The Engine

  WE LOSE SIGHT OF THE NIGHT, Aisling O’Beirn at The MAC, Belfast on the 18 th of April 2025   What is concept art and what are its origins? Aisling O’Beirn’s new exhibition at The Mac, Belfast, is an attempt to talk about global environmental changes connected to urbanisation, electrification and climate change. The electrification of cities began in the 19 th century with Paris being the first electrified city in the world.   This is why Paris is often called ‘the city of light’.   But encroaching urbanisation led to increasing electrification of cities.   Its often hard to see the night sky in a city because of the glare from artificial lighting.   We all like to look up and make out the contours and shape of the Milky Way but it’s becoming increasingly hard to do this.   This is the subject of O’Beirn’s amusing and insightful exhibition. Kim Howells, one time Labour Minister of Culture, once described concept art as “cold, mechanical co...

  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...