The Beauty Queen of Leenane: “A beautiful darkness” – Kilkenny People Review

The following review was published by Tess Felder in the Kilkenny People newspaper on Friday 27th of November 2009. The above photo was taken by Colm Gray.

“MUSIC is the space between the notes,” wrote the composer Claude Debussy, and he could easily have been referring to the Watergate Productions’ Beauty Queen Of Leenane which is on the local stage nightly until Saturday.

The play by Martin McDonagh, of In Bruges and The Cripple Of Inishmaan fame, centres on a 40-year-old woman and her cantankerous elderly mother who live together in a cottage in rural Ireland in the 1980s. As the woman, Maureen Folan (Claire Henriques) comes face to face with a chance-in-a-lifetime romance, her mother Mag (Mary Cradock) does all in her power to block the opportunity, afraid that her daughter’s success in love would leave the elderly woman either alone or put into a nursing home.

Maureen’s love interest, Pato Dooley (Brendan Corcoran), a somewhat shy but honest man home briefly from England, communicates his love via a letter to be delivered by his youngest brother, Ray (Ross Costigan), whose boredom and occasional laziness can get in the way of him doing the right thing.

As can be expected, the Watergate crew have pulled out all the stops for this production under the direction of Gerry Cody, with impressively realistic effects and a wonderful but simple set.

The four actors deliver their lines adeptly, and yet – crucially – much is left unsaid, the unspoken arguments and at times affection passing wordlessly between them. Mary Cradock is a perfectly crotchety old woman, shouting orders for tea and porridge at whoever happens to be in the room with her, while Claire Henriques manages to convey both the warm longing and the cold cruelty the character possesses, changing demeanour in an instant when turning her attention from Pato to her mother.

Brendan Corcoran meanwhile presents Pato as a genuine man, working hard to make a living for himself and do right by the people in his life. He is particularly good as a steady middle ground in a scene he shares with the two women, and in a solo scene as he conveys his feelings from England.

Ross Costigan’s Ray delivers plenty of comic relief as promised and is a wonderful foil for the harsh Mag. He especially comes into his own in his longer final scenes, where it is clear the character has good intentions but doesn’t quite know what to make of these two unpredictable women.

It has been said before, but it is worth repeating how fortunate Kilkenny is to have this calibre of theatre locally. This is a dark play and it requires a good deal of skill to convey this depth while also keeping the audience laughing throughout the performance, and staying true to the characters from start to finish.

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane starts tonight!

Have you voted yet!?

Voting is still open in the final round of Busker2009, the Kilkenny 400 Busking Competition in association with KilkennyMusic.com.

If you haven’t cast your vote for your favourite busker yet then click here to go to Busker2009.com and check out video performances by the six finalists; Sean Watmore, Quintet Tarantino, Fionn O’Hargain, Vicky Day (above), Annie Chambers and Beef Supreme. One of these finalists will walk away with a €1,000 cash prize!

Voting closes this coming Friday at 11:59pm. And don’t forget that you must click the link in the confirmation email to make sure your vote counts. If you don’t click the link in the email to confirm your vote, your vote won’t count!

Tune into KCLR96FM tomorrow around 3:15pm to hear more about the competition.

Mata Hari – Fast Way (Music Video)

Back in March I posted a behind the scenes video from my photo-shoot with Mata Hari; as the lads recorded their first music video.

The video for “Fast Way” has just gone online; awesomely shot and cut by student filmmaker Ivars Burtnieks.

As I mentioned before, the video was shot in a freight container in the Hebron industrial estate but it also features footage of the classic rockers in the studio recording. Much to my surprise I even make a little cameo in the video, if you look really closely at around 3 minutes and 30 seconds you’ll spot me setting up for my promo shoot with the band.

If you missed it before then you can check out my behind the scenes video and promo shots from the shoot with Mata Hari here.

Well done to Ivars for doing a great job with the video for “Fast Way”, you can check out more of his videos here on Youtube and you’ll find Mata Hari here on MySpace.

Vote for “Once I Counted Birds”

“Once I Counted Birds” a new short film by ArtLinks Director Cathy Fitzgerald is currently entered in the UK Guardian’s Climate Change film competition 1MinuteToSaveTheWorld.

This new film incorporates old footage taken by Cathy on a biodiversity research trip to Suwarrow; a remote, un-peopled atoll in the Cook Islands, South Pacific, in 2000. Suwarrow is an important breeding place for seabirds of all types including the rare and very large Masked Booby; her and fellow scientist Rhys Jones collected data was later published in the NZ Forest and Bird Journal 2001 and the project was a jointly sponsored UN and Cook Island project. While the trip may look idyllic, Cathy almost drowned when the yacht she and her colleague hitched a lift with was hit by a freak wave. Her new digital camcorder was destroyed but her old Hi8 survived to take this footage.

Many years later, Cathy is now actively involved in promoting ecological, permanent forestry in her small woodlands in Ireland; she blogs and creates works about converting her 20 year old spruce plantation to a permanent forest using Pro Silva, close to nature, forestry methods. She believes that small local ecologically based actions can have a positive effect globally and personally.

You can vote for “Once I Counted Birds” here; simply give the video a rating. From what I can tell, it is the only Irish entry in the competition and I think it would be great to see Cathy win given her huge interest in ecology/environmental politics & film and years of hard work promoting the Arts in Ireland.

