Roald Dahl's Matilda battles bullies on Broadway

Bertie Carvel steals scenes and carries the show.

The truth is Matilda isn't one of Roald Dahl's most interesting works. Oh, it's a charming and typically dark effort by the old master and you'll certainly find yourself rooting for his bright and put-upon young creation, but there are contradictions in the narrative that make you wonder why it takes the time it takes for the story to end happily.

That's not the case with the Royal Shakespeare Company's absurdly entertaining new musical Matilda based on Dahl's book, now playing on Broadway.

This high octane production, which features choreography that's sometimes so athletically over the top it's a little exhausting to witness, manages to do the near impossible and outfit the slim story line with songs and dance routines that add immeasurably to the source material.

With it's theme of the imaginations power to push back against the ugly realities of life, and the power of books to transform any existence, you'll cheer as smart as a whip little Matilda learns to push back against the bully who wants to boss her around.

As Miss Trunchbull, actor Bertie Carvel inhabits the role of the headmistress from Hell so successfully you might as well award him a Tony right now (it's all but inevitable). His grotesque makeup, his hunched back, his shuffling walk and his vocal stylings are captivatingly sinister and unspeakably funny.

The four young American actresses who alternate in the title role have all successfully mastered their British accents, but in the first act their projection occasionally faltered in certain songs. But these are the teething troubles of a new production, the over all performance never misses a note.

Try to book your tickets now because they're going to become sought after. This show delivers the best new musical on Broadway since The Book of Mormon broke the bank.

Origin Theatre to wow at 1st Irish festival for the fifth time in New York

Jo Kinsella in 'For Love'

It's time to give Origin Theatre its due, because its fifth annual New York festival dedicated to Irish playwrights (the only one in the world, as it happens) is running from September 3 to October 1 in New York.

For Origin it’s been a catalogue of successes because the company is celebrating its 10th anniversary season, and this year the month-long festival features Irish plays and musicals from 11 contemporary Irish playwrights (plus Eugene O’Neill) in productions from Belfast, Dublin, Boston and New York. 

Each of the main stage shows of the 1st Irish, as the festival is called, will be presented at well known venues in the city like the Irish Rep, 59E59, the Irish Arts Center, the Cell and the Drilling Company. 

“Five years and we’ve featured 72 Irish playwrights to date. It’s amazing isn’t it,” Origin’s artistic director George Heslin tells the Irish Voice.

“It’s year five so now we’re getting a huge amount of applications for the festival from Irish companies, so this year we have a broader scope. It’s not just theater -- it’s musicals and other aspects of theater. This year we’ll stage panel discussions and related events too.”

Right on cue to offer his services and his star power is Origin’s newest honorary patron, the Irish and British actor Brendan Coyle (Downton Abbey). Coyle joined the company in May and will appear during the festival to announce an upcoming 1st Irish project in New York.

The Cell on West 23rd Street will be the venue that hosts the premiere of Hard Times, a new musical written by Black 47 front man Larry Kirwan that juxtaposes Irish and African-American folk traditions. Hard Times will run from September 12 to 29.

Other highlights include For Love by the gifted writer, director and performer Laoisa Sexton. It’s a play about three women navigating the choppy waters of Dublin nightlife. The play will have its world premiere at the Drilling Co. and run from September 25 to 30.

New York’s Double Decker Productions will present New York-based playwright Jimmy Kerr’s House Strictly Private, a dark comedy by this searingly funny writer set in rural Northern Ireland, at the Drilling Co. from September 26 to 30.

The Irish Arts Center will present the U.S. premiere of writer and performer (and Irish national treasure) Pat Kinevane’s Silent, one of the most talked-about shows in recent years. Produced by Ireland’s preeminent contemporary playwright theater company Fishamble, the Edinburgh Fringe winner arrives direct from its sold-out run at the Abbey and will play from September 6 to 23.

In another headline show, the critically acclaimed production of Marie Jones’ hilarious comedy Fly Me to the Moon will have its U.S. premiere at 59E59, and run from September 5 to 30. 

Alongside the plays there will be panel events that will include a night called Damn Yeats, We’ll Write Our Own Plays, which will be a guided conversation featuring 1st Irish artists about the unique perspectives, traditions and characters of Northern Ireland’s theatre scene dating back to the early 20th century. 

The talk will be hosted by NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House, which is located at 1 Washington Mews off lower Fifth Avenue, on Thursday September 6 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Another new aspect of the growing festival is an event titled 1st Irish on Film, from Stage to Screen, a new series that explores the challenges of adapting plays to film. 

