Sitting down to watch a film in a dark cinema with just two and a half hours of poor sleep after an all-night election count could have been a recipe for nodding off. But that wasn’t t… Read More

The back of Shakespeare’s envelope must have been awash with scribbles and arrows as he wove together the five plots that includes the overriding storyline about an Athenian square of… Read More

Accidents don’t always happen in a vacuum: circumstances can conspire. That’s certainly seems to be the case with new film The Sparrow, although the screenwriter and director Mic… Read More

Kinds of Kindness is a comedy/fantasy triptych, with thematic connections, shared cast members, and some pretty absurb goings on. It’s the latest release from director Yorgos Lanthimos… Read More

This week has been a bit of a treat with two great shows to review at the Grand Opera House. One a well-established award-winning musical, Come From Away.  The other, Five Year Stand, i… Read More

It’s as if Come From Away has been soaked in empathy and left to stew. The people of Gander and the passengers who unexpectedly camp out for five days when their transatlantic flights… Read More

While beforehand I always worry about the effect of the weather on outdoor theatre performances, I should be more relaxed as shows like Tinderbox’s Sylvan worked in the drizzle and any… Read More

Coming up in a few weeks time will be 108 films packed into six days of Docs Ireland, a festival of international documentary film. Local talent from this island will be celebrated along wit… Read More

Shots are fired in a hostelry. Tick. An officer of the law is shot in a dusty town square, falling to the ground and lying face-down motionless. Tick. Someone rides off into the distance on… Read More

Within 24 hours of watching the film Hoard, I had filled the recycling bin to the brim and was making a plan to deal with the plastic Ikea boxes overloaded with USB cables of varying shapes… Read More

Belfast is awash with harrowing theatre at the moment. Over in the Lyric, Keith Singleton leads a cast who are delivering stellar performances in Prime Cut’s The Pillowman. Tonight, it… Read More

Wow! It’s loud. It’s brash. And that’s not just the explosive first beat from the ten-piece orchestra in the pit. While there was a book (1900), a stage musical (1902) and… Read More

A choreographer and dancer catches the eye of a sign language interpreter who is assisting a class she’s running with deaf students who are rehearsing a routine to perform at a summer… Read More

Two brothers find themselves in police custody. While Michal (David Murphy) is soon confessing under duress to a number of very serious crimes, his one-year younger sibling, barefoot Katuria… Read More

The penultimate concert in the Ulster Orchestra’s 2023/24 season was given over to a new work composed by Conor Mitchell and produced by the Belfast Ensemble. Sandwiched between Star W… Read More

Arthur is tall, young English man who wears a uniform of crumpled cream suit. He has the gift of divining where rich Etruscans were buried along with precious possessions that can be dug up… Read More

The spirit of Daniel O’Donnell is strong as Ciarán O’Brien steps on stage, singing with a familiar Donegall brogue, tilts his head down towards the audience and holds the… Read More

Big Telly (Granny Jackson’s Dead) have revived The Worst Café in the World with an updated à la carte reimagining of the original set menu extravaganza.Shown to a table… Read More

Cailíní. Noun. Young, unmarried women.A handful of siblings gather in the old home kitchen. Not everyone is expected. Not everyone is welcome. And if there’s tension in t… Read More

The weather forecast for last Saturday suggested that the rain clouds would pass quickly and the second half of the morning would be dry. It’s testament to the quality of the writing… Read More

Meet Marcus. Growing up, he’s been told to “hide, fit in, blend in, don’t make too much fuss” … while being perceived as exotic and different. You’ll hav… Read More

When Declan Bennett and his boyfriend moved out of London to rural Oxfordshire, their adventure was supposed to be a liberating side-effect of the Covid lockdown that was denying them of wor… Read More

An author and an artist relocated from London to rural Country Galway a few years ago. Middle-aged but younger than average, they are seen as useful newcomers. But they’ll probably alw… Read More

Biopics of musical performers have chequered histories in my book. Elvis encapsulated the essence of Presley’s performance but over-sanitised his life. One Love captured the rhythm and… Read More

