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Showing posts with label Theatre review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theatre review. Show all posts
Cam Ogie ✍No-one, with the exceptions of the English and not all of them by the way, ever want to see England prevail at any football competition and especially win it.


Unlike old soldiers, ’66’ is never allowed to fade away . . . like its erstwhile sky laden Battle of Britain, the ‘Empires’ descendants are constantly reminded that the ‘Great’ of Britain was attained and maintained by English men . . .with white English surnames such as Charlton, Stiles, Moore and of course Hurst.

This play focuses on Gareth Southgate, his past demons, and his managerial career of the Men’s English National football team. His selection through default, was accelerated by Big Sam’s demise from scandal but nevertheless as we are reminded, an England manager with a 100% success record – played one and won one! Southgate being a person who was coaching the England under 21 squad at the time and never expecting the call, was approached initially as a temporary stop gap until the role could be filled with someone more established and ‘experienced’ and more likely to lead ‘club England’ to a final and win! 

Originally tasked with getting a floundering England squad to Moscow for the World Cup, Southgate succeeds and in doing so cements his position as manager. It is from this moment on that the play takes a trajectory away from the pitch and towards the changing room and Southgate’s story and his story for England unfurls. Results do impact but it is in the changing room where Southgate announces his plan and how he intends to implement it. The audience are taken on a journey into the backrooms and changing rooms of England, where hidden conversations are now audible to the public ear.

The squad is introduced. All familiar household names – no longer just the whites of Stiles or Moore but the Empires offspring have come home to roost, Kane, Dyer, McGuire, and Henderson mix it up with Sterling, Rashford, Sancho, Saka, and Deli Alli. Each character is beautiful portrayed with Kane’s and McGuire’s being particularly outstanding. An extreme lack in academic ability being substituted with boyhood honed skills from the streets onto the pitch. 

Divided and antagonistic towards each other, Southgate breaks down those divisions and imparts the urgency of camaraderie into the squad through his departure from convention. Breaking up established and defined groupings of club players and associations in to multi-club assemblies and discarding the title of ‘boss’ or ‘gaffa(er)’ in favour of the more mundane salutation of Gareth. Winning over the backroom team proves difficult especially when a female psychologist is introduced and at times his ‘plan’ is furiously dismembered and called in to serious question from those above, below and in the stands.

James Graham’s play, highly emotive and highly evocative, simultaneously extracting from the audience tears of laughter and tears of sadness, and based on Gareth Southgate’s role as England manager, is a masterpiece in the frailty of the human species. It portrays the highs and lows of Southgate’s and England’s successes and failures on the pitch, but it is within the confines of the changing room and away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi that Southgate’s skills as manager are cultivated and humanised, where past demons are shared and finally laid to rest. Most importantly it brings the sphere of football management into the realm of humanity – managers really are people!

I, full of historical resentment of any English success, reluctantly went to see a play about an England manager and came away a fan . . . although, the constant reminder of ‘66’ will always make sure I shout for the other team I will now always hold them in deep regard!

My ‘Better Half’, never a follower of football nor never ever a spectator of the sport, but a devout perceiver of theatrical acts, nonetheless, noted to me afterwards that like the lager, this was probably one of the best plays she has ever seen . . .  after 30 years I tend to listen attentively for she has so seldom been wrong in her opinion that I can’t actually recall where she has been so!!!! Also, I agree with her on this.

If you get the chance, go see it.

⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast.   

Dear England

Christopher Owens ✍ was at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast on 2nd September 2023.

The autumnal sunshine looks favourably upon the Stranmillis Embankment today.

With the oak trees retaining full foliage and the Lagan relatively peaceful (bar the odd Hydrobike making its presence felt), it’s a calm and relaxed Saturday afternoon. The sort we should have had plenty of during July and August. Such is life in this country.

Having undergone extensive renovations in recent years, the Lyric Theatre is a flash, modern building that allows visitors to appreciate the parkland of the Embankment (due to the sizeable windows) but also manages to feel like an integral part of Ridgeway Street (which is down to the front of the building resembling a factory).

These contradictions make it the perfect place for The Man Who Swallowed a Dictionary.

I spoke to Beano a few years ago about his play We Taught Our Children How to Lie, which was being performed in several venues. He told me:

I have been working for years on a play based on the life of Davy Ervine…In fact, over the years, parts of it have been staged at various events so really that should be my next thing to finish. It’s a pet project I suppose and I feel there would be a market for it if I ever get round to completing.

