Box office: or atgtickets. The songs of Otis, Wilson, Marvin, Aretha and co are so familiar, more popular than ever, that we are on first-name terms with their makers. Put a multitude of Motown and Memphis staples in one exuberant show, wrapped inside a Dublin comedy drama full of whimsy, wit, pathos, bluster, booze, banter, too much testosterone and a classic rise and fall arc, and here comes a cracking night out, whatever the year.
His reasoning: the Irish are the blacks of Europe; Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland; northsiders are the blacks of Dublin, and soul music is the politics of the people; a mantra as familiar as the Choose Life speech in Trainspotting. The show opens with the first sighting of a Christmas party in York in , as a drunken Deco Ian McIntosh bursts into the Regency pub and leaps unsteadily onto a table in his Irish football shirt.
The last to join is the mysterious, mystical, scooter-riding soul sage Joey The Lips a sublime Stuart Reid. Are they a chain of fools? Well, who can resist when Joey tries a little tenderness in grey Dublin town? Oh, and, for the record, their take on Chain Of Fools is fab-u-lous. So too is Think. Rabbitte strives to spark a Dublin soul revolution with the vim of a Bob Geldof, but such a path to soul salvation can never run smoothly, not when band members are as fractious as Deco and drummer Billy Ryan Kelly , and scene-stealing bouncer Mickah Ronnie Yorke is doing his nut.
You may not connect with all the cast of rowdies as there are so many, but you will with the way they play. Favourite songs this time? Make a commitment to see The Commitments. Picture: Ellie Kurttz The songs of Otis, Wilson, Marvin, Aretha and co are so familiar, more popular than ever, that we are on first-name terms with their makers.
Picture: Ellie Kurttz The show opens with the first sighting of a Christmas party in York in , as a drunken Deco Ian McIntosh bursts into the Regency pub and leaps unsteadily onto a table in his Irish football shirt. Picture: Ellie Kurttz.