The voting closes this Friday and don’t forget to follow Cathy’s EcoArtNotes on Twitter for updates and new work.

Vegetarian Kilkenny: 7th Monthly “No Meat & Greet!”

Busker 2009: Final Voting Is Open!

Voting is now open on the final six acts in the Kilkenny 400 Busking Competition; Busker 2009.

After seven months and countless hours of street music, the final round of busking for the competition took place on the streets of Kilkenny on Saturday with finalists Quintet Tarantino, Sean Watmore, Vicky Day, Beef Supreme (above), Annie Chambers and Fionn O’Hargain all competing for the €1,000 cash prize.

As always voting is open to the public so please go to Busker2009.com to watch the six video performances by our finalists and cast your vote for the best busker of 2009.

You will get an email asking you to confirm your vote and please note that only confirmed votes will be accepted.

Voting closes at 23:59 GMT on Friday November 13th.

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane: Rehearsals Continue

Rehearsals for the Watergate Production’s upcoming show ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ stepped up a notch last week, over the past month we’ve slowly but surely been blocking and rehearsing individual scenes,  but last week saw the first rehearsals with the full cast all together for the first time.

It’s already proving quite an experience for me;  most show’s that I’ve done in the past, I was surrounded by familiar faces, working with a lot of the same people over the years as we all moved away from Dreamstuff to Devious.

Now with the Watergate Production, I’ve gone from being one of the older actors in a group to being the youngest in the cast and I don’t have the familiarity of how people work, like I’ve always had before. Even the play itself is very different to anything I’ve done. But I’m not complaining, it’s all very exciting, fresh and challenging for me.

I’m slowly moving away from the script and finding my character – Ray Dooley; a young chap with a love for Kimberley biscuits and Australian day-time television shows. He is “continually bored” by his surroundings especially when used as a messenger between his older brother Pato (Brendan Corcoran) and love interest  Maureen Folan (Clare Henrique).

Everyone involved in the show has been very encouraging so far, I’m constantly learning little tips & tricks by working with them and hearing endless hilarious stories. It’s also great just to be rehearsing on the Watergate stage; normally I wouldn’t get on the stage until a few days before a show and then everything has to be tweaked accordingly but we’ve been using the stage for the past few weeks, with furniture and rough marks already in place for the set.

It’s already less than a month to the opening night; we’re all very excited by how the play is shaping up and people keep approaching me in the street to tell me how much they’re really looking forward to it. The next few weeks will be filled with rehearsals, we’ve got the photo-shoot coming up and the set will soon be under construction. It’s all falling into place and I’m very excited. I’ve started bringing my camera’s to rehearsals but it’ll be a while before I get a chance to work on the photos.

For now check out this brand new shot on the Oss237.com homepage taken during rehearsals this week; my script sitting on the front row of chairs in the Watergate with my Sb800 positioned on the ground using a wireless trigger at half power to light the chairs in the background. As always comments, feedback or criticism would be appreciated… oh and don’t forget to book your tickets for the show!

The Watergate Theatre Company presents Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ in the Watergate Theatre 23rd-28th November.

For ticket bookings call: 056-7761674

Vultures – Behind the Scenes Photos: When Janine met the Hardy’s

To avoid any spoilers, I’ve held back on posting any Vultures behind-the-scenes photos for the past few months but now that the series has come to a close, I can finally begin uploading shots.

Over the course of the 10 week shoot for episodes 5,6 & 7; I tried my best to get some shots from every scene but it wasn’t always easy. Some days were extremely fast-paced, as we worked against the clock trying to meet the schedule and work with everyone’s availability. Some days there was just too much going on.

But even though I may have missed a few small scenes, I still have hundreds of behind the scenes shots to get through. I’ve spent the past few days just trying to organise them. I’ve decided it’s best to upload the photos in the order that the scenes appear in the episodes as opposed to the shoot day itself.

First up is a collection of behind the scenes shots from Episode 5:’ The Adventure Of The Hidden Microfilm‘; the scene where Janine Drew (played by Suzanne O’Brien) meets the Hardy’s (played by Peter O’Connor and Geoff Warner Clayton) for the first time. It’s a very short cut-to scene as Vultour reveals to Tennyson that he’s been passing on work to Janine; we find the chav detective interrogating the Hardys about a street full of keyed-cars.

This is the first appearance by the Hardy’s and according to my video diaries we shot it on Shoot Day 32. Given the length of the scene it was a relatively easy shoot that afternoon; it was Sla’s birthday and we spent most of the time making fun of him and talking to “da hoss’s” in the field beside us.

We were in the middle of a four day shoot for the Pinkerton Lair Scene at the end of Episode 7 but that afternoon we shot this scene and Janine & the Hardys’ part of the montage from Episode 6 before heading back to shoot more of the Lair scene that night (and eat birthday cake).

You can check out my brand new shots of Janine Drew & the Hardy’s here and here on the Oss237.com homepage and you’ll find the rest of the shots here on Flickr.

As always any comments or criticism would be appreciated. And there’s plenty more shots from behind the scenes coming soon.

The Beauty Queen Of Leenane – Teaser Poster

Here’s the teaser poster for Watergate Productions ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ in the

Watergate Theatre November 23rd – 28th.