For many people, St Patrick's Day is less about shamrocks and parades and more about flappers and barbershop. So it is for those folk who head down to Killarney for St Pat's weekend to the Guinness Roaring 1920s Festival. If Tuesday evening's launch party is anything to go by, the festival looks set to be a fairly riotous occasion.
The evening kicked off with the big band sound provided by Jim Farrelly, and flappers from the Trinity Players dance troupe and the Murder Mystery Players doing the Charleston as though their lives depended on it. During the festival itself there will be music by such eccentrically monikered bands as Gripewater Blues Band and Fattening Frogs For Snakes; champion barbershop bands such as the 100strong Californian group, the Masters of Harmony Chorus, and yes, prohibition will be studiously overlooked for the weekend.
At Tuesday evening's party, Graham Cruz and Hazel Kaneswaran of Dove stole the dancefloor with Their fine interpretation of the Black Bottom. Fresh from its performance at the Childline concert at the Point last week, Dove are currently in rehearsal with their third single, Blow Your Mind and are shooting the video this weekend.
Another group that gathered to down a Black Velvet or two were producers Jenny McCrohan and Hilary Fennell, and The Revenent's drummer, Chris Heaney. Hilary is the producer of the successful RTE series, Beyond The Hall Door, while Jenny produced Racing Homer, a short comic film about a pigeon fancier. Directed by Peter McKenna, it is to be screened during the Film Festival on March 6th.
Other people from the media world who came along to support festival organiser, Alanna Gallagher included Jacqui Corcoran, producer of Carrie Crowley's Saturday brunch programme, The Right Stuff, and actress Caitriona Ni Mhurchu who is about to go into rehearsals for Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire. This is a bilingual Tom MacIntyre adaptation of the 18th century lament poem by Eibhlis Dubh Ni Chonaill. Directed by Kathy McArdle and also featuring Karen Ardiff and Liam Heffernan in the cast, the play kicks off a nationwide tour in Carraroe, Co Galway in mid-April and ends up at the Peacock in Dublin on May 19th.