Dick Gaughan, Black Box, 24th April 2013

It’s a surprising truth that someone like me who is more than passingly (if perhaps bewilderingly) fond of seventies folk sounds should not have heard of Dick Gaughan. My lapse in knowledge is perhaps even less forgivable given we both share Mayo Gaelgoir Gaughan lineage. But there you have it, until friends of ours mentioned that the venerable Mr G was playing in Black Box we had remained somehow in the dark. Happily it wasn’t too late to be re-educated and that’s kind of what it felt like as we slipped into an absolutely packed out venue to make our way over to the bar while Dick finished his first song and launched into a scathing indictment of the modern concept of celebrity and Tony Blair as a war criminal. Several shades of red? Indeed. Adelante comrades!

For Commandante Dick is pretty much the real deal when it comes to dyed in the wool, 60s folk singing radical. Between songs he reminds us that his was the generation that brought us the anti-Vietnam war protests. He doesn’t appear to consider that this was also the generation that brought us the Vietnam war. Nor for that matter does he reflect too much on the fact that he was a teenager in Leith for much of the Vietnam war. But irony and mutability are not present in spades, here. It’s an earnest and rousing set played to a an equally dogmatic crowd, who are prone to spontaneous bursts of applause when their beloved troubadour waxes lyrical on the dangers of prejudice and segregation. It kind of got to the point when not joining in with the rapturous clapping was not just churlish, it was basically tantamount to saying you were in favour of oppression and sectarianism. This type of fervour always makes me a bit uncomfortable and it’s (one) reason why you’re unlikely to find me becoming a born again organised religion type or party member of any political grouping. Even in the middle of a group of dissenters, I want to dissent. Some people are just born awkward!

The show is about much more than just the music. It’s clearly a shared ideological space and the line of patter Dick keeps up between tunes is clearly as much a part of his charisma as the songs themselves. However, on a small stage he cuts a physically imposing figure, standing stage centre, under simple white lighting, in a black leather jacket, his guitar slung across his chest like a weapon. There is no smoke and mirrors here, just a man, his voice, his musings and his songs. And he uses these deceptively simple tools to mesmerising effect. Whether weaving a tail about a native American mass suicide to avoid capture, a thousand years of Scottish history from the point of view of an ancient yew tree, the unmarked and unknown grave of political activist Thomas Paine, the history of Hibs FC or the shameful apathy of yesterday’s revolutionary, we’re all drawn in and it times it feels more like listening to a master storyteller than a singer riffing between songs. Incidentally, though, the stark lighting is really very effective and the sound is masterful (thanks to promoter Nigel Martyn of Old Flat Top Music) – this might seem like a simple, intimate show and it is, but it belies an underlying level of artistry

He wants to know what has happened to everybody’s Che Guevara posters. Personally I took mine down in 2006, it was a de rigeur addition to my student flat but probably wouldn’t have looked so at home when I had to move back in with ma and pa for a while. Dick wants to know would our posters not look so good in our fancy new houses or if we’ve just forgotten our radical leanings. A few (very bearded) gents attired handsomely in beautiful angora and cashmere sweaters shifted around uncomfortably at their tables, cradling their pints of European craft beer and goblets of wine. This guy takes no prisoners. He might thank us all sincerely and profusely for coming out to see him on a wet Wednesday night but it’s clear we are also being held to account. Your musical taste is excellent – now examine your political conscience (and bring back the tradition of monarchs being sent out to fight and die on the battlefield while you’re at it!)

This obviously wouldn’t be to everybody’s taste but I can’t help but find that kind of passion to be pretty inspiring. Sincerity tends to be a much under-valued commodity and caring more about ideology than alienating an audience and selling more records is definitely not the kind of spirit usually seen in the self-promotion, twitter, facebook, bandcamp and youtube channel age. Dick Gaughan’s website, in contrast, is basic, shoddy looking simplicity itself because “the information here should therefore be readable on any platform. It is also built to be equally accessible to all visitors regardless of whatever abilities or disabilities they might have”. Take that digital age!

