There’s something special about witnessing birth. I was there for all of ours (our children) and these were the highlights of my life.
I witnessed the birth of a star last weekend. Have no doubt, those lucky enough to have attended Denise Hagan‘s two concerts at the Town Hall on Friday and Saturday will boast about it in the future. This beautiful and strikingly attractive young Keady lass is about to take the music world by storm. It couldn’t happen to a nicer person. They weren’t her first gigs of course, but this was the launch of a career in her home town (I still have difficulty with the city word!).
She has recently acquired new, strong, able and directed management and her burgeoning success is well choreographed. Her first CD will not be launched until February by which time aficionados will be well-familiar with its contents through multiple air play in the media. A tour in America is already set up. They love her type of music and it may be a long time before we are treated to an encore performance.
I heard the fantastic ‘Pins and Needles’ on the George Jones Radio Ulster show last Wednesday. Of course Denise performed her own song live and conducted a charming interview with the Twin Personality. He was moved, you could see that. When she finished, he raved, “I’ve got the best job in the world. I really have, meeting talent like this.” He has.
Can you imagine my delight when Denise and two continental musician friends (Manfred and girl) turned up at the Railway Bar session the very next evening. They treated us to several gems off her forthcoming album in a spontaneous jam session.
I have many favourite composers but Joni Mitchell must top the list. She did till now. Denise is rivalling her. The younger woman has a finer voice, is more beautiful and she’s from South Armagh. Her songs, already very good, will only get better. I predict that within the year (a few, at most) she will eclipse Tommy Makem as Keady’s most renowned star.
On stage she is charming as ever, with a powerful and commanding stage presence. She is confident, with a crystal-clear bell-like voice. She plays guitar well too. Earlier this year she supported Shania Twain at Kilkenny Festival. She will surely soon be just as famous as her.
Order your copy of her album now!
Newsflash: New Denise Hagan scheduled for the Town Hall on Sunday 18th April!! Check the local press for further details. And mind you don’t miss it!!
This Tourist Brochure differs little from its c.1994 predecessor. Anthony Russell has been brought on board to lend some historical and literary credence but it must be acknowledged that the misuse of the comma persists and still irks.
Best-known for playing kidnap victim Rose Stagg in The Fall, Newry-born actress Valene Kane holds all the power in her latest role as an ‘alpha female’ barrister in legal drama Counsel. This drew her back to Northern Ireland for the pilot project and she has hopes of it being made into a series.
Newry actor Valene Kane plays barrister Olivia Harley in BBC One drama Counsel
YOU could say Valene Kane is an actress prone to perilous situations – being kidnapped by a crazed Jamie Dornan in The Fall is only one of them – but in her latest role, the Newry-born star of Thirteen and Rogue One: A Star Wars Stor’, faces danger of a different kind.
Valene Kane in BBC Drama Counsel
In new BBC one-off drama Counsel, Kane steps into the killer heels of “alpha female” Olivia, a barrister who complicates her professional and personal life when persuaded to take on the case of a schoolboy client played by newcomer, Adam Gillian.
“On the surface, Olivia has it all: a powerful career and a husband [Declan Conlon] who is in the running for Lord Chief Justice – but she is growing tired of playing second fiddle…” teases the actress, speaking down the line from London where she lives with husband and fellow actor, Ed Cooper Clarke.
“When we meet Olivia, she’s sort of at a crossroads and doesn’t realise she is a little bit dead inside, so, when she meets this young boy, he ignites this free spirit inside her; a free spirit she didn’t realise existed.”
Valene Kane Is a Rising Star
The actress, who is currently filming HBO crime series Gangs of London and recently walked the red carpet at the Sundance Film Festival in the US – for the premiere of her latest movie, Sonja: The White Swan – was delighted to be back in Northern Ireland for the project, commissioned through the BBC’s New Perspectives initiative.
Penned by newcomer David Allen and directed by Declan Recks (The Truth Commissioner), Counsel showcases the emerging talent of Gillian as 18-year-old Gareth Fleming, a motherless young student whose educational future hangs in the balance after his father suffers a stroke and is unable to pay mounting school fees.
“It was so good to be back home again and involved in this project,” Kane enthuses. “Everyone working on the drama wants to see more work like this – we were so excited because we all grew up here and felt very connected, whether we come from Northern Ireland, or from the south.
“I’ve read a lot of scripts recently with good female leads, but not female-centric stories. Why I loved Olivia’s character in Counsel is essentially because it’s her story… it’s the confusion that a woman of a certain age faces when she hits a certain point in her life – her career’s going really well, but does she want kids? What’s next? Those questions relate to everyone, I think, and that’s what drew me to it.”
Describing herself as “a bit Type A personality, a bit of an alpha female” herself, the London Central School of Drama-trained daughter of former Down county Gaelic footballer and coach Val Kane says she understood that part of Olivia – even though she is “more disorganised, messy and bohemian” in real life.
