Belfast has swept all before her at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards this week. Gary Mitchell received the £30,000 sterling prize - handed over by Tom Stoppard - for "Most Promising Playwright", on the strength of The Force of Change, produced by the Royal Court.
Marie Jones's Stones in his Pockets, which has had a triumph at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End, won the award for "Best Comedy". The play, directed by Ian McElhinney, was partly responsible for the Lyric Theatre, Belfast winning the "Best Company" award at this year's ESB/Irish Times Theatre Awards, where it also won the awards for "Best Production" and "Best Actor" (Conleth Hill).
Both playwrights are from Loyalist Belfast, although while Gary Mitchell has made this his subject, particularly in The Force of Change, Jones has never really mined this seam. Stones in his Pockets concerns a rural Irish community which is suddenly descended on by a Hollywood film crew.
The award for "Best Play" went to American Joe Penhall for his Blue/Orange, presented by the Royal National Theatre. The playwright will be interviewed by Graham Whybrow, literary manager of the Royal Court, at the Rough Magic reading of this play on Saturday at the Project at 2 p.m., which is directed by fellow playwright Conor McPherson.
Simon Russell Beale won the "Best Actor" award for his Hamlet at the Royal National Theatre, which thrilled audiences at the Dublin Theatre Festival, while Paola Dionisotti won the "Best Actress" award for her part in Further than the Furthest Thing by Zinnie Harris, also at the Royal National. This writer had the good luck to see her towering performance in this superb play about the isolated Atlantic island of Tristan de Cunha at the Edinburgh Festival, and to hope aloud we might see it here. The word is, a festival director is interested, and we might.
Opera Ireland's production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, directed by Dieter Kaegi, had queues of people looking for cancelled tickets on Saturday night. Those lucky enough to see it witnessed opera production in Ireland brought to a new height.
Central to its success was the performance of Gerard O'Connor as a truly awful Boris, a witless brute and lecher after his son's wife. He sent shivers down the spine with lines like: "If I were 10 years younger." (Note to Wexford Festival Opera: why no surtitles?)
Well, he has had his evil way again - he will star in the English National Opera production of the same show in July. In August, his contract as house principal with the ENO begins. This is a major honour for an Irish bass, and reflects glory on Opera Ireland, which has encouraged him from the ranks of the chorus to roles in many of its productions, including last year's striking Boris Godunov.
Interestingly, Opera Ireland is among the forces behind the application to the Minister for the Arts for funding to redevelop the Gaiety as an opera house for Ireland. This would involve demolishing and rebuilding the stage and backstage areas. The Dublin Theatre Festival is also supportive of the idea.
What a wonderful new lease of shelf-life it would give that old wedding cake.
The dynamic faculty of applied arts at the Dublin Institute of Technology is running a fascinating series of lectures on arts practice, research and how it relates to "the academy". How indeed, you may ask? Well, you are bound to get some answers, or at least further questions, at the lectures from people like these: Laurice Dreyfus of King's College, London, an eminent American performer and musicologist (Monday next, 6 p.m.); Philip Zarilli of the University of Exeter, who has done extensive research on performance in Kerala, India (Monday, January 29th, 6 p.m.); Christopher Frayling of London's Royal College of Art, author of a recent biography of Sergio Leone (Monday, February 19th, 6 p.m.); and the Northern Irish photographic artist, Paul Seawright, who is a senior research fellow at the University of Wales (Monday, March 12th, 6 p.m.). Watch this space for details of lectures later this year.
More information at 014023482 or www.dit.ie/aa/ artsresearch