Sunny Side Up is Diona Doherty’s new show that charts a woman’s struggle to have a child. And to be clear, fertilised and healthy is how Erin would like her eggs. Before long we… Read More

The crew of a police landrover have been thrown in with each other for an evening in September 1996. There’s plenty of tension outside on the streets of Belfast. But sweep aside the bo… Read More

Alex Garland’s new film Civil War is at first glance a sober warning shot across the bows of US citizens. Push the boundaries of mutinous action against the forces of government too… Read More

A man who disappeared is found dead in a bog after ten years of sporadic not never terribly reliable reports of sightings. It’s no mystery how Seamus ended up there. But those responsi… Read More

As musical theatre adapted from children’s/family-orientated films goes, Shrek The Musical is at the top of my list. There’s nothing dumbed down or phoned in about the production… Read More

Amanda Verlaque’s autobiographical monologue has lost none of its shock and potency in this latest production. This Sh*t Happens All the Time relates to her experience as a university… Read More

The Hole in the Wall Gang are back and the audience know what to expect from the familiar characters and giddily revel in the banter. Give My Head Peace’s simple set – a sofa, a… Read More

Caitlin (Catherine Rees) and Danny (Simon Sweeney) are expecting a child. They’ve turned their back on possessions and seem to be living in a virtual reality environment that accepts v… Read More

Attila the Stockbroker certainly has stamina. Two John Peel sessions in 1982 have been followed by more than 40 years of performing in 25 countries* and over 4,000 gigs, not to mention 20 al… Read More

On the back of a bad breakup, extrovert Jamie joins her more introverted friend Marian on a one-way hire car journey from Philadelphia to Tallahassee in Florida. Due to a misunderstanding, t… Read More

Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley is taking the class of 1982 through their 12-week officer candidate training course in Pensacola, Florida. Not everyone will make it to the end, and fewer still w… Read More

The penguins have itchy feet and a strong sense of taking control of their destiny. Marty the monochromatic zebra also wishes he had been born free rather than living in Central Park Zoo. Th… Read More

Happy birthday Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics. Ten years of delighting, educating, and engaging the grey matter of citizens of Belfast and beyond. Running between Monday 18 and Sund… Read More

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is like a historic rodent that has been trapped in amber. It’s an artefact that people come from far and wide to study. A blast from the past th… Read More

“Sorry for your loss” accompanied by a firm handshake seemed like the most appropriate thing to say as I stepped out of the mizzle and walked inside a house on the Malone Road to… Read More

Madame Web’s multi-threaded plot is fairly knotted and the act of mentally untangling it distracts from enjoying the film.A pregnant woman searches for an elusive spider in the Peruvia… Read More

American Fiction is a well-painted takedown of the tendency to pigeonhole culture and the creatives behind it into simplistic categories without examining the actual art. In this case, middl… Read More

It’s not often that I sit in the theatre and can forget everything else around me and be entranced by the storytelling on stage. It’s much more likely to happen in the cinema. Th… Read More

Ireland has a lot of shameful history and another part of it from mid-1800s has been captured in theatrical form by playwright Jaki McCarrick. Belfast Girls is the story of women who board… Read More

All Of Us Strangers portrays the isolation of being gay by physically sequestering two men at opposite ends of an otherwise empty new modern apartment block. It’s metaphorically &ndash… Read More

The Commandant’s family reside next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. While Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) spends his time with engineers trying to build ever more efficient… Read More

Hats off to Maeve Smyth for producing an evening of short film screenings at the Strand Arts Centre to celebrate eight female-driven films. An event that didn’t just applaud the writer… Read More

Musical films are undergoing a renaissance at the box office with Wonka and Mean Girls getting high profile releases in recent months. Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple dives right in… Read More

Three 16-year-old students celebrate the end of their school days and give thanks for the one teacher who offered them hope and gave them a passion for theatre. John Godber’s Teechers… Read More

Once you strip away the exuberant anticipation of the final scene, and once you move past the audience whipping themselves up into a frenzy anytime the mere whiff of a bum cheek might be pro… Read More

While the overall construction of Anyone But You is solid and it’ll make you smile, it’s crying out to be written off as ‘much ado about nothing’ (upon which the stor… Read More