But, understanding the role from the inside out is something the actress, who also starred in recent BBC drama Death and Nightingales – again with Jamie Dornan – takes completely to heart.
She makes ‘mood boards’, puts together Spotify playlists and keeps a scrapbook to help identify with her character long before the cameras start rolling.
“I use artistic mood boards for every character and I’ll keep a scrapbook with pictures and textures to help me feel what they feel,” Kane explains. “For the role of Olivia, I also worked very closely with the costume designer because I had a clear idea of how I thought she would dress and want she would want to wear.
“My father-in-law is a High Court judge and so I asked him lots of questions too… it’s a world I’m fascinated in anyway, the legal world. I think Counsel has great legs; it definitely has the potential to be made into a series.”
But even with such fastidious preparation, born out of love for the craft she has pursued since teenage years with the National Youth Theatre, the now 32-year-old is still reluctant to watch herself on screen.
“I find it very difficult, especially the stuff in which I have the lead in,” Kane reflects. “I find it hard not to critique myself and then I lose the enjoyment of just watching it. I usually get my husband to watch if first and then he tells me what he thinks…
“He’s more of a writer [than an actor] now, which is better for us, as he’s the person in one place, writing, and I’m the one who travels. It helps, I think, that we’re in the same profession, as he understands how I have to drop everything sometimes when an acting job comes up.”
Kane, who suddenly found herself reading for high profile roles following her compelling portrayal of Rose Stagg, the ex-girlfriend of serial killer Paul Spector (Dornan) in Allan Cubitt’s The Fall, is delighted that now her dream career – in defiance of the initial wishes of her parents who wanted her to attend university and study law for real – is taking off.
As well as Sonja: The White Swan – a film about Sonja Henie, Olympic figure skater and later Hollywood actress – Kane is also awaiting the general release on another movie, Profile, in which she plays a British journalist who dons a hijab to investigate the phenomenon of young women being radicalised online.
Based on the 2015 non-fiction bestseller, In The Skin of Jidhadist, by a French journalist who now has round-the-clock police protection, Profile won the Panorama Audience Award at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival and has been her “biggest highlight” thus far.
“It’s based on a true story about a journalist who had a fatwa out on her head after her story broke so, initially, my agents were kind of wary,” Kane tells me. “But, I trusted the director, the producer and in the whole process.
“We ended up writing a lot of the script together and it was a very involved process in the editing suite afterwards. It felt very much like a producer’s role – and that’s something I think I’m heading towards in the future.
“There was a long period when I was really struggling, so it’s great to be living in London and able to work there as well now on Gangs of London. It’s the first time in my 10 years of acting that I get to stay in my own house and go to my own bed. That makes me happy.”
My lovely daughter Emma, for my recent birthday, presented me with an anthology of Yeats’ verse, pieces selected by that other Irish master Seamus Heaney (once a teaching colleague of mine!). [Faber & Faber ; 978 – 0 – 571 – 24732 – 9]
Already I have enjoyed hours of delight for this selection includes the greater number of my personal favourites. Also I have closely perused the introduction by the Derry man – more than once – and I shall do so again, for much light is therein shed – by the Nobel prize-winner – on his predecessor, the greatest ever Irish poet (arguably until Seamus came along).
I take exception only to one reservation, where Heaney castigates the older man for ” a certain coarsening of tone in some of his poetry of the 1930s. His own self-absolution – ‘Why should not old men be mad?’ – does not necessarily extenuate the rant and licence”.
Seamus Heaney
I suppose it depends on which of the many meanings of ‘mad’ one chooses in interpretation but for my part
-being now an old man and given to frenzied railing –
in my inadequate body but reasonably preserved mind, memory, emotions and aesthetic appreciation -against impotence to make a difference, and failure to do so when I might have, and inability to communicate satisfactorily now with that great repository of human joy, beauty, innocence and wisdom, the fair young lady, I choose to side with Yeats over Heaney.
Heaney is particularly scathing about the poem I reproduce below.
POLITICS
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix,
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows,
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
How many hours have I spent, more than half a century ago, in university halls, asking myself that same rhetorical question? And frankly, on reflection, I deem those hours better spent than those when i was paying attention to the academic topic in question.
What then, you may wonder, in Yeats’ opinion is left to the ‘mad’ old man?
AN ACRE OF GRASS
Picture and book remain
An acre of green grass
For air and exercise,
Now strength of body goes;
Midnight, an old house
Where nothing stirs but a mouse.
My temptation is quiet. Here at life’s end Neither loose imagination, Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.
Grant me an old man’s frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call;
A mind Michael Angelo knew
That can pierce the clouds,
Or inspired by frenzy
Shake the dead in their shrouds;
Forgotten else by mankind,
An old man’s eagle mind.
Precisely so, I agree, in tune with W B Yeats. Myself I must remake, in the sure knowledge that truth and beauty are paramount.
The above are just two of eleven dozen poems in this worthy tome – my bedside reading for some time to come.
All are welcome to every screening in the Arts Centre 7.30 pm the first Wednesday of the month. Better still, join the Newry Film Club and get discounts!
