The Hip Hop Easter Bunnyat the Helix in Dublin, .
Being a highly organised kind of individual I usually spend Easter Saturday ransacking supermarket shelves for the last of the crumpled chocolate eggs. Not so this year: with my children's vaguely bruised eggs hatching in the bottom of my wardrobe, we set off for the Helix to watch the intriguingly named family concert, The Hip Hop Easter Bunny.
With the word "interactive" hanging over the proceedings like a dark cloud over an Easter parade, I nervously anticipated being accosted by a pride of stuffed bunnies to do the can-can and was therefore delighted to find pianist Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, in the guise of "Professor EA Stern", hunched over a grand piano, and percussionist Mel Mercier (as "Bones Bunny"), with a selection of bodhráns and bones, entertaining a packed house of bouncing babies and hip-wiggling toddlers with a mix of traditional and newly composed music and song.
"Two-handed cow-bones and big piana," announced Mercier, and we were off, traversing the prairies and marching with the Great High Kings of Ireland and even, at one point, being encouraged to abandon our seats for "the golliwog dance", a quaint old tradition unhampered, apparently, by political correctness.
The venerable musicians having quite literally been swept off the stage by Ó Súilleabháin's musician sons, Mícheál jnr and Eoin, it was then the turn of the young ones (who call themselves collectively Size Two Shoes) to do an eclectic set which included Van Morrison covers, a little bit of beatbox ("eggbox" as they called it) and some gently lovely compositions of their own.
The young audience bounced around attentively, clapped their chubby little hands assiduously, and crawled over mellow parents quite happily for the hour or so of this uniquely wholesome chunk of Easter culture that graced the stage for one afternoon only. - Hilary Fannin
