Out to Lunch: The Third Policeman

For a long time, I’ve been an admirer of the comic genius that was/is Brian O’Nolan aka Flann O’Brien aka Myles na Gopaleen, Brian Ó Nualláin and whatever you’re having yourself.

After reading the Catechism of Cliche, myself and other followers of the great man would take great pleasure in adding to the ammunition of the journalistic profession à la Myles ie:

When things are few, what also are they? Far between.

From what sort of time does a custom date? Time immemorial.

Or after reading At Swim-Two-Birds, we’d try to recreate the language of the Irish epic, all compound nouns and supernatural skills at hurling, chess play and hunting deer and wizards while drinking copious amounts of mead/Stella/WKD.

His satire on Dineen’s Irish dictionary is unmatched.

O’Nolan’s writing gets right inside your head and refuses to budge, his serious playfulness with language lingering in your mind like a toy someone has left behind for you to play with.

While The Third Policeman does this too, it is what kind of dissimilar piscean receptacle? It’s a different kettle of fish.

And that came through in the wonderful reading by Stephen Rea of O’Brien’s metaphysical murder mystery accompanied by Colin Reid’s suite for piano, two cellos and violin based on the novel and written about a decade ago.

This was a darkly humorous and a darkly dark telling of the tale of murder, greed and the Atomic Theory.

Large chunks of the book have been ditched by Reid – no de Selby – but to have included everything would have called for the musical equivalent of the Titanic, probably with the same tragic denouement.

Rea is a truly great actor – you don’t need me to tell you that – and his cadences were as hypnotic as the music as he led us through the quagmire of O’Brien’s imaginings from murder most foul to the famous theory of how people turn into their modes of transport.

“The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.”

But for all its absurdist humour, The Third Policeman was a scary piece of work even at a lunchtime reading. When the music was jaunty and the mood lightened, the minor chords were always evident, nothing was quite right, this story was never going to end happily ever after.

With Colin Reid himself on piano, Neil Martin and Becky Joslin on cello with Niamh Crowley on violin this was a wonderful fusion of music and literature.

Maybe there is something to this Atomic Theory after all!

Out to Lunch: Kevin McAleer

The Out to Lunch festival kicked off yesterday, not with a bang but with a giggle. You don’t expect a lot of belly laughs from a Kevin McAleer gig but a constant stream of psychadelic musings on the absurdity of the world and yesterday’s audience at the Black Box had their idea of reality stretched every which way like a Davina’s Workout DVD for the imagination.

Kevin has resurrected his famous slide show for a trip back to the 1980s – at one point I expected Dr Who to enter the venue – but his one-liners, quips, non sequiturs (McAleer doesn’t do jokes) were as funny as they were back when men wore moustaches like something out of Magnum PI and women wore lycra mini-skirts and thon McAleer boy was appearing on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live.

The set did so its age at one point with a mash-up of Star Wars and Ireland’s World Cup campaign of 1994, long before the word “mash-up” was even invented, but this was one of the best segments of the show, followed by a pair of pugilistic kangaroos.

Sorry, what did I say about belly laughs?

Lockerbie and Both Sides

THE Belfast Festival at Queen’s is up and running with postitive vibes coming from everyone I’ve spoken to about Dervish, Eliza Carthy and the Shattered Dreams exhibition at the RGB Gallery.

I’ve been to two theatrical events comprising three plays which were totally different in style and pace but which all packed a powerful punch.

In Lockerbie: Unfinished Business David Benson plays the part of Jim Swire as he tells the story of Pan Am Flight 103 which was blown out of the sky on 21 December 1988 killing 243 passengers, 16 crew members and eleven people who were killed on the ground as the plane wreckage and its fireball rained down on Lockerbie.

Amongst the victims was Flora Swire, the daughter of Jim Swire a GP who has never got over the death of his beloved Flora. (The family’s roots are on the Isle of Skye).

