EVER since the Andrew Sachs affair I’ve taken a particular dislike to the British television and radio presenter Jonathan Ross and, despite his chat shows being hugely popular on the BBC and, in the last year or two on ITV, I never again warmed to him. In a perverse way, that’s why I was looking [...]
REHEARSALS are now in their seventh week for Druid’s biggest project yet, DruidMurphy — Plays by Tom Murphy, directed by Garry Hynes and featuring a cast of 17 including Marie Mullen, Aaron Monaghan, Niall Buggy and Salthill native, Joseph Ward who plays the role of ten-year-old Donaill in Famine. DruidMurphy will tour for six months [...]
OR THE BULL KILLS YOU By Jason Webster Vintage €10 JASON Webster is an American author who has not only adopted Spain as his home and married a Spanish woman, but has repeatedly managed to find interesting and alternative perspectives on that country in his consistently first-rate books. I have all of his non-fiction works [...]
Tough tales from Kilmainham’s 40 shades of grey EVERY DARK HOUR By Niamh O’Sullivan LIBERTIES PRESS €14.99 HAVE YOU ever been in prison? Or have you ever been in a prison? I might just qualify under both headings. I have visited three historic prisons, one active one, and spent a night in a [...]
IT IS A case of “Take Two” for the Malthouse Players and for the community of Mountbellew this weekend as the popular local drama group finally gets to proceed with the staging of Moll, by John B Keane. The Malthouse Players had been due to stage the play at the end of March but, on [...]
Fighting the darkness IT’S NO laughing matter but as Brian Hannon was describing, and demonstrating, how well he’s coping with Alzheimer’s disease on Sunday night’s Would You Believe? the Oscar Wilde witticism “A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her” came to mind. But when I [...]
VARIOUS PETS ALIVE AND DEAD By Marina Lewycka Penguin €15 HOW could I resist a tale featuring the son of an idealistic 60s commune couple who is afraid to admit to his ageing hippie parents that he’s now sleeping with the enemy and working as a trader in London’s Golden Mile? To add [...]
COMPOSER and Claremorris native Patrick Cassidy returns to his home place this Friday April 13 for the European premiere of his Famine Remembrance Concert, which was performed to acclaim in many venues in the USA. The concert is one of the highlights of the centenary celebrations for St Colman’s Church in the town, and it [...]
WITH NEXT Saturday marking 100 years to the day since the most famous of shipwrecks, it has become evident across almost all channels that the century-long fascination with the story of RMS Titanic continues apace. The BBC excelled with its Titanic Season, other channels carried something or other on the tragic sinking, Montrose proved the [...]
OH, TO BE ANYWHERE other than watching television now that April’s here because television is a winter’s tale which when the clocks spring forward invariably goes from dull to duller and even to exceedingly dull indeed. With April as yet in its first fine careless rapture (I’ve been reading Robert Browning) television can still blossom [...]