As I write this review, it has been announced that the entire run in the Lyric has sold out.

Thanks to Moore Holmes for the use of this photo
Opening with a rendition of ‘Leaving Dalriada’, actor Paul Garrett does an excellent job of holding the audience captive with his take on Ervine and other figures without anyone getting lost in this one man play. When he takes on the persona of other people, he is able to differentiate them through differing accents, voices (his Gusty Spence was spot on) and mannerisms. It’s a big task for one actor, but Garrett more than delivers.

He’s also kept busy with an action packed script which tells the life story of a kid who grew up in the shadow of the shipyard and was strongly influenced by his father and mother (who, he was fond of noting, were to the left of Stalin and to the right of Genghis Kahn respectively) before the whirling dervish that was the conflict engulfed Ervine, leading him to Long Kesh and constitutional politics, where he garnered acclaim from both sides of the political spectrum.

Beano's script has plenty of his sharp Belfast wit (quite a few jabs at Linfield!) but with moments of solemness and pathos that accentuate the narrative. Such examples are the scenes dealing with his marriage to Jeanette and how they kept their marriage together while in Long Kesh, as well as the relationship with his grandson, Mark (to whom the narrative is addressed).

All of the above is further helped by the stylized direction. With the set consisting of two oversized books opened in the middle (presumably acting as a metaphor for how people come and go but ideas are forever or maybe history coming alive) and a mix of lights, dry ice and sound effects, these augmentations embrace the textual nature of the play format, and the end result is something other worldly, as if you’re witnessing a dream.

One person told me that he had walked out of the play because (in his opinion) Ervine’s role in the UVF was glossed over (a relative of this person was injured in the Rose & Crown Bar bombing in May 1974 and Ed Moloney has tangentially suggested Ervine could have been involved in this attack). Admittedly, the narrative does go from him joining the UVF to being arrested in a matter of seconds. However, I would argue that dissecting his operations for the UVF is not the point of the play. Rather, it is to shed light on the motivations of a complex character and chart the evolution in his thought process as well as look at his family life.

Whether that is acceptable or not is for the individual to decide. For me, it is not the job of the writer to educate and to cover everything in minute detail but to entertain and illuminate the audience. Based on these parameters, The Man Who Swallowed a Dictionary succeeds.

Thanks to Beano Niblock for the use of this photo
An air of sadness hangs over the story, not just because of the personal tragedies and the conflict itself but also for the loss of progressive loyalism, which still exists but certainly not in the same way as when Ervine was alive.

In various obituaries of the man, it was regularly noted that the PUP had lost the prominence it had from 1997 to 2002. The slow demise of the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP, coupled with the rise of Sinn Fein and the DUP (both breaking long held pledges in their pursuit of power) left Ervine and co in no man’s land: seen as too accommodating towards Sinn Fein by loyalists and seen as unreformed terrorists by unionists.

Had he lived to see events from 2010 onwards, how would he have reacted:

- would he have been sidelined like Dawn Purvis?

- would he have gone all in the way Billy Hutchinson did?

- would he have helped to temper fears, ensuring that such flare ups remained minimal?

Obviously, it’s impossible to say with any certainty. However, in his Boston College interviews, he confessed that he was maybe too dismissive of those within Unionism who were fearful about the notion of "Irish culture" being held in higher regard than "British/Unionist culture". Also, this segment is interesting:

We don’t vote … for what we want, we vote against what we don’t want, so the perceived political bulwark against that which you don’t want is the one that’s trawling in all the votes. That rather tells us that you can have all the agreements in the world but unless you’re very mindful of the needs of the broader public the broader public will rebel…The mood music of hatred and bitterness still exists: don’t be soft on the other, if you’re soft or if you’re perceived soft…there’s a price to pay.

Coupled with an admission that the PUP were (at the time of the interviews) going through a “torrid” time, it would seem that Ervine was aware that he would not get what he was struggling for, but he knew that this didn’t mean that he would give up on his beliefs, the very struggle that built him. Not only does this suggest strong principles, but it also brings to mind Jaz Coleman’s line that to understand the meaning of struggle is to realise that it is about “Giving your whole life to a single passion/Which others may or may not/Consider obsolete."