Unlike many others though, Jim Swire started his 12-year and counting quest for the truth of who killed the 270 victims at Lockerbie and to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Most interestingly, Swire believes that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the “Lockerbie bomber” didn’t actually commit the crime and in this play which is more like a lecture really, he forensically sets out the reasons why he believes the Libyan was not guilty as charged.

That it was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Council who did it on behalf of the Iranians who wanted revenge after the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airplane killing 290 people six months previosuly.

(Evidence against Megrahi was handled by Dr Thomas Hayes who was also part of the Maguire Seven miscarriage of justice).

Swire’s evidence is persuasive but it is the personal moments which hit home hardest. We hear Flora as a young girl singing her favourite songs in a tape of her Swire gave to Benson and as the character tells us that many would still be conscious as the plane hurtled to earth, seats, luggage human beings falling in a dance macabre towards death, the simuated sound of the aircraft almost made you grab your seat as the horror unfolded.

Lockerbie: Unfinished Business is a wonderful play about Jim Swire’s love for his daughter and the complicity of his own nation in thwarting his attempts to find true justice for her.

(PS If you’re interested, you should go to Jim Swire’s website at www.lockerbietruth.com)

n The two plays that make up Both Sides could not be more different but address the same subject – what happens when paramilitaries get their P45s.

David Ireland’s Yes So I Said Yes, is a scabrous, surreal, slapstick look at loyalist murderer who is driven mental by the next door neighbour’s dog.

The unfolding story involves rape, murder, bestiality and Stephen Nolan  but it’s done in such a hypnagogic, cartoonish style, that, while it is not for the faint-hearted, it is hilarious. Belfast’s gallows humour has never been this pitch-black.

Ulster loyalists speaking Irish, the only Protestant left in Ulster, pregnant Taigs, fear of what is on the other side of the fence, real and imagained and Snuffy, the unemployed loyalist gunman, not sure was is real and what is just something going on in his confused mind in this “new Northern Ireland”.

*Static is the second play in the diptych, written by retired professor of English at UU, Robert Anthony Welch.

While Yes So I Said Yes is a dream-like romp, Static isfirmly rooted in the soil of south Armagh, although most of the action takes place in a  hospital ward in Belfast where Denis McShane is being treated for cancer.

The morphine is playing havoc with his mind as he ebbs and flows from the violence of his past to, well, the violence of his present. Someone has muscled into his horse rustling business and has being buying up land on his patch. The unknown interloper has to be “dealt with” but, this is the new dispensation and a word in a comrade’s ear no longer has any currency, although there are acolytes who can be called upon when some dirty work is required.

Into the scenario, arrives a flirty Claire Bristow, a young woman with more than a passing interest in McShane and his past.

Both plays are unforgettable in their own ways put together by a “government of all the talents”.

Mick Gordon made flesh Welch and Ireland’s writing enhnaced by lighting, sound and costume.

The acting is superb with the same actors in both plays.

Veteran Roy Haybeard is joinee by JD Kelleher, Charlotte McCurry, Paul Mallon, Gerard Jordan and Conor MacNeill – great south Armagh accents boys!

They were hilarious and truly frightening, subtle and slapstick, meek and menacing and always engaging.

The Painkiller

In his short story, Who Died and Left You in Charge, Alexi Sayle writes of the transvestite Clive who is on a mission to kill the first cyclist he encounters.

Clive becomes Cicely in Transformations, a cross-dressing shop near Euston Station where provincial businessmen can be transformed into nervous women.

“Being Cicely out for a walk was, Clive imagined, rather like being a slightly forgotten celebrity, Mel Smith perhaps, or Kenneth Branagh,” writes Sayle.

Well, Kenneth Branagh is less ‘slightly forgotten” after his return to the stage in his native Belfast in a production of Francis Veber’s farce, Painkiller alongside the debut-making Rob Brydon.

The Lyric Theatre was packed last night as you would expect as people came along to see their favourite acting son, star of the groundbreaking Billy plays (until the Hole in the Wall Gang satirised the life out of them), critcially acclaimed adaptations of Shakespeare and much more besides.

