The magnificent Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann is in Clonmel for the second year, starting tomorrow, with a week of concerts and ceilidhe, including Liam Clancy (tomorow); Eileen Ivers and Micheal O'Suilleabhain (Thursday); Danú (Monday); a concert honouring Comhaltas pioneers (Wednesday), including Dr Tomas O'Canainn, this year's Ard Ollamh (Supreme Bard), who, along with Sean O'Se, will perform a Sean O'Riada tribute.
There's also Scoil Éigse, the traditional Irish music workshop, and Seachtain na Gaeilge programmes. More than 10,000 musicians will compete and entertain the 300,000 expected visitors on the Fleadh Cheoil weekend.
So Long Sleeping Beauty, writer and actor Isobel Mahon's play which ran for six weeks last year in Bewley's Café, including as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival, opened last week in Chester, Massachusetts, directed by Vincent Dowling. The play, about the meeting of a woman and her late husband's gay lover, about whom she knew nothing until her husband's death, was seen by Dowling last year. He asked Mahon to rewrite it as a full- length piece and it has its US premiere on Wednesday. The play will also be performed by a Scottish cast in Oran Mor theatre, Glasgow, in November.
Dublin Fringe Festival usually makes a point of having a gimmicky invitation to its launch - last year an actual comb (for the fringe) had a luggage tag attached with invite details. This year neon orange flotation armbands were sent out, with the invitation details ("jump in the deepside" at the Liffeyside launch at D1 on Tuesday) overprinted. But it was a serious matter at the British embassy, where they mistook the invite for something suspicious and called the explosive ordinance disposal team.