Political beliefs outside of general apathy and derision for political engagement are pretty much anathema to younger, more hipster troubadour-types too. And I think there is room – and even a need – for a musical institution like Dick Gaughan, larger than life personality, fervent ideas, sonorous voice and all.

He treats us to an encore performance of Ewan Maccoll’s ‘The Father’s Song’ and then the big man is done, his entreaty to remember ‘There’s no ogres, wicked witches, only greedy sons-of-bitches who are waiting to exploit your life away’ still ringing in our ears. Preach!

Belfast Film Festival: Much Ado About Nothing

Last night was the Belfast Film Festival sold out screening of Joss Whedon’s take on Shakespeare’s (arguably) best comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, at the QFT, very ably introduced by film festival volunteer (and also my cousin!) Aidan.

There’s something quite Nouvelle Vague about Whedon’s take on a Shakespearean tale of love found, doubted, lost and regained with a healthy serving of political intrigue and tragedy averted. The cool black and white cinematography, sharp suits and jazz soundtrack reminded me of my beloved Jean-Luc Godard, though since most of the action takes place in a palatial Californian-style home (which, fun fact, is actually Joss Whedon’s house in Santa Monica. Sigh. Lives of the rich and famous etc) rather than on the Parisian city streets to draw a direct comparison might be over-stating things somewhat.

Stand out performances, for me, included  the sultry, sassy stylings of Angel/Dollhouse alumni Amy Acker as one of Shakespeare’s mouthiest and most bad ass (well at least til the end anyway) female characters, Beatrice.

I was also pretty taken with strong jawed Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse regular Alexis Denisof portrayal of a macho, slightly buffoonish Benedick, in which he balanced blustering cockiness with some genuinely heartfelt emotion and quite potent sexual chemistry with his on-screen sometimes sweetheart, sometimes arch-nemesis. His comedic timing and arch delivery of lines worked really well in the hot tub and martini / aplha male preening work out scenes but I felt was a bit over-stated and clownish during the crucial eavesdropping scene in which he variously prank falls, rolls, hides behind some shrubbery and does a kind of Scooby Doo ‘huh’??? face to invoke his surprise at discovering Beatrice might have real feelings for him.

A final commendation has to go to Reed Diamond’s suave portrayal of Don Pedro – suffice to say that were I Beatrice, I would have taken him up on his offer of marriage rather than the also handsome but infinitely less sophisticated Benedick. Just sayin’… The ineffectual but enthusiastic local cops also get a thumbs up. Other plus points include Shawna Trpcic’s very stylish costume design that did tread a thin line between lapsing into just being a fashion shoot for beautiful Anthropologie-style, vintage-inspired dresses but which stayed on the right side of the line, more Baz Luhrmann and less perfume commercial.

So many beautiful dresses…so little time…

I did love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly and super fans of Whedon (who seemed to make up the majority of the audience last night) will find plenty to love in a film amply featuring cast and crew from throughout Whedon’s body of work, as well as the very human and somehow authentic-seeming interactions between characters in slightly bizarre situations, whether that be a teenage Californian vampire slayer and an ancient vampire who has lost his soul, the renegade crew of Serenity or, in this case, modern wealthy Americans interacting through the high theatrical dialogue of a Shakespeare play ostensibly set in Italy. All in all, it’s definitely an 8/10 from me and you can catch it on general release from 14th June.

Belfast Film Festival 2013: La Traviata

Oh, I do love a bit of opera. That probably moves me up several social classes on the profoundly silly and irrelevant new Great British Class Calculator but suffice to say, I’m less of a box in Milan in eveningwear and more of a Test Drive the Arts type of attender :) I blame my mum for my arts snobbery gene, so she gets dragged along to all the kind of frou frou arty events my friends and husband roll their eyes at (eg. Ulysses!) so it should come as no surprise that I bought tickets for Belfast Film Festival’s screening of Zeffirelli’s La Traviata in St. Anne’s Cathedral for Mother’s Day. Woo hoo, tragedy, untimely death, meddling families and men in tight trousers, all for you mum!

