Accompanied by a lone cellist (Thomas Veitch) and dressed in period costume, Michael Veitch weaves a deeply personal and tragic tale with aplomb. It is one he wrote with Peter Houghton. In August 1852, Michael’s great great grandfather, James William Henry Veitch, was the surgeon on board the emigrant clipper Ticonderoga when it sailed from Liverpool…
Regular readers will know how I long to visit Italy one day. For now, I have to content myself by travelling vicariously through books like Only in Naples by Katherine Wilson. Here’s the blurb: Katherine is fresh out of college when she arrives in Naples to intern at the US Consulate. There she meets handsome,…
The sophomore feature from Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), The Nightingale offers up horrors of a different kind. Set in Tasmania in 1825, the film is a bloody, brutal and unflinching tale of revenge that also addresses the savage history of colonial Australia, the systemic abuse and mistreatment of women and the indigenous population. It makes…
It is 2054 and Earth is in trouble, so droves of people are taking up the opportunity for interplanetary relocation. A man who has gotten himself into trouble and is financially destitute is Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson). Without digging too deeply, he seizes the chance to start afresh, as a new human colony is about…
Kelly Rimmer’s Before I Let You Go hooked me with its story of two sisters and one impossible choice – it was one of those books that once you get to a certain point, you have to keep on reading. And it’s also one of those books that makes you think about what you would…
Jennifer Egan returns to the world of her Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad in her new novel The Candy House. The Candy House revisits the same characters and their children and hangers on and is delivered in the same connected short story style that jumps around in time and occasionally…
Ridley Scott has never been afraid to take risks. That much is evident from his many canonical films including Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Blade Runner. But for every Gladiator, there’s a Robin Hood. He seems to have a tendency to always shoot for the stars, sometimes succeeding brilliantly but sometimes falling short. His…
Violet is a Musical based on a short story, “The Ugliest Pilgrim”, by Doris Betts. It first appeared Off-Broadway in 1997, but was produced on Broadway in 2014. The book and lyrics are by Brian Crawley. The music is by Jeanine Tesori. Some of Ms Tesori’s other work includes: Thoroughly Modern Millie (2000), Caroline, or…
We find suggestions of child abuse abhorrent; but it wasn’t always so. Traditional fairy tales (like those of the Brothers Grimm) often include elements of adults being unspeakably cruel – or worse – to children. Indeed, in more recent times, writers like Roald Dahl haven’t shied away from including childhood hardship in their fiction. Netflix’s…
There is a semi-autobiographical element to Sing Street, the fantastic, charming and slightly quirky Irish coming of age story from John Carney (Once, Begin Again). Set in Dublin in 1985 the film looks at adolescent angst, the pangs of first love, dysfunctional families, the Catholic education system, bullying, the power of love and the power…
