Tag Archives: Galway Arts Festival

Review: Penelope by Enda Walsh (Druid Theatre Company)

  By Allan | August 14, 2010 - 6:09 pm | The Arts, Theatre
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Enda Walsh’s Penelope is a captivating hybrid of Greek myth and Irish characterisation. It appears to be baking under an Ithacan sun, but its characters have voices soaked in the grey of more northerly isles and names that underscore that origin. It’s not the first example of an Hibernian cowl worn over the shape of antiquity: James Joyce’s Ulysses is the most prominent one but Marina Carr, Macnas and Barrabas have also toyed with the trope in recent years. Penelope’s collision of anachronistic elements is a back story to The Odyssey: four suitors (Niall Buggy, Denis Conway, Tadhg Murphy and Karl Shiels) vie for the hand of Odysseus’ wife (Olga Wehrly) before his prophesied return, and their destruction at his hand. They reside at the bottom of a bloodstained swimming pool, listlessly discussing the taste of heat, and heat has them stripped to togs and gowns. The set, as one … There’s more →

Get down here! Galway Arts Festival 12-25 July 2010

  By Allan | June 30, 2010 - 2:01 pm | Comedy, Events, Performance Art, The Arts, Theatre, Tourism
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Summer heralds Galway at its most attractive: the city’s waterways achieve colours of an almost impossible intensity for the short duration of the warmest season. White swans swarm the Claddagh and Spanish Arch, blue dragonflies dance over the canals whose banks heave with explosions of flowers, and the daylight plays that golden trick that attracts painters and photographers west. Of course, there’s the Beijing-rivalling number of bikes that listlessly cake the canal beds, and the bobbing keg caught in the weir’s wake, but surely they only serve to remind the visitor of the playful high jinks that these heady days imbue in the imbiber. Thus is set the backdrop against which the Galway Arts Festival takes place, kicking off this year on the 12 July and running until the 25th. The full programme is available online here, and bookings can be made here. A few of the theatre highlights include: … There’s more →

Review: Mark Thomas, It’s the Stupid Economy, Galway Arts Festival 2009

  By Allan | July 23, 2009 - 5:24 pm | Comedy, Featured Post, The Arts, Theatre
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I first saw Mark Thomas during the Galway Arts Festival two years ago, promoting his book As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela. He was animated, funny, angry and- not really reaching the audience. Last Saturday night I realised why: most people there didn’t give a shit about loopholes in international arms law unless they parked a tank in their sittingroom and shelled the widescreen television. This was in contrast to the palpable tension and raw energy of last week’s audience in the Radisson Hotel. The reason? Thomas was railing against banks, the credit orgy and the failure of the political class, common ground for everyone there. Thomas was in full voice as soon as he took to the stage, possibly the benefit of having played here before, and also of having a show that wasn’t a retreading of vast tracts of his book (a symptom of his last show: … There’s more →

Coming up in the Galway Arts Festival

  By Allan | July 16, 2009 - 11:41 pm | Events, Gigs, The Arts, Theatre
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Shows still to come in the Galway Arts Festival: Mark Thomas, Saturday 18th July 9pm (€22.00): Acclaimed comic and activist, Mark Thomas creates a manifesto - a policy paddle to help steer our way out of the current economic crisis. The economy’s bust, the environment broken and governments have run out of ideas, the only people who can save the day is us! Every audience gets to vote on the policies they like, Mark road tests them and then sets off to make them happen. It is somewhere between Jim’ll Fix It for anarchists and White Collar Crimewatch, with a passing nod at Bill Drummond, the Fluxus art movement and Anneka Rice. Join Mark as he creates a People’s Manifesto to light our way through the gloom at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Saturday, 18th July at 9pm. Described by The Guardian as “Moving and inspiring…as gripping as any live performance … There’s more →