Event of the Week
Solar Bones
Saturday, October 15th; Linen Hall, Castlebar, Co Mayo; 7.30pm; €20; thelinenhall.com; Thursday, October 20th, Saturday, October 29th; Abbey Theatre, Dublin; 7.30pm; €45/€30/€25; abbeytheatre.ie; Wednesday, November 2nd, until Friday, November 4th; Everyman Theatre, Cork; 8pm; €31/€28; everymancork.com
Another outing for Michael West’s adaptation of Mike McCormack’s audacious 2016 (multi-award-winning and Man Booker Prize-longlisted) single-sentence novel. On All Soul’s Day, Marcus Conway (Stanley Townsend) sits in his unnerving kitchen reflecting on a world that is as much clear-headed (everything seems quite normal, and why shouldn’t it?) as a mess of contradictions (why is he experiencing a distinct sense of foreboding?). It might seem for some a rather intangible production to be presented for public consumption in the lead-up to Halloween, but Townsend’s performance has been praised for its eerie, pinpoint precision and Lynne Parker’s direction for its assuredness.
Gigs
All Rise: The Passing of the Poem
Saturday, October 15th; Kells Courthouse, Co Meath; 7.30pm; €17.50; tickets.ie
Subtitled “an evening of song and art, of call and response, of culture and resistance”, All Rise focuses on one song – Colony, by Damien Dempsey – and its recognition of enforced occupation in Ireland and abroad. The historic venue is appropriate (Kells Courthouse was built during English rule and penal laws) as the event aims to recover and validate cultural conservation, wherein stories, poems and songs were openly shared. Artists (including Michael Brunnock, Rema Hamid, Nuala Leonard, and Perlee) will give their personal responses to Dempsey’s song, while the man himself will also perform it.
Pillow Queens
Saturday, October 15th, and Sunday 16th; Róisin Dubh, Co Galway; 8pm; €23.50/€21 (sold out); Thursday, October 20th; Set Theatre, Co Kilkenny; 8pm; €24; Friday, October 21st; INEC Arena, Killarney, Co Kerry; 8.30pm; €24.90; pillowqueens.com
They played a pair of sold-out shows at Dublin’s Vicar Street recently, but it isn’t over yet for Pillow Queens. In fact, often it’s the “provincial” shows that highlight a band’s determination in front of people that, perhaps, aren’t always acquainted with bands of such calibre, experience, and quality. Now with two superb indie-guitar pop albums to their name (2020′s In Waiting, 2022′s Leave the Light On), Pillow Queens have surely reached the point where album number three will take them to even bigger and better places.
Yungblud
Tuesday, October 18th; Button Factory, Dublin; 7.30pm; sold out
Whoa! This one is unusual insofar as UK’s Yungblud (aka Dominic Harrison) is so commercially successful he could sell out much larger venues, but this is a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket gig that will see him perform his recently released self-titled third album in a sparse, stripped-back fashion. Gigs such as these, where the whites of audience eyes are noticed all too clearly from the stage, don’t occur often enough. That it’s from a major name is gravy. Tickets are sold out, and lucky is the Yungblud fan that has one.
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Red Bull Soundclash
Friday, October 21st; Shelbourne Hall, RDS, Dublin; 7.30pm; €25; RedBull.ie/Soundclash
In the blue corner, we have Mango X Mathman, in the red corner, we have Aby Coulibaly & Monjola, and across two stages and several rounds of musical battles they will each display Herculean hip-hop efforts as they go noggin-to-noggin, mic-to-mic for the main prize. Assisting them, respectively, will be a line-up of music acts to be revealed on the night. The event’s special guest act is much-praised Belfast rap group, Kneecap, while MC for the evening is BBC Music Introducing presenter (and R&B artist in her own right) Gemma Bradley. Two words: seconds out!
Stage
Richard E Grant
Thursday, October 20th; NCH, Dublin, 8pm; €45/€36/€28.50 (sold out); nch.ie
From his film debut in 1987′s Withnail and I to his most recently praised, Oscar-nominated performance in 2018′s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Richard E. Grant (the ‘E’ is for his surname, Esterhuysen; Grant is his original middle name) has conducted himself with no small style. This one-man stage show hones in on his new memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness, which, while primarily written in the last year of his wife’s terminal lung cancer diagnosis, nevertheless also includes the high-grade celebrity gossip he clearly revels in. Expect, then, a mix of poignancy and wry humour from a truly class act.
Opera
71st Wexford Festival Opera
Friday, October 21st, until Sunday, November 6th; various venues/times/prices; wexfordopera.com
What’s not to admire about a long-established festival with a singular vision, remarkable values and a stunning setting? This year’s Wexford Festival Opera, under artistic director Rosetta Cucchi, includes what anyone would consider peak productions: Armida, the final (overlooked) work by Antonín Dvorák; The Spectre Knight, by undervalued composer Alfred Cellier; the premiere of Les Selenites, a commissioned chamber opera by Wexford Festival Opera artist-in-residence Conor Mitchell; and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, Impossible Interviews, which sees The Irish Times’ Classical Music critic, Michael Dervan, interview, live on stage, the magician/escapologist, Harry Houdini. (Or someone that looks and acts very like him.)
Exhibition
Willie Doherty
Saturday, October 15th, until Saturday, November 19th; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; kerlingallery.com
Secluded settings, veiled grounds, the harsh reality of deterioration, conflicted and insistent pasts. Willie Doherty’s minutely detailed gaze – created through reflective video/film and photography – has largely settled on Northern Ireland, specifically his native Derry. In his latest, terse image-based exhibition, Is and Is Not, Doherty presents rural landscapes shaped by abandonment, intolerance and bias. “Poetry”, states the gallery website about the collection, “is found in the most reluctant of places”.
Still Running
Potted Potter
Gaiety Theatre, Dublin; until Sunday, October 23rd; gaietytheatre.ie
Everyone likes wizards, witches and magic spells at Halloween, right? And a few laughs? Here we have twice Olivier Award-nominated actors Jefferson Turner and Daniel Clarkson squeeze all seven of JK Rowling’s hefty Harry Potter books into 70 highly amusing minutes. Amaziarmus!
