effects that Alzheimer’s disease has on both of them.

Based on a memoir, the play is deeply personal, made all the more impactful by the fact that Michelle takes on the role herself, recreating her memories with a rawness that could only be portrayed by someone who has already lived through them.
There aren’t too many people who don’t know Michelle – if you didn’t, she, with her whirlwind personality, would make sure you did by the end of the evening! With that in mind, it’s intriguing to watch how stripped back her performance is. While the colour and artistry of her language remains, it is tempered with the calmness of someone who has made sense of the world around her.

As the play progresses, we are guided through Michelle’s journey, as influenced by what is happening to Siobhan – as her mother’s mind slips away, Michelle’s goes into overdrive, not so much quelling as overpowering her fears through various coping mechanisms. There is a certain profoundness to her emergence at the other side and her reflection that the dead do not disappear, but become part of those around them, is a poignant observation.

The wit and poetry of Michelle’s language is there in spades – her descriptions of events, places and people are vivid and unique to the point of hilarity – she has a gift for turning five words into 40, but makes you appreciate the fact that she did.
Speaking at the reception afterwards, producer of the play, and Executive Director of Wexford Arts Centre, Elizabeth Whyte said the play had come to life because people had been willing to take creative risks – Michelle had the courage to bear her soul in the initial biography ‘Scourged’, Elizabeth had read the book and decided it needed to be adapted for stage, Ben Barnes had come on board as director, Artlinks had granted funding for it, and the Board of the Arts Centre had backed it for production.

She remarked that the personal nature of the piece, for Michelle, and for audiences that had experienced similar moments in their lives, meant that it became a requiem for many.

Michelle expressed her own thanks to those gathered, joking that everyone had already heard enough from her that night!
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She thanked those who had supported her along her journey and paid tribute to her family and father Tom, who was watching from the audience that night.
Gorey Guardian/Independent.ie

THUNDER OVER THE ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden

It’s a relatively rare occurrence for any venue in Ireland to capture a new jazz band so early in its formative years, so full marks to Wexford Arts Centre for snaring Thunderblender from their base in Belgium as part of their first Irish tour. The trio is lead by Dubliner Sam Comerford on tenor sax and its underused bass cousin, and he was here last year with the impressive multi-national Swiss-based quintet Aerie. This time out he was joined by the Belgians Hendrik Lasure on piano, and Jens Bouttery on drums, and they took a captivated audience through a bewildering array of sounds and noises arising from the space provided by Comerford’s adventurous compositions.

Throughout the set the trio moved between extremes of exquisite melodiousness and dense distortion. Indeed, Comerford wrought sounds from his bass sax that had probably never been heard in the Wexford Arts Centre, and such playfulness brought many delights as tunes rambled around and bumped into each other and yet never quite got lost their way home.

The piece ‘Kwakzalver’ was a good example, with Comerford flushing sounds from the nether regions of his bass sax amid Bouttery’s battery of thunderous drumrolls. Lasure’s piano spat chords along the way and all three ventured off on their explorations until joining forces in a strident, but tight ending.
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Bouttery made his skittish brushes pay for their keep in ‘Toetje’, creating an undertow that allowed Lasure to roam free as the fancy took him and Comerford joining both for some precision unison riffing. That piece, and many of Thunderblender’s other delights, came from free-form outings of other tracks on Last Minute Panic, their debut album from last year. It was equally clear that while some parts of their repertoire are rehearsed with precision, the beauty and the exhilaration they bring to the stage comes from the freedom to improvise with no apparent boundaries. And no matter how far out it got, a beguiling melody was never too far away, and the Wexford Arts Centre audience went the full distance with them anyway.

LAWLOR TRIO TEASER GIG AT SKY AND THE GROUND

Review: Jackie Hayden

Last week’s gig by the Kevin Lawlor Trio at the Sky and The Ground, (supported by Wexford Arts Centre) served as a tasty and timely teaser for the drummer’s upcoming Quintet outing at the Wexford Arts Centre on Saturday, April 14, when the fluid trio will be joined by Adam Nolan on sax and Pat Molitor on keyboards.

