A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It was while watching the world Premier of MARS, the Irish National Opera’s wackily brilliant contribution to the Galway International Arts Festival, that I again realised how lucky we are to have this incredible platform for creativity on our doorstep.

Galwegians say it every year – so much so that it’s become a cliché – but the city is truly the festival capital of the country, if not of Europe, during the summer months.

This week the crowds are flocking to Ballybrit for the annual Festival of Racing – at least the ones with any stamina left are.

Because if you’d partaken in the Film Fleadh and then dovetailed into two weeks of the Arts Festival, you’ll have the constitution of a hardy pro to make it through the Galway Races as well.

Personally speaking, this year’s Arts Festival was the best in years, and MARS wasn’t even the final bookend of it – but start at the beginning.

We’ve come to a point where the Arts Festival wouldn’t be recognisable without a big circus of trapeze artists – and so it was with Sabotage, staged under canvass in GIAF’s new No Fit State Big Top alongside Nimmo’s Pier.

The live music alone would have been well worth the admission fee, but the skillset of the performers was a marvel to behold – even with the rain driving so hard on the tent outside that you wondered if you’d get drowned before you got home.

I may have been the only person in the Big Top who wasn’t intimately familiar with the songs of Amble, because everyone else seemed to know every single word.

This was one of the hot tickets of the fortnight and when you were lucky enough to get your hands on two of them you quickly realised why; these guys just came across as the nicest blokes in showbiz, constantly marvelling at the crowd’s reaction and reflecting on the speed of their journey from schoolteachers to spectacular, sell-out Arts Festival performers.

They weren’t the only big hit in the big top, but for Galwegians of a certain vintage the twin peaks were the Stunning last Saturday night and the indomitable Mary Coughlan the previous Wednesday.

Half of the town was there for both, and Mary sung like angel – and swore like the devil incarnate!

She was magnificent in the musical sense and her stories would entertain an audience on their own. She defies age, so there’s no reason to mention it.