Familiar ring as Lindsay goes into the west
Predictable Irish jaunt is worth the watch for the (deja) views alone
MATTHEW BOND
Irish Wish Netflix, no cert, 1hr 24mins
Drive-Away Dolls Cert: 16, 1hr 24mins
The New Boy Cert: 12A, 1hr 3is 6mins
Monster Cert: 12A, 2hrs 7mins
Two decades ago, the then 17-year-old Lindsay Lohan starred alongside Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday, in which a magical Chinese fortune cookie resulted in mother and daughter waking up in each other’s bodies.
Roll forward 20 years and the now 37year-old Lohan is back in strikingly similar vein in romcom Irish Wish. Only this time she sits on a wishing chair in a wonderfully scenic if colour-saturated west of Ireland, has a magical encounter with the mischievous St Brigid and wakes up to discover she’s no longer the bridesmaid, she’s the bride.
Yes, it’s not best friend Emma (Elizabeth Tan) marrying handsome Irish author Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos),
it’s her, Maddie, the modest book editor who’s tying the knot with the man she’s been secretly besotted with for years. So why isn’t she happier? And why does she spend so much time sipping the inevitable pint of stout with wedding photographer James (Ed Speleers from Downton
Abbey)? It’s cheesy and predictable but better than Amy Adams’s Leap Year or the awful Wild Mountain Thyme with Emily Blunt. Weighing in at a gloriously succinct 84 minutes, Drive-Away
Dolls does not hang about. Within moments of getting under way it has comprehensively set out its cinematic stall. A famous actor – in this case Pedro Pascal but others follow – has taken on the sort of small part they normally wouldn’t bother with, a centrallooking character meets a swift and grisly end, and suddenly there’s an awful lot of rather startling lesbian sex going on, albeit obviously played for laughs rather than titillation. It is quite the opening five minutes.
And what well-crafted fun it all turns out to be, as director and cowriter Ethan Coen takes a break from making films with brother Joel and instead creatively partners up with his wife (Ethan’s, not Joel’s), Tricia Cooke. She edited several of the brothers’ earlier films and, it feels pertinent to point out, describes herself as a ‘queer film-maker’. Hollywood, eh?
What ensues is like a free-wheeling cross between Thelma & Louise and the Coens’ own No Country For
Old Men, with two young women – promiscuous, motor-mouthed Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and buttoned-up, Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) embarking on an impromptu road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee in Florida.
Jamie needs to remove herself from a difficult break-up, while Marian wants to reassess her life and possibly end a long sexual drought. But their plans are put on hold when they discover that the car they are delivering contains a hat box and briefcase, and that a pair of bickering bad guys are suddenly after them.
Yes, the basic plot is familiar – that’s clearly deliberate – but the execution is highly enjoyable, with Qualley having a ball as the loquacious Jamie and cameos from the likes of Bill Camp, Colman Domingo, Matt Damon and an uncredited Miley Cyrus adding to the considerable fun.
A film that sees an apparently orphaned Aboriginal boy being forcibly taken in by a children’s home run by nuns in the 1940s sounds like we’re all set for a misery-fest. But The New Boy is far stranger, more mystical, even magical than that, with Cate Blanchett hugely watchable as the practical, no-nonsense Sister Eileen and young Aswan Reid superb as the new boy of the title.
Sister Eileen, it turns out, is hiding a secret – that the priest who headed the rural children’s home has died. But the new boy is hiding a bigger secret…
The somewhat misleadingly titled Monster is a serious Japanese drama from director Hirokazu Koreeda, who made the excellent Broker.
This is a more complex offering, which begins with a protective single mother complaining to her son’s school when he begins to behave oddly. A more complex story slowly (ultimately too slowly) emerges, with terrific performances from the two boys playing the characters at the heart of the story. As for the monster, you’ll have to work that out for yourself.
CHEESY, UTTERLY PREDICTABLE BUT BETTER THAN LEAP YEAR WITH AMY ADAMS
‘Aeschylus wrote this shortly after the battle, in which he may have fought’
‘Xerxes looks and sounds like a hard-up sean-nós singer. It’s a pity… ’
MICHAEL MOFFATT SHOW OF THE WEEK
Na Peirsigh (Persians) Abbey Peacock Until April 6
The Persians by Aeschylus, the oldest surviving play from the great era of Greek drama, is set in 472 BC when the Persian king Xerxes launched a disastrous war against the Greeks at Salamis. The Greeks had won a famous battle at Marathon 20 years earlier, still commemorated by all those record-breaking runners, and non-athletes limping home in fancy dress.
But the young king Xerxes wanted revenge against the Greeks for the defeat at Marathon, and decided that overwhelming force would do the trick. It didn’t. The Persians had so many ships they got in each others way and after the Battle of Salamis, the Persian empire was on its way out.
Na Peirsigh (Persians) is unusual in telling the story from the point of view of the beaten army, written by a member of the winning army. It’s also unusual because it was written by Aeschylus, not as an ancient historical drama, but shortly after the battle, in which he may have fought.
It’s not surprising to see the play cropping up again. Recent years have seen a lot of armies heading off to sort things out only to face difficulties and outcomes they never anticipated. But sensibly, those similarities are not spelt out laboriously in this latest production of The Persians, in Irish with excellent English surtitles.
The group of six female and three male performers get the most out of the strong emotional and rhythmic power of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Irish translation.
Staging Greek drama can be difficult, with its static combination of main characters accompanied by a chorus – ordinary citizens summing up the situation. The chorus here speak as a group and as individuals in unobtrusive, well-choreographed movements.
But the long list of warriors and kings at the beginning of the play is dramatically weak. The names might have meant something to Greek audiences in 472 BC, but it’s a weak dramatic opening for newcomers to the play.
The early sequences, when the chorus is describing the situation, is well handled by director Conor Hanratty, reaching its peak in the interaction between the Persian queen Atossa (Caitríona Ní Mhurchú) and the chorus. The impressive stage has a gloomy look and atmosphere, with a ring of candles up front on an altar, as though fate is in the hands of the gods. The chorus and Atossa swing from optimism to doubt, to dread, about the possible outcome of the war. Atossa, mother of Xerxes, having endured nasty dreams with symbols of defeat, is far from happy about her son’s war. The attempts of the chorus to cheer her up are a failure. All the young men are at war: what may happen to those left behind if the army is defeated? A plea is made at the grave of the dead hero king Darius, for him to intervene.
Strangely, when the dead Darius materialises, he comes across not so much as an ethereal vision from the dead but as a rather practical character highly critical of his son Xerxes and prophesying a lot more trouble to come.
The arrival of the defeated Xerxes (Naoise Mac Cathmhaoil) at the end should be a chilling sight: he has lost thousands of men by his youthful recklessness and by misinformation that has fooled him. He has blemished the image of his sainted father Darius and brought grief to his mother and the citizens.
But his stumbling entrance at the end, shattered and shamed, is spoiled by having him look and sound like a hard-up seannós singer doing a long-winded ólagón. Tragedy becomes a dubious vocal performance.
It’s a pity it all ends on that note, because the first section catches the disturbing atmosphere of a nation living in hope but keeping their spirits up against a background of fear, defeat and all its consequences.
One of the more interesting things about the play is that it’s by a Greek writer from the winning side, who doesn’t glory in the Persian defeat and who appears to sympathise with them in their misery. It’s almost as if Aeschylus was warning the Greeks about the dangers of becoming complacent about their own superiority.
Timmy Creed carries a huge weight of information in his role as the messenger who piles on bad news and bloody details and Caitríona Ní Mhurchú is superbly dignified as the shattered Queen Atossa who can still accept her disastrously erring son.