Our next screening is on Wednesday night 5th December at the usual time of 7.30pm. As usual, we will be showing a short film before the main screening.
The main screening is a film called “The Fairy” (PG, 93 mins. Directors: Bruno Romy, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon. Cast: Bruno Romy, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon).
“The Fairy” is about Dom who works the night shift in a small hotel near the industrial sea port of Le Havre. One night, a woman arrives with no luggage and no shoes. Her name is Fiona and she tells Dom that she is a fairy that can grant him three wishes. Fiona makes two of his wishes come true then mysteriously disappears. Dom, who has fallen in love with her by then, searches for her everywhere. Is Fiona a magical creature or an escapee from a mental institution who has taken a liking to Dom?
The opinion of the Adjudicator seldom tallies with my own – and so it is again. I will report however, without comment, the final results from the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Newry Drama Festival.
Premier Award : Rosemary Drama Group, Belfast : When we are married
Runners-up: Ballyduff, Waterford: The Crucible
Third: Silken Thomas: Jerusalem
Fourth: Newpoint: Beauty Queen of Leenane
Most Ambitious Choice: Silken Thomas : Jerusalem
Best Producer: Rosemary
Best Actor : Liam Quinlivan as Rooster in Jerusalem
Best Actress: Eithne Bell as Mum in Beauty Queen of Leenane
Best young actor: Rosemary
Audience Award : Rosemary
Best Stage Manager: Ballyduff
Best Decor: Ballyduff
Best Lighting: Ballyduff
Best Moment of Theatre: Silken Thomas
Best Music and Sound: Ballyduff
Best Costumes: Ballyduff
Best Technical Production: Silken Thomas
Scholarship: Rosemary
To write a New Age English allegorical drama so radical as Jerusalem – as Jez Butterworth has done – with a degenerate drug dealer as hero and with all its attendant violence and foul language, and almost instantly enjoy huge success with it in New York and London, and have it acclaimed as a modern classic, is quite an achievement. Yet it was more than much of our audience last evening could stomach and many left, while a section of those who remained expressed grave reservations,though admiring the cast for its consummate performance.
Every one to his or her own taste. I, for example will not attend tonight’s Palace Players performance of Night, Mother because I could not cope with the subject matter (the calm, planned suicide of a daughter before her mother). Yet this play won a Pulitzer Prize.
I thought Silken Thomas’ Jerusalem was magnificent: a triumph in every field of dramatic endeavour. Too good – I suspect – for Newpoint’s sake, who may have to settle for runners-up spot, or less. I have about 14 hours to be proved wrong.
The Kildare team will most assuredly win Most Ambitious Choice and, I suspect, best set. They may take far more accolades than that!
It has been a good festival all round with packed houses and full attendance at the Fringe Events too. With the single reservation of such an inappropriate and dreadfully morbid choice of play for Final Night, I warmly commend the Newry Drama Festival Committee for their efforts on the occasion of their Diamond Jubilee.
There was high praise indeed, and rightly so, last evening from our adjudicator Walter Ewart for Newpoint’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane. I believe he was greatly impressed with every aspect of this interpretation, from the stage crew to the set, to the lighting, sound script, props, costume, the directing and most especially the acting performance.
Eithne Bell came in for especial mention for a scintillating performance as the old mother. It was a flawless and courageous portrayal of a scheming, selfish old woman (Declan, her husband confided to me that she wasn’t acting!) and I suspect she will win the Best Actress award.
I have been in general agreement all week with Walter Ewart, and again, when the only reservation he expressed was about a slight lack of menace and impending madness earlier on in the play. Patricia McCoy (as the Beauty Queen) was her usual impressive self and played perfectly off the mother character. The two men, Donal O’Hanlon and Donal Kearney also strongly played their respective roles.
For Ewart, the best moment of theatre was the emptying of the p**s-pot into the sink. We loved it. But for me, it was her fall, as a lifeless corpse, from the rocking chair to the floor. Brilliant! And very courageous! As was her struggle on the floor, when she was again attacked by her mad daughter.
I had a few minor quibbles (Eithne’s very synthetic grey wig, torrential rain, but no wet on characters entering the house, reference to muddy boots but no mud, no background rain sound when TV/radio switched on, Kennedy portrait rocking perilously on wall at each entrance/exit) but I hope the team will prevail to go to the Ulster Finals.
I have not seen it yet but I suspect the main threat will come from Silken Thomas who tonight give us Jerusalem. This is the performance I have been most eagerly anticipating.
I know you really will want to go to the Town Hall tonight at 8.00 pm to support our local Newpoint Players who are performing Martin McDonagh’s Beauty Queen of Leenane.
Eithne Bell and Patricia McCoy have already shared the “Best Actress” award for their roles and Sean Treanor has won a Best Producer award. They all (Donal O’Hanlon and Donal Kearney are also on stage) could do with another win to help them to the Ulster and perhaps the All-Ireland Finals.