The Sky and The Ground Upstairs setting makes for an intimate and relaxed environment at any time, and Lawlor’s trio made full use of it, turning in a more obviously funky set than they usually deliver, with an appreciate audience soaking up every note and nuance offered by Lawlor with Alex O’Keeffe on guitar and Jack Rufus Kelly on bass.

Both halves of the gig opened with John Scofield tunes, ‘Over Big Top’ and ‘Bag’. With the former, the trio slipped into an easy groove straight from the off, with O’Keeffe limbering up with some pungent soloing. When they followed it by stretching out via an inventive take on Lennon-McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’ that revealed new depths in a very familiar melody, the audience knew they were in safe hands. Kenny Burrell’s ‘Midnight Blue’ was taken at a frisky pace, enlivened by Lawlor’s energised drumming, before bringing a heavier beat and Kelly’s snarling bass to Joshua Redman’s ‘Greasy G’. Kelly’s speed-walking bass was to the fore on Wes Montgomery’s ‘Fried Pies’, before the first set closed with a helping of funky interplay from all three on Lawlor’s own composition ‘AK97’.

And so it continued with a second half that was equally captivating, during which, among other highlights, the trio uncovered new and unexpected subtleties in a brisk run-through of the Ariana Grande hit ‘One Last Time’, not obvious jazz fare by any means. The sound throughout the gig was impeccably clear, and there was much anticipatory murmuring in the bar afterwards following the news that Lawlor has another album set for release very soon.

THE LOST BROTHERS FOUND AT WAC

Review: Jackie Hayden

Hot on the heels of an enthusiastic 8/10 review in Hot Press for their fifth album Halfway Towards a Healing, The Lost Brothers brought their tantalising blend of Country, Blues, Bluegrass, and Folk to Wexford Arts Centre for a memorable full-house concert.
Oisin Leech and Mark McCausland are neither brothers nor lost, having found their niche as buskers in Liverpool, an apprenticeship that helped teach the Irish pair how to write and deliver songs that get to the point and never overstay their welcome. Their close harmonies owe a major debt to Simon and Garfunkel, as do much of their melodic phrasing. That they were joined for the night by Steve Wickham on fiddle, banjo and concertina was an extra treat. As an accompanist Wickham knows when not to play, thus making his contributions ever more telling, especially on songs like the delicate ‘Echoes in The Wind’, ‘Iron Road’ and ‘More Than I Can Comprehend’.
The duo have an appealingly sombre work in ‘Soldier’s Song’ about poet Francis Ledwidge, while Leech’s harmonica brought a fresh flavour to ‘Cry For A Sparrow’. And just as I was thinking that this was all like Dylan going electric never happened, McCausland picked up his electric guitar to add some further sparkle to proceedings, especially on ‘Come Tomorrow’ and the road weary ‘Halfway Towards a Healing’. Another tributee was Leonard Cohen in the suitably moody ‘Where the Shadow Goes’.
Their own wonderful songs stood proud among covers of The Everly Brothers, Jimmy Reed and ‘In Spite of All the Danger’, the only McCartney-Harrison song in the Beatles canon. The knowledgeable Wexford Arts Centre lapped it all up, before the lads encored with a tasty run at Dylan’s ‘Corinna, Corinna’.
Earlier, the PwC Spotlight artist Megan Kate Doolan premiered her new EP Wait Another Day with captivating performances of four songs to which she applied her wispy and vulnerable voice. She also has a winning way with a melody, and ‘For You’ and ‘Falling’ were especially welcomed by the attentive audience. She’s surely one to catch whenever you get the chance.

Brighton

Review: Liam Murphy, Munster Express
The Wexford company, Raven Theatre, staged the somewhat underrated, Jim Nolan play, Brighton, at Wexford Arts Centre. Director Aine Gannon added more humanity than in the original that premiered in Waterford, by using other actors as stage crew, playing residents in the Sisters of Calvary Nursing Home in London. There was less isolation or alienation in a production that hardly faltered in its balancing act of the fears of death and the resilience of the human spirit. There was much natural laughter and the audience understood the all too human drama taking place on that stage and echoing aspects of their lives as well.

