Cameron McCauley in “Bears in Space,” which continues through the weekend at  59E59 Theaters in Manhattan.
PHOTO BY IDIL SUKAN
 
By Orla O’Sullivan
At a gathering on Friday evening to mark the mid-point of Origin’s 9th Annual 1st Irish Festival, founder George Heslin likened the creators of “Bears in Space” to Boyzone...

Pope John Paul II in Ireland.
 
By Ray O’Hanlon
 
One of the basic skills for any half decent news reporter is to be able to count the number of people.
I have lost count of the number of occasions when the reported numbers at some event or gathering are way off the mark.
Most times it is a case of exaggeration in an...

Fionnuala Doran.
 
Page Turner / Edited by Peter McDermott
The very design of the cover of Fionnuala Doran’s “The Trial of Roger Casement” helps explain why many regard her subject as the most intriguing personality involved with the Easter Rising, containing as it does the terms “consul,” “rebel,” “British traitor”...

Chief Michael Fahy. FDNY photo.
By Ray O’Hanlon
 
New York City has last one of its bravest.
FDNY Battalion Chief, Michael Fahy, died Tuesday after being struck by debris when a drug lab in a Bronx house exploded.
As many as twenty were injured in the blast, according to reports.
Chief Fahy, a 44-year-old father of...

Cathal Hayden possesses a commanding technique.
 
By Daniel Neely
The other week I was handed a copy of Cathal Hayden’s brand new solo banjo album “Hooked on Banjo” and it’s proven a tough one to put down.  Filled with brilliant ideas and superior playing, it’s an album that appeals to my own personal love for the...

Denis Donaldson.
 
By Anthony Neeson
 
The family of Denis Donaldson, who was shot dead in a County Donegal cottage in 2006 after being outed as a British agent, have said that they do not believe that his killing was sanctioned by Gerry Adams.
The claim was made on a BBC Spotlight program last week.
Three years after...

Neil Hannon’s other musical claim to fame is his composition of theme music for “Father Ted.”
By Colleen Taylor
I’m a sucker for any Irish musician who demonstrates a love of literature, and 1990s orchestral pop band the Divine Comedy fits that bill.  The group, headed by Neil Hannon, tips its hat to Dante’s 14th...

Rory McIlroy
 
By Irish Echo Staff
 
On the day that Arnold Palmer died, Rory McIlroy seemed possessed by the spirit of golf’s first truly popular hero.
“It was more than his scoring and shotmaking that captivated the world. It was how he played. He did not so much navigate a course as attack it.”
Those lines were from...

Sonya Kelly gets tied up in the red tape of immigration regulations in “How to Keep an Alien.”
PHOTO CREDIT: GER HOLLAND
 
By Orla O’Sullivan
 “Why would you want to live in Ireland where sunshine is only a rumor?” the native Sonya accusingly asks Australian Kate on a drunken night out in Dublin.
The two have been...

Matthew Broderick set for Irish Rep. re-opening.
 
By Irish Echo Staff
 
 
New York’s Irish are being pulled this way and that this Saturday with events to attend from Peekskill to Coney Island and Manhattan between them.
Manhattan will be a place to be at noon to 4 p.m. when the newly refurbished Irish Repertory Theater...

Solicitor Padraig Ó Muirigh with members of the bereaved families outside Stormont today. Belfast Media Group photo.
By Irish Echo Staff
 
On Monday they walked out. Today they sued.
Members of the Ballymurphy Families, joined by members of other bereaved families, announced today that they would be suing both the...

Aaron Heffernan, left, and playwright Eoghan Quinn in “Bears in Space.”
 
By Orla O’Sullivan
I could tell you what I saw last night at 59E59 Theaters, but by the time you see “Bears in Space” it might be a different show. At least, to hear the performers tell it.
Aaron Heffernan, one of the four, guessed that night’s...

Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy and Brendan Fay. Photo by Garry Rissman.
By Irish Echo Staff
 
 
The 2016 Presidential Distinguished Service Awards for the Irish Abroad list includes six new world winners, four of them in the U.S. and one each in Canada and one in Colombia.
Gay rights activists Brendan Fay and Kathleen Walsh...

One Horse Pony.
 
By Colleen Taylor
This week, I was looking for some fun, whimsical music, and I found it in the Cork blues band One Horse Pony.  As their humorous band name—a mixed idiom between “one-horse town” and “one-trick pony”—might suggest, this Cork group offers some mirth with their music.  They make brassy,...

Playwright Derek Murphy, a New York City resident, is originally from Ballyfermot in Dublin.
 
By Peter McDermott
“It begins with a car accident,” Derek Murphy said. “If you hit a stranger with your car, would you invite him into your home?  What would happen if you did?”
That’s the initial premise of his play...