Arts & Culture

ENNIS Musical Society is setting the scene for a musical with a difference this month as it stages The Addams Family A New Musical. Featuring an original story this show has all the spooky characters audiences will know and love from the two films. Based on an original story and score the show sees the head of the Addams clan, Gomez, played by Galwegian Alan Greaney, placed in every father’s nightmare, when his only daughter, Wednesday, played by Aoibheann Malone, has grown up and fallen in love. This musical comedy sees Wednesday, the ultimate princess of darkness form an unlikely bond with a sweet, smart young man from a respectable family – a man her parents have never met, Lucas Beineke, played by Ennis’ Daniel Lynch. And if that weren’t upsetting enough, Wednesday confides in her father and begs him not to tell her mother. Now, Gomez Addams must do something he’s never done before – keep a secret from …

Sam Gaines and his partner, Sadhbh O’Neill, have experienced first-hand how creativity has healed and given purpose to their lives, following a life-changing diagnosis. TWENTY years ago life changed for East Clare based couple Sam Gaines and Sadhbh O’Neill, when Sam was diagnosed with MS. Both working artists, Sam and Sadhbh have journeyed along a tough road adapting to their changing circumstances. They had no idea what MS was or how it would effect Sam but they never let the illness define Sam or stop them from doing anything. “MS is very personal and effects everyone in different ways. Two years ago Sam’s health plummeted and everything changed again. MS now stopped us in our tracks. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would end up where we are today. We had plans and dreams for our future, this wasn’t one of them. We have absolutely no idea what tomorrow will bring or how Sam will be. It …

DON Baker and Rob Strong celebrate 50 years on the road this year and are bringing their recently recorded album, Brothers In Arms to an Ennis audience this weekend. Ahead of the gig, Don, a prolific singer or songwriter, whose songs have been recorded by Sinead O’Connor, Eleanor McEvoy, Brian Kennedy, Declan O’Rourke, Finbar Furey, and Liam Ó’Maonlaí discussed his music career. Described by Bono as “the best harmonica player in the world”, Don says he is “just a normal bloke that happens to play instruments, I’m very ordinary”. Although his real passion is for music, his career has had many interesting turns, many of them “accidental”. He has played alongside Daniel Day Lewis in ‘In the Name of the Father’ as well as playing gangster Thomas Flynn in Fair City. He is an accomplished song writer with several published books in various languages on how to play the harmonica. So how did this “ordinary bloke” end up with so …

IN celebration of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, Galway Film Centre, in partnership with Clare and Galway county councils, with support from the Heritage Council of Ireland, have announced the commissioning of a documentary series with filmmaker Paul Murphy. Entitled Stories from the Landscape: The European Dimension, the project will involve the production of two short documentaries on the theme of landscape and will record aspects of our built and natural heritage across Europe, in both Ireland and Austria. The first film will look at the tradition of dry stone wall building and will visit two festivals that celebrate this; Féile na gCloch on Inis Oírr on the Aran Islands and Stein Und Wein, which takes place in Langenlois in the north-east of Austria. Though many miles apart, both Inis Oírr and Langenlois celebrate the tradition of dry stone walling with festivals that are both regional and local development strategies towards sustainable tourism. The second film will focus on …

CERTAIN unsolved crimes echo in Ireland’s consciousness over decades, with names like Philip Cairns, Raonaid Murray and Trevor Deely still recognisable long after their deaths or disappearances. What happens when a crime goes unsolved for far too long is the theme of Rachael English’s new novel, The Night of the Party, set in Clare during the heavy snow of 1982. In her fictional village of Kilmitten, parish priest Fr Galvin is killed, and the crime remains still unsolved a generation later. “Even though it starts with a crime, I wouldn’t really call it a crime novel. You could probably call it a mystery in the old-fashioned way. It’s not a modern thriller, with fingerprints and DNA and serial killers,” says the author and RTÉ presenter, who hails from Shannon. The story shows how being close to a terrible event, but not talking about it, can reverberate through a life, with one of the main characters carrying a dark secret from …

Ennis actress Denise Gough has spoken about receiving a nomination for a Tony Award. The Tony Awards are among the most prestigious in theatre and recognise excellence in Broadway productions. The 2018 event will be held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on June 10, while it will be broadcast live by CBS across America. Ms Gough has been nominated for her part in Angels in America, a play set in the mid-1980s, during the AIDS crisis and the conservative Regan administration. Unusually, the play is performed in two parts, due to its massive duration. Part One: Millennium is three and a half hours long, while Part Two: Perestroika is four hours long. Ms Gough has received her nomination in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play category. Susan Brown, who also appears in Angels in America, has been nominated in the same category. “I was in bed when my agent …

A new artists studio facility, initiated by the Arts Office of Clare County Council, will open in Ennis on Tuesday next. Orlaith McBride, director of The Arts Council of Ireland, will officially launch the EASI studios, based in the Tracklands Business Park. The development of the facility was one of the actions identified in the Clare Arts Development Plan and will support artists in the Ennis area by providing flexible and affordable studio facilities across a variety of artistic disciplines. “EASI, stands for Ennis Access to Spaces Initiative, an initiative aimed at developing creative spaces in the town,” explained Siobhán Mulcahy, Clare County Arts Officer. She continued, “This particular facility offers artists the opportunity to work in individual and shared workspaces. It is envisaged that the studios will appeal to a range of artistic disciplines including, but not limited to, visual arts and digital based activity.” She explained that the artists studio will also facilitate arts organisations and those working …

EAST Clare author Edna O’Brien has been honoured with her appointment as Dame of the British Empire for her services to literature. It comes six weeks after the Tuamgraney native was named as the winner of the PEN/Nabokov award for achievement in international literature. Her nephew, Michael Blake, said this was “a long time coming” and said, having spoken to her on Wednesday and Tuesday of this past week, that Edna is delighted with the honour. He said she is currently busy working on her latest book and has found the last few weeks very busy, but rewarding. “She is very happy to have this title, she got it for her contribution to literature and that is what her life is about, it’s not about monetary reward. She got the Pen award and now she’s got this so now she feels ‘maybe I’m doing something right and maybe all those hours of frustration and desperation were worth it’. A writer …