| Arts flourish at Galway Festival  Tourists
and art aficionados crowded the streets of Galway City for the 30th annual
Galway Arts Festival during the last two weeks of July.
Despite the rainiest summer Ireland has seen in years, the street performers
were out in full force. Colorfully dressed mimes posed as statues, the
tunes of local musicians echoed through the streets, and theatrical groups
such as The Gombeens Theater troupe gave free performances of satirical
comedies.
Festival highlights included an art exhibit by Sean Lynch, whose work
explores a wide range of forgotten historical subjects, and an exhibit
of women war photographers. Traditional music sessions at the Róisín
Dubh pub hosted bands such as Moonshine, Brian McGrath and local hero
John Faulkner.
Evening concerts featured a mix of American, English, Cuban, Canadian,
Scottish and Irish bands. Among some of the most popular shows were Alabama
5, The Divine Comedy and Laura Veirs.
As if all this weren’t enough to keep a person busy, the festival
offered many world-class theater and literary readings.
The performance of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia Here I Come was profoundly
moving: the story of a young man in the 1950s excited at the prospect
of leaving Ireland for America, yet struggling with past regrets and fears
at giving up all he has ever known and loved to venture into the unknown.
The New York-based The Team gave a refreshingly unique performance of
Particularly in the Heartland, a new play that invited audience members
to participate in the show while challenging them to question what it
means to be American in a changing world.
Among the most popular theater shows were Chicago’s Steppenwolf
Theater’s performance of Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited,
and the debut of Patrick McCabe’s brilliantly disturbing new play
The Revenant. McCabe was on hand at the Radisson Hotel to give a chilling
reading from his new novel Winterwood. In what was probably the best opening
in the festival’s history, McCabe began in characteristic offbeat
style by playing 1960s rock music for several minutes without a word of
explanation and then launching into a reading of selections from his earlier
book Gems of the Emerald Isle. He finished up with excerpts from Winterwood
and, to judge by his reading, the novel is no less haunting or intense
than McCabe’s critically acclaimed novel The Butcher Boy. –
By Bridget English
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