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Well, that was disappointing.

The doors opened at 9:05 rather than the show starting at 9 (the signs did say “Doors 9pm”, but with no other information available, nearly everyone who attended was in the queue before the doors opened). There was no indication of when the show would start. When it finally did, at 9:45, I was both too tired and too put out to enjoy it much. This was not in any way helped by:

– some of the worst lighting I’ve ever seen. The lights were too yellow, too dark and too overhead. Their faces were shadowed by their foreheads. Twice between sets the theatre brought lights up on their faces and it was wonderful. It lasted a total of about eight seconds in the 45 minute performance.

– the guitar being over-amped. They turned the guitar amp down after the guitarist asked them to, and that improved it quite a lot, but the theatre itself *nowhere near* large enough to require amping at all. The flipping Cork Opera House isn’t big enough to require amping, for God’s sake.

– the seats being (particularly after sitting there nearly an hour before the show started) butt-numbing.

Zoe Conway is still a very good fiddle player, but the production was so bad that I left at the break, and I’m cranky. The whole thing made me want to go say, “For Christ’s sake, people, what is this, amateur night?” to the people running the theatre, and make them go away so I could do it right.