Restaurant review: ‘Overall I am disappointed by the food, which simply doesn't pack as much flavour as it should'
It's the Galway International Arts Festival, the busiest two weeks of the year in a city never short of an excuse for a pint or a party. Shop Street is thronged with luvvies who haven't seen each other in a while embracing luvvily, while legions of tourists carrying bags of tat follow their pole-carrying leaders.
Festival goers on their way to and from performances and exhibitions and gigs follow no one other than the person who might be able to finagle them into the Druid double bill of Macbeth and Riders to the Sea, this year's hottest ticket. The queue outside the Gothic-style Middle Street church, for what I assume to be an exclusive cultural happening, turns out to be for a funeral instead. Even in the midst of all this culture, life and death go on.
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Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Ireland in the 1980s was bloody awful, but there was at least one good reason not to emigrate
The first play I saw was Macbeth at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. It filled me with awe, partly because it was probably very good (the darkly compelling Ray McAnally was in the title role) and partly because I had never before experienced the weird wonder of people being transformed right before my eyes. I was 13 then. I'm 67 now. So I've waited well over half a century for a staging of Macbeth that sent the same quakes up the spine – until I saw Druid 's new version in Galway last weekend. With Marty Rea as Macbeth and Marie Mullen as Lady Macbeth, Garry Hynes 's production is by far the best I've seen anywhere. [ Riders to the Sea and Macbeth: A magnificent horror unbalancing nature Opens in new window ] Which incidentally brings home a truth we too often take for granted: for all the nonsense we have to put with in Ireland, we are a nation blessed in its artists. The church betrayed us. Governments sold us out for a handful of dig-outs. Our banks became casinos. Much of the media became cynical and self-serving. But through it all there have been brilliant creative people holding fast to the hard core of art: integrity in action. Druid's Macbeth, coupled in a typically contrary and radiant gesture with John Millington Synge's great one-act tragedy Riders to the Sea, marks the company's 50th anniversary. Anyone else might stage a birthday party with cakes, candles, balloons and novelty costumes – and a nice, punter-friendly comedy to keep the box office jingling. Druid give us a fearless and ferocious exploration of evil. This is the splendour of the company and of its indefatigable leader Hynes – they never saw a grain they wouldn't want to go against. READ MORE Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen in the 1970s Druid was founded in 1975, but really came into its own at the start of the 1980s. This in itself is a triumph of perversity. The early 1980s were bloody awful. The economy imploded. The agony of the H-Block hunger strikes played itself out like a gala season of nightmares. The abortion referendum was another mad parade of a country's tormented obsessions. Statues were moving and the Virgin Mary was appearing in the Munster skies. A young girl died giving birth in a grotto. A teacher was fired for living in sin and a judge said she was lucky not to be living in a Muslim country where she would be stoned to death. I remember going, in a sceptical mood, to see Druid's production of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in 1982. Why on earth, in the midst of all these public psychodramas, would a young theatre company want to stage the calcified old drama that had become a national joke? And then being astounded and electrified by what they were doing with it. They were reclaiming Irish tradition, revelling both in its wild poetry and its dirty realism. Druid was emerging as a kind of national liberation movement – liberating the inheritance of Irish art from prudishness and shame, but also from soft charm and wheedling winsomeness. They were making no apologies and taking no prisoners. And it struck me then that, although Druid was not overtly political, it was radically engaged. What it was engaged in was (in Martin Amis's phrase) the War on Cliche. In the North, the great poets ( Derek Mahon , Michael Longley , Seamus Heaney , Paul Muldoon ) realised they couldn't stop the horrors, but they could keep alive a supple, inventive, playful kind of language that stood in opposition to the sectarian cliches that underpinned them. Druid were doing the same thing in the South – creating a living counterculture in which all the suffocating platitudes, banalities and truisms were thrown into the bullring of their tiny auditorium to be skewered and gored on the horns of precise and truthful performance. For