5 The Life of David Gale Alan Parker's first film since Angela's Ashes returns him to the confrontational issues genre of his Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning. Kevin Spacey plays a firm opponent of the death penalty who finds himself on Death Row after being convicted of murder. Kate Winslet, playing a reporter trying to stop the execution, co-stars along with Laura Linney and Gabriel Mann (autumn).
6 Minority Report Steven Spielberg follows the underrated A.I. with an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story set in a futuristic judicial system in which killers are arrested before they commit murder. Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell head a cast that includes Max Von Sydow and Samantha Morton (July).
7 The Road to Perdition Director Sam Mendes follows his Oscar-winning cinema dΘbut, American Beauty by bringing a 1998 graphic novel to the screen. Set in 1930s Chicago, it stars Tom Hanks as a hitman, Michael O'Sullivan, who seeks revenge for the murder of most of his family. The cast includes Jude Law, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stanley Tucci, Dylan Baker and Ciaran Hinds (summer).
8 Simone Andrew Niccol, the bright young New Zealander who scripted The Truman Show, follows his very promising directing dΘbut, Gattaca, with the intriguing story of a disillusioned movie producer (Al Pacino) who loses his leading actress to another film and covertly replaces her with a computer-generated starlet. With Chris Coppola, Catherine Keener and Jay Mohr (autumn).
9 Spider-Man Expect spectacular special effects and action sequences in the long-mooted movie based on the exploits of the masked DC Comics character, Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man. Sam Raimi is the director who finally brings it to the screen and generally serious actor Tobey Maguire is the interesting choice to play the central role. With Willem Dafoe as the villainous Green Goblin ( May 3rd).
Michael Dwyer provides a comprehensive guide to the spring movie releases in The Ticket next Wednesday, January 2nd.
Theatre
Gerry Colgan
1 Exciting things are planned for the Gate theatre, including a new £3 million building project which will add greatly to facilities from box-office to rehearsal space.
On stage, an evening of two new one-act plays adapted by Brian Friel from his beloved Chekhov, The Bear and Afterplay, will open in March, to be followed in April by a worldpremiΦre by Frank McGuinness calledGates of Gold, about two gents who founded a well-known theatre in Dublin. Their identity is, of course, being kept a dark secret.
2 The National Theatre gets off to an inviting start. A new Sebastian Barry play, Hinterland, opens in the Abbey at the end of January, with the intriguing theme of a statesman looking at his dubious past and turbulent private life. It will be directed by Max Stafford Clark, the theatre guru from London's Royal Court, and the cast will include Dearbhla Molloy and Patrick Malahide. A play by Canadian Michel Tromblay, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, will play in parallel at the Peacock.
3 The Passion Machine Company, when it has finished its successful tour of Diarmuid and Grβinne north and south, plans a revival in May of its now-classic soccer play, Studs, at the Gaiety theatre. It is also finalising arrangements to produce a new play by actor Alan Archbold called The Buddy Whelan Story in the autumn.
4 The new or relatively new theatres that have sprung up throughout the country are growing in programming confidence, as is illustrated by Armagh's Market Place Theatre's spring season. Its authors include Paul Mercier, John Breen, David Mamet and Martin McDonagh, and prominent among the offerings are two new comic dramas about life in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement. They are Affluence by Down-born William Trevor and Caught Red Handed by Tim Loane.
5 Yew Tree Theatre in Ballina plans a highly productive year, and has hired a full-time company administrator, Orla Scannell, to manage its increasingly busy affairs. The programme includes revivals of plays by
Max Hafler, Lennox Robinson and Neil Donnelly, and a lot of interest will centre on a new work by Yew's artistic director, John Breen, author of the phenomenally successful rugby play Alone It Stands, which is about to open in the West End. His latest play, currently with a working title of Difficult Second Album, will dramatise the life and career of Charles Haughey. It will open early next year and then tour extensively.
6 Community and public theatre is planned in various venues and forms. Big Day Out will take over Dublin on March 16th, offering street theatre, comedy, mini-parades and more whoopee for the day. The Bealtaine Festival, which began in 1996 and celebrates creativity in older age, will mount over 250 events throughout the country during May. They will encompass theatre, storytelling and other artforms. Diversions 2002 will again enliven the summer outdoors in Temple Bar, and will include the winning play of a competition organised by Fishamble Theatre Company. The Barabbas ensemble, riding high after its recent festival, will also contribute free events.
