Galway casts its spell with Arts Festival
The Galway International Arts Festival gets into full swing this week. Among the highlights this year are concerts by Sinead O’Connor, St Vincent, and Damien Rice, a provocative exhibition of the works of Australian visual artist Patricia Picinini, a new film installation by Enda Walsh, and a number of intriguing theatre productions, including Samuel Beckett’s Lessness starring Olwen Fouéré, controversial South African show Exhibit B, and the festival’s flagship theatre event — the Irish premiere of Frank McGuinness’s The Match Box, starring Cathy Belton.
As a native of Galway City, Belton knows all too well the spell that the arts festival can cast over the city in midsummer. She vividly recalls the enormous spectacle that the celebrated French street theatre company Royal de Luxe brought to the city in 1991, and she can recollect earlier childhood memories still, days spent accompanying her parents into Galway’s bustling streets to take in assorted spectacles, whatever the festival might throw at them.
“My mom and dad would often take their own holidays around that time and we’d go into town in the morning, see an exhibition, go to a play that night,” she says. “There was such exposure to major international acts. It was extraordinary, such a great gift to be exposed to that in Galway and for it to have been so accessible as well. I think that’s what quite special about the arts festival. It’s not remotely elitist and there is something for everybody.”
Belton is now one of the country’s most accomplished stage actors, and well-known, too, for her roles in film (Philomena) and TV (Red Rock). Performing in the arts festival for the first time is a significant occasion. “It’s so exciting,” she says. “To be able to do this play at home is such a privilege, but it’s also one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. I have such great support from amazing family and friends in Galway, but you just want the show to be the best it can be.”
The Match Box centres on Sal, a London woman of Irish descent who — destroyed with grief by the cruel loss of her 12-year-old daughter — retreats to Valentia Island on the Kerry coast. “Sal’s life has been utterly transformed by this one event,” explains Belton. “Her whole life is ripped apart. But the thing that gets you is that, as an audience, you think that you’re on top of this play. You say, ‘Ah, this is about a grieving mother. This will be very interesting.’ But then it turns into something else, which, of course, only McGuinness can do. He’s a lover of the Greeks, and of figures like Electra and Hecuba, and The Match Box turns into something very Greek — which is an extraordinary thing to accomplish in a one-woman play. The play shows what a shocking and destructive loss like this can do to a person.”
Belton has worked with McGuinness before, starring in his production of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman and the premiere of his own play, The Hanging Gardens, both at the Abbey Theatre. She is a huge admirer of the Donegal writer’s work. “He has a huge heart, a passion, and ferocity,” she says. “There is something quite raw about Frank that I love in his writing. It’s a very, very muscular language. And all that is combined with this great love of life and people, at the end of it. Even though a lot of his subjects are very dark, you come out of a Frank McGuinness play with an affirmed sense of life.”
Researching for the part, Belton took a trip to Valentia Island. “It was important to go there. That’s where the play is set and I just needed to walk the roads and get those images in my head, to feel them. Whether it will pay off, I’ve no idea. But it was good. I took a lot of photos and put them around the rehearsal room, and I find that sort of research helpful. I try to surround myself with as much stuff as possible and then I can start to find the character.”
Galway International Arts Festival - The Highlights
Patricia Piccinini – Festival Gallery, July 13-26
The work of Australian visual artist Piccinini is wholly distinctive. Examining the outer reaches of natural imagery and technology, she has produced some of the most uncanny spectacles imaginable. In addition to the exhibition itself, Galway residents can look forward to the image of her impressive Skywhale – a giant tortoisy-looking hot air balloon with mammary-like appendages – dangling above them during the first week of the festival.
Lessness – An Taibhdhearc, July 22-26
Olwen Fouéré’s (above right) one-woman show riverrun – a stirring adaptation of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake – has stunned audiences worldwide since premiering at the Arts Festival in 2013. The same actor and production company return with an adaptation of one of Samuel Beckett’s most delightfully esoteric prose pieces. The show arrives fresh from a celebrated run in London’s Barbican Theatre.
St Vincent – Big Top, July 14
There’s music galore this year, with John Spillane, Sinead O’Connor, and a host of others all on the bill. The visit of St Vincent (below left) is an especially appetising one, however. Recent albums have seen the American blossoming into one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary alternative music, an artist who plays fiendishly with forms while finding offbeat but beautiful melodies.
Exhibit B – Black Box Theatre, July 14-19
Poised between performance and installation, Brett Bailey’s show – which channels the ghosts of colonialist atrocities past and present-day exploitation of immigrants – caused controversy when it was produced in the UK last year, but was hailed also as a piece of immense power.
A Girl’s Bedroom – Bank of Ireland Theatre, July 13-26
The Arts Festival has premiered a number of Enda Walsh’s most acclaimed plays in Galway over the years – among them The New Electric Ballroom, Misterman, and Ballyturk. This is the second time Walsh has debuted a short film installation here, following on the back of last year’s intriguing Room 303. (Yes, there appears to be a ‘room’ motif going on here.)
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
