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Threads unravel in ill-woven Irish tapestry
I Am Of Ireland
[Michael Robinson]
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
I Am of Ireland
Old Red Lion Theatre
London
THERE is promise in the first five minutes of this new play from Seamus Finnegan. All seven of the cast appear as a troupe of Irish stereotypes, from the balaclava’d IRA man to the Orangeman in the sash his father wore. There’s a priest of course and, bafflingly, a drag queen who's never seen again.
It’s an early sign that there are going to be loose ends, but the problem with having multiple storylines is that there needs to be cohesion somewhere along the way.
The themes explored are familiar — the future of the Catholic church, which seems to have damned itself, the self-destructive bigotry of loyalists looking for new enemies to destroy, the forced exile of so many and the notion that the path to peace can be a disappointment to those who have put faith in the bullet and the bomb.
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