Firstly, the venue. Now I do quite like site-specific theatre (see, for example, earlier reviews of Teatro Biuro Podrozy’s Macbeth or Kabosh’s Ghosts of Drumglass). It is true that audiences might lose out on some of the more carefully enunciated dialogue or subtleties of staging but I think you do gain a lot from the communal audience experience and the atmosphere of an unexpected venue. Site-specific cinema is kind of a different kettle of fish, though. Sometimes it can be amazing – like going to see Aliens projected on the side of Titanic Paint Hall in 2007 accompanied by planes coming in to land at City Airport and static-filled radio messages from the organisers. Or Zoolander in the film tent at Electric Picnic in 2006. Or even Jaws at Andytown Leisure Centre at Feile in 2010. Other times, like a screening in the middle of a rowdy, debauched house party or in a nightclub or outdoors at City Hall on a freezing cold night with damp grass don’t quite work so well because cinema, unlike theatre, doesn’t have quite the same ability to grasp an audience, draw them in and allow them to transcend their surroundings.

La Traviata fell somewhere between the two stools. On the plus side it began with a beautiful performance from a few singers of popular opera arias in the wonderful acoustics of the cathedral space. The Cathedral space itself was perfect for a Verdi opera – all spiralling stone columns, gloomy shadows, reverberating acoustics and marble flooring. The crowd it attracted was wonderfully diverse both in age and gender but also in fashion, dahling. Ladies and gents togged up in North Face coats, fleecey hats and sensible gloves, alongside ladies in fur, gents in pinstriped suits and students in duffle coats. All that being said, there were a few factors which both distracted and detracted somewhat from the screening experience. One, for me, was the temperature of the cathedral – not much could be done about that, it’s true, but even with coats, scarves and my mum’s entirely sensible suggestion of a blanket out of the car, we were chilly so I did feel for people who had opted for style over substance. Another was the chairs – again, given it was being shown in a cathedral, not a lot the organisers could have done about that but as anyone who has been unfortunate enough to attend numerous lengthy mass / church services growing up can attest, those seats are not built for comfort and we ended up sitting on our blanket and fidgeting for most of the film trying to get comfortable. The screen, while large, was also slightly too low down so unless you happened to be sitting in the first ten rows, reading the subtitles (which were only deployed about ten minutes into the screening in any event) required a lot of ducking, peering round people and eventually giving up! But the affable Victoria Cafolla has already addressed my concerns on twitter so I feel a bit churlish bringing it up again.

The film itself, though, was absolutely beautiful both in terms of the music and the cinematography. Even if you aren’t familiar with La Traviata, if you have seen any opera at all, the themes of doomed love, young death and epic regret will be familiar ones, leaving us to emerge from the Cathedral feeling rather like Violetta in the throes of her mortal decline!

Thank goodness then for the light relief of the party scene where everyone dresses up as matadors, bulls and gypsies to inject a little festivity into the proceedings…

And did I mention the tight trousers??

Anyway, that’s all for now…until I’ve been to see Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing tomorrow night :)

Belfast Festival: Ulysses @ The MAC

yes I said yes I will yes.

Last night I went to The MAC  to see the gloriously rich, engaging Andy Arnold production of Dermot Bolger’s adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses for the stage. The set was gorgeously realised, functioning variously (and believably) as a bedroom, a newspaper office, the seaside, a pub, a hotel, a cemetery and a conduit to the past and to the heart of Leopold and Molly’s fractured marriage and the painful echoes of their young son’s death eleven years before. I took a really quick (and not totally legit – sorry) snap on my phone but it doesn’t really do justice to Charlotte Lane’s incredible set design, which was lovingly enhanced by fantastic lighting (courtesy of Sergey Jakovsky) and soundscapes (courtesy of Ross Brown).

I hate to compare something to David Lynch, because the comparison seems so unnecessary and reductive in so many cases, but there were definitely touches of classic Eraserhead-era Lynch around the scenes in which Bloom stumbles through the brothels and the pitfalls of his own tormented psyche on the hunt for Stephen Dedalus.

