Irish Times critics pick the hot tickets in the arts.
U2 in Croke Park
"The Jacks are back" - they're the words Bono greeted fans with the last time U2 played Croke Park, way back in the mid-1980s, when the band had truly bridged the gap from possible contenders to definite rock stars. Almost 20 years later, and with the Best Rock 'n' Roll Act in the World tag still hanging around their necks (and even less likely to be torn off with the global success of new album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb), U2 are expected to return to Croker a few months after the start of their world tour. Not absolutely confirmed yet, and no news yet on the stage show, but 25 years of back catalogue and strong new material (plus a level of credibility that has been maintained since Achtung Baby was released in 1991) make this, once again, a must-see rock event. TCL
Croke Park, Dublin, late June
New Brian Friel play
Brian Friel will bookend the year at the Gate Theatre in 2005; while February brings the world première of his new play, The Home Place, December will see a new production of Faith Healer, with Ralph Fiennes in the title role. Tom Courtenay, Nick Dunning, Barry McGovern and Derbhle Crotty star in The Home Place; set in 1878, as unrest grows around the question of Home Rule, it explores the increasingly troubled relationship of a father and son living in the apparent serenity of a Big House in a rural village where the arrival of an English cousin unwittingly stirs up resentment causing trouble that, though uninvited, is perhaps bleakly inevitable. Adrian Noble, former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, directs. BMcK
Gate Theatre, Dublin (01-8744085). Opens February 1st, with previews from January 27th. www.gate-theatre.ie
West Cork Chamber Music Festival
The West Cork Chamber Music Festival's Francis Humphrys was a Wagner nut in his youth, and he likes to indulge his passion for larger things with a mid-festival relocation from Bantry House to St Brendan's Church. This year, he's doing it for two nights, to include Anthony Powers's setting of Seamus Heaney's From Station Island (coupled with a Spohr Nonet and Berio's colourful Folk Songs), and following that with Britten's Canticles (featuring leading British tenor Ian Bostridge) and a performance of Schoenberg's chamber version of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. Returning artists include the remarkable Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Italian mezzo soprano Cristina Zavalloni, and Norwegian percussionist Hans-Kristian Sorensen (who will deliver the spectacular drumming of Xenakis's Psappha). First-time visitors include Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey, Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov, the Rosamunde Quartet and the Trio Wanderer. This year's festival commissions are a new string quartet from Stephen Gardner, and a work for solo violin by Elena Firsova. MD
Bantry House, Co Cork, June 25th to July 3rd (1850-788789). www.westcorkmusic.ie
Neil LaBute World Premiere
The organisers of Cork 2005 have scored quite a coup, securing the world premiere of Wrecks, written and directed by Neil LaBute. LaBute is among the most prominent of contemporary American dramatists, well-known for his plays Bash and The Shape of Things, both seen in productions at the Gate Theatre in recent years. Wrecks will be produced by Pat Talbot of the Everyman Palace Theatre, with Kenneth Madden. BMcK
Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork, autumn 2005. www.everymanpalace.com
Ibsen's 'A Doll's House'
One of the most acclaimed directors currently working in Europe, László Marton (below left) brought his Dance in Time - a vivid musical and theatrical exploration of the history of his native Hungary - to delighted Abbey audiences this year. At the Peacock last year, his treatment of Ibsen's The Wild Duck, in a new version by Frank McGuinness, was unmissable. Expect the same superb results this April, when Marton and McGuinness (below right) team up once again, this time on the main Abbey stage, to present what is perhaps Ibsen's best-known and most-loved play, A Doll's House. BMcK
Abbey Theatre, Dublin, April (01-8787222 or 1890-444100). www.abbeytheatre.ie
ECM Jazz series
The first half of 2005 offers a mouth-watering succession of jazz events to savour. Clearly, the major highlight next year will be
the series of concerts by artists of the great ECM label, sponsored by The Jazz Architects and organised by The Improvised Music Company. It will have a spectacular opening in Vicar Street on January 23rd with the Kenny Wheeler Big Band, including notables such as Evan Parker, Norma Winstone, Henry Lowther and Julian Arguelles, and the acclaimed young pianist, Gwilyn Simcock. On February 13th, the Tomasz Stanko Quartet (right) take to the stage. Others confirmed so far for the year-long series include Charles Lloyd Quartet (April 21st), and the Enrico Rava Quintet (May 15th). RC
Improvised Music Company: (01-6703885) www.improvisedmusic.ie
Netherlands Dance Theatre 2
