EVENT: NEW MUSIC DUBLIN
Ireland's foremost contemporary music festival returns to the capital for four days of adventures in sound; highlights include Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d'un Poète), one of the greatest surrealist films ever made, presented with the world premiere of a new live score co-written and performed by Erik Friedlander and Matthew Nolan. Elsewhere, Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore debuts Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations, a world premiere suite of nine works inspired by skies over Ireland, England, and Wales. Also: New Music Dublin's flagship orchestral concert, under conductor Gavin Maloney, features the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Chamber Choir Ireland in an exciting programme of contemporary works that includes Irene Buckley’s opera Lament for Art O’Leary, with text by Vona Groarke, reimagines the 18th-century lament Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, alongside works by Olga Neuwirth and Ed Bennett. Another guest, Berginald Rash, talks to RTÉ Arena below (Various venues, Dublin, Wed 2nd - Sunday 6th April)
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FILM: THE END
Director Joshua Oppenheimer, known for his groundbreaking documentary The Act of Killing, makes his fiction debut with a rather unlikely musical about what seems to be the last remaining human family on earth, as they hide in an ornate bunker built deep inside a salt mine after environmental collapse has destroyed society. Filmed in Ireland, the cast includes Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay and Bronagh Gallagher (Selected cinemas nationwide)
STREAMING: FAMILY/AMONGST WOMEN
A pair of '90s Irish TV classics are now finally available to watch via RTÉ Player. Roddy Doyle's Family centers on the Spencer family, a working-class family living in a Dublin housing estate, with each of the four episodes focusing on a different member of the family. It's a major work, introducing audiences to the character Paula Spencer, later the subject of a trilogy of Doyle novels that included the Booker-winning The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. Also available is Amongst Women, which adapts John McGahern's acclaimed novel about family life in rural Ireland in the 1950s. Both series are anchored by outstanding performances from the incomparable Ger Ryan (Now streaming, RTÉ Player)
BOOKS: THREE BY SAMUEL BECKETT
Samuel Beckett's three seminal novels Molloy (Faber), Malone Dies (Faber) and The Unnamable have been reissued in new editions, 70 years after Molloy was first published in English - they feature fresh introductions from Colm Tóibín, Claire-Louise Bennett and Eimear McBride, and read together serve as an important milestone in the body of work of one of Ireland's great writers (Out now, Faber)
THEATRE: YOUTH'S THE SEASON
Written when playwright Mary Manning was 26 and first performed in 1931, this startlingly modern coming-of-age satire explores the ups and downs of life for privileged young Irish people in newly independent Dublin. This welcome revival of Manning's work offers a new generation the opportunity to revisit an unsung gem from the Irish theatre canon. Directed by Sarah Jane Scaife, the cast features a dazzling bright young things that includes Lorcan Strain, David Rawle, Ciara Berkeley, Sadbh Malin and Jack Meade - director Scaife and actor Molly Hanly talk to RTÉ Arena below (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2 April – 3 May)
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