The End We Start From is a far-fetched feral film but much more believable and effective than other movies in the genre like The Survivalist and Couple in a Hole.Jodie Comer once again shows… Read More

A retired asset from a deniable squad of violent fixers who have agency to keep the US on the straight and narrow abandons his beekeeping and decides to avenge the death of a sweet lady off… Read More

Fourteen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu is introduced to Elvis by one of his military friends. He’s serving with the US military in Germany. Ten years his junior, she’s naïve… Read More

The closer a pantomime can get to its audience, the more powerful and connected it can be. That’s certainly the case with the Beauty and the Beast being performed by the Belvoir Player… Read More

After a couple of years staging productions of A Christmas Carol – with what must have been the cutest Tiny Tim on the island – Bright Umbrella Drama Company are taking a very di… Read More

Cinderella at the Devenish Complex in Finaghy is the Belfast pantomime that’s on everyone’s lips. The hotel ballroom may not be a typical venue for theatre, but Neil Keery’… Read More

O Holly Knight is set up as a nostalgic story that plays out in the run up to Christmas in a 1960’s Belfast that is still devoid of Troubles. There’s a newspaper editor who doesn… Read More

I’m not sure how I missed The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan earlier in the year, but I wish I’d also been able to skip the two-hour sequel The Three Musketeers: Milady. Some… Read More

The hospitality industry provides a rich seam of material for alternative Christmas shows. Fraught industrial relations between workers and managers, agitated customers, the heightened emoti… Read More

With a big auditorium, advance ticket sales that must be the envy of other venues, and 12 shows a week, the finances are there to throw the kitchen sink at Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in… Read More

The pesky freedom fighting chickens are back in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Following their escape from the clutches of Mrs Tweedy and the farm she ran like a prisoner camp, the chicken… Read More

Step into Darkwood Manor where the unseen Lady Alice is convalescing upstairs with her care assistant Ciara, the handyman McKillop is pootling about, the butler is lingering in the corner of… Read More

The act of sitting with a notepad and a pen in hand ready to scribble in the dark already slightly distracts from the normal audience experience. For film previews, the early morning start c… Read More

It’s beginning to look a lot like … Santa’s elves need help figuring out what the man in the red suit wants for Christmas. But help is at hand from young volunteers who ac… Read More

It may be The Night Before Christmas, but after a rousing opening number – Happy Christmas to All – it’s soon apparent that not all is well in Queen Talia’s land. The… Read More

Hansel & Gretel gets off to a cracking pace, and keeps it up for most of the performance. It’s aimed at children and families, and it confidently throws a rake of characters at t… Read More

Julie returns to a sprawling country hall her Mum used to visit. She’s there to write a screenplay about the mother-daughter relationship and mark her Mum’s birthday. Tilda Swint… Read More

Raphael Khouri takes his audiences on a trip through Berlin, Beirut, Amman, Saudi Arabia, and Los Angeles to Athens and beyond in a performance that was commissioned by Outburst Arts. It&rsq… Read More

It’s been a stressful few months. What with the new house and the renovations and starting to redecorate, on top of a new baby, and husband Sam disappearing off the grid to the island… Read More

The Safety Catch is set up as a fictional confrontation between road racing champion Michael Dunlop and a friend of the family Liam Beckett who asks the rider to think about the possibility… Read More

The Belfast Ensemble premiered their first version of Abomination in the Lyric Theatre as part of Outburst Festival five years ago. It was a thrilling bonus, tacked on the end of a restaging… Read More

In 2004, a patient absconded from his English nursing home and travelled across to attend the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations in Normandy. Bernard Jordan’s escapade inspired a nu… Read More

Three young women celebrate the end of school and distract themselves from looming exam results with a boozy holiday in Malia, Crete. Will it be a rite of passage into adulthood for Tara, Sk… Read More

Samuel (Samuel Theis) plunges to his death from the attic window of a snowy chalet. The police identify his wife, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), as their chief suspect, the only person known t… Read More

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s episodic film Monster presents a series of glimpses into the same set of events from different perspectives. First time around, it’s clear who the bad guy is… Read More

