Or so say the bards....

From Admission, Jean Hanff Korelitz's otherwise decidedly non-celtic new novel:

Hungry Grass: "Wherever someone died in the Irish famine, if you walk over that spot, over the earth where they died, you feel weakness and hunger. Or so say the bards."

Never knew they, the bards, said this.

Things are quiet here in NYC as they usually are in mid-July. However, there has been an announcement as to the return of The Cambria by the Irish Arts Center in September for four weeks. It is slated for rotation with Frederick Douglass Now, a one-man show written and performed by Roger Guenveur Smith (Do the Right Thing, American Gangster). The Cambria is Irish writer/performer Donal O’Kelly’s play about Frederick Douglass’s historic trip to Ireland, where he was greeted as a hero by the Irish people. The Cambria features Donal O’Kelly and Sorcha Fox, with lighting by Ronan Fingleton and direction by Raymond Keane.

Mr. O'Kelly's theatrical and historical histrionics are not my cupan tae, but the subject matter is certainly worthwhile.

From Sligo to Cork: An inspiration for Neil Jordan's new movie

"Now must I these three praise
Three women that have wrought
What joy is in my days:"

The beginning of Yeats' poem Friends, read by Neil Jordan at last night's National Library's award- winning exhibition: Yeats: The Life and Works of  William Butler Yeats.

Especially poignant to read upon my return from a week-end away with three of my finest friends. 

But enough about me and moving on to the movies, moving from Galway's Druid to Sligo's Yeats and Mr. Jordan, and to the south, to Cork.

Mr. Jordan is fresh from completing Ondine with Colin Farrell and Stephen Rea. Co-starring is Mr. Farrell's Ballykissangel compatriot, Dervla Kirwan. Besides Ballykissangel and even more importantly Doctor Who, Ms. Kirwan is known for her stage work in Billy Roche's The Wexford Trilogy and the West End production of Brian Friel's The Aristocrats.

The movie, set and filmed in and around Castletownbere, West Cork, portrays a fairy tale of a fisherman who finds a woman in his nets. He is convinced that she is a mermaid, or more appropriately for the setting, or netting, a selkie, a seal who can take on human form. I'm thinking of John Sayles The Secret of Roan Inish and I am very pleased. Roan Inish is my second favorite Sayles movie, right behind Eight Men Out. How will Mr. Jordan's selkie story compare to the very American John Sayles'? Any thoughts? And why does Father keep a leather coat hidden in the roof?

Something Druid This Way Comes......

It is welcome news that Galway's Druid Theatre will be back at St. Ann's Warehouse this October with another Enda Walsh play, The New Electric Ballroom. I'm a huge fan. Mr. Walsh's work is glorious. And that's not the oxycodone talking.

The New Electric Ballroom was the hit of the 2008 Fringe Festival, following the 2007 success of Walsh's The Walworth Farce 

at the same festival. Christopher Isherwood opined that Ballroom was the female companion piece to the Farce in this NYT article last August.

Mikel Murfi, who directed The Walworth Farce in Brooklyn,received a Best Supporting Actor award from the Irish Times. Ballroom won Best New Play.

Has anyone seen it?! Would love to hear about it!

When the NYT writes an article about blogging in an empty forest....

I wasn't going to come back til Bloomsday. Seemed an appropriate day to renew the blog. Especially since this year's Symphony Space Bloomsday focuses on food! Unlike everyone else, I love food. All kinds and types. Food and James Joyce. I figured that would be enough to wake me from my stupor.

I was going to wait until the 16th, but today's paper had an entertaining article entitled Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest, and since I've been writing blogs that fall in empty forests for a year now, I thought it worth reprinting here. I may not have given up. But I can certainly understand the temptation.

Turning toward what's Irish in the NYC theatre world, now that I'm unsteadily back on my feet in the empty forest:

The Slant Theatre Project is presenting Conor McPherson's The Good Thief  in tandem with the premiere of Beneficiaries by Mat Smart. Should be a poignant night of theatre.

Good luck to all involved with Waiting for Godot at tonight's Tonys. Here is a fun interview with John Goodman and Bill Irwin on the Lenny Lopate Show, WNYC:

Thoughts toward summer in the Great White North.

On medical leave but perusing  The Shaw Festival brochures. The Devil's Disciple (Evan Buliung, below, in title role) is always a must-see for the junior set in the family.

And then there's Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell in the ubiquitous Importance of Being Earnest at the Stratford Festival.

Isn't that worth going through Canadian customs?

The Whereabouts of Sebastian Barry?

Tuesday it was One Washington News at NYU's Glucksman Ireland House. I got the chance to ask Mr. Barry about Saturday's conjecture: novelists don't make good playwrights. He laughed and replied that he hoped to live long enough to dispute the theory. He read from his book The Secret Scripture and took some questions from the packed house. Interestingly, the passages he chose to read were of Roseanne, the aged heroine of his book. He chose Roseanne, because Dr. Grene, the other major character in the book, made him uncomfortable to read: "he is the most autobiographical character I've ever created." Now I must re-read the book, for the 3rd time, with that disclosure in mind.

The Costa Award-winning novelist, who is also a good, no, great playwright, won Ireland's Novel of the Year Award last night at the Irish Book Awards last night in Dublin. 

Congratulations too to Conor McPherson. His movie Eclipse made the May 11th New York Magazine approval matrix. Upper right hand corner! A true cultural compliment.

Film Awards in the Triangle Below Canal Street

Greetings and salutations to Ciarán Hinds and Zoe Kazan for their Tribeca Film Festival Awards: Best Actor and Best Actress respectively. Ms. Kazan appeared in Bryan Delaney's The Onion Game last spring here in NYC. Mr. Hinds? Well, don't I talk about him every day?