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Advantage of having a theatre on your doorstep #236: When it comes to 8 o’clock on a Sunday evening and you’ve been lounging about on the couch watching movies all day, a snap decision to pop out can lead to a great night of music. Last night we got to see Cathy Davey, supported by two great acts – Molly Jenson and The Raglans.

We arrived in the middle of Jenson‘s set and she was doing a great job of warming up the crowd. Engaging in conversation and having a joke with the audience, then delivering some beautiful songs, she really made her mark. Having toured extensively in the US and with an impressive MySpace following, Jenson will surely be huge when her album, Maybe Tomorrow, goes on full release in March 2009.

The Raglans are a three piece band who, as Cathy Davey says, are far too young to be this good. Although they are local lads, Stephen Kelly, Luke Carrig and David Hayes have spend a lot of time touring Ireland and spreading the good music. I look forward to hearing a headline set from these three guys in the near future.  It was nice to see so many people showing up just to hear them. For these people Cathy Davey was merely a bonus. I missed out on getting one of their EP’s (they sold out) but there are a few tracks on their website.

Davey describes her Bare Bones Tour as..

…a chance to play intimate venues without being too noisy for sensitive ears. Rearranged songs to better suit candlelight. Three of us playing as many instruments as we can fit in our suitcases and the chance for me to babble nonsense if I so choose as the bigger venues tend to echo unpleasantly, and I do so hate the sound of my own voice.. don’t we all. That’s the Bare Bones Tour. It’s nice. And slightly special.

It is nice and it is very special. Her beautiful voice suits the more stripped down versions of her own tracks. This is how they were meant to be heard. A relaxed crowd at first finally broke out of their shells when she played her hit Reuben. From then on, it was a magical night.

A song I hadn’t heard before, Rowing Your Own Heart Away (I stand to be corrected on the song’s title), really stopped me in my tracks. Beginning with a gorgeous, soothing melody, the latter half of the song broke into haunting and near disturbing harmonies. It was fantastic. Just three voices on stage and it sounded like an evil choir. Brilliant.

Proving her ridiculous amount of talent, she put aside her mandolin and guitar for a while to take to the drums, singing Can’t Lose It from the drum kit. She then nervously introduced The Nameless, but I’m not sure why she was so tentative about it – it was one of her best tracks.

Showing her relaxed professionalism, she had to stop the performance midway through Wild Rum, a song about alcoholics, because she forgot to plug in her mandolin. With ease, she laughed it off and picked right up where she left off. Just one of many lighthearted moments in a fun evening that ran until midnight in the intimate venue.

She closed her set with the 1920’s George Gershwin song, Do It Again. It was beautiful and relevent and closed her set perfectly. She returned to the stage for a crowd pleasing sing-along, Cole Porter‘s You Do Something to Me, where she dragged the very perplexed Raglans back on stage to do backing. With the whole crowd singing along, it was a very satisfying finish to an exciting night.

Notes:

• Check out more from Cathy Davey on her website or MySpace page.
• The Raglans have their own site too and there’s some tracks on their MySpace page.
• Molly Jenson is here and here.

Keep an eye on Greystones Theatre’s website to see what acts are coming up next. This week sees Director (plus very special guests) take over on Wednesday night and Brian Kennedy on Thursday, playing tracks from his new album of covers, Interpretations.

The Apprentice has gained quite the blogger following in recent weeks. Simon on LiveBlog.ie is hosting a live blog tonight, as well as our usual one. I hope ye all stick around and enjoy(?) tonight’s show with me as Bill Cullen finally chops the numbers down to the final three. Stuart, Orla, Nicky and Brenda are left standing. Who will survive to the final and the chance to be The Apprentice?

Maybury et al are having a blogging fund drive for Children’s Books Ireland.

CBI’s three primary goals are engaging young people with books, resourcing the children’s books community and reminding everyone of the importance of books for young people. One of the greatest gifts I got as a child was being encouraged to read. It has stood to me throughout life and that passion for books is still alive in me now. CBI tries to light that passion in the youth of today and any help you can give to their cause is greatly appreciated. Talk to Dave or go directly to ChildrensBooksIreland.ie and help in whatever way you can.

I closed my laptop and put it in my bag.

I put my scarf on and zipped up my jacket.

I took my wallet out of my pocket to get my train ticket.

I got up off my chair and walked to the door of the DART. It was just pulling in to Pearse Station.

I put my hand down to my pocket and couldn’t feel my wallet. I took a deep breath and went back to my seat. It wasn’t there.

I was beginning to worry slightly. The train came to a halt. I frantically looked under the seat and around the carriage. I knew I didn’t leave it at home, as I used it to pay for my newspaper in the shop in Greystones.

I hopped off the carriage just as the doors were closing. Panicked, I thought I must have left it in the shop.

Then I realised I was holding my wallet in my right hand.

I don’t have any prizes to give out but there’ll be fame and recognition for the best caption…

Eight years ago, Lottie and I kissed at the back of UGC cinema’s screening of Charlie’s Angels. Despite this inauspicious beginning, we have stayed together for eight years. From the early stage where no one (including ourselves) believed we would last right through to today where our friends seem to view us as that annoyingly lovey-dovey couple in the corner, I am proud to say the passion has never died.

Lottie has supported me through some of the darkest times of my life and she has been there at my side through all of it, when anyone else would have turned their backs. Equally, she has held my hand and laughed along during some of the greatest moments, many of which have been as recent as this year. I don’t care how mushy and loved up this post sounds, I want to tell her how much I love her and how important she is to me.

