Los Angeles Times film reviewer Kenneth Turan wryly observed that Liam, director Stephen Frears's British film about an Irish family in 1930s Liverpool, "does a better job of re-creating the ambience of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes than that film did." Avoiding the dramatic and visual monotony that makes Alan Parker's 1999 film of Angela's Ashes such an unrelievedly dreary … [Read more...] about Liam: The Shock
of Recognition
Liam: The Shock
Paddy’s Gold
In my father's town, Carndonagh, County Donegal, Ireland, market day still goes on in a muddy field, behind "the diamond," the town center, a ritual preceding memory. I walked down to it just the once, because he wanted me to see it. Young cows and bullocks and sheep and pigs mill about in the damp, gray early morning. The steam rising from their manure piles and urine puddles … [Read more...] about Paddy’s Gold
Steering The Tricycle
Nicolas Kent, the man behind the Tricycle, the uniquely innovative theater in Kilburn and launching-pad for many of Ireland's most successful plays, is interviewed by Marilyn Cole Lownes. ℘℘℘ It's 10 a.m. on London's busy Kilburn High Road and the Tricycle Theatre, emblazoned with flashing lights, is already open for business and ready for action. Sandwiched between the … [Read more...] about Steering The Tricycle
Irish Roots:
Some Light on the Dark Clan
The name Delaney comes from the Irish O'Dubhshlaine. Its earliest anglicized form is O'Dulany with a broad `a.' Delane is another variant (the O' has been long since dropped). It is sometimes mistakenly associated with the Limerick surnames O'Duillean, Dillane and Dillin, though there is no relation.
Dubh means black or dark. That's the easy part, but some dispute arises over … [Read more...] about Irish Roots:
Some Light on the Dark Clan
John F. Kennedy: An Appreciation
Young people today know John F. Kennedy primarily for being assassinated and for his presumed dalliance with Marilyn Monroe. And that's a shame, because he meant something far different to an entire generation of Americans, myself included, who were young forty years ago. When JFK was nominated for President in 1960, he was forty-three years old. He cut his hair to look older … [Read more...] about John F. Kennedy: An Appreciation