A ROAR FROM THE HEART, controlling through vulnerability … Eilish O’Carroll’s Headford performance was a searing success last night and left the crowd humming and smiling and buzzing in a warm “aren’t-we-all-wonderful” glow …we can’t wait for the same all over again tonight & are blessed to live practically within walking distance of this remarkable heart-searching and terrifyingly honest dramatic event … Eilish had the audience eating out of her hands from the moment she stood on stage – petitely, like an Irish Edith Piaf – to the very last hum-along note of “you gotta live, you gotta love, you gotta laugh …”
Striking notes of pathos, humour, sadness,determination and heart-stopping mirth, Eilish showed that she is indeed her mother’s daughter, with immediately recognisable similar characteristics of un-stoppability, determination and true grit… she is the offspring of a woman who was decades ahead of her time and one who also visited Headford on her own particular personal mission, sixty-six years ago in January 1948. You have to have nerves of steel to do what Eilish does, putting it all out there in the hope that it comes back to you, and it all came back to her last night by the barrow load …
It was a “home crowd” in everything but name because Eilish’s grandfather was born just over the road from Headford in the parish of Caherlistrane and she mentioned all of those links and connections in her opening and closing remarks … they reeled us in hook, line and sinker and she was pushing an open door from that point on …It’s an extraordinary feat to pull off, controlling a crowd through extreme vulnerability but that’s what she did … it’s risky and heart-stopping high-wire stuff but Eilish has the required personality, intellect, acute observational skills, comic timing and burning desire to tell HER story to pull it off … and it’s such a turbo-boosted sugar rush when it works … please do yourselves a real favour and get your hands on tickets for this show if it’s coming anywhere within an asses roar of you in the next few weeks because it’s the real deal, a genuine roar from the heart.