A full house was also guaranteed by the prescence of Brydon, most famous for his role in Gavin and Stacey who was making his stage debut.

The vehicle for the return of Branagh and the first coming of Brydon was The Painkiller, a farce written by French dramatist and film-maker, Francis Veber who, by the way, also wrote the international blockbuster, La Cage aux Folles.

Painkiller tells of the suicidal Brian Dudley whose wife has just left him for a psychologist. When Brian decides to end it all in a hotel room, he encounters someone else with death on his mind – an Armani-clad hitman called, em, John Smith.

What follows is 80 minutes of mayhem, mistaken identity, rifle fire and Lady in Red. To pull it off, this requires tight direction, top class acting and split-second comic timing from a cast who are totally in tune with each other and that is what we got at the Lyric.

We all know of his acting ability but Branagh was a particular surprise with a wonderful repertoire of silly walks that would make John Cleese guffaw. This on top of a character who swung from vicious killer to drug-induced loony.

Brydon is never less than engaging in whatever he does and while he might not have the greatest range in the world, he is a fine comic actor and as the love-lorn Brian, he proved that he can hold his own on the professional stage in the company of top career actors.

The supporting cast were faultless too with Mark Hadfield as the bellboy, Claudine Harrison as the wife stolen away by Stuart Graham (whom I last saw in Steve McQueen’s Long Kesh film, Hunger), and local actor Andy Moore as a policeman with a tendency to get hit over the head a lot.

The Painkiller is a laugh a minute farce that will brighten up these dark, windy Autumnal nights. Welcome home, Ken, diolch yn fawr, Rob.

Daniel Sloss

Some standup comedians you can take an instant dislike to, sorry Ricky, while others just click with you right away, laugh at first sight. Daniel Sloss is in the latter category.

A 20-year old from Fife in Scotland, I’d heard he was doing the Out to Lunch festival in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter so I checked him out on youtube.

Sloss uses his youth to good comic effect without coming over as one of those precocious child stars who are overly self-conscious about any talent they have, but Sloss’s winning charm carries him through. Oh and he has one big advantage over a lot of other standup comedians – he’s actually funny.

Today’s / yesterday’s lunchtime show at the Black Box was a hugely enjoyable affair. The baby sister of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Out to Lunch is a depression-busting, snow-melting, pavement-gritting, heart-warming antidote to the  financial and climatic hardship out there.

For £5.50 you get a show and a lunch during your break – and its worth spending the extra time to get into the city centre if you work outside it – for a programme full of cultural delights.

Daniel Sloss’s star is definitely in the ascendent. Appearances on Michael McIntyre’s Roadshow, the Rob Brydon Show and 8 out of 10 cats on Channel 4 not to mention his own pilot show for BBC3, The Adventures of Daniel ensured a good crowd for his Black Box gig, eager for jokes about teenage angst – girlfriends, shaving and lots of onanism (I’m using that word because I’d be embarrassed writing the word masturbation – doh!).

It’ll be interesting to see how Daniel’s show  develops as he slips into boring old adulthood , but for now, he is showing huge promise.

Divided even in golf!

The First and Deputy First Ministers have congratulated the European Ryder Cup team and quite rightly so. However, the Irish border was much in evidence in the one press release.

Little-Ulsterman Peter Robinson said the win was even more enjoyable “given the pivotal role played by local golfers, especially Graeme McDowell, whose heroic victory brought the trophy back to European soil.

“We can all be extremely proud of Rory McIlroy and Graeme, they are marvellous ambassadors for their sport and their country.”

So although they were playing for Europe, Robbo sees their victory is also a victory for the Northern Ireland brand, hence no mention of Free Stater Pádraig Harrington whose da was a Garda who played football for the Cork.

Deputy Martin McGuinness, however, took an all-Ireland approach.

“Rory, Graeme and Pádraig have led the European team to a wonderful victory … Local golfers have again proved themselves to be the best in the world.”