"NDT2 pay rare visits to these shores and they do not stay very long. It is therefore imperative to see them when you can." Irish dance audiences would do well to heed this advice from London's Time Out publication when the company visits Belfast's Waterfront Hall on April 13th as part of the Earthquake Festival of International Dance. Comprising 16 dancers aged between 17 and 24, it has developed a worldwide reputation with stunning dancing and a carefully chosen repertoire of up-to-date choreographies. MS
The Earthquake Festival of International Dance takes place from April 6th to April 23rd. (028-90334455) www.danceni.com www.waterfront.co.uk
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
For a long time there was an expectation that, after the first concert performance at the close of the RTÉ NSO's season next May, Gerald Barry's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant might be presented (again in concert) at the Aldeburgh Festival. In the event, things have turned out even better than that. The Aldeburgh Festival is getting a new, fantastical opera from Richard Ayres. And Barry's work, after the play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, will be the opening opera of English National Opera's season in London in September. The advance samplings of Act II in Dublin and Huddersfield in 2002 suggest that Barry's take on Fassbinder's acid view of cross-generational lesbian passion will be well worth watching out for. MD
National Concert Hall, Dublin, May 17th (01-4170077). www.nch.ie www.rte.ie/music/nso/nsoevents.html
RTÉ Living Music Festival
There's such a vast body of new music never heard in Ireland that the planners of RTÉ's three-day Living Music Festivals will be able to spend a long time creaming off major names to focus on. For 2005, the festival's new director, composer Kevin O'Connell, has chosen Germany's 78-year-old Hans Werner Henze in a programme that will bring the Irish début of Germany's highest-profile new music group, Frankfurt's Ensemble Modern. O'Connell is also devoting time to some of Henze's German colleagues (Detlev Glanert, Wolfgang Rihm, Matthias Pintscher) and an even longer list of British composers (Robin Holloway, Thomas Adès, Michael Tippett, Simon Bainbridge, Oliver Knussen, Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr), and there will also be new works by Irish composers Frank Corcoran, Fergus Johnston and Rachel Holstead. MD
The Helix, Dublin. February 18th to 20th (01-7007000). www.thehelix.ie
Dorothy Cross
Long-anticipated major survey of the career of Dorothy Cross, one of the foremost Irish contemporary artists, probably best known for The Ghost Ship project, which involved mooring a disused lightship, coated in reflective paint, off Dún Laoghaire harbour. In her drawings, prints, sculptures, installations, videos and films, she has explored ideas relating variously to gender, national identity, culture and history, often with mordant wit and with a consistent interest in the suppressed or hidden role of women. The schematic approach to representation and the dry, austere aesthetic of her earlier work are still characteristic, though in a broader, more relaxed way. This show tracks her progress from the beginning of the 1990s. As part of the Cork 2005 programme, she is also collaborating on a new project with actor Fiona Shaw, to be unveiled in Cork in May. AD
Irish Museum of Modern Art, May 25th to September 11th. www.modernart.ie
The Sopranos - last series
Its creator David Chase promised that The Sopranos would end after five seasons, but having been made an offer he couldn't refuse he agreed to bring it back for what would be a sixth and final season. After five years, the drama of suburban Mafioso remains consistently brilliant, and in Tony Soprano, actor James Gandolfini has carved a character of unparalleled intensity. A combination of ruthlessness and luck allowed Tony to escape rivals and Feds at the end of the last series, but there has always been the sense that the end will be will be as brutal for him as it is for us. It doesn't begin recording until May (10 episodes instead of the usual 12) so we won't find out until near the end of the year. SH
Michael Borremans
The low-key work of the Belgian painters Luc Tuymans and Raoul de Keyser have had an enormous impact on much of contemporary painting. Borremans is also a Belgian painter, but his work differs from that of his countrymen in a number of respects. Now in his mid 50s, he has consistently sought to interrogate and test the possibilities of painting but without the buffer of distance or irony that is typical of so much comparably analytical work. Just as Ireland has been relatively quick to highlight the work of Tuymans and de Keyser, this is the first major European exhibition to feature Borremans and it will also show in London and Ghent, while another show is planned for MOMA San Francisco in 2006. AD
Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery, July 14th to August 28th. www.royalhibernianacademy.com
Druid Synge