This year’s Belfast Film Festival certainly isn’t afraid to explore faith and spirituality. Silent Roar calls out false spirituality and false hope as it explores a young lad&rsq… Read More

The first ten minutes of Elene Naveriani’s Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry would make a great short film in their own right. Yet after the opening credits, the exciting narrative expand… Read More

Two of the NI Independents short films caught my eye in the Belfast Film Festival programme. They were screened this afternoon in the Strand Arts Centre.Marie Clare Cushinan’s VIVA ima… Read More

The Rear Windows company are keeping rather too close an eye on how their products are performing in people’s homes. Perhaps looking through them more than they’re looking at the… Read More

If you go down to the woods Belfast Film Festival today, you’re in for a big surprise.Double Blind sees seven young people check into a spartan facility to take part in a medical trial… Read More

Annie was the third film I saw in the cinema as a child. ET, followed by War Games, and then Annie. From memory, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the fourth. I’m that old! The… Read More

Stolen will be shown in schools across Ireland in years to come – spread over a couple of periods since the 102 minute film would bust a single lesson – to remind students about… Read More

As always at this time of the year, there’s lots to catch your eye in the Outburst festival programme. Previous festivals have gifted audiences with performances like Damage, Scorch, T… Read More

We’re now into peak festival season in Belfast.Belfast International Arts Festival is into its last week (finishing on Sunday 5 November), local events in the ESCR Festival of Social S… Read More

Some of the strongest work featured at Belfast International Arts Festival has been that (like Rhino) which embraced the imagination and creative power of an ensemble to produce something th… Read More

work.txt is an ensemble piece of theatre. With a difference. The audience are the ensemble. A set is built. One member will unwittingly be written into the whole evening’s dialogue and… Read More

Prodigal son Gabriel returns to the home lived in by his grieving mother and twin brother Michael. It’s an awkward welcome given his two years of globetrotting following the tragic dea… Read More

Hen feels trapped in her seven-year-old marriage. Yet it’s her partner, Junior, who is getting out: the human Hen married will soon be swapped out for a sentient clone while Junior spe… Read More

It’s as if this was the definitive staging Eugène Ionesco had intended when he wrote Rhinoceros in 1959. Notionally it’s a story about rhinoceroses arriving in a small vil… Read More

Take 15 acrobatic bodies that bounce and flip and spin, one DJ who provides a constant live soundtrack, a circling motorbike, 48 or more red Coca Cola crates, and a dance floor and billowi… Read More

Back when I was young, most of the GCSE English Literature classes in school studied Robert Bolt’s Man For All Seasons (based on the life of Sir Thomas More), leaving just one class &n… Read More

It’s the beginning of the summer, and hair stylist Cheryl (Kerri Quinn) and primary school teacher Michael (Terence Keeley) live in a modern and fashionable home opposite a field tha… Read More

Becky is heading away to Ibiza for her hen do, accompanied by her mum, sister, and some friends. On a boozy weekend that is meant to be about letting their hair down ahead of Becky’s m… Read More

Lies Where It Falls is a theatrical memoire, an incredibly personal retelling of a set of moments in Ruairi Conaghan’s life and career. We hear about the highs and lows of sharing his… Read More

Screenwriter Paul Laverty and director Ken Loach are back with The Old Oak, the completion of a trilogy of films based in the north-east of England (I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You)… Read More

The Bodyguard builds on some great musical theatre performances with a set dripping with style and panache and a lighting rig that stands out from most touring productions to create a worthy… Read More

Some highlights to look out for in the Belfast International Arts Festival, which runs for the 61st time from 12 October–5 November 2023.THEATREGary Mitchell’s new black comedy B… Read More

Shane is ill at ease with himself. He’s living on his own in a shabby two-up two-down and his sense of wellbeing mirrors his lodgings. Once a week he drags himself out to a comedy clas… Read More

In the aftermath of the murder of his father, Joe Nawaz travelled from south Belfast back to Pakistan with his family to piece together what had happened. His one man show Five Days begins… Read More

Francis might get beaten black and blue and experience prejudice from all and sundry on the street, but the most hurtful attacks are probably from the mouth of his mother. An immigrant from… Read More