Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Various venues, DublinImmersive Irish history, unacknowledged Aids deaths and post-coital chats – this year’s festival is challenging and entertaining
Returning to live performance with…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:42AMMonday, October 11, 2021
Lyric, BelfastEx-lovers attempt to rebuild a fence in Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney’s play marking the centenary of the partition of Ireland
An invisible line bisecting a boggy field …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:12AMMonday, October 4, 2021
Abbey, DublinSarah Hanly embodies a range of characters in her punchy debut play that explores the pressures on teenagers
“It’s a holy show,” Saoirse declares, as she comes round in ho…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:12PMThursday, September 9, 2021
With theatre for an audience of one, a whirlwind set of Kevin Barry stories and sparky songs, the Irish festival is in fine form
Adapting to Covid-19 restrictions with ingenuity, Galway inte…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:32PMMonday, September 6, 2021
Abbey, Dublin and available onlineRosaleen McDonagh’s play, an unsettling love story set in a Traveller community, has the ring of truthfulness
A love story shines through a mass of societ…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:24AMSunday, August 15, 2021
Edinburgh festival fringe, onlineDeirdre Kinahan’s play explores how culpable Máire can be for acts of cruelty, when she was brutalised as a young woman in a church-run institution
Deirdr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:03AMThursday, August 12, 2021
Coole Park, GalwayLady Augusta Gregory’s former home is an apt backdrop for this transposition of the play to 1880s Ireland
Druid Theatre Company’s outdoor setting of Thomas Kilroy’s C…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:48AMSunday, June 27, 2021
Cork Midsummer festival onlineVirginia Woolf’s novel, centring on an Edwardian marriage and the rupture of war, is richly adapted and beautifully staged with a strong ensemble cast
Shadow…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18AMThursday, June 24, 2021
Abbey, Dublin, and onlineUna McKevitt’s droll domestic drama shows us a day in the life of a family dealing with the ill health of an ageing father
Reopening to live audiences for the firs…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:36PMFriday, April 23, 2021
Available onlineStephen Rea and Judith Roddy give beautifully nuanced performances as a father and daughter meeting during the Covid-19 pandemic
A pane of glass is not the only thing keeping…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:12PMFriday, April 9, 2021
Available onlineGilly Campbell’s autobiographical play about searching for her absent father may be a monologue, but it tells a story much larger than one person’s
How to make sense of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18PMFriday, February 12, 2021
Available onlineInspired by a real incident where a woman was barged into the path of an oncoming bus, Sonya Kelly’s play explores proximity and distance
Three lives intersect for just an …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:33AMFriday, October 9, 2020
With productions staged live outdoors, livestreamed, or available online, this year’s festival fused the past with the present, and engaged an audience both present and remote
“You see m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:24AMFriday, February 28, 2020
Black Box, GalwayContemporary themes resonate throughout Garry Hynes’s production about a debt-ridden aristocratic family on the brink of losing their estate
Something in the sombre mood o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:12PMTuesday, February 25, 2020
A vaudeville thriller set around a Dublin newspaper in 1973 uses knockabout humour to parallel modern-day geopolitics
‘General swearing and delight” is playwright Michael West’s winnin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:54PMWednesday, February 12, 2020
Galway 2020 promises everything from Margaret Atwood to art with local asylum-seekers. Its organisers and artists talk about building bridges and creating a lasting legacy for Irish artists
…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:12PMTuesday, January 28, 2020
Project Arts Centre, DublinCracking male banter gives way to seeping sadness in John O’Donovan’s play about three men grieving for their friend
Tripping on drugs, 17-year-old Liam lies d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:54AMThursday, November 7, 2019
Gate, DublinThe acclaimed writer’s version of the Greek tragedy focuses on her sister Ismene, with plenty of modern relevances
Colm Tóibín’s new version of the Greek tragedy Antigone d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:18PMMonday, October 7, 2019
Marina Carr’s Hecuba probes a mother’s grief, family secrets unravel in The Beacon and audiences are immersed in 80s LGBT+ Dublin in Faultline
Questions of interpretation drive Nancy Har…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:36AMSaturday, September 7, 2019
Abbey, DublinOnly those with the most righteous anger will triumph, in this small-town play about wider societal issues.
Sexist graffiti on a suburban wall provokes blazing confrontation in …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:03AMMonday, July 22, 2019
Town Hall theatre, Galway There are echoes of Joyce and Beckett as guests gather at a dinner party and grapple with their own disconnectedness
A highly strung dinner-party host looks set for…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:12AMFriday, June 21, 2019
Various venues, CorkMini plays performed for solo festivalgoers are a hit – plus there’s a bluffer’s guide to the suburbs and a Tom Waits-esque concept album come to life
The multi-dis…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:12PMFriday, May 31, 2019
Abbey, DublinA versatile cast and evocative setting bring to life Dylan Coburn Gray’s award-winning script, which follows a taxi driver’s journey through an eclectic Dublin family
In Dyl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:12PMSunday, May 26, 2019
The Mac, BelfastA Northern Irish teenager escaping to Wales for an abortion is played with huge empathy, lifting a script that is thin on drama
A young woman lies across a row of hard plasti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:12PMFriday, March 8, 2019
Gate, DublinThree nuclear physicists are reunited in this drama about ageing, marriage and sexual rivalry, directed by Oonagh Murphy
With its slow release of a series of moral questions, Luc…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:22AMThursday, January 31, 2019
Two frank solo shows, East Belfast Boy and Every Day I Wake Up Hopeful, depict male crises with heart, humour and hip-hopSaggy and shuffling, his dressing gown flapping over a middle-aged sp…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:18PMMonday, October 1, 2018
Dublin theatre festivalA forgotten play by Seán O’Casey inspires Anu Productions’ immersive journey through a dilapidated block of flatsTwo or three return visits would be required to p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:24AMSaturday, August 25, 2018
Peacock, DublinStem cells, DNA and subtle psychology give an edge to Michael West’s deft contemporary reboot of FrankensteinPlaywright Michael West fuses old and new ideas in his gripping …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:48AMMonday, July 23, 2018
Town Hall theatre, GalwayStanley Townsend brings the poet’s searing love poetry to life in a visually stunning show boasting some Beckettian touchesFor the bereaved it can often feel as if…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54AMSaturday, June 23, 2018
Gate, DublinThe author’s adaptation of his comic novel about an unplanned pregnancy is filled with nostalgic touches and noisy energyRoddy Doyle’s recent books have delved into such diff…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06AMFriday, June 22, 2018
Lyric, BelfastMillions of children around the world love Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's story of a quest for companionship and understanding. The best-selling French novella from 1943 has succe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:42AM 
