Celtic Exodus is the new full-length musical from the creative mind of The Wolfe Tones star Brian Warfield. Set in the 1840s, it tells the tale of The Great Hunger (known in Irish as An Gorta Mór) in the small village of Kilturk — a village bursting with dance and song until the murder of their English landlord and the arrival of his Disney villain-esque replacement. The production accurately accounts for what occurred during the “famine” in Ireland (minus villagers bursting into song) due to Warfield’s extensive research into the era.
Warfield and Dave Browne composed all new music for the show, and if you’re familiar with the brilliance of The Wolfe Tones, then it’ll come as no surprise that the score is a hit. The stand-out song ‘What Lies Ahead’ is one I could see all musical aficionados knowing by heart one day. And they just might, as we could very well see Broadway and the West End in the future for this production. We’ll certainly be watching its progression to bigger and better stages.
“We all had to put faith in each other,” choreographer and movement director Jason O’Neill shared with The Irish Dance Globe after the show. With only two and a half weeks of solid creation and rehearsal, choices had to be made swiftly. From the audience’s perspective, though, you would have never known.
Because of the 19th century dance competition subplot, the stylisation of the Irish dancers proved daring. Instead of wearing modern heavy shoes, O’Neill had the dancers in thick-soled brogues-style shoes. These are a much more period accurate choice while still creating enough percussive noise through subdued scuffs and rallies.
With an extensive CV that includes Riverdance, Heartbeat Of Home, and Prodijig, O’Neill is an ideal choreographer to stage all forms of Irish dancing. The movement style throughout the production combines a notably Irish dance repertoire with dramatic contemporary shapes. Although, they were not performed simultaneously akin to the emerging genre of “contemporary Irish dance”.
Seeing contemporary dance put on the classically trained Irish dancer’s body feels like a cathartic expression of post-colonial Irish culture (you might have heard the numerous fabled stories about Irish dancers keeping their arms glued to their sides as a subtle act of resistance to British oppression). Celtic Exodus is Warfields’ expression of an Ireland that has still not fully recovered from colonisation. It is more than just another famine story.
Celtic Exodus ran from 22-25 January 2025 at The Complex, Dublin, Ireland. You can stay up to date on the show and possible future productions by following The Wolfe Tones’ official account on Instagram.
