{"id":283305,"date":"2026-02-06T04:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/283305\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T04:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:33:09","slug":"the-whole-celtic-kitschen-sink-plays-out-under-flatleys-watchful-eye-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/283305\/","title":{"rendered":"The whole Celtic kitschen sink plays out under Flatley\u2019s watchful eye \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to watch the 30th anniversary performance of Lord of the Dance, a tale of a simple dance aristocrat\u2019s battle with the forces of darkness, without thinking of its creator Michael Flatley\u2019s recent court travails. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy show, Lord of the Dance, is the story of good versus evil and I promise you the good guys always win in the end,\u201d says the man himself as he introduces the show alongside the original cast and a phalanx of child dancers.<\/p>\n

I should point out that good and evil in this metaphorical scenario could either be Flatley or Switzer Consulting, the entertainment company with which he is wrangling over control of the show. We\u2019re not taking sides. <\/p>\n

Switzer maintains that Flatley is in breach of a contract permitting them to run the show. They managed to get a ban on Thursday night\u2019s performance, which was subsequently lifted and then, on Wednesday, Flatley\u2019s legal team were granted permission to access a set and costumes. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a very enthusiastic crowd here (most likely not all lawyers). Many younger readers won\u2019t know that when Riverdance first emerged, it represented Irish soft power. It was what we had instead of a nuclear arsenal or a good motorway to Cork. <\/p>\n

\"PrincipalPrincipal dancer Macaulay Selwood in action on Thursday night. \"MichaelMichael Flatley during Lord of the Dance at the 3Arena.
\n \"EviaEvia Hayter (Little Spirit) on stage during the performance.<\/p>\n

It revealed that Irish dancers had arms and it took beautiful trad-style melodies and orchestrated them to sound huge (the natural endpoint of Irish trad\u2019s fantastical Enyafication). Two years later, the show\u2019s Irish-American star created Lord of the Dance, and before we knew it, he was living among us, perfecting our accent and depleting the national supply of baby oil.<\/p>\n

Lord of the Dance starts with a golden-costumed faerie called the Little Spirit (Evia Hayter), a literal manic pixie dream girl, who plays tin whistle whilst surrounded by robed Druids holding glowing orbs (very \u201cStone\u2018enge\u201d) to awaken a troupe of dancers. Enter the Lord of the Dance (Macauley Selwood). His job is to leap across the stage doing Superman gestures and clacking his heels. He\u2019s good at entrances and, also, using dance as a mode of transport. <\/p>\n

The Lord of the Dance is a complicated man and nobody understands him but his women, plural. They dance at him. There\u2019s \u201cSaoirse\u201d (Katie Coates), a blonde primary schoolteacher with a site on her family\u2019s land (I\u2019m basing this on her sensible dance style) and, \u201cMorrighan the Temptress\u201d (Olivia Allen), who, thanks to nominative determinism, is a temptress. Look, the Lord himself wishes there were more than two kinds of women. But there just aren\u2019t. It\u2019s the ancient past: 1996. <\/p>\n

The helmeted, face-painted antagonist is the Dark Lord (Zoltan Papp), who is conquering Planet Ireland, where this story is set, with an army of skull-faced toughs. He snaps the Little Spirit\u2019s tin whistle in two, which is an appropriate response to someone playing a tin whistle, to be fair. But the Dark Lord also does bad things. He gets Morrighan to nick the Lord of the Dance\u2019s cool fashion belt. He orchestrates a big brawl with the Lord of the Dance\u2019s chums. Later, he straight-up murders the Lord of the Dance, but before we can even eulogise him properly (\u201cHe really loved dancing, like, a lot. It was kind of his thing\u201d), the Little Spirit resurrects him. <\/p>\n

Yes, resurrection. The Lord of the Dance is, apparently, Dance Jesus. It\u2019s hard not to feel that Dance Jesus is possibly Michael Flatley\u2019s pet name for himself, too (he appears several times on video cuts over the course of the evening, like a watchful Big Brother).<\/p>\n

\"MichaelMichael Flatley on stage with cast members.
\n \"\"<\/p>\n

It feels like a bit of a stretch that the Little Spirit can resurrect the dead when earlier she had a meltdown over a broken whistle, but I guess plot coherence isn\u2019t the point. The story\u2019s main purpose is really just to facilitate song-and-dance set pieces in which the performers can lep and croon virtuosically. I like the classic trad songs sung by the grandly named Erin the Goddess (Cleo Griffin) and the sequinned string-bashing fiddlers and the misty landscapes on the LEDs and all the flames and when the dancers change costumes Bucks Fizz-style and the general use of dance as an intimidation tactic (note to self: try this on the late bus home). It\u2019s the whole Celtic kitschen sink, really. <\/p>\n

The Lord of the Dance and the Dark Lord ultimately settle things the only way they know how: with a fighty dance-off. Before the night\u2019s out, Michael Flatley is out once more with all the dancers hoofing away and there\u2019s a standing ovation (this is helped by the genius subtitle for the show: 30 Years of Standing Ovations). <\/p>\n

Yes, peace has returned to Planet Ireland. Will peace come to the behind-the-scenes legal battles? I propose a dance-off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to watch the 30th anniversary performance of Lord of the Dance, a tale of a simple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3265,93,61,60,2050],"class_list":["post-283305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-3arena","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-michael-flatley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}