Culture Night Waterford

I set out last night to get a flavour of the Culture Night activity in Waterford city.  My experience was good in parts like a curate's egg. Speaking of clergymen, I enjoyed Helen Norton and Jonathan White's witty spin off of Wilde's Importance of Being Ernest. An hour long of crisply enunciated dialogue by the actors in the comfortable space at Garter Lane was a cheerful and well executed theatrical experience and drew a full house. My first stop at the Fat Angel Wine Bar was less successful, I couldn't hear or see any of the four short plays by local authors presented in the small back room and by default joined  the lively chatter in the front room. Gravitating toward Greyfriars, usually a focal point for culture night activity, I was surprised to find the doors to the exhibition at the Municipal Gallery closed and was left with feeling that the buzz and the culture vultures were somewhere else this year. Later I did manage to squeeze into the Oak Room of The Munster Bar for the Mod Poets session. I heard a intense monologue with a bleak theme of post traumatic stress disorder delivered by a very well turned out actress in 50's costume by Anna Jordan and Paul McDonald's ode to his dog.