MONDAY
Any Observer
Draíocht, Blanchardstown Centre, Dublin Until Sep 10 draiocht.ie
Jason Deans has been artist in residence at Draíocht since January. His exhibition of modular, geometric, sculptural solids (right) has been designed to fall apart – slowly. He uses natural materials in ephemeral arrangements as a way of referring to the fragile character of social and political structures, among other human enterprises.
TUESDAY
Neil Young + Promise of the Real
SSE Arena, Belfast 8pm £70/£65 ssearenabelfast.com Also Wed, Dublin
Always one to march to the sound he hears inside his head, Neil Young returns to Ireland in the company of Promise of the Real (featuring Willie Nelson's guitar-wielding son, Lukas), which backed Young on his last studio album, The Monsanto Years. By all accounts, these will be marathon three-hour shows; expect acoustic tunes, semi-acoustic strums, and full-blown guitar wig-outs.
Live at the Marquee
The Marquee, Cork 7pm €40 ticketmaster.ie
Now in its 11th year, this fixture on the Irish music calendar continues to pull in the punters with a strong mix of old faves and new blood. The series of concerts commences tonight with Dropkick Murphys (with support by Stiff Little Fingers), and concludes on July 13th with Pixies (support is Bleeding Heart Pigeons). Other acts in the interim include The Corrs (June 9th), Gavin James (June 10th), Don Henley (June 29th), Foals (July 5th), and Walking on Cars (July 9th).
Candi Staton
Sugar Club, Dublin 8pm €27.50 thesugarclub.com Also Wed, Dublin
Perhaps best known for her 1976 disco smash, Young Hearts Run Free, American soul/gospel singer Canzetta Maria Staton is proof positive that great songs – and great singers – always stand the test of time. A second date here (tomorrow) is sold out, so be quick about it!
Poetry and Song in the Tower
Joyce Tower, Sandycove, Dublin 7pm €15 joycesong.info, Also Wed and Thurs, Dublin.
The first of three consecutive concerts, featuring six leading Irish poets – John F Deane, Gerard Smyth, Vincent Woods, Moya Cannon, Greg Delanty and Mary O'Malley – who will be joined by Fran O'Rourke, singer and Prof of Philosophy at UCD, and leading Irish classical guitarist John Feeley (with O'Rourke and Joyce's guitar, below) for a programme of poetry and song with Joycean associations. A perfect prelude to Bloomsday.
WEDNESDAY
The Glorious Maids of the Charnel House
Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin Until Jul 2 kevinkavanagh gallery.ie
Alice Maher returns to her fascination (metamorphosis) in nine new large-scale drawings. These are magic-realist fantasies in which the female imagination roams freely, delighting in all manner of dreams and transformations. They recall her early Alice (in Wonderland) drawings celebrating the wild, capricious spirit of a young girl.
At Swim, Two Boys
Samuel Beckett Theatre. Previews Jun 6 Opens Jun 7-11 7.30pm €16/€10 tcd.ie/becket-theatre
We're almost halfway through this year of commemoration, one that has found numerous ways to allow a nation to look back. By and large, they have been even-handed and sensitive in tone, supported by state funding and drawn from competitions, re-evaluating the heroes, seeking out the marginalised and remaining bracingly aware that these are again times of movement and protest. So whose perspective do we take: That of the rebel leader, the royal subject, or something closer to a street view?
Jim Mack and Doyler Doyle, the young lovers in Jamie O'Neill's celebrated 2001 novel At Swim, Two Boys, make compelling viewers, one studious and naïve teenager, the other worldly and salted. Their friendship grows through sexual awakening and political stewing in the year leading up to the Rising, which finally floods everything. New company Forty Feet stages a new adaptation by Tim Scott.
New Road
Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo 8pm €18/€9 hawkswell.com
Kerry piper Leonard Barry saddles up alongside harmonica and concertina supremo Rick Epping, with fiddle player Andy Morrow and guitarist Seamie O'Dowd. All Sligo denizens, this four-piece rattle the cages of their canon with equal parts vim and vigour.
THURSDAY
Gerard Dillon: Painter, Dreamer, Clown
Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens, Belfast Until Nov 6 nmni.com/um
For Gerard Dillon and several of his contemporaries, art was a road to freedom, and they set out to follow it. It led Dillon from his birthplace, close to the Falls Road in Belfast (via London) to Connemara, which became his landscape of choice. Riann Coulter has curated this compact retrospective (above), which includes many of Dillon's best- known works.
Smiley
Lyric Theatre, Belfast. Previews Jun 4-8 £13 Opens Jun 9 - Jul 2 7.45pm (Sat mat 2.30pm) £15 - £24.50 lyrictheatre.co.uk
It's a funny old game, theatre. Like football, it can be a game of two halves, where bringing the two together raises questions about whether a playwright has alighted on the best metaphor for a meaning, or if it's an attempt to crossbreed two incompatible passions.
In Paul Mercier's Studs, a stranger arrives to manage a local working-class team in Dublin, to lift fortunes. I, Keano made a jape of the Irish World Cup psychodrama in Saipan as a kind of healing balm.
And now Gary Mitchell takes a five-a-side team in Belfast who become the unwilling stooges of a gang of ex-paramilitaries, forced to rob the league's prize money. If that sounds comically convoluted, that may be the point: neither football, nor division in contemporary Northern Ireland, ought to be matters of life and death.
But will Northern Ireland's valiant contest in Euro 2016 prove to be a cooperative or competitive player? Is it more important than that?