Three of the seven plays of J.M. Synge were last year produced and toured nationally by Druid: The Playboy of the Western World, The Tinker's Wedding and The Well of the Saints. This year Garry Hynes will direct the other four - In the Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea, Deirdre of the Sorrows and When the Moon has Set - and, in a massive undertaking, all seven plays will be performed together as part of the Galway Arts Festival this summer. This will be the first time all Synge's plays have been performed together, and national and international tours of the plays will follow. BMcK
www.druidtheatre.com
Umwelt
In the auditorium there were dozens of walkouts, loud arguments, ripped-up tickets thrown towards the stage, cheering and a standing ovation. Onstage, the première of Umwelt in Lyon in December confirmed Maguy Marin's reputation as one of the most important choreographers working in Europe at present. As the final work in Fête de la Danse 2005, Umwelt is likely to provoke similarly strong reactions in the Cork Opera House on February 25th. A searing and virtuoso work, its relentless rhetoric is balanced with a parade of subtle visual references. Marin may be best known for her versions of Cinderella and Coppelia with Lyon Ballet but these days her work is more directly political, and in many ways Umwelt is a angry yet lucid reflection of what she sees in the world around her. Likely to become a classic. MS
Fête de la Danse takes place in various venues in Cork from February 15th to 25th. www.instchordance.com
Wayne Shorter at the NCH
The almost legendary saxophonist and composer, Wayne Shorter (below), who was expected to play the Guinness Jazz Festival in Cork last year in a concert that was cancelled, is confirmed to perform under the auspices of Walton's New School of Music at the National Concert Hall with a stellar line-up: Danilo Perez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade. RC
National Concert Hall, Dublin (01-4170077), March 3rd. www.nch.ie
John McGahern's Memoirs
One of the undoubted highlights of the literary calendar in 2005 is the September publication of the memoirs of arguably Ireland's greatest living novelist, John McGahern. The extract from the memoir, recently published in Granta, again shows McGahern is the master of rural description and of a spare (almost austere) meditative prose style. While this recollection of the author's upbringing in Co Leitrim has echoes of some of his fictional work - family relationships, the rituals of the Irish countryside - at its core is the abiding memory of a mother who died early in the author's childhood. And if you can't wait for the publication of the memoirs by Faber and Faber on September 15th, RTÉ 1 will screen a Hummingbird Productions documentary on the author's life and work, John McGahern: A Memoir, next Tuesday evening at 10.15 p.m. GS
Cathal Coughlan
He's got a persona and a mindset that have weathered the troubling vagaries of the music industry. Cathal Coughlan also has the mental constitution of a true survivor, and if there's anything of a music highlight taking place in 2005 then it's his new work for Cork 2005: Flannery's Mounted Head. As a former founder member of Microdisney and Fatima Mansions - two of Irish rock 's most sublimely provocative bands - Coughlan knows a thing or two about challenging preconceptions, and Flannery's Mounted Head looks as if it will do just that. A narrative song cycle concerning the titular character's search for spiritual fulfilment, FMH also features spoken word and visual imagery. Something special this way comes? TCL
Father Matthew Hall, Cork. September 16th (Ticketmaster 0818-719300) www.cathalcoughlan.com www.cork2005.com
Edward Albee's 'The Goat'
Landmark's second production - their inaugural one, David Hare's Skylight, broke box office records at the Project - will be the Irish première of Edward Albee's The Goat. The play caused a sensation in New York (where it won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play) and earlier this year in London (where it has been nominated for an Evening Standard award). Why the fuss? Well, the main character is having an affair - not that unusual. But the object of his desire is the eponymous goat. Outrageous, funny and outrageously funny. GS
The Project, Dublin, May (01-8819613) www.project.ie
European Quartet Week
In one way, the names say it all. The string quartet festival that is European Quartet Week, presented by West Cork Music and Cork 2005 next Easter, will feature concerts by the RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet, Quatuor Debussy, Cuarteto Casals, and the Tokyo, ConTempo, Lindsay and Callino Quartets. The names, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. The "week" opens on Good Friday with a free performance of the hour of music that makes up Haydn's meditative Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross. And between Easter Monday and the following Saturday there will be no less than 20 concerts, exploring the richness of the quartet tradition, from Haydn and Boccherini to Shostakovich, Tippett and Ian Wilson. MD
European Quartet Week, Cork, March 25th to April 2nd. (1850-788789) www.westcorkmusic.ie
'Past Things and Present: Jasper Johns since 1983'