Hosted by the New York Irish Center in association with the Irish Rep, the special event features the Irish Rep’s award-wining Ciaran O’Reilly, who will perform solo excerpts from Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa before introducing a screening of the 1998 film version starring Meryl Streep and Michael Gambon. The performance and screening will happen on September 7 and 21, both at 7:30 p.m.

There will also be a reading by author Tony Macaulay from his best-selling memoir Paperboy about growing up in West Belfast in the 1970s, hosted by the W.B. Yeats Society at the National Arts Club on September 17 at 6 p.m.

And for one night only there will be a special performance of celebrated Irish actor Garrett Keogh’s play Setanta Murphy, a drama that addresses themes of life and death, which will be presented by American Irish Historical Society in association with Origin Theatre Company on Tuesday September 11 at 7 p.m.

Visit www.1stIrish.org.

Tiny Dynamite displays new Irish talent

Love's essence is always intangible, but it produces substantial consequences. In Abi Morgan's absorbing new drama, which has been given a compelling production by Origin Theatre Company at 59 East 59 Theatre, who we are to each other is at the heart of a bruising lifelong dance between three characters.

Lucien was a shy boy who has grown into a overly cautious and haunted young man (Christian Conn) and Anthony (Blake DeLong) is a ne'er-do-well who was struck by lightening when he was six and looks fated to live out a damaged existence under the watchful eye of his old friend.

Morgan underscores the enduring love between the two friends, which crucially runs just a little deeper than the mistrust that occasionally brims to the surface between them. As adolescents we learn that both men once loved a young woman who took her own life. The affection was so deep, the loss so profound, they can barely bring themselves to speak of it.

Instead what they do is go on an annual ritual: Lucien makes his yearly attempt to rehabilitate Anthony by taking him on a back to nature summer vacation. Fresh air, a bath, some new threads, regular meal times - these are the fairly patronizing moves Lucien makes to reconnect with his old pal and his past.

But gratitude and affection share the stage with moments of snarling anger and clearly unfinished business. Morgan knows that the two men, locked in a dance they can not end, have reached an emotional impasse and so she introduces a blow-in in the shape of Madeline (Olivia Horton) a free spirit who works the spot during the summer vacation months.

Left to their own devices the two men have worn themselves out with abstract philosophical speculations about the nature of creativity and destruction, which they at all times seem on the edge of themselves, until Madeline makes all that fine talk concrete through her presence and through recognizing the wrenching heartache that's behind all the smoke and mirrors.

Men, the playwright reminds us, can exhaust themselves with drunkenness and competition indefinitely, and perhaps Morgan indulges them too much in this respect. It is left to Olivia to be the foil and to bring the plays overarching themes of betrayal and redemption into focus.

But along the way the play meanders and then focuses in a way that can prove jarring to the viewer. Each time we find ourselves getting closer to the three characters and the interior objectives that motivate them it seems a philosophical debate erupts that pushes us away again or holds us at arms length. It's a frustrating tic that throws a veil of uncertainty over the proceedings just at the points when you most hope to connect. Morgan certainly seems as interested in experimenting with the plays form as she is in creating compelling characters and although this is admirable artistically it continually undermines the drama onstage.

Director Matt Torney has created one of the most lucid productions of a new play that I have witnessed in New York in a decade. Torney strips the stage and the production to their theatrical essence as though to compensate for and clarify the abstractions in the text. In the process he has mined the emotions that propel the three young characters and he has added immeasurably to the depth of this work. Torney's staging is eloquent, immensely confident and frequently beautiful to look at, coaxing remarkable performances from the cast.

In the end though it's Morgan's curious and reflexive introspection in the text that fails to satisfy. We learn of the private passions that have driven her characters and we come to care for them too, but the plays thematic obsessions consistently trump all other considerations.

Love may be intangible, but after witnessing how it has first leveled and then promised to redeem her three characters, there's a steep human dimension to these engagements that the play demurs.

Steve Kazee and "Once" score Tony triumps - VIDEOS

Irish musical Once walked off with the largest haul of trophies at the 2012 Tony Awards last night and in this clip Steve Kazee (who won Best Actor in A Musical last night) shows us why.

Kazee, 36, who gives his all to his portrait of a wounded young Dubliner with a song in his heart, lost his mother at Easter whilst the show was still in preparation. Lat night Kazee remembered her in an emotional tribute that brought supporters to their feet.

In his acceptance speech he quoted Arthur O'Shaughnessy, the poet of Irish descent, saying : 'We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.'

For Kazee and for the cast and crew of Once, those dreams came true last night.