The cast was relatively small while the show’s running length was around the two hour mark, and between the costume changes and character changes as well as the inherently physical aspect of the whole production the cast did a stellar job, particularly Bloom (Jean-Paul Cauwelaert) and Boylan/Lyons/McHugh/Private Carr/Ghost of Paddy Dignam/Alf Bergan (Stephen Clyde), of seeming spectacularly unruffled and plausibly oriented throughout.

By turns scathing and bitter, manifesting the worst (or best) of Joyce’s deeply ingrained sneering scorn for his compatriots, darkly funny, tender, touching, morose and all too human, the production was very true to both the spirit and the letter of Joyce’s seminal text while nonetheless providing a genuine theatre experience, allowing the audience to forget, even momentarily, that they were watching an adaptation of a novel rather than a work originally written for the stage. And that reminds me, in case you are one of the lucky (unlucky) types not to have done an undergrad degree in something hopelessly impractical like English Lit, and have, therefore, managed to avoid reading your way through Ulysses armed with a study guide and a 6 pack of supermarket-brand Red Bull, the Tron Theatre have very helpfully produced a lovely guide to the novel over on their blog.

If I could offer any criticism at all, it would be that it took me a while to warm to stage Molly (played by Muireann Kelly) – I am a fan of chick lit and soap operas, but Molly’s frank, c’mere til I tell ye, confessional style at the play’s opening was all a bit overblown to me. Of course the same could potentially be suggested of Joyce’s ecriture feminin, it’s experimental and it is original and still remains fresh, but subtlty and understatement are perhaps not his strongest point, nor those of any of the Modernist writerly types. Still, there is a big difference between the words on the page and the words embodied in an actor on stage, and a slightly more nuanced delivery may have felt more in keeping with the Molly readers know and love. However, as the production went along I felt she won me round and the famed soliloquy which concludes the novel was delivered beautifully so it’s no more than a rather minor niggle.

All in all, a fantastic production and one which is, alas, now finished at the MAC after an all too brief 3 night stay but you can still catch it in the Project Arts Centre in Dublin from 6th – 10th Nov or down at the Everyman in Cork 12th – 17th Nov. Highly recommended.

Belfast Festival: Ghosts of Drumglass

ENTER THE UNDERWORLD, INTO A NIGHT AS BLACK AS THE DARKEST RAVEN’S WINGS

Last night we went to Ghosts of Drumglass, a new production for Belfast Festival at Queens produced by Kabosh theatre company & Paperclip…architects. As it was the very first night they were running slightly behind schedule so we had to cool our heels on Belfast’s style mile (shudder) while we waited for the ghostliness to begin. The wait was aided by baked goods from The Cookie Box. Imagine, a whole shop dedicated to…cookies! (Cookies that cost £1.20 each though..sad face…)

Before entering the darkened eponymous Drumglass Park (known to BT9ers as plain ol Cranmore Park in case you were wondering), the black clad people of Kabosh divided us into two ‘teams’, threatening that only one team would make it out alive. Mwahahaha etc. Our team consisted of a pair of slightly nervous ladies and a gang of teenagers who were very much entering into the shrieking, out after dark, drama A-Level spirit of things.

Now, I’m torn at this point because I really don’t want to give away any spoilers. Ghosts of Drumglass is on right up til Halloween itself so there’s still plenty of opportunity to get tickets and catch one of their four shows a night, and I really hate it when people spoil stuff! So I’ll try to be vague and hopefully intriguing enough for you to go along and check the production out yourself because…SPOILER…it’s really good.

Firstly you get led to the park toilets, rigged out in UV light, filled with dry ice and smelling, oddly, like a Catholic church – beaucoup de incense! Our solemn guide lined us up against the toilet stalls, facing the hand basins and the mirrors. Having just watched Paranormal Activity 3 the other night I was a bit afraid we were in for a bit of Bloody Mary but actually it’s a lot jumpier and, strangely enough, a lot more darkly comedic than that. Suffice to say there’s a few scares, lights flickering, doors rattling and a mysterious tale told about the eleven children of a wealthy local Anglo-Irish family, the Musgraves. Fun fact: Drumglass Park is named after Henry Musgrave, the owner of nearby Drumglass House, who died in 1922.

