The Engine

LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN BY OSCAR WILDE AT THE METROPOLITAN ARTS CENTRE, BELFAST , NOVEMBER 14TH, 2012  Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde Adapted by Patrick J. O’Reilly Cast: Paul Boyd Lord Darlington , Dumby, Mrs. Cowper- Cowper Ruby Campbell Lady Windermere Dagmar Döring Mrs. Erlynne, Mr. Hopper, Lady Stutfield Neill Fleming Lord Windermere, Lady Stutfield Daithí Mac Suibhne Parker, Mr. Cecil Graham, Lady Plymdale, Lady Agatha Angie Waller Duchess of Berwick, Lord Augustus Lorton Crew: Lisa May Director Matthew Reeve Composer & Musical Director Diana Ennis Set & Costume Designer James McFetridge Lighting Desig...

The Picture of Dorian Gray  by Oscar Wilde at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 3rd November 2012-11-05  adapted for the stage by Neil Bartlett Cast • Jane Brennan Lady Henry Wotton • Jasper Britton Lord Henry Wotton • Gerard Byrne Francis • Tom Canton Dorian Gray • Susannah de Wrixon Lady Narborough/ Limehouse Madam • Aaron Heffernan Victor • Bob Kelly James Vane • Emmet Kirwan Footman 1 • Andrew Macklin Alan Campbell • Charlotte McCurry Sybil Vane/Lady Monmouth • Frank McCusker Basil • Lise Ann McLaughlin Lady Agatha Carlisle • Bairbre Ní Chaoimh Mrs Erlynne/ Limehouse Prostitute • Kate O’Toole Mrs Leaf/ Mrs Vane • Ben Plunkett Reynolds Ensemble • Michael Sheehan Footman 2 • Ali White Lady Ruxton/ Limehouse Prostitute Creative Team • Neil Bartlett Director • Kandis Cook Set & Costume design • Chris Davey Lighting design • Ivan Birthistle Sound design • Vincent Doherty Sound design • Paul Kieve Additional staging by • Donal O’ Farrell  “all art is q...

IPHEGENIA AUF TAURIS by J.W von GOETHE at the MAXIM GORKY THEATER, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN, 12TH OKTOBER, 2012 Spieldauer: 1:45h Besetzungsliste Franziska Walser / Edgar Selge Ein Abend von Peter Baur / Sibylle Dudek / Falko Herold / Edgar Selge / Franziska Walser, Bühne, Kostüme und Video Peter Baur / Falko Herold, Dramaturgie Sibylle Dudek Koproduktion mit den Ruhrfestspielen Recklinghausen Mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Ernsting Stiftung Alter Hof Herding Berliner Premiere am 10. Dezember 2011 im Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin  I went to see Iphegenia auf Tauris by Goethe in Berlin on Friday evening. It was a wet October evening in Berlin but still quite mild. I walked past the Tiergarten, straight ahead, past the Berliner Philharmonie and past the Sony Centre, making the mistake of getting on the S-Bahn at Potsdamer Platz since it was then so wet and miserable. The station Unter den Linden seemed to have been shut down so I got off at a new station, Brandenburger ...

EDVARD MUNCH: THE MODERN EYE  Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was born when the American Civil War was at its height and he died just before the end of World War Two.  His life can be said to straddle all the main events of early modernity. Munch was born in Christiania, Norway and began his art career in Christiana ( Oslo's original name) as a central figure in Christiania's artistic bohemia. In this early period he completed  formative works especially The Sick Child (1886) based on his sister's early death.  Subsequently Munch moved to Paris and Berlin where he was involved with the Expressionist and Symbolist movements in art. Munch was on the fringes of Die Brücke (The Bridge), an art movement of primitive and expressionist artists based on a small group of architecture students from Dresden but he never became a fully fledged member. Indeed although he was associated with various movements he was never an instigator but merely an associate.  The exhibiti...

PICASSO AND MODERN BRITISH ART at the TATE MODERN  This exhibition is the story of how modern British art became embalmed at a certain point in its evolution, constrained obviously by the assumptions, precepts and conventions of the British class system. Which is not to say that Picasso had a class system to contend with but ultimately choose to side with 'beastly Communists'. Eventually he appeared in Britain in two guises. The first time in 1919 with Diaghilev's Ballet Russe as a set designer, hardly an artist in his own right but a member of an extended group who represented one trend of the European avante garde. In the second incarnation he was the political Picasso, invited to a peace conference in Sheffield organized by the Communist Party then banned by the British government. Picasso came and went on his way, probably thinking rightly that the British government consisted of pathetic, ignorant philistines and hysterical anti-Communist phobics. Perhaps he in...

 DAMIEN HIRST at the TATE MODERN, APRIL 2012  In some ways amazing, awe-inspring and sometimes just evoking disgust (but evoking something), Damien Hirst's (1965 - ) retrospective at the Tate Modern is designed to coincide with Olympic year, perhaps also to summarise where Britart is now at. There's a glass case filled with flies feeding off a cow's head which are born inside maggots and go on to die against an insectocutor, there's a room full of live gigantic butterflies (the butterflies, from Africa and Latin America, only live for three weeks, after that they are all replaced. Some feed on fruit and some on pollen depending on whether they are African or Latin American.), there's the shark in formaldehyde ( The Physical Impossibility of Death in the mind of someone Living ) and much else. If you haven't thrown up by the time you've left you are probably desensitised. There's also an exhibit called The Black Sun made up of one million or so dea...

Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan at the Tate Modern, London, March 2012  Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994)was an Italian conceptual artist connected to various movements including the Arte Povera movement of radical young Italian artists known for using simple, inexpensive materials such as biro pens, postage stamps and magazine covers. Boetti is an artist like Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) fascinated by alchemical symbols, numbers, esoteric possibly meaningless symbols, keys, codes, ciphers. His work links specific artists to certain symbols. One work links certain Turin artists to specific parts of the city set out in cartographical form with certain colours representing the domain of some artist friend of Boetti, usually another member of the Arte Povera group.  As an artist Boetti is Mettera al Mondo il Mondo (giving birth to the world) through works like sei sensi (The Six Senses, 1974), an enormous abstract made entirely with biro pens utilised at different intensities, an a...

YAYOI KUSAMA RETROSPECTIVE AT THE TATE MODERN Yayoi Kusama (1929-) was born in Nagano Prefecture in a hill town in the Japanese Alps about 130 miles west of Tokyo just before the second world war. She grew up in a traditional Japanese family with a traditional set of Japanese values that maintained that a woman should complete her education, then marry and have children. However, Yayoi possessed creativity and wanted to fulfill herself through her art rather than taking on a traditional role. This meant that she soon came into direct opposition to her family and especially her mother. Her parent's business was marketing seeds and they were very opposed to Yayoi's artistic vocation. However she managed to complete one year of art school training in Kyoto in 1948 but the constraints of family, gender and being Japanese led her to rebel against these constraints and to become familiar with contemporary American culture but also the legacy of French surrealism, experimental...