Monday
Driving Miss Daisy
Gaiety Theatre. Ends May 28 7.30pm (Sat mat 2.30pm) from €21
gaietytheatre.ie
Most theatre producers – and certainly those of the commercial breed – know they are competing with an array of entertainment forms. Pat Moylan and Breda Cashe, originally the force behind Lane Productions, often respond by blurring the boundaries: their stage version of The Shawshank Redemption aped the weirdly beloved movie very precisely (with mixed success).
Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy may have been a play before it was a film, but it’s unlikely that box office hopes have been pinned to his Pulitzer Prize-winning script from 1988. Still, this staging is faithful to its source, a 90-minute acceleration through Civil Rights-era Atlanta, in which the ageing Miss Daisy (Gwen Taylor) learns to tolerate her chauffeur Hoke (Ernest Perry Jr), whose principal role is to introduce her – with sunny good humour – to basic ideas of racism, prejudice and deprivations.
Handsomely cast, spryly designed and entirely undemanding, it has the same sense of relentless uplift as a social-media meme – which may also be its fiercest competition.
Tuesday
No Other: A Celebration of Gene Clark
Upstairs @ MVP, Dublin 7pm €12
eventbrite.ie
It isn't often that we have an event devoted to celebrating the life and music of an American musician and songwriter. Yet collective Young Hearts Run Free has put together a heartfelt tribute to the founder member of The Byrds: performances of songs by Clark (right), exclusive playback of unreleased Clark material, documentary film clips, and a Q&A with noted Byrds scholar, writer Johnny Rogan.
Season and Evening and Weather and History
Caoimhe Kilfeather (Gallery 1)
Turkmen and Uzbek Children's Clothes: Garments from the early to late 20th century
(Gallery 2) Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin Until July 27
Caoimhe Kilfeather has built a reputation for making subtle, carefully considered installations. Now she takes on the formidable space of the Douglas Hyde, using photographs, sculptures and weaving to evoke "a world of reticent lyricism and melancholia that bears within it the possibility of hope and transformation". Romanticism meets modernism.
Wednesday
The Last Shadow Puppets
Olympia Theatre Dublin 8pm €45.05
ticketmaster.ie
Calling The Last Shadow Puppets a supergroup might be pushing it bit too far, but there's no denying that separately, constituent members Alex Turner and Miles Kane have their respective fanbases. These shows see The Last Shadow Puppets make its Irish debut, which should be of interest enough, let alone seeing if their sophisticated pop/rock material (from their two albums, 2008's The Age of Understatement and this year's Everything You've Come to Expect) can cut it in a live setting.
Thursday
Ports
Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, Coleraine, Co Derry 8pm £10/£8
flowerfield.org
"Ones to Watch", "Flavour of the Month" and "Faces of 2016" are just some of the critical thumbs-up this Northern Irish band has received over the past six months. Next week Ports release their debut album (The Devil Is a Songbird). This show is part of a brief nationwide tour to promote it. Highly recommended.
The caged bird sings…
Wexford Arts Centre Until Jun 16
wexfordartscentre.ie
It's the beginning of the art and design graduation show season, and the Wexford Campus graduates of Carlow IT have a nice venue in the Arts Centre and a lot of interesting- looking work to show. The line-up includes Ann Breen, Deirdre Buttimer, Lisa Dunne, Fran Greene, Gina Murphy, Danny O'Brien, Martin Reading, Sandra Ryan, Breda Stacey and Zane Sutra.
Hans Zimmer
3Arena, Dublin 8pm €65
ticketmaster.ie
There are few enough old- school soundtrack composers left standing, but Germany's Hans Zimmer is one. Zimmer has composed music for more than150 movies, most recently Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. That's the bad news. The good news is that in this rare Irish show, Zimmer will perform the scores of many of his classier credits, including Rain Man, Thelma & Louise, The Lion King, Gladiator and The Dark Knight.
Zoe Conway, John McIntyre and Enda Reilly
Powerscourt Townhouse Theatre, Dublin 5.45pm €5
087-2547574
With her fiddle playing on Riverdance, her collaborations with everyone from Máirtín O'Connor to Lou Reed, and her superb solo albums (with accompaniment from husband and guitarist John McIntyre), Zoe Conway has raised the bar and the profile for Oriel fiddle music with considerable panache. This performance is the final instalment of these monthly teatime sessions before the summer break: a real treat.
