The Arts Review​

Rex Ryan in The Witness. Image by Kate Glynn ***** Rex Ryan likes crime. Which is not to accuse him of committing any, just to recognise his proclivity towards stories of true-life Irish crime. He also enjoys one-man shows in which he directs himself. The triple threat of writer, performer, and director once again looking at the Dublin criminal landscape from the late nineties in his latest offering The Witness. Based on Nicola Tallant’s book, The Witness: The Story of Joey T

High Society. Image by Pamela Raith **** It’s almost impossible to convey how popular High Society was when it premiered in 1956. With music and lyrics by Cole Porter, book by Arthur Kopit, based on the play The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry (made into a hugely popular movie in 1940), its star power of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly was enough to guarantee success. The nearest modern equivalent would be if Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, with both having the musica

The Rose of Castile. Image uncredited. ***** It might be a 19th-century opera, but under Heather Hadrill’s excellent direction, Michael William Balfe’s The Rose of Castile gets a generational facelift. The Irishman’s 1857 opera, chosen for the inaugural Wexford Festival Opera in 1951, transformed into a 1920s Hal Roach, Laurel and Hardy-style comedy. A Depression-era love story of queens and commoners, flappers and disguises, comic misunderstandings and political intrigue tha