The Engine

  Agreement by Owen McCafferty at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 29 th March 2023 The negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement in Lyric Theatre's production of 'Agreement' Agreement is being produced to mark the 25 th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, a historic settlement of a period known as ‘the troubles’.  There is a lot of material to work from but a great deal of it involves tedious, unending backroom dialogues, disputes, antagonisms, some of which are depicted in the play.  That’s unpromising in terms of drama but Owen McCafferty does offer us the ingredients for a play which reaches into that lost period and extracts a sizeable portion of pathos and comedy.  The director Charlotte Westenra portrays the characters and their conflicts through the lens of a reduced mise en scene and a sparsity of intrusive elements such as music which is present, however, as an electro-synth beat that intrudes subtly at the beginning and end of scenes....

  ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 8 th of February 2023, adapted by Anne Bailie, directed by Phillip Crawford   Finnigan Garbutt, Adam Gillian and Thomas Finnegan in Romeo and Juliet Is Shakespeare still relevant in the snapchat age?   This version of Romeo and Juliet attempts to mediate modernity with the archaic language employed by Shakespeare through a sprinkling of anachronism and knowing cultural reference.   The theatre itself becomes an extension of the stage with lots of cleverly modulated advertisements looking like displays for Gucci or Armani but featuring actors from this version of the play.   The production values created by set designer Robin Peoples were classy and so was the play.   The play combines authenticity with anachronism, the set design in Shakespeare’s time, but the costumes are modern.   Maybe the play is uncertain about its tone, whether to go for the updated excesses of ...

  Big Man at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 28th October, 2022 A one hander like Big Man , or, in proper English, a dramatic monologue, is extremely difficult to sustain for 70 minutes or so.   Usually, the audience become increasingly agitated at the thirty-minute mark and/or drifts away.   So, it is to actor Tony Flynn's credit that he manages to engage with a personal account of a failed relationship. The anti-naturalistic stage and absence of props was vaguely reminiscent of German expressionism.   A white stage riven with black cracks and a gaping white hole was alternately transformed into a black stage with white lines by James McFetridge's lighting design.   Lighting was used throughout the play to offer the actor a spotlight when he provided a more intimate digression, part of his unfolding story.   Flynn's anecdote about a gay relationship with a younger man in the Ardoyne rarely commented on sectarianism at all but shone a light into gay lif...

  THE GAP YEAR by Claire McMahon at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast Directed by Benjamin Gould Set director – Stuart Marshall Lighting Designer – James C McFetridge Sound Designer – Garth McConaghie The Gap Year is a crowd-pleasing romp conceived by Claire McMahon and presented by the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.   It begins, somewhat dis-ingeniously, at the beginning with a wake, and goes off like an arrow shot in a straight line ahead or a lone crow flying across a horizon. Three women go off on a year out facing crises of ageing such as bereavement, Alzheimers, and separation.   Unlike Shirley Valentine, they don’t decide to travel to sun drenched beaches, warm seas and pina coladas but to a danker, wetter place which is all too familiar, namely their own country, the counties of Ireland, setting foot in every Irish county on the way. The set design is efficient and effective, a landscape abstract serves as a backdrop, a hillside that could be anywhere in Ireland ...

 Translations by Brian Friel at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 4th of May 2022  Translations by Brian Friel at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on the 4 th of May 2022   The first performance of Brian Friel’s revived play Translations at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast was in 1980 in Derry starring now world-famous actors Liam Neeson and Stephen Rea.   The location of the first performance was deliberately chosen, an attempt to foreground a city often left at the margins of theatre by bigger centres like Dublin and Belfast.   Translations was the first play produced by Field Day, a cultural initiative by Friel, Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Stephen Rea, and others, designed to address issues of nationalism, culture, language and identity at the height of the period of instability and political violence in Northern Ireland known as ‘the troubles.’   The play has a history just as it reflects on the history of a locality in relation to larger, complicated changes s...

  WALTER SICKERT at the TATE BRITAIN on TUESDAY 26 th April 2022   Brighton Pierrots by Walter Sickert, 1915 Walter Sickert was born in Munich in 1860 and eight years later travelled with his family to London.   His father was also an artist, indeed Sickert began his career by imitating his father’s work.   Sickert initially trained as an actor, indeed fascination with the theatre is in evidence throughout his career.   Sickert trained at the Slade School of Fine Art before working as an assistant to established artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) in 1882. Walter Sickert, Self-Portrait 1896 Sickert adopted Whistler’s signature style of muted tones and dull, realist colours.   However, by 1885 Sickert had met French artist Edgar Degas (1834-1917).   He began to follow Degas’s meticulous preparation which included a planning grid and bolder use of colour.   This can be observed in works like Shop Front, The Laundry (1885, pencil,...

  Kyosai at the Royal Academy on the 21 st, April 2022   Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889 is regarded as the successor in Japanese art to Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) who helped to shape the Ukiyo-e (floating world) painting style.  Whereas Japan had been relatively isolated from the outside world for 260 years, Kyosai witnessed the arrival of the first western fleet and increasing Westernisation.  This was initiated by the Meiji dynasty in 1868 when the Tokugawa shogunate was toppled and imperial power restored after centuries of decline.  The emperor had come to represent spiritual power whereas, the Shogun (meaning roughly ‘army commander’) the secular, military power of the Japanese state.  Although the Shogun was technically the emperor’s servant, the emperor had been marginalised and deprived of significance for centuries.  The Meiji restoration signified the decline of the shogunate.  The emperor moved his seat of power from Kyoto to Ed...