7 At the other end of the stage scale, lavish spectacle will have some attractive outings in the larger venues. At The Point Theatre the acclaimed Beauty and the Beast, a stunning musical based on the Walt Disney film, will play from April to June.
It is currently in its eighth year on Broadway, and has also broken box-office records in London and Liverpool. The Point Theatre will also present Disney on Ice - Toy Story in March. Belfast's Grand Opera House will house the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of his own show, Sunset Boulevard in February/March.
8 Apart from the international theatre festivals and their associated Fringes in Dublin, Galway and Belfast, a plethora of smaller celebrations have taken root in recent years. Limerick's Unfringed will make an early start at the end of January, but most are scheduled for the autumn. They will include festivals in Laois, Ennis, Donegal Bay and Bluestacks, Kilkenny and several others, for which programmes are being busily shaped. It is potent evidence of the thriving theatre scene throughout the country.
9 As of now, while hard information about dates, venues and associated activities is not yet finalised, The Synge Cycle, planned for some time by Druid Theatre Company in Galway, appears to be on target for a series of productions during 2002, stretching into the following year.
It is right that Druid should be the ones to do justice to the entire stage canon of John Millington Synge, in what will be its biggest project. Work will also begin on refurbishing the company's home in Chapel Lane.
10 Finally, a few interesting offerings to close this lucky dip. The always busy Gerry Stembridge will have a new play, Denis and Rose, based on a story by Maeve Binchy, playing in Tallaght's Civic Theatre in February and March.
A Rough Magic production is always an event worth waiting for; in April, the Project will house its Irish premiΦre of the award-winning Copenhagen, written by Michael Frayn.
Fishamble is finalising plans for a first play by Jim O'Hanlon called The Buddhist of Castleknock in Dra∅ocht Theatre, Blanchardstown, next door to the eponymous Dublin location.
Classical
Michael Dervan
1 Christ Church Baroque/Andrew Manze (violin), Christ Church Cathedral: What I've heard of the work of Christ Church Baroque, Ireland's period-instruments orchestra, has frequently suggested a serious struggle with standards. So the introduction of an International Directors Series to allow the players work under the guidance of leading practitioners is an important development. Violinist Andrew Manze, one of the super-stars of the early music scene, joins CCB for the first time next month for a programme of Handel, Pisendel, Geminiani, Vivaldi and Bach at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin on Saturday January 12th and Sunday January 13th.
2 City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, NCH: The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, surely the most talked-about orchestra in Britain, never set foot in Ireland during the long reign of Simon Rattle. Both the orchestra and the man who had the unenviable task of stepping into Rattle's shoes, Sakari Oramo, make their National Concert Hall dΘbuts at the end of February. Ravel's Mother Goose and Mahler's Fourth Symphony frame Oramo's own orchestration of DΘbussy's Chansons de Jeunesse, in which the soloist (as in the Mahler) is fellow Finn, soprano Anu Komsi. (Thursday, February 28th)
3 Arts Council Policy and Action Plan for Opera: Last July, the Arts Council announced the appointment of Pamela Smith as opera specialist, to prepare a policy and action plan for opera. With an orchestra from Belarus employed at the Wexford Festival (and the re-establishing of the link with the NSO seeming increasingly unlikely), and the shocking revelation of Opera Ireland's £400,000-plus accumulated deficit, it's certainly an interesting time for the council to consider the nature and adequacy of its support for opera. Pamela Smith's conclusions are expected to be ready by March. Let's hope they don't get lost as a similar exercise for music did at RT╔. RT╔ carried out a nationwide public consultation process, after which the policy was supposed to issue in autumn 1999. All that's been heard from the national broadcaster is a deathly silence on the issue.
4 Alison Browner (mezzo soprano), Akademie fⁿr alte Musik Berlin: Dublin mezzo soprano Alison Browner, who has established her early music credentials in authoritative performances of Bach, returns to Ireland early in April for a Music Network tour with one of Germany's leading early music groups, the Akademie fⁿr alte Musik Berlin. She'll be singing Handel in a programme which also includes works by Locke, Purcell, Rosenmⁿller, Marini and Uccellini. The tour starts in Tinahely on Friday, April 5th, and visits Mullingar, Galway, Cork, Dublin and Castlebar.