Then the other team heads into the ladies toilets and we headed into the gents. More flickering lights, scary Poltergeist like sound effects, sinks filled with ectoplasm. So far, so slapstick. Based on the blurb of what the play was going to be about I was expecting something a lot more Sheridan Le Fanu-like, with few special effects, so I was a bit surprised by all the special effects sorcery on display but I did find it quite effective and it was more along the lines of something like Ghost Stories than The Veil but it is no less chilling because of it. Maybe it’s the time of year, maybe it’s the Victorian architecture surrounding the park, maybe it’s because it’s darker in a park at night than you might imagine from the street but the opening section of Ghosts of Drumglass did get under my skin a bit.

Cranmore…err…Drumglass Park at night

For fans of survival horror video games, particularly The Silent Hill series or maybe something like Alan Wake, the format is hardly unfamiliar. The interlude in the toilets is similar to an FMV, where knowledge is imparted, dramatic action happen, clues are given as to what needs to be uncovered (including a flashback montage to Henry Musgrave’s childhood memories and a strange note revealed) and the ‘rules’ for survival are explained – stick to the path, follow your guide. And so we do, shuffling out into the night around the park, following the mysterious, becloaked Henry (James Doran of Game of Thrones fame) as he visits various tableaux around the park, recalls incidents from his childhood, comes across an old talking bear buried in a suitcase, a friendly spirit (Michael Liebmann) by a glowing brazier (who might not be so friendly after all) and the ghost of his father. There’s strange figures, eerie lighting, rocking horses, swings and roundabouts moving all on their own (how do they do that??). There’s a final closing scene just on the rightside of high camp melodrama with his mother (Bronagh McCrudden) scrubbing her hands in the moonlight. There’s an almost shockingly sudden conclusion and a palpable feeling of sadness for this fictional (or not so fictional?) family.

Silent Hill 4…

Needless to say, with four shows on a night al fresco in October, each performance is around 30 minutes long, give or take 5 minutes. So, unsurprisingly, there is not a huge amount of character development and the exposition of the plot is hardly subtle. Nor does the plot particularly make sense in the structed sense of the word. But it doesn’t really matter. The visual impact of the show, its eerie setting and the high drama of each set piece create a lasting impression and evoke emotions in a way that I found quite surprising. It comes highly recommended for some Halloween-themed culture – tickets available over….here

Belfast Festival 2012 Preview

Belfast Festival at Queens is 50 this year and they have a bit of a gala spectacular programme to celebrate the milestone. There’s a lot to love about this grand dame of arts festivals, whether its the innovative programme, the international artists, the high calibre of acts and the general hustle and bustle it creates around the town at what is otherwise a slightly dark and dreary time of year. They also usually oblige with something Halloween-y,  and I love a good gothic romance so I’m a fan!

Last year I was absolutely blown away by The Animals and Children Took To the Streets and in previous years I have been really impressed with The Enchanted Garden events in Botanic, and a pretty class al fresco Macbeth on motorbikes so I am definitely looking forward to this year’s events and I am particularly pleased to see that the organisers seem to have made a really concerted effort to keep ticket costs down.

In previous years there have been a couple of things I wouldn’t have minded going to but priced at close to £20 a ticket it didn’t really encourge you to be experimental back in 2006, when I was earning the princely sum of about £10k a year. (How things have…err…changed!) This year’s festival certainly has some pricy acts (cough, £190!! to see Van Morrison, cough) but there are plenty of other much more reasonably priced shows around £10/£15 mark and 400 free tickets available as part of A Night for Belfast and other free tickets for community groups too. So well done them!

Anyway, here are my top three picks (out of many choices you will appreciate!) for this year’s festival, and will hopefully see some of you at these :)

1. Ghosts of Drumglass

The Musgrave family of Drumglass Park died with the passing of the last remaining child, Henry.