This play reminds us of what we once had, and the political landscape is much poorer without David Ervine.

📜Christopher Owens, 2023. A Vortex Of Securocrats. ASIN: B0BW2XKJS3.

The Man Who Swallowed a Dictionary 🔴 Live Review

Kate Yo ✍ I was in Dublin's Olympia theatre the night that Gerry "the Monk" Hutch was freed. 


We sat in the circle surrounded by chatter, and a few women in tiny groups gathered together talking secret squirrel.

The event was billed as sold out, but there were empty seats around us most likely left by people off celebrating elsewhere. The event on that evening was Nicola Tallant's Omertà discussing the Regency Hotel attack, who carried it out and why. The catalyst for the feud is the killing of Gary Hutch in Spain, that led to a decade long feud that left eighteen people dead. It was this murder that dragged the Monk in.

The attack in the Regency was carried out by the Hutch gang. Six men entered the Regency during a boxing weigh-in and shot David Byrne dead. The real target was thought to be Daniel Kinahan and Sean McGovern. The attack was over in six minutes, carried out by six men, a shooter and three fake gardai in uniform, along with a man dressed up as a woman, and Kevin "Flat Cap" Murray. After shooting Byrne dead using AK 47's assault rifles the gang fled to waiting cars.

By chance a Sunday World photographer took nine successful pictures, one after the other of flat cap and the man dressed as a woman running away.


After the Regency shooting someone somewhere suggested brokering a peace deal. Three days after the Regency the gardai bugged Jonathan Dowdall's car and fitted it with a tracker. Gerry Hutch and Jonathan Dowdall then travelled north for republicans to broker this deal. The dissidents themselves were heavily infiltrated at this time due to Denis McFadden in the MI5 sting. 

Hutch had good relations with republicans, stretching back a long time. Unknown to both Hutch and Dowdall, Gardai had bugged Dowdall's Toyota Land Cruiser with a listening device and and attached a tracker. The two men in the car travelling north, talked freely, about the feud and other stuff while the Gardai listened and followed where they went.

Dowdall could be heard telling Hutch, them Kinahans are a fucking big army. Hutch is heard saying
the cunts who done Eddie have to fucking go.  This was Gerry's brother shot dead three days after the Regency attack and in revenge for the murder of Byrne. 

Also the Monk's brother Patsy became a target, Kinahan wanted him dead, because he knew Patsy would want revenge following the killing of his son Gary in Spain. The men are heard saying after the attack that David Byrne was left in a heap and the gardai were running around like headless chickens. Dowdall tells Hutch I'm in this with you to the bleeding end. The men also discussed the disposal of the three yokes, thought to be the three AK47's used in the regency hotel. Hutch tells Dowdall they'll be 100 percent on the man and the woman but after that they'll only have speculation.

The tapes, ten of them, show Dowdall's true colours. He came across as callous and manipulative, and the tapes also gave insight into gang culture in Ireland. In court Hutch's team tried to have these tapes collected from the listening device thrown out. They claimed that eight out of the ten of the tapes were recorded in the north and therefore they were out of the court's jurisdiction. This led the three judges to listen to the tapes in private, and they allowed them to be used in evidence.

The spotlight during the trial focused on Jonathan Dowdall. Both the Dowdall family and the Hutch family were known to each other stretching back to when they were kids. One of the Hutch's worked on Dowdall's mother's street trader stall. Dowdall had a good reputation in the community both as a business man and politician. He began his own small company, employing about twelve men. He had a
luxury home on the Navan Road. It was Dowdall and his father that booked a room in the Regency to be used during the attack, they then handed over the key to the Hutch gang.

Dowdall was charged along with the Monk for murder. Within three months he'd made a deal with the cops to remove the murder charge for a lesser sentence of facilitation and serve four years along with
turning state's evidence. Dowdall knew his own words could be used against him and set about constructing a new narrative, to the point of almost rewriting the history.

During the trial Dowdall became petulant. Saying he'd never committed a crime in his life, he wasn't himself back then, that the Hutch gang were terrorising his family, and on and on he went. But the judge had the measure of him, and recognised that Dowdall was a sophisticated and manipulative liar. Dowdall is now in the witness protection programme.

