What’s on Friday: Forbidden Fruit, Life, The Salmon Leap Festival and The Gigli Concert

FESTIVALS

Forbidden Fruit
Royal Hospital, Kilmainham Dublin 2pm €119/€59.50/ €49.50
ticketmaster.ie

The first open-air festival of 2015 with a chance of sun? You never know – the music is certainly warm and bright, and over the weekend you’ll get to soak up sounds from the likes of Fatboy Slim, Nicholas Jaar, Wu Tang Clan, Jamie xx, Richie Hawtin, Run the Jewels, Cyril Hahn and Patti Smith.

Life
Belvedere House, Co Westmeath 8pm €165
life-festival.com

The summer festival season kicks off in earnest, with Life sure to attract many to Mullingar. Nas will top the list of must-see attractions for many, but there will be sizeable audiences for Eats Everything, Squarepusher, Ben Klock, Pantha Du Prince, Gold Panda, Jurassic 5’s Nu-Mark, The Magician and dozens more. Eight stages, a campsite and a whole range of experiences will entice you over 160 acres of lakeside parkland.

The Salmon Leap Festival
The Salmon Leap Inn, Leixlip, Co Kildare €65 all weekend
salmonleapfestival.com

The great, the good and every musician in between are lining up for this new weekend festival. Luka Bloom, Eddi Reader, Seamus Begley and Steve Cooney, Altan, Lisa O’Neill, Kíla, the irrepressible Máirtín O’Connor Trio, Damien Dempsey, Mundy and the sublime Whileaways are just some of the artists whose passports have been stamped for the odyssey. Curated by Conor Byrne, Salmon Leap has all the makings of a splendid early summer fiesta: intimacy crossed with more than a tincture of lunacy – a winning combination.

CLUB

Radiomade Forbidden After Party
District 8, Dublin 10.30pm €10
radiomade.ie

Here’s one for those who want to keep going after Forbidden Fruit comes to a close in Kilmainham. The bill includes live sets from Cian Murphy and Ross Turner aka I Am the Cosmos, Diamond Dagger, Miss Kate and Fringe Festival Hootenanny stars No Requests. All proceeds from this shindig go to funding online radio station Radiomade’s city- centre studio.

THEATRE

The Gigli Concert
Gate Theatre. May 26-Jun 27 7.30pm (Sat Mat 2.30pm) Mon & Mat €25, Tues-Thurs €32, Fri-Sat €32
gate-theatre.ie

“Christ, how am I going to get through today?” begins Tom Murphy’s play from 1983, with a becoming lilt somewhere between a beaten sigh and a searching prayer. That is, near enough, the tone of the play that marks the great playwright’s belated Gate Theatre debut. A crumpled English “dynamatologist”, JPW King, who is really closer to a damp squib, consults with his sole client, a nameless Irish property developer, out of his mind and determined to sing like the Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli. West End regular David Grindley directs their sessions, which are at bottom about a search for salvation, shot through with a dry comedy and lubricated with alcohol and the exaltation of song.