Tony Mac Mahon has achieved much over the years, as a musician and radio producer. Over the past two years his achievement has been to get this show together and organise the Riverdance team to back it.
The concept is nothing new: a mix of poetry and music extolling the pan-Gaelic identity.
Shaun Davey, for instance, did something similar, though with much bigger resources in The Pilgrim, when he focused on the whole idea of exile and pilgrimage.
Here the focus is harder to define: there is a definite message about how badly treated both Irish and Scots were by colonial and clerical misrule, and how chickens are now being helped home to roost. There's also a happier message that music, song and dance are in our very soul, and they've helped us overcome very bad times, emigration and hunger.
There is a huge stage, a great set worthy of an opera, yet no dramatic action or linking narrative. What we do have are 10 outstanding musicians, including two dancers from Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton Island who can show how much the two-and-a-half hours of music and poetry mean to them. As a multi-faceted display of great folk music, it is very good value, and the first night had a genuine buzz of enjoyment.
Riverdance has undergone a fair bit of tweaking to become the success it is. With the same treatment, this could be its more intimate cabaret successor.