Even a happy outing to Brighton had a poignancy as the play poised on several ‘theatrical moments’ that impressed with their painful accuracy. It is a curious play that confounds cliché and expectation, as we spend two hours with three fine characters who coped with uncertainty, incapacity, and terminal illness, and still had time for others. Bridget Scully impressed as the ‘mammy of all mammy’s’, Lily Thompson, who coped with terminal illness and still had time for others as she cheered and encouraged as she gathered her memories into her laptop.

Michael Conway was excellent as the grumpy actor, Jack Dunhill, confined to a wheelchair and angry at the ending of his successful theatrical career. Ben Mac Caoilte was splendid as Dave the Care Assistant whose love life was a gossipy mess. His ‘excessive enthusiasm’ and ‘gathering doubts’ were excellently expressed, facially, vocally, and emotionally.

Once again, the ability of Jim Nolan to ‘people the stage’ with characters who were only referred to but never seen was much in evidence here.

At the end of March, Wexford Arts Centre will stage the world premiere of The Scourge, written and performed by Michelle Dooley Mahon and directed by Ben Barnes who is a director of both Theatre Royal and Wexford Arts Centre.

BRIGHTON COMES TO WEXFORD

Brighton is a play by Waterford dramatist Jim Nolan that tackles head on many of the burning issues of the day, especially those that affect people in nursing homes. It’s set in the Sisters of Calvary home in London and focuses mainly on three finely-developed characters. Lily (Bridget Scully) is a loyal, good-natured Catholic whose faith dominates her life and thinking. The recent arrival Jack (Michael Conway) is a well-known actor now confined to a wheel-chair following an accident and contemplating assisted suicide, while David (Ben Mac Caoilte) is a gay (in both senses of the word), decent carer and a rabid Arsenal football fan.

David and Lily connect through their mutual interest in football (she’s a Fulham supporter) evoking much amusing friendly banter between them. Jack has a liking for backing horses and soon has Lily at it too, to mixed results. Dave is also involved in a not-quite-working affair with his wayward boyfriend.

Initially, Brighton feels a bit staid and twee, but a planned trip to Brighton brings on a number of issues that ramps up the tension and challenges the characters to come to terms with their respective problems. Jack has a female partner who wants him to live with her, Dave plans to force his partner into marriage and Lily has her cancer to deal with.

As with the film The Drummer and The Keeper, shown recently at the Wexford Arts Centre, Brighton infiltrates a sense of humour and humanity into topics that are serious and life-changing. It could easily have tipped over the line into schmaltz, but under Aine Gannon’s direction it maintains its grip on reality. The main characters are played sensitively and convincingly, but Mac Caoilte particularly impressed with the accuracy and consistency of his London accent.

The size of the audience and their warm reception also made it yet one more drama triumph for both Raven Theatre and the Wexford Arts Centre.

CAROLE NELSON TRIO RAISE THE SPIRITS AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review by Jackie Hayden
There was a point during the Carole Nelson Trio’s stimulating concert at the Wexford Arts Centre when keyboardist Nelson introduced ‘The Sky Darkens’ from her new album One Day in Winter. The poem/tune was inspired by Leonard Cohen’s death and his love of Zen Buddhism. She’d written the lyrics while meditating on ageing and death, and her rendition of them in spoken form with the trio brought the spirit of Cohen to the venue, with Dominick Mullen’s martial drumming adding an appropriately sombre touch.

But there was a Zen feel to much of the fine music the trio offered throughout the night, with a tendency for the Carlow-based Nelson and her sidekicks (Mullen plus Cormac O’Brien on bass) to make every note and every space count to the maximum.