5 ESB Vogler Spring Festival: Czech mezzo soprano Dagmar Peckova, Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov and the Vienna Piano Trio are among the guests at the ESB Vogler Spring Festival, held at Drumcliffe Church, Co Sligo, in the heart of Yeats country. Repertoire ranges from songs by Strauss, Shostakovich and Berg, to Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (with clarinettist J÷rg Widmann) and Schubert's Octet. The Vogler Quartet tackles the First Quartet by Karl-Amadeus Hartmann as well as a new commission from Stephen Gardner, and there are also two new works by Kevin O'Connell in the programme. (Friday, May 3rd to Monday, May 6th)
6 Strauss: Elektra, National Concert Hall: Gerhard Markson has chosen to end his first subscription season as principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra with a Richard Strauss spectacular, a concert performance of the ground-breaking opera Elektra, not heard in Dublin since Jβnos Fⁿrst's performance with the then RT╔SO in 1988. Luana de Vol is in the title role, and the RT╔ Philharmonic Choir makes one of its relatively rare forays into the world of opera. (Friday, May 31st)
7 West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Bantry House: Visitors to the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in 2002 will include Dutch soprano Charlotte Riedijk, baroque violinist Maya Homburger, Russian pianist Pavel Nersessian, and the Artis String Quartet, who play works by Viennese composers great and not-so-great, Berg, Zemlinsky and Weigl, as well as those blown-ins, Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart. New works have been commissioned from Zhou Long and Kevin Volans for a festival that now runs to over 30 concerts before you even begin to consider the fringe programme. (Saturday, June 29th to Sunday, July 7th)
8 Wagner's Ring der Nibelungen in concert, UCH, Limerick: You have to hand it to the National Youth Orchestra. It's mounting concert performances of Wagner's complete, four-night Ring cycle under Alexander Anissimov in Limerick (Monday, August 5th to Saturday, August 10th), followed by a repeat at Symphony Hall in Birmingham (between Monday, August 12th and Sunday, August 18th). And on top of that, there will be a two-day Wagner conference in Limerick, on Friday, August 9th and Saturday, August 10th.
9 Kilkenny Arts Festival: Following the happy experience with French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras last August, Kilkenny Arts Festival is once again inviting a visiting musician to devise a series of chamber concerts within the music programme. This time it's leading British horn player Michael Thompson. Also appearing will be the Vienna Mozart Trio (who'll play contemporary works by Irish and Austrian composers), the Swedish lutenist Jakob Lindberg, and the Prague Chamber Orchestra, who give the opening concert. (Friday, August 9th to Sunday, August 18th)
10 Opening of University Arts Centre at Dublin City University The main hall of the University Arts Centre at DCU will have a seating capacity to match the National Concert Hall, backstage facilities to put the NCH to shame, and on-site car-parking. The big questions, of course, are what will it sound like, and what will its management choose to put on there? It should be rather more easy to predict what the RT╔CO will do there as orchestra in residence. But it's not. Let's hope their offerings amount to rather more than the current diet of music from the movies, Abba shows and classical programmes that are mostly hotch-potches.
Jazz
Ray Comiskey
In jazz you never can tell, which is why trying to divine what 2002 will be like in the fullness of time and programme promoters can be a bit like a druid sniffing sacrificial entrails and telling the clan chief the harvest will be good and his enemies will fail. But what can be divined so far suggests that it will at least be a very interesting year, and may even be a particularly good one.
1 Ben Jackson of Note Productions says that his annual ESB Jazz Series will again be split into spring and autumn seasons of four concerts each. And he offers just one tantalising glimpse of what lies ahead in this series - a duo of tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd and longtime associate, the superb Swedish pianist, Bobo Stenson. Lloyd is one of the more unusual figures in jazz - an icon who came into the 1960s global spotlight surrounded by flower power and the make-love-not-war ethos of the time, yet who first played down home blues in his native Memphis, nowadays better known for Graceland and Der Pelvis. Since then, mysticism has taken over the man and his work with mixed results, at least where music is concerned.