myself, the existence of that supercharged space up a lane in Galway was one good reason not to emigrate. Druid were gloriously shameless, but they also shamed the rest of us with their relentless commitment to Ireland, their superbly stubborn belief that a basket case could also be a Moses basket, that a collapsing country might also be a place of pure possibility. Like other Irish artists at the time – from U2 to John McGahern , Eavan Boland and Druid's great collaborator Tom Murphy – they just got on with being world class by being themselves. As Jonathan Swift said when he left his money to build a psychiatric hospital, 'No nation needed it so much.' The late playwright Tom Murphy at the Druid Theatre But I've been using the past tense inappropriately. Druid's 50th anniversary is certainly shadowed by loss. The light of some of those luminous actors – Mick Lally , Ray McBride, Maelíosa Stafford – has been dimmed by death. Jerome Hynes, whose managerial brilliance was equally vital to Druid's growth, died scandalously young. The sudden loss last Easter of Garry Hynes's wife Martha O'Neill hovers over the anniversary celebrations as an unwelcome and unnecessary reminder of the ravages of time. [ Garry Hynes: 'My wife was taken from me in the blink of an eye. My whole life's changed' Opens in new window ] And yet, because Hynes is a great artist, pain and grief are transmuted into defiance. Instead of being a lap of honour, this current Druid production is a magnificent raging against the dying of the light. It is not afraid of the dark. It goes so deep into it you think you have reached its limits – and then it goes further and deeper. Truly great theatre is a hair's breadth from truly terrible theatre. Rea's Macbeth risks monstrosity. Hynes allows him to conjure a vision that would have seemed excessive even a decade ago: pure evil. He makes that vision both timeless and terribly of our time, redolent of Vladimir Putin , Binyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump without being reduced to any of them. And it is, in a broad sense, that most countercultural thing in contemporary Ireland: profoundly religious – Macbeth as the Antichrist. This is the glory of Druid: 50 years is overture. Hynes is more restless, more edgy, more disconcerting and more masterly than she was when the company started. Druid is not taking a bow. It is still headbutting all our complacencies. We come out of the theatre seeing stars.
Irish Independent
4 hours ago
- Irish Independent
‘Kamikaze: An Untold History' review: War documentary tries to make sense of Japan's suicide missions
Director spent 15 years tracking down and talking to peers of the pilots and members of their families to deliver this monumental achievement in filmmaking Amid the innumerable books and documentaries about World War II, few examine the question of why there was widespread public support in Japan for the kamikaze missions that sent 4,000 pilots, all in their teens or early 20s, to their deaths in the final 10 months of the war. The feature-length documentary Kamikaze: An Untold History (BBC iPlayer), produced by Japan's public service broadcaster NHK, is an attempt to make sense of what seems senseless. It's crystal clear on why the missions themselves went on so long after the country's military leaders knew the war was already a lost cause. The sacrifice of the lives of these young men, many of whom hadn't even completed their training, was a cynical attempt to prolong the war in order to negotiate more favourable terms with the Allies. Historical records show that a mere 10pc of the kamikaze missions succeeded in their objective In the event, what followed was the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed within days by the Japanese surrender. Historical records show that a mere 10pc of the kamikaze missions succeeded in their objective. All the sacrifices, all the deaths, including those of 7,000 Allied personnel killed in the attacks, were ultimately for nothing. The documentary's director, Oshima Takayuki, spent 15 years tracking down and talking to peers of the pilots and members of their families. The result is a monumental achievement. The documentary explodes the myth, easily digestible during the war to those in the West being drip-fed racial stereotypes, that the kamikaze pilots were, like the suicide bombers of today, crazed fanatics who were happy to give their lives for the cause. Maybe a handful of them were. Most, however, were just young, terrified men who, fearful of being shamed and branded traitors, felt they had no choice but to volunteer. They were given a form on which they had to state their willingness to go on a kamikaze mission. The choices were: 'strongly desire', 'desire' or 'negative'. 