The discussion centred around the breaking of omertà, what was it like to live in hiding, as the judge said, living your life looking over your shoulder. Yet, once the agreement for WPP was secured Dowdall didn't have to make himself look good. He could have got into that witness box and denied all knowledge of the crimes that had happened. Whatever the situation now he and his family are currently in hiding.

These discussions on Omertà by Nicola Tallant that I went to in Belfast and Dublin were absolutely brilliant in their analysis of the Regency attack. And there are other events on this throughout our island.

If there's one in your area - go. You won't be disappointed.

Sources

The two events Omertà in Belfast and Dublin.

Nicola Tallant's book The Clash Of The Clans.

⏩Kate Yo is a Belfast book lover.

Omertà

Kate Yo ✒ They would be willing to sacrifice small lives for great reputations." - Chris Mullan to Paddy Armstrong. In Life after Life.


There is no prison play or production that does not show how the human spirit can soar.

Gerry Conlon embodied this spirit both in jail and out of it. What came across as Gerry's nervous energy was a lust after the truth to clear his name, and his daddy's name. This play takes up where the film ends. This is Gerry's story on the outside and it is told warts and all.

A young man from Peel Street, the Lower Falls, just out of prison after seventeen years. With plenty of money in his pocket, he was thrust upon the world stage where he was lifted shoulder high. Gerry insisted he walk out the front door a free man after a miscarriage of justice. Paddy Armstrong and Carole Richardson left by a back exit to avoid the world's media. Is it any wonder that his life became tumultuous?

It's a funny thing freedom writes Paddy Armstrong, I've thought about it every day for the last fifteen years, missed it, craved it and nearly died for it, and now that I have it I have no idea what to do with it. And so they partied. Their lives were adrift, out of control, with no moorings.

The play shows the partying having this tumultuous effect by assaulting the senses. It used strobe lighting and loud sound to create an almost psychedelic effect. A bare stage except for a metal bed with a small Wall behind it. The stage remains this way all through the two hour show, yet Shaun Blaney was able to hold the attention of an audience all the way through this show.

Blaney gave a brilliant solo performance that took his audience from Belfast to Dublin, to the Oscars and to Portsmouth where Gerry got clean off drugs. In addition to this, Blaney played many parts: Gerry and his nervous energy, his mother Sara and many other characters.

Gerry wants a film made of their story and he goes about trying to make that happen. This takes him on a huge journey where he acts as a consultant in the film. There's a lot of banter in it, with people such as Daniel Day Lewis, who came to Belfast and followed Gerry around to get the accent right, and Gerry through Blaney claims that Daniel never tasted poverty food until he came to Gerry's ma's house.

There is a scene where Gerry is at the Oscars and he doesn't realise it would be fours long. He gets impatient, so he goes to the gents where he holds court with all the famous faces. He banters with them all. Liam Neeson, Johnny Depp and a full room  - it's felt you are in the gents there with them. His film won seven Oscars and lifted sixty five million dollars at the box office. But Gerry just couldn't sit still. Not for four hours.

Another scene is where a car load of them stop on the road and the banter leads all involved to reenact scenes from The Quiet Man. Blaney pulls this off on his own, and he does it magnificently, just like he did in Stones In His Pocket. You meet Daniher, and Maureen O Hara, and you go to the race with them, and hear the music from the film.

That's a lot to pull off for one person - and to top it all off he looked like Gerry!!

This play is based on Ricky O'Rawes book. I haven't read it so I'm sure there's more to the story or even a better understanding of it, if I'd read the book. The three of them Gerry, Martin Lynch and Ricky O'Rawe met for drinks and were invited to attend Martins plays. Later, Martin Lynch was asked by Gerry if he would take his dad's old letters and turn them into a stage play. The letters never materialised, so they based the show on Ricky's book.

Martin Lynch in the show's programme tells of meeting Mrs Conlon at Cyprus Street Advice Centre and boasts he was probably the first person to write the name Gerry Conlon in a ledger. This is where arrangements were made for Gerry's daddy to go to London to get him a solicitor.

