AFTERNOON DELIGHT AT THE IRISH ARTS CENTER!!

The Irish Arts Center houses one of the best bars and lobbies in New York City. A saloon of sorts, it’s all about conversation. There are no racks of televisions distracting you – it’s a special place where you can mingle with peers, punters, and others with a love for Irish culture and theatre.

Like many, I don’t get out as much as I used to but that’s okay, because at the IAC I usually run into 30 or so people I know - or should know - and many’s the confidence is exchanged over some well-pulled pints.

On a recent afternoon I met friends and acquaintances from all over the US, Ireland and the UK as we gathered for Culture Ireland’s Meet The Irish 2025. It featured six Irish theatre companies showcasing  their work, courtesy of this driven and benevolent Irish Government organization.

Culture Ireland has been in operation for 20 years and their brief is to fund Irish artists and arts organizations, and help them promote their work worldwide. 

Led by indefatigable director, Sharon Barry, they do an outstanding job. So far, they have awarded over 9000 grants to the tune of €84m.

The list of those they’ve assisted is vast and consists of household names and “complete unknowns,” to quote Bob Dylan.

Like many New York artists I’ve never been blessed with, nor applied for, any kind of grant, so I doff my hat to the Irish government in its willingness to promote home-grown artists – money well invested that will return all sorts of dividends.

Not that any of the six acts I saw at the IAC seemed spoiled or spoon-fed, the cost and scars of developing their art were evident, but each showed a desire to portray the new Ireland they inhabit.

Confident, fearless, provocative, passionate - the work I saw often delighted in banishing shadows and exposing what lay behind them in the old Ireland.

One surprise, there was little in the way of broad politics on display, although sexuality, gender, identity, intellectual development, family, and other topics received bracing treatments. Then again, take away the issue of race, and you could say much the same for current American theatre.

Each company in their short, allotted time tackled their particular subject, or obsession, with such depth that certain thoughts and images still spring to mind.

I found Bellow, the opening piece, very moving. It examined the life commitment to Traditional Irish Music of ace accordion player, Danny O’Mahony, through the prism of Brokentalkers, a modern experimental theatre group. Gerry Keegan was an accomplished and ever-probing guide and interrogator.

Grace, a play for young people, will touch anyone who has cared for a person with developmental issues. It concerns a father and daughter who have no need of words to communicate. When the father dies, Grace must find new ways of “talking.” But then, “love doesn’t need words. You can just feel it.” And we did.

Gina Moxley looked, sounded, cajoled and provoked like some of the artists at the old Dance Theatre Workshop in Chelsea. I look forward to seeing a full production of her I Fall Down – A Restoration Comedy. She’s funny, irreverent, and just what you need if you’re suffering from a case of the blahs. I regret not meeting her over a pint.

I’d always wondered what Mark O’Rowe’s work was like, and then realized I’d already read a review of Reunion. This “zinger of a play” is probably the closest to “regular” theatre. Given its universal theme of family reunion, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it ensconced someday at a large Off-Broadway house.

Illness As Metaphor is based on the Susan Sontag book that caused a sensation in New York some years back. Dead Centre, a much toured and acclaimed theatre group, deals not so much with illness, but the language used to describe illness in a serious but witty manner. I still shiver when I think of this gripping piece, for it addresses trials many of us will face.

London-Irish woman Emer Dineen exploded onto stage in 0800 Cupid by THISISPOPBABY – a cross between Freddy Mercury and Cáit O’Riordan in drag. Her hymn to Jesus was electric, honest, and a fine song that stands on its own merits. I did have a pint with her and can’t wait to have more.

What a way to spend a cold Monday afternoon. Thank you, IAC and Culture Ireland.

WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA

 So here we go again. Round 2 with President Trump. 

I have little doubt that he is the most influential American politician of the last 80 or so years. But this is the America we live in: where self-entitlement, whining, and lying are more important than self-sacrifice, a degree of modesty, and trying to make life better for your fellow citizens.

I sometimes wonder if the pandemic wiped away some of our ability to focus on the  preceding years?

I recall the first Trump presidency as a time of unmitigated chaos. In fairness, Mr. Trump himself seemed shell-shocked when it became apparent that he was about to become president.

He was inheriting a first class economy that during the Obama years had gained over 10 million jobs, unemployment was down to a low 4.7%, 15 millions more Americans had health insurance and the S&P 500 was up 166%.

Apart from the continuous lies, about-faces and narcissism of the Trump years I remember three major events. A 35-day shutdown of the US Government over building the wall that he boasted Mexico would fund – that fit of infantile pique cost the country $11billion; the ripping up of a hard earned nuclear treaty with Iran, and of course the pandemic itself when our president folded, amid suggestions like shooting up disinfectant as a solution.

He's never been a great man for a crisis, but he does have streaks of luck – how amazing none of them coincided with his casino ventures; but once more he has inherited another first class economy.

President Biden might not have been able to keep eggs at a reasonable price, but in his four years he has created 16 million jobs, unemployment averaged around 4%, while the S&P 500 has gone through the roof.

The problem with President Trump is knowing when to believe him. Then again, he doesn’t appear to know himself. During the recent campaign he promised to slash grocery prices immediately he gained office. 

Now he’s admitting that such a task will be “very hard.” No one seems to have informed him that if he follows his two big campaign pledges – to introduce tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, plus deport great swathes of immigrants -– prices and inflation will inevitably soar again.