It was one of two spoken vocals, the other being ‘Snow Is Falling’ to which they brought a suitably wistfulness. ‘Cold Rushing River’ enabled all three to stretch out and ‘Sun Rising Over The Blackstair’ began in languid style before shifting up the gears. They’d opened proceedings with ‘Beata Viscera’, Nelson’s re-invention of a hymn from the 13th century by Pérotin, setting the scene for an evening dominated by Nelson’s fluid playing, and her tendency to ease notes effortlessly from her instrument. Much of One Day In Winter is inspired by the natural environs of her home, and it was exhilarating to hear its compositions come alive before our very ears in such an intimate setting. Full marks to sound engineer Olchan Kirwan for his work too.
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The night’s adventures began with local singer Alice Lynskey performing as part of Wexford Arts Centre’s new music artist support initiative PwC Spotlight. She sang with a guitarist and proved that not only is she an assured singer with a confident stage presence, but she also writes melodic songs with a compelling lyrical maturity. Particularly striking was her ’Love to Heal’, about the pressures of being an outsider, as was the winning ‘Red Headed Woman’ with its narrative about a woman surviving an attempted rape to murder her assailant, before finishing with a taut version of her imminent debut single ‘Devil in Me’.

PwC SPOTLIGHT PROGRAMME SWITCHES ON IN STYLE

Review: Jackie Hayden

Wexford Arts Centre’s new music artist support initiative PwC Spotlight got off to a promising start with one of the selected artists, Gorey singer-songwriter Karen Alice Dunbar, bagging the coveted support slot for last week’s Radiant Arcadia concert. As part of the initiative, four artists form a pool from which visiting acts can choose a support act, the other three being Megan-Kate Doolan, Alice Lynskey and Stone Blind State.

Dunbar has a delicious voice which she weaves around a delicate guitar style that goes beyond the few basic chords. Her own song ‘Liar In My Bed’ is a feisty take on infidelity and loss of trust, while her ’Marionette’ waves the flag for individualism in the face of social pressures. She also delivered a tasty cover of ‘The Lakes of Ponchartrain’ with aplomb and was a clear hit with the audience too.

Radiant Arcadia are an all-female outfit based in Denmark and drawn from different cultural backgrounds. They perform music from the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Danish, Arabic, and Sufi traditions, and in a variety of languages. Tonight they added an Irish singer, Aoife Scott for versions of ‘Grace’ and ‘Bean Phaidin’. The playing of electric violinist Anne Eltard was exhilarating, and accordionist Maren Hallberg Larsen wasn’t far behind, but what appeared to most captivate the audience was the remarkable throat-singing of Faridah Busemann and the almost scary operatic prowess of Karen Jørgensen. And yes, the Arts Centre roof is still there.

The ensemble gave us a stirring rendition of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ‘Alla Hoo’, and the Russian Yiddish folk song ‘Tumbalalaika’ sparked an outbreak of audience singing and vigorous hand-clapping. In a world that seems to become increasingly divisive by each news bulletin, this was truly a Wexford Arts Centre performance to remember, not just for the magnificent music but for the audacity of these people to defy such daunting barriers.

FILM BRINGS INSIGHT AND SYMPATHY TO MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

Review Jackie Hayden

The imminent debut album by the band MUDA, lead by Gorey vocalist Dave Lavelle, lyrically addresses issues that have been covered across all media, but are not so easy to find in our rock music, with some exceptions. So I welcome musician Nick Kelly’s graphic and sensitive film The Drummer and The Keeper as it embeds those issues firmly in a rock world has bequeath us a trail of broken lives.

The film asks whether deep-seated emotional matters can be successfully tackled through creative activity, and while the depiction of a naive rock band heading for the top has been much overdone, it serves as a suitable background against which the issues can be played out. The bi-polar Gabriel, the Drummer in the band and of the title, is played convincingly by Dermot Murphy. His fellow musicians and sister Alice (Aoibhinn McGinnity) are rapidly losing patience with his erratic behaviour, unreliability, and penchant for setting fire to things. But he loves the band so much he reluctantly agrees to be medicated and to play football with some disabled guys as part of his treatment.

He falteringly develops a friendship with The Keeper Christopher (Jacob McCarthy) who has Asperger Syndrome and is obsessed with goalkeepers and Lego. Christopher becomes a highly efficient roadie for the band, but things fall apart when they dump Gabriel for a new bloke. But it’s not over yet …
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Unlike Nick Kelly, who has an autistic son, I have thankfully had no immediate experience of such matters, so his film helped me understand the trials and pressures on those who have. Others expressed the exact same response. It might seem crass to see it also as a hugely entertaining work with lots of the kind of rock noises I like, but maybe that’s one way to break on through to the other side.
Mental health matters are not easy to make fun of, but The Drummer and The Keeper is played with such sympathy that you laugh with the characters. So maybe we’ve come a long way since John Lennon’s gauche parodies of those with disabilities. Maybe.

