Artscape: As rioters and protesters caused mayhem on the streets of Belfast last Sunday evening, inside the Grand Opera House the drama was unfolding of other dark deeds on a Sunday in Derry 33 years previously, writes Jane Coyle. After a prolonged period of relative calm in the North, who could have predicted that the opening night of the Tricycle Theatre's recreation of scenes from the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday would be punctuated by civil violence and thuggery.
Under artistic director Nicolas Kent, the Tricycle has developed a powerfully distinctive brand of political theatre, based on meticulous factual re-enactment. Here the setting is an anonymous chamber inside the Derry Guildhall, through which a procession of witnesses pass, some offering heart-rending accounts of what happened in the Bogside on January 30th, 1972.
"Strangely compelling, like watching a car crash," was how writer Tim Loane described the evening. Loane was a panellist in a post-show audience discussion, chaired by BBC current affairs presenter Mark Carruthers. He was joined by lawyer Angela Hegarty from the Bloody Sunday Trust, Nicolas Kent and Bernadette McAliskey.
The inevitable question was asked about the omission of Martin McGuinness's testimony, in which he admitted to membership of the IRA. Kent pointed out that it was impossible to include all the evidence of more than 1,000 witnesses and that there were other accounts which he and editor Richard Norton-Taylor felt took precedence.
McAliskey recalled her own feeling of "sheer terror" as the terrible events unfolded and argued her personal misgivings about a British government-ordered inquiry into the shootings. She described the day as not the worst in her own life, but the worst in the lives of 13 Derry families.
Kent says this will not be a long-running production, coming as it does at a particular juncture, in the gap between the end of the inquiry and the long awaited delivery of Lord Saville's report.
Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry is at the Millennium Forum, Derry, tonight and at the Abbey Theatre during the Dublin Theatre Festival from Oct 11th to 15th. www.dublintheatrefestival.com
China calling
Beijing has been a hive of Irish cultural activity this week, writes Clifford Coonan. A delegation of Irish writers, publishers, editors and translators came to meet their Chinese counterparts in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, and to do their bit to promote Irish literature.
"We didn't come empty handed. We brought bursaries for Chinese translators to work in Ireland on Irish writing," said Sinéad MacAodha, director of the Ireland Literature Exchange. Among the books set to be rendered into Chinese under the scheme will be a work by Beckett, possibly Murphy or Molloy, and one work of contemporary fiction.
The delegation included Joseph Woods, director of Poetry Ireland, and John Spillane, director of the Mercier Press.
MacAodha presented New Writing from Ireland, which includes work by Rosita Boland, Kevin Rafter and Dermot Bolger among others.
There was keen interest in the bursaries among translators who attended a reception in the Irish Embassy in Beijing, though one translator admitted to being a bit baffled by Beckett.
A Prime Cut of Beckett
Samuel Beckett may be dead but he is refusing to lie down, writes Jane Coyle. Just weeks after the shenanigans surrounding the rights to Waiting for Godot and the Gate Theatre's refusal to allow Peter Hall's new production to be staged in London, Belfast's Prime Cut Productions has announced it has obtained the rights to Endgame, Beckett's dark comedy.
What's more, the company has signed up double Olivier Award-winning actor Conleth Hill and Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Award winner Frankie McCafferty to play the master and servant, Hamm and Cloy, respectively.
Hill recently clocked up his second Olivier Award (the first was in 2001 for Stones in His Pockets) for his outrageously camp performance in the West End hit musical The Producers. Mark Lambert, who is to take charge of a new play, The Centaur, in Montreal later this year, will direct. The production will run at the Belfast Waterfront Hall from February 2nd to 8th, 2006 and will mark the centenary of Beckett's birth.
"Since Beckett's death, the rights to his work are closely guarded by the Beckett estate," said Prime Cut's Emma Jordan. "2006 will see worldwide celebrations of his work and Prime Cut are thrilled to be able to bring such a seminal masterpiece to Northern Irish audiences. The nature of this achievement is highlighted by the recent disputes between Peter Hall and the Barbican Theatre in London and the Gate Theatre in Dublin."
With Dublin's Gate Theatre and London's Barbican Theatre holding the licence to Godot, Hall is not allowed take his production to London. "It's too close to the Gate's major programme for the centenary next year," says Gate director Michael Colgan. "We were happy for it to be put on this year to celebrate Peter's 50th anniversary production but now have to draw the line. In any case, the Beckett Estate doesn't want two productions one after the other."
Stella bids farewell
There was a discernible tear in the eye and a crack in the voice of Stella Hall as she bade farewell to the Belfast Festival which she has directed for the past five years, writes Jane Coyle. Hall, who recently took up a new post as creative director for the Newcastle and Gateshead Initiative, was unveiling this year's full programme, whose advance highlights - Marianne Faithfull with the Ulster Orchestra and the Abbey/Lyric Hamlet among them - were announced last June.
The festival, which takes place from October 21st to November 6th, has several world premieres courtesy of the independent theatre sector in the North, including Daragh Carville's Family Plot for Tinderbox and Richard Dormer's The Half, written and performed by him for Ransom Productions, and the Irish premiere of Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, by local theatre company Bruiser. A Minute of Your Time, a co-production by Kabosh and Ransom, comprises four new one-minute plays to be performed in unusual locations across the city. There will be the first professional performance in Ireland of The Desert Music, a monumental piece by Steve Reich, while Andy Summers (former guitarist with The Police) and Benjamin Verdery will perform the European premiere of a double concerto for electric and classical guitars. Booking: tel 048-90971197 or on-line at www.belfastfestival.com
Musical celebrations
Twenty-five years after he gave a Steinway grand piano its first public airing in NUI Galway's Aula Maxima, pianist John O'Conor returned to the west earlier this week to mark Music for Galway's quarter-century birthday celebrations, writes Lorna Siggins.
The 25th season programme involves many "old friends", according to Music for Galway's Jane O'Leary - friends such as Robert Taub, who presented a complete series of Beethoven piano sonatas, Stephen Kovacevich, who selected the organisation's first Steinway, and Peter Donohoe, who selected the second after the original was caught in a fire in the Aula.
Other artists returning for the season include Wolfgang Holzmair, Jian Wang, singer Regina Nathan and Finghin Collins, who first appeared as a young prizewinner at the Feis Ceoil.
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra will be resident in Galway during October, working with teachers and students in the city and county, and the Cello Octet Conjunto Ibérico will present a cello octet performance. The celebrated Kungsbacka Piano Trio from Sweden and German violinist Diemut Poppen will mark another birthday - that of the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 250 years after his birth in January - and there will be more Mozart from the Jacques Thibaud Trio of Berlin.
Portuguese percussionist Pedro Carneiro is booked, as are Galway's lively resident ensemble, the ConTempo String Quartet. The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet will mark athird birthday - that of Shostakovich - with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Irish composers Raymond Deane, Eric Sweeney, Ed Bennett and Jane O'Leary will present new work. Full programme and information from: 091-705962; e-mail: info@musicforgalway.ie