Crucial to the success of the second Cathedral Quarter Arts festival was a programme that proved enticing enough to draw crowds to venues not normally considered by those looking for a cultural night out in Belfast city centre. On any given evening, the area around St Anne's Cathedral buzzed with festival-goers on their way to or from a gig, a poetry reading, an exhibition or just a quiet pint to discuss what they had seen and heard.
Arguably, one of the most memorable events of the 10-day festival was a community play that ran for one week down on the docks in a venue called the Paint Hall Studios, a huge warehouse-turned-movie lot close to where the Titanic was built. Anyone who has sat through the sometimes dire, always well-meaning attempts by groups to bring drama down to earth will find it difficult to get excited by the prospect of community theatre. Playing for Time sounded like more of the same: earthy, urban drama with the topical subject of soccer-related sectarianism as a theatrical backdrop.
The most intriguing part was that, due largely to the success of this Belfast group's last offering, The Wedding Play, the newly-formed Community Theatre Association of Belfast had received £100,000 in European and lottery funding. A lot more than most amateur groups could ever hope to receive.
It was freezing in the warehouse/theatre. Punters were urged to take a drink from the bar while industrial machines pumped heat into a giant ovalshaped tent. A peep inside revealed a performance space set in the round, a state-of-the-art lighting rig and a string quartet. Throughout the play, powerful images were projected on to the sides of the tent that doubled as a 360-degree video screen. This visual element, mixed with intense audio effects, including live soprano vocals, made for a compelling theatrical cocktail. The effect was more multi-media extravaganza than community theatre.
The action began with distraught family members crying at the side of a hospital bed where a teenager lay in a coma, his heart rate monitor blipping ominously across the circular screen. What followed was an emotional, visually stunning and innovative journey through one family's darkest problems and deepest rooted prejudices.
The teenager (played superbly by Bill Elwood) has been offered a trial with a Glasgow football team - the wrong football team, as far as his gangster father is concerned. The play follows him as he deals with pressures from family and friends and gets caught up in sectarian violence after a football match. This plot development was communicated using a news report on TV monitors thrust in front of the audience by cast members while the Manic Street Preachers song If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next blared out across the space.
The play turned out to be the festival's most controversial offering; but not for the reasons director Patrick McCoey may have wished. Local critics panned it, calling it predictable, questioning the venue, the scale of the play and the amount of money spent. "I doubt whether there'll be many calls for extra time from disappointed spectators," mused one.
Perhaps, though, they missed the point. Yes, the script by William Mitchell could have done with some severe editing, some of the performances were lacking, while the acoustics, it must be said, were dreadful. Still this was a dramatic spectacle with more heart and imagination than many professional productions.
Perhaps, instead, Playing for Time should have been judged on a script that, while flawed, tried hard to make sense of one of the most disturbing characteristics of post-Agreement society. Or on the considerable staging risks taken when more conventional ones would have done. As for the spectators, they spoke eloquently for themselves. There were nightly standing ovations for those involved in a thought-provoking production which, on the night The Irish Times visited, moved at least one woman to tears.
The tears were ones of laughter at the Duke of York pub in the Cathedral Quarter a couple of nights later. Stand-up comedy had packed out the upstairs bar which, being decorated with murals of neon fish and octopus, gave loads of fresh material to comedian David Doherty.
Formerly of Don't Feed the Gondolas, the Dundalk comedian Patrick McDonnell had the Southerners in the crowd in distinctly nostalgic mood as he recalled the lengthy Green Cross Code song from Wanderly Wagon, which most of us learnt by rote as youngsters. He then went on to make us feel distinctly thick by revealing that, in the North, our youthful counterparts could cross the road by merely remembering to "Stop, Look and Listen". Bah! Deirdre O'Kane was the last performer to take the stage with her alter ego: the very blond, very lovely cabaret singer and part-time hairdresser Chrystal Hickey.
Earlier, though, it had been the turn of the amateurs. On Friday night the city's first open-mike competition (prize £250) managed to attract only two would-be stand-up comedians. The winner, Stephen from Omagh, just pipped his opponent Ian with an hilarious take on the penguins that vandals threw to the lions at Belfast Zoo. Er, you had to be there.
Around the corner, the John Hewitt pub hosted a different class of stand-up performers with the folk at Sub-Text, a regular night of spoken word and music, welcoming novelist and journalist Will Self into their literary world. Chatting and drinking cola before the gig, a charming Self confessed he writes for BA's in-flight magazine so he can get upgrades. The controversial writer went on to read a story called `Urban Adultery'; his graphic t ales of illicit snogging laced with authentic car manual instructions proved a hit with the reverent audience.
The respectful punters weren't just there for Self, though, and the author stayed around to hear the work of fresh Northern Irish literary talent, including Colin Carberry, Gavin Carville and Marty Neill, who read extracts from recent work. Twenty-six-year-old Leontia Flynn's bittersweet poetry was, after Self, one of the other hits of the evening. Writers featured strongly overall in the festival programme. Distinguished Ulster author Tom Paulin looked back over his career on Friday night, while on Saturday it was the turn of Scottish writer Liz Lochhead.
Now in its second year, this action packed Cathedral Quarter Festival proved that good things can definitely come in small packages and are even capable of rivalling larger-scale productions such as the Belfast Festival at Queens. Director Sean Kelly and all the festival team deserve praise from anyone who supports the idea of a more accessible arts programme for the city. Fans can only hope that, in coming years, with the commercial expansion of the Cathedral Quarter area, the festival remains true to its diverse cultural roots.