ANOTHER JAZZ TRIUMPH IN A REWARDING YEAR FOR FANS

Review: Jackie Hayden

The past year has seen the establishment of the Wexford Arts Centre as a key staging post on the European jazz circuit. This has come about partly as a result of Elizabeth Whyte’s imaginative programming and the sterling efforts of local jazzman-activist Kevin Lawlor.

The year has seen superb gigs by the Swiss-based Aerie who featured two Irish band members, the Miles Davis tribute night that included Tomos Williams and Dave Jones from Wales, the Ronan Guilfoyle band, and Lawlor’s night dedicated to John Coltrane. What’s more, all of the afore-mentioned attracted decent numbers. So, it was fitting that the jazz year came to an end with another stunner, with Berlin pianist Marie Kruttli leading her trio featuring two Swiss blokes, Lukas Traxel on double-bass and Martin Perret (drums).

Despite the apparent complexity of the music, all three played with effortless fluidity yet managed a remarkably precise synchronicity during the ensemble passages. Drawing much of their repertoire from their most recent album Running After the Sun, Kruttli shows remarkable maturity for a player only in her late twenties, and while her upbringing in a classical household brought her a love of such classical composers as Debussy and Stravinsky, others have detected elements of Miles Davis, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, and she wears those influences and her considerable talent with a nonchalant lightness.

The Wexford Arts Centre outing had Kruttli kicking off her contribution to ‘Istanbul Dort’ with an appealing melody leading into a phase that took on a somewhat discordant aspect and then led into a more funked-up section. As if to head off any notions that this was all that lay ahead, they took a more reflective, melodic approach with ‘Pocahontas’. ‘Running After the Sun’ developed a looser faster feel and driven by an inventive contribution from Perret they brooded their way through the more introspective ‘Balancing on A Wall’.
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And so, it continued in a sequence of delightful surprises in which ‘Contemplative Birds’ and ‘Sailing Day’ struck emotional chords with the Wexford Arts centre audience. As we’ve observed in the past, complex music and musical dexterity can often obstruct the communication of human emotion, but not with these guys.

ELECTRIFYING TRIBUTES TO YOUNG AND DYLAN AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Anyone needing somewhere to take shelter from the icy weather last Friday night could hardly have found a cosier place to warm their souls than the Wexford Arts Centre for JMA’s night of Classic Songs by Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

As with their visit to the same venue with the same show early this year, the core trio of Mick Egan and James Meyler, both on vocals and guitars, and Anne Meyler on vocals and tambourine, were augmented for the occasion by the sturdy drumming of Keith Devereux and the fluid bass of Mick O’Brien for a night of guitar-drenched rock music that left the standing-room-only audience eager for more.

JMA bring a flexible and comfortably loose approach to their rock format that fits perfectly with the often maverick live performing of both Dylan and Young. Combining the two in one tribute show also makes much musical sense in that their styles often overlap, they’ve performed together on stage and Neil is a self-confessed admirer of Bob.

Of the two, JMA’s approach feels more comfortable in the company of Young’s songs, and there were powerhouse performances to-night on such staples as ‘Cinnamon Girl’, ‘Cortez the Killer’ and ‘The Needle and The Damage Done’, while Egan’s harmonica contribution to ‘Heart of Gold’ gave it an added lift.

On the Dylan front the full band also delivered stand-out versions of Dylan’s lesser-known ‘Senor (Tales of Yankee Power’) and ‘Baby Please Stop Crying’. With the finishing straight with their sights they coasted towards a triumphant closure with Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ and concluded with a stunning version of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ that will help eradicate some of the more misguided attempts at that particular song we’ve heard at the Arts Centre over the years. Appropriately, they sandwiched Young’s ‘Like A Hurricane’ in between.
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Along the way, Egan got a few laughs from a supersized harmonica which he pretended to play and which he admitted he’d found in Trax. Much credit for a memorable night must also go to the Wexford Arts Centre’s soundman Olchan Kirwin. As expected, Mick Egan’s incendiary electric guitar playing was the dominant feature, but his compadres were no slouches either. Can’t help suspecting they’ll be back again next year.