Jasper Johns became famous as a prototypical pop artist with his deadpan, beautifully made paintings of American flags, maps, alphabets and painted bronze beercans. The lightness of touch and subject matter masked a process of rigorous semantic inquiry and he has followed that path ever since. This exhibition, organised by the Walker Arts Centre in Minneapolis, focuses on his output after a radical change in the 1980s that saw him incorporate a more personal, autobiographical iconography into his works, such as Racing Thoughts (1983)
There are 90 works included, many using references to his studio, home, childhood and the work of other artists. AD
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Kilmainham, Dublin (01-6129900). February 9th to April 29th www.modernart.ie
'Exodus: Sebastião Salgado'
Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado began working life as an economist, but became a photojournalist in 1973. It is, however, his hugely ambitious personal projects, in which he sets out to document major historical shifts and developments in terms of their human (and laterally, animal) cost, that have established his reputation. The Cork exhibitions feature work from two series: Migrations, which charts the enforced movement of peoples in areas of conflict and in a politically unstable, globalised market; and Children, which considers the plight of children in the midst of instability. Salgado's extraordinary, epic vision relates him to European history painting and the language of cinema. AD
Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street, Cork, and Mahon Point. www.triskelart.com
William Orpen: Politics, Sex and Death
Catchy title for an in-depth survey of the work of one of the major figures in Irish and British art in the early part of the 20th century. Like his contemporary, Sir John Lavery, Orpen's (1878-1931) stylish appeal was as a society portraitist, but there was much more to him than that, including his stint as a war artist during the first World War. Hence the fact that this exhibition emanates from London's Imperial War Museum, whose collection includes A Peace Conference at the Quai d'Orsay, and explores the full range of his work. It also examines his Anglo-Irish , anidentity and, by virtue of the National Gallery's archive of his letters and other material, his reputation as a lively correspondent - besides some 70 paintings, it includes more than 50 works on paper, mostly letters embellished with his own witty illustrations. AD
National Gallery of Ireland, Millennium Wing, Dublin. May 25th to August 28th. (01-6615133) www.nationalgallery.ie
Brecht at the Project
As well as transferring its Dublin Theatre Festival hit, Improbable Frequency, to the Abbey stage this spring, Rough Magic will present a new production of a play by Bertolt Brecht, The Life of Galileo, at the Project Arts Centre in February. Directed by Lynne Parker, the play is both a stage biography and an exploration of the manipulation of truth for political motives. Those who remember the company's skilful handling of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen in 2002 will be interested to see Parker tackle another dramatist's take on the dark side of science. BMcK
Project Arts Centre, Dublin (01-8819613), February 17th to March 5th. www.rough-magic.com www.project.ie
What Happened to Bridgie Cleary?
April at the Peacock sees the reunion of writer Tom McIntyre and actor Tom Hickey, whose 1986 collaboration on the stage adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh's The Great Hunger has gone down in Irish theatre legend as one of the greatest productions of all time. Its subject is the murder of the young Irishwoman Bridget Cleary in 1895; Cleary had been burned to death by her husband, her father and other members of her family, who confused her illness from bronchitis with possession by fairies, and subjected her to a ritual exorcism that claimed her life. In his dramatisation of Cleary's story, McIntyre focuses on the love story at this tragedy's core. Alan Gilsenan will direct. BMcK
Peacock Theatre, Dublin. April, (01-8787222 or 1890-444100). www.abbeytheatre.ie
Tony O'Malley
A major retrospective celebrating the work of one of the most significant, popular and remarkable Irish artists of the 20th century. Born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, in 1913, O'Malley began painting while being treated for TB. His life changed decisively when he visited Cornwall on a painting holiday and resolved to join the flourishing artists' community there. His highly personal style, lyrical, abstracted from natural colour and pattern , sensitive to the atmosphere of place and attentive to the way history is written into the environment, won him a loyal and growing following when his work began to be exhibited in Ireland from the 1970s. Eventually he and his wife, the painter Jane O'Malley, moved to Ireland and settled in Callan, where he died in 2003. AD
IIrish Museum of Modern Art, Kilmainham, Dublin (01-6129900). October 26th to January 2006. www.modernart.ie
Contributors: Tony Clayton-Lea, Ray Comiskey, Michael Dervan, Aidan Dunne, Shane Hegarty, Belinda McKeon, Michael Seaver, Gerry Smyth