Paddy Armstrong also wrote of Gerry in his book Life After Life and there's an interesting story behind it. They meet each other on the wing after Paddy had been voluntarily removed to the block. Paddy was having a bad time. He'd asked to go to the block, his mood was very low. This energy that Gerry had enabled him to push on and Paddy wasn't doing so good. He had just come out of the block which he had asked for but he felt like he could have stayed on. There is some evidence in the book that Armstrong may have suffered a nervous break down. Gerry's wrote of Paddy in his own book that Armstrong had a pale prison pallor that some men get. He didn't recognise Paddy that day on the wing, in Gartree maximum security jail, some of the Balkan street ASU were also housed there. However he didn't recognise Paddy: Gerry it's me. Paddy! They embraced and clung to each other. Paddy wants to say are you drowning too my friend . . .  or is it just me? But instead he says I'm great Gerry, happy to see you. 

Before going to the block, Armstrong and another prisoner were at odds, and Paddy was in his sights, so much so that Paddy was warned by others that this guy had him in his sights and for Paddy to get in there first. So a boiling bucket of water was produced and mixed with plenty of sugar for it to stick. It was poured by Armstrong over the other prisoner and then Armstrong gave him a few wallops of a sock with a battery in it. This resolved the issue but it upset Paddy so he asked to go to the blocks. On Armstrong's first day back on the wing he spotted Gerry who didn't recognise him. According to Armstrong there was a difference to Gerry: he was still the same person but stronger, not beat down, It was the first that Paddy had seen him since their appeal was lost eleven years earlier and eight years from Gerry lost his dad.

While they both worked as consultants on the film Armstrong had told Gerry about Goa. A prisoner that Paddy knew told him all about it, and in turn Paddy told Gerry all about it. And so, off they both went to Goa. When they came back to Dublin rejoining the film crew, the three police officers Vernon Atwell, Thomas Style and John Donaldson, that fabricated their confessions and wrecked four innocent lives were in the dock In the Old Bailey where they were cleared of all charges.

Blaney tells us that £240,000 was gone through in nine months. The British government paid compensation in three instalments. 

In one scene Gerry is in Portsmouth where he went to rid himself of drugs and there is a farewell scene between Gerry and a lady friend. This scene is very moving and music from back then was played to a hushed audience. 

Blaney's women characters are something to behold. All of the women smoking, sounds of the frying pan cooking, sounds of the rain, the gestures, portrayed perfectly! Blaney brought Gerry and his wee mammy Sara back to life, like they'd risen up and returned to tell this tale.


When the roller coaster lives ended, Blaney as Gerry returns us to Belfast, back to look after his mother. He is dealt a hard hand getting cancer himself. Mum says to Gerry you haven't spoken your father's name to me in fifteen years, say it. And Blaney does, over and over. Here Gerry learns of his own daughter. She called him daddy. He loves being called daddy.

Daddy.

⏩Kate Yo is a Belfast book lover.

In The Name Of The Son

Simon Smyth ✒ went to a matinee performance of Martin Lynch and Richard O'Rawe's play In the Name of the Son. The play follows the life of Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four after his release from prison.

Image: culturecrushniblog

I was running late for the play and ordered a taxi which is something I normally don't do as I don't drive and walk everywhere if I can. The taxi driver told me he lived with Gerry Conlon's brother in England. He went to England at the age of 16. He went straight to the Christian Brothers in London and asked them where all the Irish people were as he was looking for work. The Brothers sent him to a particular street corner and told him to wear a couple of jumpers to look 'bigger' for the purpose of gaining work on the building sites. A man who turned out to be Gerry Conlon's brother heard his Belfast accent and took him on. They discovered that they were practically neighbours in West Belfast. They became friends and the taxi driver stayed at digs with him for years. I stupidly asked the taxi driver if he was in England before or after Gerry's arrest and he said after which in hindsight was obvious as he wasn't what you would call old.

The Lyric is a fine venue and you would be at a loss to find a bad seat.

The play began in darkness with the actor playing Gerry Conlon writhing and contorting energetically on a bed, as if from his reaction to a savage nightmare.

The story, of which I knew very little, follows Gerry as he gets released from prison after a devastating miscarriage of justice and then through the peaks and troughs of his chaotic life after his release.

It is difficult to guess at how Gerry Conlon would've lived if he wasn't arrested and framed as a bomb-maker and now is not the place to speculate but, despite his small time criminal past, I suspect he would've thrived. This is one message I received from the play - the unadulterated unfairness of it all. I guess otherwise it would have been a Fair Trial and not a Show Trial.

I don't want to go into the details of the story as one of the most valuable merits of the play is its expert story telling.