DOWN AND OUT WITH GEORGE ORWELL IN WEXFORD

Review: Jackie Hayden
Photo Credit: Patrick Hogan
own and Out in Paris and London is actor Phelim Drew’s imaginative monologue
adaptation of George Orwell’s first book, depicting his experiences of life-sapping
poverty and degradation in those two cities in the 1930s.
With thoughts of inhuman Irish living conditions still fresh in our minds, not to forget
our daily engagement with the issue of homelessness, this work has a resonance in to-day’s Ireland that might have been less pointed in the Celtic Tiger era. Indeed, there’s a telling moment when Drew/Orwell refers to the way poverty annihilates the future.

Drew makes for a convincing Orwell too, and, apart from this show being an impressive feat of memory, he uses his vivid mimicry skills to evoke a selection of the array of characters Orwell met when he was down, but never actually out, and even fits in a bout of singing.

The Wexford stage was set with nothing more than two simple chairs, a table and a
glass of wine, and he was supported by a minimal amount of sound effects, yet he
somehow conjured the claustrophobia of Orwell’s existence in the two capitals. His
Orwell comes across as a compassionate, stoical figure who enjoyed the company of
people for their own sake, while enduring the foibles and faults of waiters, landladies
and those eccentrics who added colourful relief to his situation, and the sizeable
Wexford Arts Centre gave him their full engagement. That such a precarious existence could also elicit a few laughs was a tribute to both Drew and Orwell.
Orwell’s acute powers of observation demolish the romantic view of the starving artist as he defiantly recalls the endless hours of boredom and the pain of starvation. His experience of the real world as related in Down and Out in Paris and London partly explains his later engagement with politics, rejecting imperialism to champion the proletariat, and this timely production was a stark reminder that there is still much work to be done.

Let’s hope that a few of our government ministers get to see this thought-provoking
show as it makes it rounds.

DUBLINERS IN WEXFORD

Review: Jackie Hayden
There’s a general assumption that most theatregoers are female, and this was borne out at a full Wexford Arts Centre last weekend with the staging of The New Theatre’s production of Dubliners Women, adapted from James Joyce’s classic short story collection.

Director Sarah Baxter and adapter Katie O’Kelly presented ‘The Boarding House’, ‘Clay’ and ‘Eveline’ in one continuous piece, with the individual stories delineated by the actors writing each title on a small, old-style blackboard. Each story focuses on the plight of a woman in different circumstances.

Amid elements of farce and slapstick, Madi O’Carroll and Katie O’Kelly carry on a selection of luggage and a heavy chest that, when opened, reveals the third actor Gordon Quigley. All three are wearing old-style underwear and dress themselves from items in the luggage. O’Carroll becomes the ever-watchful landlady, Mrs Mooney whose much put-upon young daughter Polly is played by O’Kelly, while Quigley is Mr. Doran, one of their respectable boarders. Mrs Mooney soon suspects a liaison between them from which Polly could be pregnant, and decides the only honourable solution is marriage.

For ‘Clay’ they move swiftly and seamlessly into their new characters, with O’Kelly becoming the single and timid Maria who works as a laundrywoman for the nuns. She sets off across Dublin to visit friends, losing a specially-bought cake along the way, and suffering much discomfort when she gets there. Simple props are effectively used, as for instance, to indicate the swaying of a tram. In ‘Eveline’ we see a woman too daunted to escape a violent home life to go to South America with her sailor man, with the boat evoked by a simple rope on the stage floor.

Baxter paints vignettes of a long dead Dublin/Ireland in which each citizen knew their place and behaved accordingly, and we get a clear idea of the inner thoughts of each character. The stories are imbued with more humour than might be obvious from Joyce’s writings, and pieces of music and song add colour to a highly entertaining work that the audience at Wexford Arts Centre thoroughly enjoyed. If it sends us back to read the originals, it will have done more than enough.

