The Engine

  Once Was a Boy by Theo Dorgan, Dedalus Press (2023) and The Solace of Artemis by Paula Meehan, Dedalus Press (2023)   Theo Dorgan is a writer from Cork who has written a narrative poem organised in three sections which moves from home to church (or convent) to school.   The material suggests the world of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s novel The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man .   However, the handling is quite different here because Joyce went to Clongowes, a Jesuit boarding school though structured on the lines of an English public school.   The school described in the book seems to be a traditional, Catholic state school.   The narrative drive of the material is presented in lines that depend on situations from childhood.   The writer has dispensed with rhyme and (almost entirely) with rhythm.   Instead, lines have the directness of spoken language, and their prose origins imply a sentient yet naïve consciousness struggling to comp...

  OUR NEW GIRL at the LYRIC THEATRE, BELFAST on the 10 th of April 2025   Written by Nancy Harris Directed by Rhiann Jeffrey Lisa Dwyer Hogg as Hazel, Canice Doran as Daniel, Jeanne Nicole ni Ainlie as Annie (L - R) Our New Girl is a slick new production by the Lyric Theatre.   The production values hint at the broader strokes of cinema.   The trees behind the house change constantly while the action inside is almost static.   Boxes filled with Sicilian olive oil turn up on the doorstep, in fact one of the play’s sub plots is how to get rid of the stuff.   While this is resolved, a nanny turns up on the doorstep.   Like Mary Poppins or Mrs Baylock in The Omen , there is no sign that any external agency has contracted her, so she just stays.   Why not? Lisa Dwyer Hogg as Hazel, Mark Huberman as Richard Although the play is static, virtually eventless and set in the kitchen of a plush house in London, the action and dialogue were never...

  THE VELVETEEN RABBIT at the LYRIC THEATRE, BELFAST on the 15 th of March 2025 Darren Franklin as Jack in the Box The show has characters, mostly toys like the Jack in the Box (who happens to be the narrator too), Robbo the robot woman, the skin horse and the velveteen rabbit.    Velveteen is a kind of cheaper, inferior form of velvet not normally seen in the UK but possibly more popular in the US where the novel by Margery Williams published in 1922, first had success.   Williams was a British writer who appealed to American sensibilities.   Rosie Barrie as Robbo The theme of the play is ‘nobody’s real’.   The songs are repeated on a singalong script broadcast in the theatre.   They are energetic and well performed, catchy, tuneful and accessible.   The songs have been brilliantly re-imagined by Jan Carson and Duke Special.   The deeper meaning of the play is that when a toy is really loved it becomes real.   The décor was bright, c...

  RICHARD III by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE at the LYRIC THEATRE, BELFAST on the 16 th of October 2024 The Tragedy of Richard III The Lyric’s new production of Shakespeare’s Richard III announces itself with puerile themes, a bouncy castle, crazy drummers creating diegetic sound, and George, Duke of Clarence, Edward IV’s and Richard’s brother, being led away to incarceration in the Tower of London.   He’s dressed in fishnet stockings, later dons a pair of angelic wings, and wears a pair of old-fashioned white underwear.   He seems unworried about the grizzly fate that awaits him in a butt of wine.   It’s difficult to assess when the play is set and hard to view it as employing anachronism.   Richard wears modern clothes, some of the other characters medieval clothes, in other words a confusing clash and mixture of styles as if the director could not settle on a definite vision of the play or establish a coherent conceit.   Charlotte McCurry as Queen Elizabeth Q...

  TUDOR POLITICS AND CULTURE   The main source of political authority in the Tudor age was the monarch.   The monarch was unelected and decided solely by genes and heredity (although there had been some exceptions).   Ruling families did change, however, as when Richard III was defeated at Bosworth by Henry Tudor in 1485.   Weak kings like Richard II and Henry VI had been deposed in favour of another branch of the same family.   Family trees were vital in establishing one’s lineage and thus one’s personal entitlement, or lack of it.   Thus, the Middle Ages were essentially static as summed up in the feudal system itself which was vertically stratified by ties of family and blood.   However, the king did not rule alone.   After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William set about creating a land register known as The Doomsday Book.   This was intended to help the monarch know what land there was and which of Duke William’s followers wo...

  THE SPANISH ARMADA, 1588   English involvement in the Dutch War of Independence on the near continent brought the possibility of war with Spain closer.   Holland had been a possession of the Spanish Hapsburgs (the Hapsburg family had split into two separate houses, the Spanish, and the Austrian) but the independently minded Dutch had different ideas.   From 1585 onwards Elizabeth maintained an expeditionary force in Holland as well as garrisons in the towns of Flushing and Brill which were ceded to the English as safe ports of entry for reinforcements, they also signified good faith between the two countries.   Ostend and Bergen were also garrisoned by English troops.   The English supported Henry IV of France by sending expeditions in 1589 and 1596.   But the biggest problem for Elizabeth was Ireland where the traditional Gaelic rulers were rising out and, after 1595, allied to the Spanish. Elizabeth was hardly bellicose and, quite sensibly, h...