THREE OF THE BIGGEST IRISH MUSICALS

ONCE: Musicals have an inbuilt cheese factor that comes with characters suddenly bursting into song. Some modern efforts, like Lars Von Trier’s Dancer In

The Dark, have attempted to circumvent this, by folding the music into the ambient noise the characters hear. Others, like Alan Parker’s Evita, have been ‘sung through’ with no spoken dialogue.

Once, both in the source film and then onstage, had an even more organic approach; it told the story of a pair of lovestruck musicians whose bursts of song were more than plausible, given their roles in the story — at times the cast of the show serves as their own orchestra. The show (with the book written by Enda Walsh) opened on Broadway in 2012, won a slew of Tony awards and is without doubt the most successful Irish musical ever. On Broadway there are no guarantees and even the mightiest of showbiz reputations have been savaged by its difficult-to-please critics. John McColgan and Moya Doherty appeared to have the Midas touch after Riverdance became a worldwide phenomenon in 1994. Their multi-million euro reimagining of the story of Grainne Mhaol was met with a decidedly tepid response, however. After middling reviews it ran for only two months on Broadway and The New York Times would report that it had lost more than $16m (€14m).

If ever a concept seemed ripe for a stage musical adaptation it was The Commitments, which had started life as a poorly selling novel before director Alan Parker turned it into a huge cinema release in 1991. The soundtrack meant it was almost readymade for the stage.

Roddy Doyle (left), who wrote the book, wasn’t keen on musicals, however, but was apparently converted when his kids took him to see The Producers.

The musical of The Commitments ran for three years in the West End before going on a shorter run in Dublin, where the cast was enlivened by Kevin Kennedy — Curly Watts from Corrie.