TAKING THE ‘TRANE TO WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden

The current status of live jazz in Wexford can be gauged from the fact that the stage area at the Wexford Arts Centre had to be reduced to accommodate all those who wished to attend last week’s Music of John Coltrane by the Kevin Lawlor Quartet. The credit for this development must go to Lawlor himself for turning in high quality gigs at regular intervals, and also to Wexford Arts Centre for having the vision to stage what would never have been seen as sure-fire commercial hits.

Coltrane was the latest in a series of impressive shows that followed similar tributes to Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and the legendary Blue Note label, and the Lawlor Quartet brought us a vintage show that gave ample evidence as to why Coltrane in a short career had a similar game-changing impact on jazz saxophone as Jimi Hendrix had on the electric rock guitar.
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The night kicked off with each of the four musicians taking it in turn to solo on ‘Blue Train’ from Coletrane’s early phase, with Adam Nolan (tenor sax), Pat Molitor on piano, Andrew Csibi’s unerring double-bass and the ever-efficient Lawlor offering samples of the delights to come. Much of Coltrane’s music is physically and musically demanding, but with Nolan on the frontline and Molitor chasing him around the scales, we got a jazz gig as high on musical acrobatics as it was on melodic passion and emotion.

They lent an elegance to the Duke Ellington tune ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ and stretched out on both ‘So What’, from Miles Davis’ towering Kind of Blue album ,and the ground-breaking ‘Giant Steps’. It’s been said that anyone who doesn’t quite get jazz should listen to Coletrane’s version of ‘My Favourite Things’ (yes, from The Sound of Music!) and the we heard a slightly more aggressive version than Coletrane’s, one that certainly struck several chords with the audience.
Given the predominance of racism in the USA, there was a poignancy to the inclusion of Coletrane’s ‘Alabama’, a sombre piece composed after four black girls were murdered in the fire-burning of a church in Montgomery. Before the end, we were taken to another high with the ‘Resolution’ part of Coletrane’s Love Supreme. It was a great night that left an eager audience wondering where might Lawlor take us to next?

​Billy Roche – The Red Guitar Tour
BILLY ROCHE TRIUMPHS AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden

It was standing room only when Billy Roche brought his neat band and his red guitar to the Wexford Arts Centre last week. A small number of recent gigs had suggested that Billy’s successes as a writer and playwright had been the music scene’s loss, so this Red Guitar Tour gives us a chance to make up for lost time.
Roche’s unique style not only stems from his expressive singing voice but his open-tuning guitar technique enables him to blend traditional folk elements with touches of sixties/seventies psychedelia and eastern overtones. Added to his already established deft way with words he has now created a body of finely-wrought songs that held the audience spellbound throughout.

Billy was aided and abetted by long-term Roach B and sidekick Mike Odlum on bass and keyboards, and comparative newbie Pete McCamley on percussion and anything else that came to hand, including a klaxon, a harmonica and a flute, and when the voices of all three combined they made a stirring whole. As you might expect, Billy’s wit and some inter-band banter added to the gaiety of the occasion, as did some chat about the latest football scores.

But there was also much serious work to be done. ‘Julia’ has a delicate seventies prog-folk feel to it, while the murder ballad ‘Three Lovely Ladies’ was delivered with appropriate aplomb and just a little menace. ‘On The Run’ had echoes of Mike Heron’ of Incredible String Band fame, ‘Lost’ is a plaintive song that evoked memories of Al Stewart and benefitted from Odlum’s subtle piano contributions, and ‘Yearning’ left space for that droning open-tuning guitar style too.
But when Billy delivered a solo ‘I Thought I Heard The Robin Sing’ it was so deliciously sweet it needed nothing extra. The uptempo ‘That’s All Right When You’re Young’ had a fuller band sound that clearly appealed to the Wexford Arts centre audience, while Napoleon’ and ‘Dead Man’s Shoe’s were laced with different kinds of foreboding. ​

All in all, this was a good-humored night that never lost sight of the quality of the songs and musicianship on offer.