From a family of 11, no descendants were produced to carry on the blood line. In the darkness of the park, the ghosts of the past threaten to fragment the peace of the present that eludes them. The ancient trees of Drumglass surrender the secrets of the Musgrave family to those who trace the steps of the dead. But will we have to atone for treading on the long-dormant spirits of those who went before?

Incorporating cutting-edge sound and light installation, site-specific theatre company Kabosh present a haunting theatrical experience in this unique setting. Not for the faint-hearted.

I’m a big fan of Kabosh and really liked some of their past productions, such as The Waiting Room (2006) and This is What We Sang which I reviewed for Culture Northern Ireland at Belfast Festival 2009. Ghosts of Drumglass is by Rosemary Jenkinson, whose short story collection Contemporary Problems Nos. 53 & 54 I came across during my PhD and I’ve been wanting to see a play by her so this seems like a good opportunity. The park is one I frequented as a child and now go to with my two year old so I’m looking forward to going there at night (without a bottle of cider. probably.) to see some theatre, darling. And I haven’t seen a good spooky play since The Veil at the National Theatre in London this time last year so I am excited about this. Raincoat at the ready!

2. Macbeth dir. Lynn Parker

Yes I am a bit of sucker for anything Shakespearean and in particular for the play so spooky the theatre luvvies refer to it only as THE SCOTTISH PLAY (woo) and this does look like a very strong production. Directed by Lynne Parker of Rough Magic and, incidentally, niece of redoutable Belfast playwright Stewart Parker, I saw her production of Stewart Parker’s Spokesong in the Assembly Rooms in 2008 and I have been eager to see something else since so this provides a nice opportunity do so and the trailer does look suitably eerie. A little reminiscent of The Ring, non? (that bloody subway thing has always terrified me, by the way, so now I have a new reason to fear walking through it…thanks Lyric!)

I’m also intrigued by the write up “This darkly comic production will harness the wit and muscularity of the Ulster idiom with Shakespeare’s supernatural thriller.” Interesting…

3. Ulysses at The MAC

PRESENTED BY TRON THEATRE COMPANY
in association with PROJECT ARTS CENTRE, DUBLIN and THE EVERYMAN, CORK

Freely adapted for the stage from the novel by James Joyce by DERMOT BOLGER

According to the publicity materials this production of Joyce’s epic tome ‘has been adapted for stage by celebrated author and Dublin chronicler Dermot Bolger, Ulysses is bawdy, hilarious and affecting, and celebrates Joyce’s genius for depicting life in all its profundity.’ One to go and see with my mum I think, since she likes Joyce so much she married my dad on Bloomsday. True story.

Also when I was an undergrad student back in the heady 2002-2006 days in Glasgow, I made it down to The Tron a couple of times and saw some pretty excellent stuff so I have high hopes for this and I’ve always meant to read something by Dermot Bolger so maybe this will prompt me to finally get round to doing that at some stage.

Culture Night Belfast 2012: Review

I am a huge fan of Culture Night- the creativity behind it, its general mission, the al fresco artiness of it all. Highlights from last year included synchronised outdoor disco dancing in the rain, disgruntled and misanthropic stand up comedic japes and the spooky, atmospheric stylings of Wireless Mystery Theatre. This year promised to be bigger and better than ever with a gorgeously designed website and an impressively efficient social media campaign, including a photo competition.

#lovebelfast photo by Gavon McGibbon

In fact, in my day job as a development worker in a community organisation I received two emails from Community Arts Partnership, a phone call from the Arts Council and an in person reminded from another arts project coordinator that the event was happening, there were activities for community groups and young people to take part in and that free transport could be provided for groups. My dad, otherwise rather happily oblivious to the arts ‘scene’ had heard of this year’s event and seen some of the marketing round the town. And then, on Friday, a slightly ominous post from the organisers reminded people to think about transport because “Obviously, if you can help it, you’ll be leaving your car at home – 25,000 people coming into a city centre usually isn’t such an appealing prospect for driving.”

I started to wonder if bigger is always better.