Nice to know Marty thinks Rathfarnham is “local”.

Frank Reidy

Ó Shligeach go Ruanda agus ón Liobáin go Conamara, tá saol thar a bheith suimiúil caite – agus tá go leor eile ar na bacáin – ag Frank Reidy, iar-oifigeach in Arm na hÉireann.

Tá leabhar i ndiaidh a fhoilsithe ag Cló Iar-Chonachta. Ó Chosta go Cósta, ina bhfuil cur síos ag Frank ar an dáimh atá aige leis an Afraic ach ina shuí sa Chrusicín Lán ar an Spidéal, labhair sé faoina thaithí in Arm na hÉireann.

“Bhí mé san Fhórsa Cosanta Áitiúil ag deireadh na 1960í nuair a bhí an ghéarchéim ó thuaidh agus is cuimhneach liom féin 1969 nuair a tháinig na teifigh ó dheas nuair a bhí mé sa Finner Camp. Ní cheapaim go dtuigeann daoine an ghéarchéim a bhí ó dheas freisin mar gheall ar an tuaisceart,” ar sé.

Bhí suim i gcónaí ag Frank sna fórsaí cosanta ó dheas, ní ar chúiseanna polaitiúla ach mar shlí bheatha.
Chuaigh sé isteach sna Daltaí sa Churach i 1973 agus uaidh sin isteach sa Chór Comharthaíochta agus é ag plé le cúrsaí raidió, teicneolaíochta agus cumarsáide. Post buan a bhí ann, dar leis.

“Mhothaigh mé go raibh sé ar nós dul isteach sna sagairt,” ar sé, “cineál gairm nó vocation a bhí ann.
Rinne Frank na turasanna thar lear, go dtí an Liobáin sa chuid is mó, agus é ábalta taisteal thart, Iarúsailéim agus an Bhruach Thiar agus na háiteanna sin atá i gcónaí sa nuacht a fheiceáil dó féin. Measann Frank go ndeán Arm na hÉireann jab tábhachtach ar son na Náisiún Aontaithe.

“Sa Mheánoirthear, bhí caidreamh láidir againn le muintir na háite, bhí muid i gcónaí ina measc agus thuill muid meas mar idirghabhálaithe,” ar sé.

Chuaigh Frank chun na hAfraice don chéad uair i 1994, nuair a hiarraidh air dul go Ruanda i ndiaidh an chinedhíothaithe ansin.

“Ag an am sin, bhí John O’Shea ó GOAL ag cur brú iontach ar Dick Spring a bhí ina Aire Gnóthaí Eachtracha ag an am, saighdiúirí a chur go Ruanda agus ba é an socrú a rinneadh nó go gcuirfí oifigigh agus saighdiúirí de chuid Arm na hÉireann leis na heagraíochtaí neamhrialtasacha agus go mbeadh na hoifigigh freagrach as lóistíocht.

“Cuireadh ceist ormsa ar mhaith liom dul go Ruanda agus taobh istigh de sheachtain, bhí mé ar an mbóthar,” ar sé.

Mar atá a fhios againn anois, maraíodh suas le milliún duine taobh istigh de céad lá agus ní nach ionadh, fágadh Frank, fear mór cainte, gan focal.

“Bhí an cogadh cathartha ar siúl idir na Tutsis agus na Hutus agus ag deireadh an chogaidh, theith na Hutus – a bhí ciontach – theith siad uilig amach as an tír chun na dtíortha máguaird.
“Stopadar, shuíodar síos agus rinne na Náisiúin Aontaithe agus na heagraíochtaí campaí dóibh. Bhí sé ar nós rud a d’fheicfeá in Inferno Dante. Bhí sé ar nós rud as an mBíobla. San áit a raibh mé, ní riabh tada ag na daoine seo, bhí siad ag fáil bháis leis an ocras, leis an tart, le gach cineál galair, an calar ach go háirithe. Tá an boladh sin istigh i mo chloigeann fás, boladh an bháis.
“Is daoine iontacha iad agus meas acu ar an marbh ach bhí rudaí chomh dona sin gur chaill siad a bhféin-mheas. Bhí marbháin fágtha ag taobh an bhóthair, bhí gasúir ar strae óna mhuintir, bhí sé uafásach,” ar sé.

