Looking for a great night out? Dublin Theatre Festival opened last week with a programme of home-grown and international productions that will make you laugh, surprise you and send you out into the night on a high. From the holy bangers and emotional belters of Lourdes! The Musical and the playful old Hollywood glamour of Radio Bette, to the wit and provocation of Heroes of Tomorrow and the warmth and humour of Let Me In, there are plenty of reasons to make a night of it at Dublin Theatre Festival.
Testament
Irish National Opera
The Gaiety Theatre from October 8th to 10th
Irish National Opera stages Testament at The Gaiety Theatre from October 8th to 10th, a haunting new opera by Tarik O’Regan with a libretto by Colm Tóibín, adapted from his novella The Testament of Mary. This new opera will delight fans of Tóibín and anyone curious about the secret thoughts of the mother of all mothers. The story unfolds in the final years of Mary, mother of Jesus; Mary is old and watched by three men, Paul, Marcus and John, who are determined to shape the story of her son. They want what is written to define the future. Mary wants only to recount what she witnessed and knows to be true.
The opera unfolds inside her memory. Past and present coexist, often without clear boundaries, as performers move in and out of roles. What emerges is a struggle between lived experience and the versions others seek to fix in words. The Gospels were written years after Jesus’s death, shaped by memory rather than direct eyewitness record. Testament imagines a figure who was there, who saw and remembered.
READ MORE
Lourdes! The Musical
Xnthony
Civic Theatre Tallaght, September 25th to October 10th
A fun night out that will rip your heart out and leave you thinking for days. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll emerge changed from this pilgrimage.
A musical about miracles and the people who stage them. On the day Matthew’s life is finally about to begin, he receives news that changes him forever. Forever and ever, Amen. Instead of facing reality, he runs to Lourdes, where faith is spectacle and a ragtag troupe of pilgrims are staging an amateur musical about St Bernadette. From the company behind the award-winning musical Oliver Cromwell is Really Very Sorry comes a new musical packed with holy bangers, emotional belters and a nun with a habit for DJing. Behind the irreverence and spectacle is a story with real heart. As Matthew tries to escape a reality he isn’t ready to face, Lourdes! The Musical explores faith, friendship, hope and the things we turn to when life changes in an instant. Funny, moving and unexpected, this is a pilgrimage with much more on its mind than miracles.
The cast brings together some brilliant musical theatre and performance talent, including Riain Cash, seen in the Tony Award-winning Fun Home at the Gate Theatre; Danielle James, award-winning actor, writer and performance artist and a finalist for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Playwriting; and Molly Lynch, whose musical theatre credits include Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Cathy Hiatt in The Last Five Years.
Heroes of Tomorrow
Brokentalkers
Project Arts Centre, September 25th to October 4th
When we can’t even agree on what’s true, how do we know what’s right? Who is a hero, who is a villain – can we even tell the difference?
Created by internationally renowned and award-winning Dublin-based company Brokentalkers in collaboration with acclaimed theatre-maker Andy Smith, Heroes of Tomorrow is a new work for theatre that considers some of the complexities and contradictions of living in the world today, and asks questions around the purpose of art and what part it can play.
Heroes of Tomorrow tells the story of celebrated artist Jan Hansen. Born in 1974 in Tromso, Norway, along with his partner Caoimhe Keenan, Jan has been resident in Ireland since 2020. His 30-year career has seen him win awards, exhibiting work worldwide at prestigious venues including Astrup Fearnley in Oslo, Tate Modern in London, The Guggenheim Bilbao and Imma in Dublin. Hansen is an artist who likes to explore what art is; ask questions of what it can do and where it can happen. Critics have written how his work recognises the humanity in a world of changing power and perception.
Hansen has recently been announced as the latest recipient of the Beyond the Future commission. Sponsored by a consortium of three global tech companies, they set it up “to support art that reflects their principles, values and intentions”. Hansen has announced that his work will be called The End of it All.
Considering art, power and protest, Heroes of Tomorrow is a story of possibility, connection and corruption. An epic tale of oil, trade, weaponry, technology, colony and creativity. Of Vikings, empire, exploitation and extraction. It’s a story of how we got here: a world where things feel a bit fragile and fragmented. Where it feels like there is a gentle rumble underneath everything.
And it’s hard to know what to do, right?
ZINC
Dead Centre and Théâtre de Liege
O’Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College, October 1st to 4th
Presented by Dead Centre & Théâtre de Liege and adapted by from the book by David Van Reybrouck, this production takes place from October 1st-4th at O’Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College. Dead Centre, one of Ireland’s greatest theatre companies explores the roots of power in Europe within a story that couldn’t be more relevant to the geopolitical mess we are in.
This is the story of something that came into existence by accident, was exploited, extracted from its place of origin, and sent to far off places. That something was a man called Joseph Rixen. This is also the story of zinc.
Over the course of his life, without ever moving, Rixen was a neutral, subject of the German Empire, resident of the Kingdom of Belgium and citizen of the Third Reich. He did not cross any borders, borders crossed him.
Blending the testimonies of five cast members from across Europe, with the extraordinary true tale of Joseph Rixen, ZINC will explore how the human body becomes a map – a site where the struggles of politics and history determine who we are.