Another merit of the play was the unquenchable vigour with which the actor goes through his paces. The actor's boundless energy was unfettered to the point of being psychotic. I mean this as a complement as it was such a fine performance of mimicry that I forgot completely that this wasn't Gerry Conlon in front of me and was absorbed into the world of victimhood, broken and firm relationships, poverty and emotion.

It was a hellish emotional rollercoaster which hammered home the fact that despite his release the ill effects of confinement dictated the path Gerry was to take through life: heartache, guilt about his father Giuseppe, bad luck and addiction.

It was funny in equal measure to its horror which is a trick undoubtedly difficult to pull off but no problem for the playwrights or the perfectly cast actor. The audience was on the verge of tears at times and was there was an abundance of laughing throughout. There was even a quirky reference to The Pensive Quill.

I was fighting back tears on a couple of particular scenes. One of my friends was an ex-prisoner and he said it brought back a lot of familiar memories.

Although much of the play took place after his release the set was a simple prison cell, an obvious metaphor that stated that Gerry Conlon was never actually free from injustice or his past.

The actor was a fine mimic as mentioned above and he adroitly played characters as diverse as Gerry Conlon's mum, girlfriend, father, film director Jim Sheridan, various Hollywood actors, musicians like Bruce Springsteen, actor Daniel Day-Lewis who famously played Gerry in the film In the Name of the Father and yes, you guessed it, everybody else as it was a one-man play. It was an astounding performance and a fascinating insight into the life of one of our famous sons. It wasn't a pleasant story but the play was entertaining and informative in equal measure.

In the modern age you expect at least one mobile phone to go off at a play and one did, right at the point the actor was explaining how he lost everything in a house fire, "but at least the mobile phone still worked" he quipped. He got a well deserved round of applause for that.

A superb play. I suspect it will be touring. Go and see it. I promise you will not be disappointed.

⏩ Simon Smyth is an avid reader and collector of books.

In The Name Of The Son

Review by John Coulter 0f General Banter Live Podcast by Colin Geddis and Mickey Bartlett, Limelight, Belfast.

12 Out of 10 For Laughter

Beano Niblock with a review of the Pearse Elliot play Man In The Moon which initially featured in the Long Kesh Inside Out site on 3 October 2013.



Ticket to the Moon

Guest writer Ricky O’Rawe with a review of Belfast playwright Pearse Elliot's latest production.




The Man in the Moon

Guest writer, poet and playwright Beano Niblock from the loyalist community with a review of Martin Lynch's latest play.

Meeting At Menin Gate: A Play Of Two Halves

Guest writer Richard O'Rawe with a review of the latest work of playwright Martin Lynch

 
Menin Gate Memorial

Watching Meeting at Menim Gate in Belfast’s The Mac theatre last week, it struck me that playwright, Martin Lynch, must have the patience and courage of a Jehovah’s Witness selling bibles in Taliban country.  How else can you explain Lynch’s dogged devotion to trying to make sense of that awful euphemism known universally as The Troubles?
   
Previously, Lynch had produced Sam Millar’s stirring play, Brothers in Arms, and Ron Hutchinson’s Paisley and Me.  In my view, Meeting at Menim Gate, the third in this trilogy, is the best of the three.  Not only that, but I believe this may well be the best writing ever to have oozed from Lynch’s pen.  Certainly, it is on a par with his most successful plays, The History of the Troubles (accordin’ to my da), and Chronicles of Long Kesh.

Meeting at Menim Gate is the story of a former prisoner and cross-community Peace and Reconciliation beano to World War 1 graveyards in Belguim.  As beanos go, this one is hardly extraordinary (in the first half of the play at least) with former foes doing what former foes do when they leave behind home shores: drinking pints to beat the band and becoming best mates – until they return to their respective homesteads.  Beyond the drinking and merry-making, the potential for love is in the air when Liz, whose policeman father had been shot dead by the IRA, falls for Terry, a former IRA lifer.  But what price love when Liz finds out that Terry killed her father? Can Liz forgive and forget?   

This play is stuffed with humour, pathos, and at times, gut-wrenching horror.  Don’t pay to see Meeting at Menim Gate if you only like happy stories with happy endings.  If you want to be challenged and entertained in equal measure – as I was – go watch it. You won’t be disappointed.


Meeting at Menim Gate

Oliver

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