LOCAL GIRLS SHINE AT WEXFORD ARTS CENTRE ARTS CENTRE

Review: Jackie Hayden
Local Photo credits Patrick Hogan

The audience at the Wexford Arts Centre last week for the flamboyant American violinist and singer-songwriter Deni Bonet were also fed two surprise local treats in solo support acts Megan Kate and Rachel Grace. Both sing their own songs and play guitars, but Clancy is the more experienced and hence more assured performer. In ‘Scream Out Loud’ she has a terrific song that confronts the issue of mental health, an area few of our songwriters venture into, Jimi Cullen being a notable exception. That song contains a startling line about “no politics in suicide”. She delivered a heartfelt song about her grandmother ‘Nancy’ and brought a neat bluesy undercurrent to the acerbic ‘Nice Knowing You’ before closing with a convincing version of Bob Dylan’s ‘To Make You Feel My Love’.

Earlier, the remarkably young Megan Kate applied her light and expressive pop voice to her melodically-captivating songs and proved she’s a natural and articulate performer very much at home on stage. Watch out for her.
All of which created a positive Wexford Arts Centre mood for bill-topper Bonet who has added her virtuosic violin skills to recordings with REM, Cyndi Lauper, and the Scissor Sisters. She was accompanied on the night by guitar-players, Matt and Bob, who also contributed occasional vocal harmonies. At times Bonet brought a furious rock energy to her classically-trained talent that was more Jimi Hendrix than Yehudi Menuhin.

Many of the tunes came from her new instrumental album Bright Shiny Objects , with the title track, ‘Einstein’s Brain’, and ‘Primal Dream’ especially impressing, but she really cut loose on ‘Palisades’ with some adventurous and exhilarating violin playing we could have done with more of. Of the songs from previous albums she gave us ‘Cynical Girl’, ‘How Far Can I Push You’, ‘Get On With It’ and the YouTube hit ‘One In A Million’. The trio also fitted in an inventive revamp of The Beatles’ ‘Please Please Me’, but there was a pointlessness to their untidy take on The Traveling Wilbury’s ‘Handle With Care’.

Given that this was Bonet’s first visit to the Wexford Arts Centre she attracted a decent-sized audience, including visitors from Belgium, who hung on every note and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Better still, she’ll probably be back in Wexford early next year.

THE MAN FROM CLARE

Review: Jackie Hayden

The Man From Clare is hardly the jewel in the crown of
​John B Keane’s caipin, but under Alan Corcoran’s lucid direction for the Wexford Drama Group at the Wexford Arts Centre it provided a couple of hours of fun and games, and a few tears as well.

With the All-Irelands on the horizon this was a good time of year for a play loosely based around a GAA football match between local teams from Kerry and Clare, with all the souped-up rivalry and bragging that such encounters tend to encourage as tribal insecurities float to the surface.
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The Man From Clare first emerged in 1962, so it’s one of John B’s early works. It focuses on match-winning footballer Padraic O’Dea, the man of the title who in his mid-thirties is expected to lead his team Cuas in Clare to victory against the home team of Bealabawn, located just across the Shannon in Kerry. The match brings O’Dea the sudden discovery that he no longer has the skills and strength to stay on top of his game. The role is convincingly played by John Crosby as he struggles to accept that his place as top dog is being taken by the younger and fitter man, Jim Flynn, energetically played by Simon O’Carroll.

Meanwhile the lads are invited after the match to stay a while in the house of Morisheen Brick, with Eugene McLoughlin wringing all the laughs from his role as the father of single ex-nun Nellie. Her stoic diffidence is finely captured by Louise Dillon as Morisheen tries, with no degree of subtlety, to get her married off to Jim so that he himself can pursue the woman of his dreams. She has to endure insults about her appearance from O’Dea’s father Daigan (Michael Murphy). Meanwhile Flynn and O’Dea indulge in a bout of fisticuffs while the rest of the team are out drinking and chasing women like proper footballers.
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The sound and lighting at the Wexford Arts Centre (designed by Pat Jackman and Cian Redmond respectively) added to the pleasure of the occasion for the full house on the night, and the appreciative audience were riveted throughout. If you want to catch The Man From Clare it has four more nights to run until August 26th.