Like Stenson, he fits snugly into the airy ambience of Manfred Eicher's ECM label. But both he and Stenson are masters of the difficult art of less-is-more, so their duo concert in Vicar Street next March is bound to arouse interest.
2 Apart from his link with the ESB, Jackson has also confirmed that he will continue running concerts at the new Axis, Ballymun's Arts and Community Resource Centre. One of them will be the trio of pianist Bill Charlap, drummer Stephen Keogh and a bassist yet to be confirmed - on the trio's recent marvellous album, Artfully, it was Mark Hodgson - which is scheduled to play there on April 29th. The day before, the trio is down for a concert at the Triskel in Cork as part of an Irish tour.
Jackson expects to put on six to 10 such concert tours at venues in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and elsewhere. One, he hopes, will be with the trio of Jason Moran, the brilliant young American pianist who played in Temple Bar with Michael Buckley, Mike Nielsen, Ronan Guilfoyle and New York-based Irish drummer, Darren Beckett, last summer.
He also intends to put on what he calls "one-off" concerts including, he says, "a major act on St Patrick's Day in the Gaiety". And he plans to bring back the South American singer, Susana Baca, and pianist Brad Mehldau, who has been here so often he's seems like a part of the furniture.
3 The first half of 2002 is already shaping up like a very full time for the Improvised Music Company's Gerry Godley. It's highly varied, ranging from cutting edge material to bop, with the very successful ESB Routes in Rhythm series he organises running in parallel to it.
The year effectively begins with the arrival in January of the New York pianist, David Berkman, scheduled to play at Whelans with a Scottish group. But much interest is likely to focus on the return visit of the Esbj÷rn Svensson Trio to Vicar Street in May; those who heard them here already need to know no more. As for those who haven't, they now have a chance to repair that serious omission.
4 Rivalling Svensson for attention the same month is the likelihood that guitarist John Abercrombie will be here with an exceptional group completed by Mark Feldman, Marc Johnson and Joey Baron.
5 Also at the top of the list is saxophonist Andy Laster's Hydra; the other heads are trumpeter Cuong Vu, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Tom Rainey. They're down for the Project in February, with more concerts planned for Belfast and Waterford. Other envelope-stretchers scheduled for that month include the Amsterdam-based saxophonist John Roucco and drummer Eric Ineke, who will be joined by Ronan Guilfoyle and Tommy Halferty at JJs.
6 March at JJs will see Carlo Actis Data and Enzo Rocca, a baritone saxophone and guitar act from Italy, whom Godley describes as "iconoclastic and humorous". At Whelan's the same month, any bop fans suffering from withdrawal symptoms can get a proto-fix from trumpeter Damon Brown's quintet; altoist Perico Sambeat, pianist Bruce Barth, bassist Mark Hodgkinson and drummer Steven Keogh are his cohorts.
7 And the only jazz group confirmed for April at the moment is a quartet lead by the "Rollins-esque Anglo-Caribbean tenor" - I can't better that description - of Dennis Baptiste.
8 Next February will also see Music Network's first jazz venture of the year when tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, who showed his quality in the Shelter a few months back, tours with his own group. Accompanied by Scott Kinsey (keyboards), Boris Kozlov (bass) and Dan Rieser (drums), he will be on tour from February 1st, taking in Letterkenny, Boyle, Tinahely, Blanchardstown, Dublin, Cork, Drogheda, Mullingar, Newbridge, Castlebar and Roscrea.
9 The National Concert Hall's first jazz offering of the new year will be more traditionally orientated. Trad man Chris Barber has added three more musicians to his group; now billed as the Big Chris Barber Band, they can be heard at the NCH on January 23rd.
10 As for the ESB Routes in Rhythm series which Godley organises, three are confirmed so far. February will feature classical music in the oldest song tradition of the Arab world, dispensed by Farida and the Iraqi Maqam Ensemble from Baghdad; it won't be a bad gig, dad. April will see Black Umfolosi, with township songs and tribal dances from Zimbabwe. Closest to jazz of the three should be the sextet of the great oud player from Lebanon, Rabih Abou Kahlil, down for a visit in May.