On Saturday night we were surrounded by some of our best friends and there is no better way we could have celebrated our anniversary. It was the second Burlesque Night we’ve been to and we’ll definitely be returning…

Look, I know I took too many pictures, but I just got a new camera and I was having fun with it. 🙂

If Lottie can have her payday delights, then surely so can I. On Thursday, my new Canon 1000D arrived in the post. It’s my first SLR and it’s damn sexy looking:

Now I just have to work out how to use it…

In her opening monologue Catherine Eaton borrows lines from Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Julius Caesar to introduce us to her character, Olivia, a woman in solitary confinement in a mental institution, under the care of her childhood doctor. The play that unfold asks the question, is Olivia mad or is she sanely telling her own truths in the only way she knows how, through the language of Shakespeare. This one woman play (which features the disembodied voice of Vincent O’Neill as the doctor) is a tour de force for the young actress and writer.

In interview Catherine says,

I took Shakespeare’s complete works, his canon apart, I fragmented it, and I rewove them together, fragment by fragment, to tell an entirely new narrative.

It’s an ambitious idea and one that works well. Once I stopped my brain from saying “I know that line; that’s from Hamlet; that’s from Romeo and Juliet”, and began to fall into the world she was creating, her narrative flowed beautifully to tell the story.

Sadly, it is her story’s finale that lets her down. Captivated by the battle of minds between Olivia and her doctor and teased by the subtle sexual tension (I’ll remind you that the tension is created solely by Eaton on her own on stage), I awaited a dramatic and climactic conclusion, and I felt let down by this. Perhaps she should have borrowed further from Shakespeare’s tragedies and given us a bloody end, or from his comedies and given us a love story with a happy ending, but she did neither of these. Instead we are left with a character still lost in her own mind, no further developed from the opening moments of the play.

This is a shame, because Eaton’s performance is so full of vigour, love, passion and even humour, that I willed her to have a decent end. Overall, it is like studying a set of monolgues from the Bard’s work. We explore tragedy and beauty, we examine madness, repression and the human spirit, but without the final act of Hamlet, without the tragic conclusion of Romeo and Juliet, without the satisfying farcical close of A Comedy of Errors, we are left with characters in limbo and unfortunately that’s where Olivia is stranded as the stage plumets into darkness.

I suspect Eaton purposely wanted to leave her character in limbo, neither freeing her to the world where she could be ‘normal’ nor condemning her for her madness. Eaton understandable empathises with her. Olivia is a woman who is passionately lost in the works of Shakespeare, as Eaton herself is/was. She sees nothing wrong with choosing only to speak in line from the playwright’s text. Olivia is incapable of even speaking her own surname, as it does not appear in the pages of this complete works. Eaton’s passion for Shakespeare is portrayed in Olivia’s actions and words, but somewhere along the path of writing her play, Eaton has forgotten that Olivia is in a psychiatric ward for a reason. It is madness and there is no method in’t.

I don’t want to be too negative. I enjoyed the play, I enjoyed Eaton’s performance. It was beautiful and courageous, but I would love to see her tweak the ending, or perhaps explain her reasons for the ending she gave it. As it stands, I would recommend the play to lovers of Shakespeare, but others may struggle to find merit in the production.

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It is only the second play I’ve seen in the Greystones Theatre and I look forward to more.  The theatre works so well for intimate pieces like this and it would be great to see more people enjoying the venue. As for Corsetless, it continues its travels across Ireland including a one night performance in the Axis in Ballymun. For more information see Stir Productions’ website.

The boy has his own badge. How could you not trust him…

I trust Tommy. Do you?

Sinéad O’Connor and Shane McGowan – Haunted

It happens every year around this time (okay, maybe it’s slightly earlier this year). As the evenings draw in and Christmas nears, Christmas lunches begin. And come 5.30pm, roaming the street like zombies are lone business men, in expensive suits, staggering from side to side as they desperately ponder where they may have parked their car.

I love seeing them. Their faces are all squirmed up in a weird expression, presumably their attempt at looking sober. They confidently put one foot in front of the other, but unfortunately their body doesn’t want to follow, so they hobble backwards a few feet. Walking in a straight line is not an option.

The first sign of Christmas is not the Budweiser adverts, it’s not the Christmas lights on Grafton Street, it’s not the first Christmas card you receive, it’s the drunken businessman with a bit of tinsel in his hair, staggering towards home.

How did I miss this? YouTube‘s first ever live streaming event happened in San Fran and Tokyo on Sunday night, featuring some of the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) YouTube stars, such as Bo Burnham, Fred, Tay Zonday, Happy Tree Friends and the incredible Charlie.  There were also guest performances from the delicious Katy Perry, will.i.am and Akon.

Check out the whole event – I have a long YouTube-filled evening ahead……

Via OurCountryPAC.org, this is a genuine advertisement thanking Sarah Palin. Watch it to the end. Wonderfully crazy!

Catherine Eaton sold out Carnegie Hall with her one woman show, Corsetless. Written by and starring Eaton, it tells the story of Olivia, a woman confined to a psychiatric ward. She’s been locked up there since the death of her grandfather, who was her sole guardian. Olivia chooses to speak only in Shakespearean text. Her doctor, who has known her since childhood, had her committed. Olivia wages a linguistic battle against the doctor and the medical team she believes is holding her in isolation, arguing that it’s her decision to take on this acquired language, that it’s a reasonable choice. Relaying a tale of mental illness through the use of Shakespeare’s text is an impressive project and one which has really piqued my interest.

Tomorrow night, Wednesday 26th November, Eaton brings her show to Greystones for one night only. I love Shakespeare and I’m fascinated to see how his text will be used to tell this story, so I’ll be heading down to see it. Anyone like to join me?

Okay, they may have made up for it this week, but that doesn’t detract from their massive fail.

G & C, you’re fired!