Look at books - Irish artists, fiction and history

Prodigals And Geniuses

By Brendan Lynch

The Irish love a good pub within walking reach and Ireland’s most gifted artists and thinkers have been no exception. As Paris has it’s Left Bank and New York has its Upper West Side, for decades Dublin’s bohemian quarter has been centered around Baggot Street and Leeson Street, fringed by the Grand Canal.

Among it’s familiars were four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature and nearly every major Irish writer of the 19 century, including Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and even Samuel Beckett.

Along the way Lynch conjures long lost Dublin like a magician. He never forgets how proud the capital city is of its distinguished writers and he never forgets how disdainfully it usually treated them when they actually lived there.

Lynch clearly loves his subjects and this is no more apparent than when he disccuses playwright Brendan Behan. “We’ve a lot to thank the British for,” Behan tells the author one morning in Dublin in 1958. “Did you ever see such handsome houses or squares? As my bardic neighbor John Montague might say, you can feel the rhythm. Look at those railings. And the granite steps dancing in the sun, wouldn’t they make your granny skip?”

Love for the locality and the mad collection of intellectuals, chancers and hangers on that assembled there once, and still assemble there now, animates every page of this deeply affectionate, brilliant and brilliantly gossipy book.

Dufour Editions, $31.95.

Cold Eye Of Heaven

By Christine Dwyer Hickey

In novelist Christine Dwyer Hickey’s new book we meet 75-year-old Dubliner Farley, an old man at the close of his days reflecting over the events that shaped him.

It’s quite a trick to peel away the layers of experience to dig to the root of her subject and reveal what makes him tick, but Dwyer Hickey is equal to it. Along the way she recreates a vanished Dublin, it’s sights and sounds and it’s magical vernacular, in a conjuring trick that will beguile you from the first page. (Christine Dwyer Hickey will read from and sign copies of Cold Eye Of Heaven at The Irish Arts Center at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, September 24).

It’s instructive to watch how regret can grow and take over a life until it’s all that remains of a person, and Dwyer Hickey shows us how loneliness can be the outcome of a poor choice, and one that spreads around a life like fog.

Dwyer Hickey also has the skill to take her time, offering a leisurely portrait of a man in lyrical prose that creates his world and his legacy so vividly you’ll think that all that separates you from him is a page. This is ambitious work, elegantly crafted.

Atlantic Books, $7.99.

Overcoming Violence

By Johnston McMaster

Ireland’s history, even in recent times, has been ferociously violent. Over centuries a cycle of outrage and revenge has characterized the seemingly endless conflict between warring traditions intent on giving no quarter.

What to do in a stalemate that cannot ever be won? And what of Christianity, that promotes peace but has shown itself to be all to quick to add kindling to long simmering resentments? Those questions have exercised minds for centuries.

In Overcoming Violence author McMaster explores the roots of the sectarian violence in Ireland, wresting the message of compassion and love from the destructive theology of the Old Testament.

In particular he laments the Irish myth of redemptive violence, which was all too popular with both sides in the Easter Rising and the Irish Civil war. Nothing good comes from anger and insult and McMaster wants to reminds us of the fact. Bad theology cannot be an excuse for more violence.

So what is strong enough to take the place of a culture of violence centuries in the making? A new value system, McMaster argues, and a new ethics based on non-violence that includes peace and compassion. We don’t just need to demilitarize our society; we need to do the same with our mindsets and spirituality.

Faith offers the most devastating critique of violence, and it can only work when it counters the violent theology and God that has been carefully but erroneously erected in Ireland over four centuries.
Columba Press, $26.95.

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.

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.