Nuair a tháinig Frank ar ais go hÉirinn, admhaíonn sé nach dtiocfadh leis socrú síos agus gheall sé dó féin go bhfillfeadh sé ar an Afraic, luath nó mall.

Saoithiúil go leor, b’fhéidir, deir sé go bhfuil an Afraic agus na Sé Chontae cosúil lena chéile. Ó thuaidh, bhíodh an t-uafás agus an foréigin in áiteanna áirithe ach measann daoine go mbíodh sé mar a gcéanna fud fad na háite. Tá sé amhlaidh san Afraic fosta. Sin an fáth go bhfuil Ó Chósta go Cósta scríofa ag Frank, cuntas ina dtugann sé cuairt in athuair ar oirthear na hAfraice, agus gnéithe folaithe na hAfraice a léiriú, Afraic an ghrá agus an gháire, Afraic na féile agus na flaithiúlachta, Afraic an spraoi agus an tsonais – íomhá nach bhfuil chomh forleathan sin i meáin an Iarthair, iad gafa le scéalta faoi ghorta, cogaíocht, caimiléireacht pholaitiúil agus anró gan stad gan staonadh.

In Ó Chósta go Chósta, seolann an t-údar timpeall chósta thoir na Céinia, tugann sé cuairt ar sheanmháthair Bharack Obama, agus ríomhann sé stair chasta, thragóideach na tíre. Tugann sé faoi safari i bpáirc náisiúnta an Maasai Mara. Tugann sé cuairt ar Uganda go bhfeice sé an chabhair a thugann Rialtas na hÉireann don tír sin. Agus filleann sé ar Ruanda go bhfeice sé mar atá ag éirí leo sna blianta tar éis an chinedhíothaithe. Leabhar taistil, leabhar staire, leabhar eolais, leabhar polaitíochta – leabhar nach mór do dhuine ar bith a bhfuil spéis aige san Afraic sa lá atá inniu ann é a bheith ina sheilbh.

Story slamming in Galway

It’s lovely when one chance encounter leads to something that is laden with possibilities.

Each year, I MC an event called Scribes at the West, a literary gathering that has seen the likes of Marian Keyes, Alexis Sayle, Pauline McLynn and Duke Special visit West Belfast to talk about their books or their song lyrics.

This year, featured a poet from Galway, Mags Treanor, whom I knew absolutely nothing about. However, when reading her biog, I discovered she ran something called a story slam, an event where ordinary people would get up in a relaxed atmosphere and tell a true story in no more than five minutes.

What I great idea, I thought. So, when I got to talk to Mags about story slams – she does one in the Róisín Dubh in Galway city centre and another in Headford – I decided I had to go and sample one myself.

So last month I headed down to Galway, via Sligo, for the Loose Lips story slam at the Róisín. What a lovely night it was!

The event was held upstairs in the famous Galwegian venue, a room with subdued lighting, a mike, a bar and an audience. All you need.

The theme of the evening is chosen beforehand and tonight the theme was Journeys. The themes are always inclusive enough to attract a wide range of stories – physical journeys, emotional journeys, imagined journeys, anything was permitted as long as you didn’t commit the mortal sin of being boring!

Mags opened the proceedings and there followed a stream of people -who had given their names at the start of the night – who told their stories.

There were young and old there, men and women, seasoned storytellers and novices. The best story of the night came from Peggy, a woman who had been to Loose Lips a couple of times before but tonight worked up the courage to tell her story about meeting a seventh son of a seventh son on a trip to Wales with her then-boyfriend.

The stories were simple but there was a wonderful sense of community in the room as people who might have faltered a little were given encouragement from the rest of the 25-strong audience.

