A tale of two festivals

ArtScape:  As the dust settles on Belfast's seventh Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival (CQAF), the 43rd Belfast Festival at Queen's (BFAQ) prepares to announce highlights of its 2006 programme, writes Jane Coyle.

The festivals are both at a crucial stage in their development. The CQAF is no longer the young upstart, challenging the supremacy of its distinguished big brother, but an established fixture on the city's cultural calendar, injecting vital momentum into the redevelopment of this historic but long-neglected quarter.

This year, the CQAF's eclectic programme saw 70 per cent of its shows sell out. The Black Box, a long-overdue permanent performance space, opened its doors to iconic figures such as Tariq Ali and Chuck Palahniuk, while a curious mix of old rockers, students and trendy fashionistas packed the World Marquee to listen to two guitar legends, Bert Jansch and Davy Graham.

Bollywood Brass produced an ear-splitting night to remember; Dara O'Briain sold out the Waterfront and Liam Ó Maonlaí and the Celtic Fiddle Festival gave traditionalists much to cheer about.

Director Sean Kelly has been enormously successful in importing a cutting-edge mix of work, which has reached out across the communities and generated unprecedented goodwill and support. But with one of the festival's major funders, Laganside Corporation, drawing its activities to a close this year and the three-year tranche of EU Peace II money used up, he is under no illusion that kind words are no substitute for hard cash.

"This year's festival has been judged to have been something of a high water mark", he says. "But success means that expectations are very high and the challenge facing us now is to tap into private sponsorship, without compromising the ethos of the festival. We accept that we will have to become more entrepreneurial, but we are cautious about overbranding. However, we do feel that there are companies and organisations here who will handle the festival in the right way and work in partnership with us."

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, BFAQ's new artistic director, Graeme Farrow, is charged with re-establishing the profile of what was once widely regarded as the UK's second-biggest international arts festival. Farrow acknowledges that the "all things to all people" philosophy of the past few years, while successful, has meant a compromise in artistic excellence.

Along with Queen's University's newly appointed head of culture and arts, Michael Poynor, he is battling the little local difficulty of a 50 per cent cut in core funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

"This is a very big year for us," he says. "We will be looking at new avenues of funding, which will enable us to programme things that people want to see and return the festival to its status as a prestige, international event, capable of driving tourism.

"After 43 years, we're there to be shot at. But we have listened to the criticism and, while not reinventing the wheel, we will be rebuilding. We have adopted a slightly "less is more" approach and will be bringing in exclusive, world-class performances, which we hope will restore trust among customers and investors. If something unfamiliar features strongly on the programme, it will be because it is really special and unmissable".

There are unconfirmed reports that the Argentine tenor, José Cura, will perform at the opening concert in the autumn, while the Grand Opera House has announced that it will be back on board with the National Theatre production of Alan Bennett's The History Boys, which will open the doors on the latest phase of its massive redevelopment. The 2006 highlights are released next week on www.belfastfestival.com

Staging advertisements

Anyone off to Saturday Night Fever at the Gaiety on Tuesday will witness a piece of theatre history. In what may be the first "live" advert on stage here, Pauline McLynn features in a three-minute spot before curtain-up, extolling the joys of theatre in London's West End.

McLynn joins five other actors in the novel advertisement, which was scripted and produced specifically for the theatre. The production-ette, which featured Robert Lindsay in a London preview last month in Piccadilly's Comedy Theatre, will later be seen in Hamburg, New York and Pittsburg.

The ad concept, developed by Visit London, the city's visitors' organisation, draws on the similarities between Dublin and London. "Both cities have thriving theatre cultures, so what better way to remind Dubliners of all that London has to offer?" says Visit London's James Bidwell.

The Gaiety's managing director, John Costigan, finds his theatre involved in what must be one of its oddest premieres: the initiative "highlights the dynamic, creative theatrical exchange that exists between Dublin and London - and as we regularly present titles direct from the West End, it is fitting that Visit London showcases its theatrical advertisement in Dublin on the Gaiety stage."

Stirring up Cork theatre

Actors are doing it for themselves this week in Cork. Following the reaction to their Irish tour of Bouncers, a bunch of Cork actors - including Ciaran Bermingham, Cormac Costello, Dominic Moore, Peter O'Mahony and Neal Pearson - seeing the gap in the market for popular comedy in the city - got together to produce Shakers-ReStirred by Jon Godber (Bouncers) and Jane Thorton. This is the first production for their newly formed Mercury Theatre, which aims "to provide theatre that is popular, accessible and entertaining without sacrificing any aspirations to be artful, innovative and challenging". As with Bouncers, four performers take on the four central roles, this time as waitresses and the various characters they meet - but the waitresses are played by the same actors who played beefy bouncers: Costello, Moore, O'Mahony and Myles Horgan. The play is described as "a thoroughly modern comedy set in one of Cork's most trendy cocktail bars". Directed by Neal Pearson, it opens on Monday for a limited run at the Cork Opera House.

McPherson shines on

Following the reaction to the Gate production of Brian Friel's Faith Healer on Broadway, it was good to see Ben Brantley's rave review in the New York Times this week of a new production at NY's Biltmore Theater of Conor McPherson's Shining City, a play that premiered here at the Gate. Brantley says "In terms of construction, Shining City is as close to perfection as contemporary playwriting gets," calling it a "quiet, haunting and absolutely glorious new play". McPherson should be thrilled, but so too is the Abbey, where McPherson is now writer-in-residence, and director Fiach Mac Conghail said "Conor is one of the country's most brilliant playwrights and we're very proud that, once again, his talent is being applauded.'

In the therapist role Brian F O'Byrne "adds another beautifully shaded portrait to his gallery of wounded men". He and the rest of the cast (West Wing's Oliver Platt Martha Plimpton and Peter Scanavino) "wear their characters' discomfort like a second, scarred set of skins".

"The fragmented, pause-pocked dialogue that Mr McPherson uses here is nearly as difficult to nail as that of Harold Pinter. It takes a highly skilled and committed cast to convey selfconsciousness unselfconsciously. And the play, while clear, is subtle, and subtlety is seldom tolerated on Broadway unless it's being pitched by a glamorous star."

The director of this Manhattan Theater Club production, Robert Falls, "has gracefully made the adjustment to the softer but penetrating expressiveness of Shining City while staying close to Mr McPherson's original staging". The review ends ". . . I won't say anything more about it except that Mr McPherson has found an inspired alternative to those inadequate tools of communication called words."

The Opera Production Award, is a once-off award aimed at assisting the creation of imaginative opera that originates in and is presented inIreland. With a fund of €250,000 - in addition to more than €3 million the Arts Council will spend on opera this year - one or more projects will be supported under this scheme for production in late 2006 or in 2007. The closing date for proposals - from artists, producers, orchestras, opera companies, festivals, community and youth groups and so on - is May 31st.