Review - Not drowning but swimming - “Jump in and Start Swimming”

Cover of James P. Naughton's new book

Author James P. Naughton’s Irish parents taught him a thing or two about resilience growing up. Arriving in the U.S. for the first time in the fiercely cold winter of 1930, at the very height of the Great Depression, his Co. Mayo-born mother and father learned the hard way how to survive -- and thrive -- against the odds.
Naughton’s own story is one of learning how to overcome hardships, too. After almost dropping out of high school and then being refused by every college he applied to due to his poor SAT scores, Naughton finally heeded his Irish mother’s wise words.

What she told him eventually became the title of his new book, Jump In and Start Swimming.

Heeding her never-say-die approach, Naughton finally found a college that would accept him. Although he intended to become a teacher and majored in English, he ultimately chose a business career instead, with spectacular results.

As a businessman he went on to great success, in his last post managing to raise a billion dollars in a single year.

With that kind of business acumen and experience behind him, it occurred to Naughton to share his practices with others, and this inspirational book is the result.

Some people will groan at the idea. American bookshelves are already heaving under the weight of every kind of Get Rich Look Good Be Happy self-help title out there, so what makes Naughton’s so special?

“I think that half the country doesn’t know that there’s a recession on,” Naughton tells the Irish Voice.

“I live in Rhode Island, and if you go to the restaurants and bars the lines are four deep. But if you visit Providence, parts of it look like a war zone.

“During the Great Depression during the 1930s you knew the country was in trouble because you could see the bread lines. Now we have another terrible recession, and this time the people most affected are harder to see.”

Naughton says he wrote his book to remind young people of his favorite saying -- you have to go along to get along. If you’re jobless and feeling the pinch, he says, try to land the first paying position you can because it can lead to better opportunities down the road.

“My own kids don’t want to hear that message because we wanted to protect them from the harsher side of life. But now that we’re in a more challenging economic climate they will have to get used to the idea that they won’t have a career and big bucks handed to them as a kind of birthright.”

The situation in 2012 is a tale of two economies, Naughton says.

“My own friends, people I’ve worked alongside on Wall Street, will deny to my face that there is a new level of hardship out there. For them it’s the best of times. They literally don’t see that half the country is often despairing.”

Naughton has personal experience of the economic winds that are prevailing since what he calls the atomic bomb of the second Great Depression began in 2008. It ended his own Wall Street career.

Working as a financial wholesaler, he was laid off without warning. “I thought I was invincible, I was the number one guy in the industry, let alone my firm, and then my oldest son got laid off -- and he has three kids,” Naughton said.

Naughton got laid off in what the financial industry calls a Reduction In Force (an RIF).

“It’s a new age term for a layoff,” he scoffs. “I assume the company decided that they would cut my job because of my age and everything else.

“But I remembered that my father came over in the worst economic crisis to ever hit the country and I don’t believe it can ever get that bad again because we have Social Security, we have unemployment, we have better protections now,” he adds.

To battle the challenges of the current time, the economic survival skills from an earlier age, first taught to him by his own parents, will be necessary to relearn. So Naughton’s book’s title refers to having the faith in oneself to navigate the looming icebergs.

“This is a great book for anyone who is seeking post-college employment, the returning veteran, the unemployed and the underemployed. It’s based on my own life and career and the lessons it taught me that can’t be taught in school.  The book also offers high school students a reason to stay in school,” Naughton explains. “My message is start somewhere. Take a position. Trust your own abilities and create your own path. That’s the best way to thrive that there is.”

For information on Jump In and Start Swimming, visit www.keypublishingcompany.com, or call 401-486-9601.

Conan O'Brien says goodbye to Newt Gingrich's campaign

Last night Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter said goodbye to Newt Gingrich's ill-fated presidential campaign in the best way they know how.

Michael Fassbender plays a robot in "Prometheus" - Video goes viral

 Michael Fassbender

Irish actor Michael Fassbender plays a robot (but the humanoid kind with emotions) called David in the forthcoming sci-fi film of the summer Prometheus.

Watch him revel in the opportunity to play a man-machine. Squeel over those breathy pauses.

This is what a word class actor having fun looks like.

We reckon there's more than a little disturbing foreshadowing going on in this viral clip. How much do you want to bet he's going to malfunction?

Gavin Friday - Irish pop genius - VIDEO

Gavin Friday

Gavin Friday, who is quite wonderfully sui generis, makes our list for one of the most singular pop talents Ireland has produced.

Here he reminds you why.

This track, titled "Able", is taken from his recent album "Catholic":