Other stories were of a charity cycle trip from Galway to North Africa, the power of meditation while on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, getting a job in Paris, a weird neighbour in County Cavan and so on.

Story slams in one form or another are springing up all over the world so isn’t it about time we had one in Belfast, a city overflowing with stories and storytellers?

It’s time to unlock the inner seanchaí, I think.

Na healaíona Gaeilge

Seoladh Féile Bhéal Feirste ag Ollscoil na Ríona de chuid Bhanc Uladh (a leithéid d’ainm!) inné agus, mar is gnách, tá an iliomad ócáid gur fiú freastal uirthi, drámaí, ceol d’achan chineál, cainteanna, na físealaíona, scannáin, damhsa, imeachtaí teaghlaigh agus go leor eile. Ach níl oiread agus imeacht amháin i nGaeilge le sonrú i measc an trí scor seó in 36 ionad fud fad na cathrach.

Nuair a fhiafraím de lucht eagraithe na bhféilte is mó sa chathair cén fáth nach mbíonn imeachtaí Gaeilge a n-eagrú acu, deir siad liom nach mbíonn an caighdeán ard go leor in imeachtaí Gaeilge, bíodh siad ag tagairt don drámaíocht, don cheol nó de cheann ar bith eile de na healaíona. An bhfuil an ceart acu?

Tá aithne agam ar bheirt, daoine a rachadh chuig gach coirm agus gach seisiún traidisiúnta dá raibh ann ach ní fhaca mé le fada iad go dtí ar na mallaibh. Cén fáth? Ar an ábhar go bhfuil coirmeacha agus seisiúin agus féilte d’ardchaighdeán iontach tearc na laethanta seo, a dúirt siad liom. An fíor dóibh?

Cá bhfuil na drámaí d’ardchaighdeán a rachadh i bhfeidhm ar dhaoine taobh amuigh de phobal na Gaeilge? Tá obair mhór á déanamh ag Aisling Ghéar agus iad i ndiaidh Stones in His Pockets a thabhairt go Milwaukee ach an caitheamh aimsire mionlaigh a bheas sa drámaíocht Ghaeilge go deo na ndeor? Cá bhfuil comharbaigh Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill agus Chathail Uí Shearcaigh ó thaobh na filíochta de? An ann d’aos chruthaíochta na Gaeilge ach go bhfuil siad i bhfolach?

Tá a fhios agam gur mhaith le heagraithe chuid de na féilte i mBéal Feirste go mbeadh imeachtaí Gaeilge ar a gcláracha. Dá mbeifeá le seó amháin nó ealaíontóir amháin, nó ceoltóir amháin a mholadh d’fhéile Béarla, seó nó duine a léireodh saibhreas, beocht agus ábharachas chultúr na Gaeilge, cé nó cad é a mholfá?

William Kennedy Piping Festival

The William Kennedy Piping Festival is looking very enticing this year.

The dark nights of November are lightened by the musical fireworks of pipers and other musicians from all over the globe, and the cold dissipates in the warmth of the welcome in what is, almost literally, a family affair in the heart of Armagh.

Held every Autumn, the festival features not just Celtic pipers as you would expect, but it gathers practitioners from all over Europe.

Friday night, November 12 will be a blinder with two stages set up in the City Hotel in Armagh, with a line-up to die for.

Stage 1 will feature the John McSherry Band, Cran, Breabach from Scotland, French fusion trio Goat System and Milish from the USA.

Topping the bill on Stage 2 will be Gaelic superstar Julie Fowlis with hubby Eamon Doorley, Réalta, Barry Kerr and Ioscaid as well as acts from Galicia, Portugal, England, Belgium and Greece.

As well as the big concerts, the long weekend from 11-14 November is full of sessions, recitals, classes and much more and there’s always a great, friendly atmosphere at the William Kennedy so check out the details at www.wkpf.org or www.armaghpipers.org/wkpf/en/festival/index.html