• Once @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    July 17, 2015 - By 

    Nearly two and a half years after its Dublin premiere, the wildly successful Once returns to Ireland for a run unto itself.  When the show made its European debut in February 2013, the Dublin-set musical premiered at the Gaiety for a short engagement before shipping out to its West End settlements for a two-year run where it added Olivier Awards to its Tony Accolades.  Now Landmark Productions returns the show for the summer season, performed exclusively at Dublin’s Olympia, and the fans it won abroad join new followers from its hometown in what’s sure to become a sellout. Walking into…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival: First Day Back

    May 25, 2015 - By 

    Returning to the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival after a four-year hiatus, Canadian playwright and performer Rob Salerno provokes this year’s audience with his one-man show First Day Back.  The production marks Salerno’s second with the festival, making its premiere in the basement of Dublin’s Outhouse, where the leading man conjures a high-school classroom for a set which includes both stage and house.  Featuring an array of characters all embodied by Salerno, the drama captures a group-counseling session held in response to the suicide of one of the school’s students.  Where killer is victim and victim killer, Salerno depicts adolescence…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival: Blind Date

    May 21, 2015 - By 

    Following the recent debut of their first full drama Beasts, fledgling company Home You Go Productions premieres its second play Blind Date in the back half of the 12th Annual International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.  Written and directed by Colette Cullen, the show sits at a digestible 60 minutes with two separate acts and no intermission.  As the title suggests, the show’s content concerns dating, specifically the awkward world of blind dating.  Though Cullen halves her opus in two distinct experiences, the acts speak to each other in startlingly parallel ways, and they colour one another with nuance that would…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival: By The Bi

    May 19, 2015 - By 

    Mounting the second installment of their debut production By the Bi, Blazing Change Players brings an amorphously piquant performance to this year’s International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. As the title suggests, all matters bisexual are concerned. More interestingly, however, By the Bi is the only production confronting such issues within this year’s festival, the lone voice of its own middle ground. Having premiered a few months ago in the Virginia stomping grounds of co-writers and founders Caroline Downs and Morgan Barbour, this first stop in the show’s budding travelogue marks an important step in the fledgling theatre troupe’s beginnings. Both…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival: Going Up @ Teacher’s Club

    May 7, 2015 - By 

    Debuting a boisterous story of Manhattan in a quiet corner of Dublin, Penny Jackson’s Going Up launches the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival with an intimate and whimsical charm. Played by two performers, the one-hour piece ensnares two incompatible characters in a frustrating scenario: a stuck elevator. One is short, straight, neurotic to the point of heart failure, and unnervingly loud. The other is tall, gay, composed to the last stroke of eye-shadow, and equally loud. At first glance, the situation reads as a hackneyed setup where the fun lies in watching opposing forces collide while finding unlikely commonalities. Yet…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival Preview: Bird

    May 2, 2015 - By 

    Just before a major move of show from South Africa to Dublin, playwright and performer Marnitz van Deventer chats to us about the impact of past relationships, story-telling as the heart of performance, and bringing a South African flavour to Dublin’s International Gay Theatre Festival. Hi Martniz. Can you tell me a little bit about Bird and the creative process behind the show? Sure.  Bird is actually a story of the self before, during, and after a relationship.  I guess the story started three years ago when I was in a relationship with somebody, and I fell head-over-heels in love…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival Preview: Graham J. Norton

    May 2, 2015 - By 

    Preparing for a triumphant return to the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, Graham J. Norton talks to us about his lifelong work as a classical singer, drastic changes in life and career, and the steps he took leading to the formation of the Orpheus Blues and Graham J Does Cabaret. Hi Graham. So how did you go about forming the act Graham J Does Cabaret?  How long have you been training as a singer? Well I’ve trained as a singer since I was four, and I have been, for many, many years, a classical singer, performing in operas.  But I’ve…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival Preview: Going Up

    May 2, 2015 - By 

    Amid chaotic preparations in shipping out from NYC to Dublin, playwright Penny Jackson sits down with us to discuss her success as a writer both on and offstage, the lead-up to the debut of her brand new show Going Up at this year’s Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and how she believes in the power of theatre to foster social change. Hi Penny. How’s everything going with preparations for Going Up? Fantastic.  The script was just published online—newyorktheatre.com—people are reading it, plenty of great responses.  I have a lot of fans here in New York, and I would love to have…

  • Dublin Gay Theatre Festival Preview: The Equals

    May 1, 2015 - By 

    With just about a week left until showtime at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, playwright Sean Denyer of theatre troupe Acting Out talks to Joe Madsen about the history behind the community theatre group, its growth in the past decade, and the need for some musical comedy in examining gay issues. Tell me about The Equals and the creative process behind it. Well, I suppose I’ve had the idea for Equals for quite a while.  I tend to ponder things for quite a while before I actually write them, and then the writing happens rather quickly and I have a…

  • San Fermin @ Whelan’s, Dublin

    May 1, 2015 - By 

    Fresh off the release of sophomore album Jackrabbit, Brooklyn-based San Fermin returns to Dublin exactly one year after their debut performance in Ireland. Largely the brainchild of composer and lyricist Ellis Ludwig-Leone, a composition major from Yale University, San Fermin’s style plays to a variety of influence ranging folk, jazz, and pop, with an element of high refinement in each musical mannerism. The eight-piece ensemble, including two men on brass and an electric violinist, excites in a way that is hard to categorize. Ellis’ lyrics mystify the abstract while painting a visceral picture of emotion, yet the robust vocals of…