'In that environment, it must have been difficult to write 'negative',' says a historian. The only way for a pilot to ensure they didn't end up on a kamikaze mission was to achieve the highest training grades. The best pilots were considered by their superiors too valuable to be treated as cannon fodder. Everyone else was expendable. Kawashima Tetsuzo enlisted at 15 and died a few months short of his 18th birthday. Here, his family sift through some mementos. There's a Japanese flag signed by all his classmates and an article from a women's magazine honouring him and others who had died on missions. There were letters of tribute written by his teachers. The first kamikaze missions involved 24 pilots. One of them was 20-year-old Hitora Yukinobu. His plane was second in a formation of six and his death was captured on film. Footage from the US aircraft carrier he was attacking shows his plane being hit in the wing. Pupils had to sing a song, written by their teacher after the young man's death, urging 500 more students to enlist and go to war Tsunoda Kazuo, whose status as an ace pilot meant he was spared kamikaze missions, was assigned to follow the planes and report on the result of the attack. He says the pilots had the message drilled into them that kamikaze missions were their only way of ensuring Japan's survival. The media glorified the pilots' supposedly 'pure-hearted' sacrifice. Their stories were told on the radio, featuring personal messages they'd recorded for their families the night before flying to their deaths. Shrines were erected in their hometowns. A film about the exploits of one squadron was shown in cinemas to huge enthusiasm. The slogan '100 Million Kamikaze' swept across the country. Schools had a big role to play in the propaganda campaign. A friend of a kamikaze pilot recalls an empty coffin being carried into the school hall. Pupils had to sing a song, written by their teacher after the young man's death, urging 500 more students to enlist and go to war. When she's told this by director Takayuki, the teacher's now elderly daughter is surprised he'd written such a thing. She says he was a mild-mannered man who was unfit for military service due to having had TB. 'He must have felt a sense of inferiority,' she says.
The Irish Sun
20 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Ryan Tubridy steps out in style with fiancee for romantic day out at races as they cosy up in snaps
RYAN Tubridy enjoyed a date night out at the Ascot Races in England with his new fiancee. The former 2 Ryan Tubridy and his fiancee Dr Claire Kambamettu pose for snaps at the Ascot Races 2 Ryan and Claire recently got engaged while on a trip to Ireland The pair have since kept the inner details of their love under wraps, however Ryan was forced to confirm their engagement after a jewellers let it slip he had purchased a ring from their store. Now, happy-as-ever the lovebirds have stepped out at the Ascot Races in The happy couple were all smiles as they posed for a selection of photos at the prestigious event. READ MORE IN RYAN TUBRIDY Ryan and Claire looked the part as they donned their best attire for a day at the races. Tubridy sported a smart navy suit with an olive green tie and shiny black dress shoes . While Claire was a vision in a patterned skater dress and a cream coloured overcoat. The bride-to-be also wore trendy red suede stiletto heels and a cream lace hat to tie it all together. Most read in News TV The pair lovingly wrapped their arms around each other as they stood for snaps in front of the racecourse. They joined Elgin Loane, Publisher of The Irish Post, for The King George for a day of hospitality curated by Zafar Rushdie at the famous venue on Saturday. Ryan Tubridy honoured by celebrity pals after receiving major lifetime achievement Tubs and his fiance were among several well-known Irish people on the exclusive guest list for the special day. This comes after Ryan shares snaps from his jaw-dropping visit to Japan. TOP TRIP Tubridy didn't post much of the trip while he was over in Japan; instead, the star waited until he returned home to share some of his best bits. The UK star jetted over to Eastern Asia earlier this month and it looked like he had a blast. The 52-year-old looked as happy as ever as he posted a snap of himself outside a train station which had bookcase-printed walls. The TV star wrote: "On a recent trip to Japan, I found a book quarter of 'OBSESSED' In a separate video , the He said: "Recent Japan retrospective, vending machines are EVERYWHERE and sell EVERYTHING." Later, the Irish presenter took a photo of himself outside an ancient Japanese building. Ryan told fans that he travelled from Osaka to Hiroshima, then to Kyoto and on to Tokyo. The presenter posted a clip of the renowned bullet train which runs between Tokyo and Hiroshima. The host confessed he was "obsessed" with the train while he was travelling around Tubridy also videoed a beautiful Japanese garden in Hiroshima and gushed: "My favourite city."
