Early winners and late losers

The year got off to a flying start with the brilliant 'The Good Father'. Other plays were less memorable, writes Gerry Colgan

More than 110 productions seen and about 90 of them reviewed: a busy year. Benign memory tends to highlight the best for recollection and discard the failures. An early winner was Christian O'Reilly's brilliant The Good Father, from Druid, with the actors Derbhle Crotty and Aidan Kelly affirming their status at the top level. It tapped the emotions as few plays do, probing the minds and confusions of two people in trouble with life and each other.

The enterprising Galloglass company, in Clonmel, had another scorching winner in Athol Fugard's My Children, My Africa, which said more about racial divisions than any studied analysis. An elderly black schoolteacher tries to straddle the colour divide, believing that education is the way forward. Two of his pupils, a black boy and white girl, find a harsher truth, in a moving and beautiful play.

The Abbey Theatre saw the eminent Joe Dowling, on a return visit from the US, with a favourite of mine, Arthur Miller's All My Sons. It had two wonderful American actors (Peter Michael Goetz and Helen Carey) in the roles of Joe and Kate Keller and included notable performances from Declan Conlon and Justine Mitchell. It has been a vintage year for Mitchell, and she may well surface again here later.

Some individual performances, even from plays that have receded in memory, insist on recognition. At the Gate, Lia Williams was stellar in Tennessee Williams's The Eccentricities Of A Nightingale, as was Susan Fitzgerald as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. Also in this theatre, Mark O'Rowe's Crestfall had its première, but, despite the author's marvellous use of language, I was again alienated by the psychic and physical violence of his vision.

Another play that dealt in violence, but in an altogether creative way that involved the audience without repelling it, was The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, at the Helix. Roddy Doyle, author of the novel on which it is based, worked with director Joe O'Byrne on the adaptation. They achieved a remarkable transference to the stage, filled with imagination and devices that worked, and with lead performances from Hilda Fay and Brian F. O'Byrne that transfixed the watchers. This one was special.

Good theatre is, like gold, where you find it, and final-year drama students at Trinity College in Dublin came up with the goods in mid-year in an adaptation by Edward Albee of the Carson McCullers novel The Ballad Of The Sad Café. This book of grotesques came hypnotically to life under the inspired direction of Robin Wilson, with acting talents that augur well for future professional performances.

There is often gold to be mined at Bewley's Cafe Theatre, a minor venue that keeps producing major work. Hugely entertaining pieces by Lennox Robinson, Oscar Wilde and John Mortimer jostled there, mostly at lunchtime, with new plays such as Missing Football, by Peter McKenna (with the noteworthy newcomer Stephen Kelly), and One For Sorrow, a beguiling rites-of-passage comedy written and beautifully acted by Mary Kelly and Noni Stapleton.

The Abbey Theatre had in mid-year a lovely production, directed by Patrick Mason, of Goldsmith's evergreen She Stoops To Conquer. It was a traditional version, albeit incorporating a sexual assault that would have given Poor Noll a heart attack, and was beautifully acted with - yes - Justine Mitchell as the eponymous Kate and Aaron Monaghan as a hilarious Tony Lumpkin.

Fast-forward to Dublin festival time and a fringe that, in the number and quality of productions, mightily outstripped its predecessors. Outstanding were David Hancock's The Race Of The Ark Tattoo, with David Heap; Olwen Foueré in La Musica; Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer, with Aidan Dooley; and Proof, a Pulitzer Prize winner with Tom O'Leary and Hazel Dunphy in the leads.

The main festival also achieved some major successes. The Gate had the première of Brian Friel's hypnotic Performances, with the great Romanian actor-director Ion Caramitru playing the role of the composer Leos Janacek. My usual irritation with plays that last less than an hour was dispelled by this, which, as directed by Patrick Mason, was just the right length.

Over at the Abbey, another notable first was taking place with Thomas Kilroy's The Shape Of Metal - Lynne Parker directing - which also engages with the destructive potential of genius. It is a thoughtful, theatrical play that touches the emotions and the intellect.

More violence, this time from the redoubtable Martin McDonagh with the long-awaited The Lieutenant Of Inishmore. Many were repelled by its sanguinary excesses, but I enjoyed the blackness of the comedy and the sideswipes at murderous nationalism. The author is certainly an original.

There were a couple of no-nos. Birmingham Repertory Theatre brought a travesty of Hamlet, with the prince as a virtual gangster, Polonius a corrupt official, Ophelia a court floozie, Horatio a hit man and so on. There was no room for Shakespeare's depth of philosophy, no grace and, from me, no marks.

Another offering from whose general popularity I dissented was Robert Lepage's The Far Side Of The Moon. Brilliant stage effects that continually challenge the suspension of disbelief, detaching one from the play to ask how they are done, are my idea of a magic show. Most theatre may metaphorically be accomplished with mirrors, but these were too literal for me. And, suddenly, it's panto time again to end this liveliest of years.