Event of the week
Girls Aloud
Friday May 17th and Saturday May 18th, 3Arena, Dublin, 6.30pm, €67.70, ticketmaster.ie
Few recent music acts would ever hope to have 20 top-10 singles in a relatively short career, but Girls Aloud did just that at the height of their fame. Formed in 2002 via the reality-television show Popstars: The Rivals, they split up in 2009, regrouped for a year in 2012-13, then, late last year, announced a series of 30 arena shows, all of which are dedicated to their original member Sarah Harding, who died of breast cancer in 2021, at the age of 39. (Also Monday May 20th and Tuesday May 21st, SSE Arena, Belfast, 6.30pm, £91.20/£54.70, ticketmaster.ie)
Gigs
Muldoon’s Picnic
Monday May 13th, Town Hall Theatre, Galway, 8pm, €20/€18, tht.ie; Wednesday May 15th, Market Place Theatre, Armagh, 8pm, £25, visitarmagh.com; Thursday May 16th, Wexford Arts Centre, 8pm, €30, wexfordartscentre.ie; Friday May 17th, Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, 8pm, €26 (sold out), paviliontheatre.ie
The US-based Irish poet Paul Muldoon brings his cabaret-style evening of music, poetry and literature back to Ireland. Guests for dates outside Co Dublin include Anne Enright, Glen Hansard, Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Donal Ryan; those at the final night’s shenanigans, in Dún Laoghaire, will be the writer Roddy Doyle, the guitarist and composer Hugh Buckley, the poet Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and the crime novelist Liz Nugent.
Eric Clapton
Thursday May 16th, 3Arena, Dublin, 6.30pm, €86 (sold out), ticketmaster.ie
Even after more than 60 years of playing professionally, Eric Clapton still rips out the slick guitar solos that have not only influenced generations of blues guitarists but also delighted his fans, who keep coming back for more. (This show sold out months ago.) As there isn’t a new album to promote, we can expect a best-of selection that may or may not include Sunshine of Your Love, Wonderful Tonight, Layla, Cocaine and Tears in Heaven, as well as some aficionado-friendly blues tunes. (A digital-only live album, To Save a Child, is released in July, with all proceeds donated in aid of the children of Gaza.)
Classical
Kronos Quartet
Sunday May 12th, National Concert Hall, Dublin, 7.30pm, €45/€40/€35, nch.ie
With a sometimes fleeting membership that rivals those of The Waterboys and The Fall (but is still overseen by founding member David Harrington), the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet celebrate their 50th anniversary with the Five Decades tour. The celebrations will include performances of works by Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, Sigur Rós, Sun Ra and Steve Reich. “There’s no wasted airtime in a Kronos concert,” Paul Wiancko, the group’s cellist, told The Ticket recently.
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Arts festival
Cavan Arts Festival
Thursday May 16th until Sunday May 19th, various venues, times and prices, cavanartsfestival.ie
This small, astutely programmed festival presents a broad range of creative voices across four jam-packed days and nights. Picks include street arts (Professor Plunger), street theatre (Love Me Do), comedy (Kevin McGahern, Killian Sunderman), dance (Jessie Keenan) and music (Soda Blonde, Mohammad Syfkhan, Soft Launch – the latter of which has a direct connection to Cavan via their guitarist-songwriter Josh McClorey, a former member of The Strypes).
Literature
International Literature Festival Dublin
Friday May 17th until Sunday May 26th, Merrion Square Park, Dublin 2, various times and prices, ilfdublin.com
Since it began, in 1998, Ireland’s primary literary event has developed an enviable reputation not only as the gatherer of the biggest names in global and Irish writing but also as a supporter of new and developing talent. Highlights include Marlon James, Marilynne Robinson, David Nicholls, Marian Keyes, Richard E Grant, Olivia Laing, Colm Tóibín, Kevin Barry and Sayaka Murata – and that’s not even the half of it.
Dance
Dublin Dance Festival
From Tuesday May 14th to Saturday May 25th, various venues, times and prices, dublindancefestival.ie
Across venues that include the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Abbey Theatre, Project Arts Centre and the Ark, this year’s Dublin Dance Festival features shows as vibrant and joyous as 13 Tongues (from Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan), Caraça (from the Portuguese choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira), Night Dances (by the Irish choreographer Emma Martin), My Body of Coming Forth by Day (by the French choreographer Olivier Dubois) and Cometa (for age six-plus, by the Spanish and German collaborators Roser López Espinosa and Vorpommern tanzt an).
Photography
Teenage Kicks Rebellious Youth
From Friday May 17th, Photo Museum Ireland, Dublin, 7.30pm, photomuseumireland.ie
Subtitled Subculture and Street Style in Dublin (1970s-1990s), this exhibition is curated by Garry O’Neill, the sociocultural archivist best known for his 2011 book of youth-culture photography, Where Were You. Presented as part of Age & Opportunity’s Bealtaine Festival, O’Neill will be in conversation on launch night (Friday, May 17th) with the songwriter Gavin Friday, the DJ and vintage style queen Dandelion, the head of IFI Irish Film Archive Kasandra O’Connell, and the Irish music historian Michael Murphy. The panel discussion is followed by an outdoor screening of archive images at Meeting House Square.
Still running
Like the Light at the Beginning of the World
Until Saturday May 18th, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, kerlingallery.com
Twelve artists reference the exhibition title with a series of paintings that includes Sean Scully’s Landline Green Yellow, Elizabeth Magill’s I Searched for Form and Land, and Isabel Nolan’s Dead Talk (Archaeologists). Also featured is a new installation by Jaki Irvine.
