'There is no better feeling than playing your own music to a responsive crowd'

Thu, May 21, 2015

GALWAY BAND The Amazing Apples have landed in 2015 with some striking singles – ‘Slipping By’, and their most recent, ‘Lullaby’ - and now comes their debut album A Little Sense, which will be released on Friday May 29, followed by a celebratory hometown gig at the Róisín Dubh on Sunday May 31.

A mediaeval opera, a masterpiece, 'but one with catchy tunes'

Thu, May 14, 2015

ON ONE day of the year, the teenagers were let run riot in the monastery, adolescent apprentice monks could dance, sing, clap their hands, shake their tonsures, boss around their elders, play cards in church, and stage a riotous show where an altar could explode, hide and seek games ran into the wee small hours, and the elders had no choice but to let them away with it.

Francie Brady rides again

Thu, May 14, 2015

FOLLOWING A highly successful tour of Ireland last year which saw the production receive standing ovations for every performance, An Grianán Theatre is once again touring Pat McCabe's classic Frank Pig Says Hello.

Mark O’Rowe - Getting Shakespeare in the bag for Druid

Thu, May 07, 2015

NEXT WEEK sees the unveiling of Druid’s latest epic undertaking, DruidShakespeare, which condenses the four action-packed plays of the Henriad – Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2), and Henry V – into one thrilling drama played out across six hours, as adapted by one of Ireland’s finest contemporary playwrights, Mark O’Rowe.

David O’Doherty on the quest for happiness

Thu, May 07, 2015

THE EVER-wonderful comedian David O'Doherty returns for two special shows at the Róisín Dubh tomorrow and Saturday, and he promises to have checked everything in his new show, David O’Doherty Has Checked Everything.

‘It’s very exciting discovering characters with the audience’

Thu, Apr 30, 2015

THE OPENING show of this weekend’s Galway Theatre Festival is Suitcase, ‘an improvised theatrical experience’, presented by The Sky Babies at Nun’s Island Theatre, tomorrow and Saturday.

‘I wasn’t ever going to write a novel along familiar lines’

Thu, Apr 23, 2015

GALWAY WRITER Claire-Louise Bennett will launch her debut collection of short stories, Pond, this Saturday at the Hotel Meyrick, as part of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature.

Staging George Orwell at the Galway Theatre Festival

Thu, Apr 23, 2015

GEORGE ORWELL’S first full-length book was Down and Out in Paris and London, his classic account of living on the breadline in France and England in the 1920s. More than 80 years after its publication in 1933, the book’s vivid portrayal of people struggling to survive from one day to the next has lost none of its power. Indeed, with homelessness again a headline-making issue, the book has gained fresh topicality.

‘We’re not comedians by the way’

Thu, Apr 16, 2015

THE RUBBERBANDITS, the satirical hip hop duo of Blindboy Boat Club and Mr Chrome, who had dominated Irish comedy through their shows, hit songs like ‘Horse Outside’, radio appearances, and videos going viral, seemed to go very quiet, very suddenly, over the last year and a half.

Take a stroll through Joyce’s Ulysses

Thu, Apr 16, 2015

THIS EVENING [April 16] at 8.30pm Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop hosts Robert Gogan’s entertaining and illuminating show on James Joyce’s Ulysses, entitled Strolling Through Ulysses.

Reduced Shakespeare Company reduce The Complete History of Comedy

Thu, Apr 09, 2015

FOLLOWING A hugely successful season at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Reduced Shakespeare Company arrive in the Town Hall Theatre next week as part of their roistering new tour of The Complete History of Comedy (abridged).

Cathy Belton revelling in her role on Red Rock

Thu, Apr 09, 2015

Cathy Belton has excelled at playing a a slightly scary TV character in the form of Red Rock’s Patricia Hennessy so one could be forgiven for thinking the Galway woman might resemble the ice-queen in real life. However the charming, softly spoken, actress could not be more different to the villainous Hennessy matriarch.

‘We’re not afraid to experiment and shake things up’

Thu, Apr 02, 2015

AN ARCHITECT, a university lecturer, and a fine artist hardly sounds like a combination that could create thrilling, high energy, indie-electro dance music, but these are the day jobs of Belfast’s Not Squares, and that is the kind of music they make when they are together.

'I absolutely hated going to school. Every day I went there I was nervous'

Thu, Apr 02, 2015

MEET PAKIE, an orphan, storyteller, adventurer, and survivor. He may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but he does know the history of his native town, from vicious Vikings to less-than Christian Brothers.

Sharon Murphy - two Galway concerts

Thu, Mar 26, 2015

HAVING WOWED the judges, Tom Jones in particular, and audiences with her performances on The Voice UK, Clifden singer-songwriter Sharon Murphy brings her soulful sound back to the west of Ireland with two gigs in Galway - one in Monroe’s Live and the other during Cúirt.

Áine Phillips - charting the history of Irish performance art

Thu, Mar 26, 2015

ON THURSDAY March 23 at 6pm, Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop hosts the launch of Performance Art in Ireland: a History, edited by west of Ireland artist Áine Phillips, the first book devoted to past and contemporary forms of performance art in both the North and the Republic.

Wine, women, and song!

Thu, Mar 05, 2015

THE WORD ‘bespectacled’ is usually preceded or followed by the term ‘mild-mannered’, but there is nothing ‘mild-mannered’ about the bespectacled trio of wild women in sequinned mini-skirts that go by name The Nualas.

The chef, the cyclist, and the photographer

Thu, Feb 26, 2015

CHUTZPAH, RESTLESSNESS, imagination and no little skill across a range of disciplines have all played their part in photographer Reg Gordon’s eventful and varied career path.

‘I like to be in America!’

Thu, Feb 19, 2015

ON THE mean streets of New York’s Upper West Side, where rival gangs jostle for territory, and will fight dirty for it, where newly arrived immigrants compete among themselves - and against other ethnicities - to survive in a society hostile to them, two young people fall in love.

Jape - electronic tales from a Malmö resident

Thu, Feb 12, 2015

MALMÖ LIES at the very southwestern tip of Sweden’s Øresund strait. The nation’s third largest city, it is connected to the Danish capital Copenhagen via the massive, five mile long, Øresund Bridge. It is also home to many immigrant communities, mostly Middle Eastern and Eastern European, but among them is an Irishman, Richie Egan, better known as Jape.

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