• Lovers: Winners and Losers @ The Everyman Theatre, Cork

    July 21, 2015 - By 

    Lovers: Winners & Losers has enjoyed a fantastic run at Cork’s Everyman Theatre throughout the month of July. Friel’s play, written and set in 1967 tells the stories of two Irish couples. Separated into separate acts, Friel’s work even in a contemporary setting still resonates with the audience and Julie Kelleher’s first production as Artistic Director of the Everyman has been a great success. Casting the likes of Ciaran Bermingham, Timmy Creed, Judy Donovan, Antoinette Hilliard, Fionula Linehan, and Mary-Lou McCarthy; their portrayal of the characters bring each to life full of vibrant humour and pathos. Mary-Lou McCarthy (Maggie) and Timmy…

  • 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…

  • The Shadow of a Gunman @ Lyric Theatre

    May 8, 2015 - By 

    As the curtain, a modest, brown thing, rises to reveal its equally meager setting (a tenement in Dublin in 1920) the most immediately apparent quality of the set is how much it breathes. Two large windows at the back of the small apartment looking on to the alley beyond create so much space and character that its easy to forget we are in a theatre. A woman hangs her washing, people walk to and fro about their business and the set comes to life. Mr. Davoren lives in this apartment, rooming with Mr. Shields. Hampered by the characters that exist…

  • 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,…

  • PALS: The Irish at Gallipoli @ National Museum of Ireland, Dublin

    February 26, 2015 - By 

    A bleak Irish sky backdrops the frigid Collin’s Barracks, former military stronghold turned national museum turned proscenium for ANU Productions’ breathtaking new performance PALS.  Born out of the financial collapse in 2009, ANU (pronounced “anew”) has boldly challenged Irish theatre to tackle Irish issues in visceral ways, turning its site-specific method of performance into a niche, accessible, and affordable outlet for the Dublin theatre-going public. ANU’s total-immersion style of theatre forces audiences not only to witness a story, but to experience its place as an integral element of the narrative.  2012’s Boys of Foley Street revived a time and place…