Wireless Mystery Theatre setting up for Culture Night

One of my favourite performances last year was Wireless Mystery Theatre. This year, they had been relocated to Haymarket Arcade, which seemed like a perfect venue, very retro, slightly kitsch and just a little bit creepy. We got a look into Anto’s Gallery of strange leprechaun figures and portraits of Jackie Chan, and a browse round Avalon Arts craft market which included a fantastically bizarre homage to 50 Shades of Grey in the form of kind of fan art clutch bags emblazoned with Christian Grey’s err iconic catchphrase…Laters Baby. Quite the wordsmith.

However, between a busker (who was really very good by the way) inside the Arcade and a large band that seemed to include flutes and lambeg drums (??) unless my ears were deceiving me situated just across the road, even with the help of amplified speakers we could literally hear pretty much nothing. It certainly looked amazing, costumes and props were all perfection and they sounded great when we could hear them, all sound effects, retro jingles and weird radio plays about fake psychics but after a frustrating ten or fifteen minutes we had to abandon ship to pastures less noisy.

Onwards we went to St. Anne’s Square, where we picked up a Heineken, enjoyed looking at the splendidly lit up Mac and waited to see if some firepoise was imminent, as advertised in the programme. Ten minutes passed. No fire. Ok, back to Hill Street and an excellent performance from a classic rock type band in the window of a hairdressers. Then came the crowds, denser than the Dead Sea. One of the best things about last year’s event was the slightly anarchic feel, a little bit Euro passeggiata , a little bit carnivalesque. There were students, hippies, art types, families and all sorts just wandering around, enjoying the general ambience. This year wandering became almost impossible as the narrow streets and entries in Cathedral Quarter literally became jammed with people. You couldn’t walk more than a few steps before you encountered a busker, a Mexican mariachi band, grafitti artists, a parade, a drumming group…. You could barely get into some galleries. The bar at the end of the night in Deers Head was four people deep at all times and the street outside which had been the venue for some spectacularly fun rain soaked karaoke and dancing times last year for around 50 people seemed to have around 200 people in it instead. It was more claustrophobia than culture at points.

We did make it in to the very captivating and in some ways unsettling ‘Enemy Blue’ by Allan Hughes exhibition at Belfast Exposed which was explained to us in illuminating detail by the extremely articulate gallery manager, lending a whole new dimension to what was already a visually captivating experience.

Allan Hughes, video still from Enemy Blue, 2012

We did manage to elbow our way to the very front of the Oh Yeah crowds to see Girls Names at their local music showcase. I do like their eighties dirge pop jangly guitars and their strange visuals and the addition of a couple of cool hipster kids dancing in front of the stage definitely adds a certain je ne sais quoi to any gig.

Following Girls Names I have to admit that we simply gave up trying to pack any more in and since it was after 10pm at that point everything was more or less over, somewhat disappointingly, so we cut our losses and hit the bar instead. Not an easy task when you have to climb under, over or through a crowd many people deep at the bar. But never impossible for a pro.

Of course arts should endeavour to be more inclusive and more accessible. It was a great idea to reach out to community groups – instead of the same south Belfast elite arty postgrad and professional set (yes, guilty as charged) enjoying each other’s creative endeavours, why not have more music, more stuff for kids, more graffiti art. But with everything happening on one night, in a fairly small area, mostly between 7pm-10pm it quickly became a bit overwhelming. One solution that might have eased congestion in the city centre may be to have a Culture Weekend, with different events on different nights rather than absolutely everything on at once. Another might be to have everything open later – a lot of people only finish work at half 5, can’t make it into town til 7 and then had to dash from event to event in order to see anything but found themselves struggling through crowds because everyone was doing the same thing. Had all the galleries, performers, art installations and music acts been on until midnight maybe there would have been less of a breakneck speed approach to explore everything.

So Culture Night 2012 – not a bad show. Some great art, some good tunes, lovely al fresco fire lanterns and certainly well attended. Will I be returning in 2013? Well I will be there if they will. But hopefully with perhaps slightly fewer of my fellow citizens squeezed into the same square mile.