But is there a method to his madness? Perhaps all his threats and bluster have been designed to cause “fake news” journalists to fling their laptops at the wall and head for the pub.

He’s definitely serious about reducing taxes - just like every other billionaire. 

The Trump Tax cuts of 2017 provided the top 20% of earners over 65% of the benefits (the top 1% netted approximately 20%). But in such matters, he’s very democratic - every taxpayer got a smidgin of relief; the problem was, the country couldn’t afford it.

The current national debt is $35 trillion and the annual interest that we’re collectively forking out has now reached serious proportions.

Still, the main thrust of the new Trump presidency will be another tax give-away that, along with other campaign promises, could up the national debt to well over $40 trillion. Hey, they don’t call him the King of Debt for nothing. 

 

No wonder he’s hanging down in Mar-a-Lago with Musk and Bezos – both of whom have rockets that can leave this debt-ridden, blazing country behind and zoom off to tax-free Mars.

I hope he’s budgeting mucho trillions for the climate catastrophes he’ll soon be dealing with. Makes you wonder why he’d want to be president – maybe he does actually believe extreme weather is all a hoax!

What does America stand for anymore? I used to think I knew.

Then I look back at the footage from January 6, 2021. I see a mob of half-addled “patriots” summoned to DC by a venal man who refused to accept the will of the voters.

I see some of that mob using American flags to beat policemen whose job it is to protect the Capitol. 

I see more of that mob searching for the Vice-President with intent to do him harm, and I know that President Trump sat on his hands rather than call in the national guard to safeguard lives and the constitution. 

And now President Trump, who could not beat his own felony charges, intends to grant pardons to convicted members of that mob. But then, maybe he’s lying about that too. 

Welcome to the new America. 

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN - DON'T LOOK BACK

The old Philips tube radio was my best friend in those Wexford boyhood days. It took a couple of minutes to warm up but then it delivered the sweetest, fullest sound. And on a particular evening I had it blazing, for I was alone in my grandfather’s house.

From the first notes of a new song - a big jumble of Hammond organ, Fender Stratocaster, and an in-your-face New York rhythm section - I knew the world was changing. By the time Bob Dylan sang, I knew he had changed too, for he was no longer the polite folkie apologizing, “look out your window and I’ll be gone;” instead, he was sneering a caustic kiss-off, “How does it feel to be on your own... a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”

It was a Rock ‘n’ Roll moment I’ve treasured down the years. Within a week I’d learned the full four verses, and have sung them well over a thousand times. A gig can be falling on its face, but that song can always turn around a saloon, a club or even a stadium.

So, I was leery about seeing A Complete Unknown with Timothée Chalamet as the young Dylan who went electric with that song, and turned the 1965 Newport Folk Festival on its ear.

His portrayal of Dylan is excellent, as far as it goes. He definitely captures the confident young singer who hitches from Minnesota to Greenwich Village, and in short order becomes the reigning prince of Folk City, Café Wha and wherever else acoustic guitars were plucked.

There are beautiful moments when he visits Woody Guthrie, wasting away from Huntington’s Disease in a New Jersey Hospital, and assumes his mantle.

His quirky romances with Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez are handled sensitively, and Monica Barbaro as Joan is a knockout both in voice and character. 

Director James Mangold captures the essence of the West Village as “the times they are a’changing,” though much was apparently filmed in Jersey City and Hoboken.

Chalamet even sparks rare glimpses of Dylan’s cyclonic artistic vision, and his refusal to allow anyone to limit it. 

Dylan is still a wonder - even now in his 80’s he’s out there touring, doing it his way. I saw him some years back in unfashionable Bridgeport; after waiting through two long opening acts, most of his boomer audience had drifted off home because he refused to pay homage to his standards. 

He wasn’t even playing guitar anymore, arthritis had choked his hands, but his new songs sounded great. 

I was proud of Dylan. He still didn’t give a fiddler’s, it was his way or the highway, and that’s something Hollywood never captures when it comes to Rock ‘n’ Roll. The vision and toughness of legendary musicians – I am the boss, and I know best.

Chalamet gives it his all but method acting, no matter how good, can only take you so far. You’ve had to have done it to pull it off – to have been there on stage and know that you are right and the rest of the world is wrong.

That’s what’s missing in Chalamet’s very honest portrayal: edge, toughness, hardness, whatever you want to call it. And that only comes from a life on the road, failure, messing up, then picking up the pieces and pushing on. Samuel Beckett summed it up best, “fail better.”

Oddly enough, the actor playing a lit-up Johnny Cash backstage at the Newport Festival does capture that essence; whereas an ever-smiling Ed Norton, though he’s receiving almost universal accolades, doesn’t come close to capturing the Pete Seeger I knew. 

He definitely nails the enveloping warmth and grace of this iconic figure, but not Pete’s craggy patrician nature or, for that matter, his sheer orneriness. Dude stood up to the US Government and wouldn’t name names during the McCarthy witch hunts. He preferred to lose his living and be blacklisted.

Pete was an almost biblical man of principle who didn’t waste smiles – but when you earned one, oh man, did you bask in it.

So, go see Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown, it’s a lovely, if innocent, look at a watershed moment in popular culture. 

Then check out Don’t Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker’s unsparing look at Dylan, the hard man of genius. His destiny was to change music and sweep so much else aside, and oh my, did he do so – and spectacularly!