Theatre review: The Dogs of War

A programme note by author Tim Foley mentions that while The Dogs of War wasn't written as a political play, it's taken on some of that significance in light of the new Conservative majority. Certainly this Government isn't one likely to be friendly even to disabilities that are visible and obvious, and those that are invisible have often struggled to be taken seriously anyway. So mental health seems to be a subject matter the arts are increasingly trying to remind people exist, and it's certainly there to be seen in Foley's play, even if something else is invisible. Mam (Maggie O'Brien) has been mentally ill for many years, and when she had to leave work Dad (Paul Stonehouse) took early retirement to care for her. When their son Johnny left for university, they moved from Yorkshire to a remote little house in rural Northern Ireland.

Theatre review: Spokesong

Any 1970s Northern Irish play is going to at least touch on the Troubles, but Stewart Parker's Spokesong does so with a surprisingly light, even quirky approach. Frank (Stephen Cavanagh) runs the Belfast bike shop that's been the family business since the 1890s, but its future is threatened by a planned bypass that will see the building demolished in the name of easing traffic. The very idea of town planning in a city whose landscape is regularly changed by bombs seems like a kind of dark joke, but bicycles are Frank's passion as well as his job, and he has a plan to put forward to the council meeting: A fleet of free bicycles throughout the city, to be used by anyone as needed. As he meets his very own Daisy Bell (Elly Condron) and finds romance, Frank starts to imagine that his bicycle utopia could actually be the solution to all the city's troubles.

Theatre review: Over the Bridge

A rediscovery from 1960, when it caused some controversy in Northern Ireland, Over the Bridge was the first stage play by Sam Thompson, a lifelong worker and union man in the Belfast shipbuilding industry. The play focuses on the trade unions and the way they affected day-to-day work in the 1950s, but also looks back at the mass unemployment of the Great Depression, and forward to how bloody The Troubles would become in the subsequent decades. At the centre of the large cast are union representatives Rabbie (Sam O'Callaghan) and Davy (Robert Calvert,) who form the main line of communication between the workers and the head foreman, Mr Fox (Alan Mooney.) There's an array of problems large and small that threaten daily to halt work under strike action, but as sectarian differences start to become more of an issue, Thompson predicts the threat of physical violence becoming part of daily life as well.