• All That Fall @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 10, 2015 - By 

    How do you stage Samuel Beckett’s radio play All That Fall in a festival setting when Beckett was, for the most part, dead against theatrical interpretations of it? Though there had been stage translations authorized by Beckett, notably by Deryk Mendel in Berlin in 1966 and by Christopher Hampton in Calgary in 1967, the writer seemed to regret such translations and would later say no both to Ingmar Bergman and Laurence Olivier’s requests. When Director Max Stafford-Clark – former Director of the Royal Court Theatre, London – approached the Beckett estate about realizing All That Fall he was asked what…

  • 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…

  • Shot Glass: Three Strikes @ CQAF

    May 8, 2015 - By 

    On Tuesday night, Shot Glass theatre performed the second night of Three Strikes at Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, in the unusual surrounds of the Dark Horse Bar. A new concept in live theatre, Shot Glass bring edgy, dark theatre right into the pub. At three discreet tables in the bar, the protagonists sit, waiting their moment, the crowd having to twirl around to see from which corner the voice is coming. From Mary Jordan’s effortlessly cool account of her unusual application of Brazil Nuts and her husband’s subsequent demise to Gerry Crossan’s delightfully bizarre rant as ‘Blow-Dry Barry’ the pub goers…

  • 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…

  • I, Banquo @ Lyric Theatre, Belfast

    April 22, 2015 - By 

    Written by Tim Crouch, I, Banquo is a retelling of Macbeth from the perspective of his dead friend Banquo. As the play begins the ghost of the titular character rises from the floor and tells us his version of events, from the fateful meeting with the three sisters to the gruesome finale. Banquo addresses us as Macbeth and asks us to question our own motives and desires along with the other characters in the play and leaves us wondering if perhaps we’ve misunderstood. Directed by Oisin Kearney and performed by Michael Patrick, the pair take a low-budget approach and use…

  • Hedda Gabler @ Abbey Theatre, Dublin

    April 21, 2015 - By 

    Retelling the story of a woman plagued by unrest and uncertainty, Mark O’Rowe’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler offers an initial presentation of cold austerity. At first glance, from foreboding show poster to spacious set, the makings of stark drama are at hand. However, the uncertainty which tinges the fabric of Ibsen’s anti-heroine ultimately seeps into every aspect of production in the Abbey Theatre’s latest venture, leaving the piece feeling directionless and its audience unguided. On entering the space, the set, designed and dressed by Paul Mahony and Liz Barker respectively, paints an impressionistic portrait dominated by striking visual perspective.…

  • I ♥ Alice ♥ I @ Project Arts Centre, Dublin

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    “We will be seen.  They will be seen.” Back for a limited engagement at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre, Amy Conroy’s moving production I ♥ Alice ♥ I returns to its hometown for another run with specific aims in mind.  Teaming up with Marriage Equality, Conroy’s own HotForTheatre productions is reviving yet another run of the world-traveled piece for just four nights, marking 2015 as the five-year epoch since premiering at Dublin Fringe Festival 2010.  Awards and accolades decorate the show’s success, including a Fishamble for Conroy’s writing.  Yet the story of these two ladies, these two lovers, these two Alices,…