Procrastinating? Take a nap, go for a pint and start afresh tomorrowA healthy ego can survive contact with the world. A fragile ego must wrap itself in protective layersTue Apr 14 2026 - 06:00
Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom: ‘I make a conscious choice to be hopeful. That’s not always in vogue’With a new Irish production of the stage show based on the book, Albom’s autobiographical story is still finding new audiencesFri Apr 03 2026 - 09:27
Danny Brown in Dublin review: Maximalist sound with a performance that never loses its coreAt the 3Olympia, what’s most striking is the way the rapper pushes himself into difficult territory yet retains astonishing speed and precisionFri Mar 27 2026 - 10:00
Christmas is about pretending for the sake of those we love. It’s magicIn my own childhood, my mother held fast to the baffling belief that Santa was merely ‘a nice idea’Fri Dec 12 2025 - 06:00
A deal with the devil: What will artists sacrifice to realise their ambitions?Yfel, a new play from Pan Pan and the Australian collective Aphids, delves into our darker nature to find outSun Dec 07 2025 - 05:23
The Dead review: Joyce’s perfect story finds wonderfully playful expression in this Christmas gemTheatre: Louise Lowe’s returning production honours Joyce without embalming him, letting his world breathe againMon Nov 24 2025 - 10:28
Lorde still has greatness within grasp. But at the RDS in Dublin, cool restraint settles into flat chillLorde at her best is magnetic, brooding, a touch menacing. She shouldn’t try to be too relatable Sun Nov 23 2025 - 11:19
Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu: Ambitious novel reaches almost spiritual heightsNot just a love story but something sadder and more complicatedSat Nov 22 2025 - 04:41
One of Us by Elizabeth Day: Darkly funny tale of envy and powerTightly constructed thriller explores class and privilege in contemporary BritainSat Nov 08 2025 - 04:07
Cymande at Cork Jazz Festival: Easy, reaffirming rhythms of the 1970sThere’s an idealistic atmosphere here you don’t find much any more. It’s both reassuring and nostalgicMon Nov 03 2025 - 09:49
The Mirror Stage: ‘When you imagine a theatre show about psychosis, what do you see?’Brokentalkers have teamed up with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland to blend testimony, research and performanceSun Nov 02 2025 - 05:21
Flashlight by Susan Choi: Family tragedy turned into political mysteryThe American author’s latest novel connects a child’s trauma to political disappearances in JapanSat Oct 25 2025 - 04:24
Connie review: The deeply tragic life of an Irish actor who became a Hollywood starTheatre: Pom Boyd stars in clever, entertaining portrayal of Constance Smith’s extraordinarily novelistic lifeThu Oct 23 2025 - 11:46
Pillow Queens at the NCH: A beautiful performance but the messy, communal ache is missingThese Pillow Queens songs belong to half-lit bars and the roar of a crowd that knows every wordWed Oct 22 2025 - 11:15
Buckeye by Patrick Ryan: a family saga, ghost story and social history rolled into oneDebut novel tackles dark times with lightness and compassionSat Oct 11 2025 - 10:20
Caligula, at Dublin Theatre Festival, resonates as a meditation on tyranny and resistanceDublin Theatre Festival 2025 review: This Ukrainian take on Camus’s play is a compelling political statement rather than convincing dramaFri Oct 10 2025 - 11:43
Deaf Republic, at Dublin Theatre Festival, is daring, intricate and, above all, beautifulDublin Theatre Festival 2025 review: Dead Centre turn Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry into complex, layered, hallucinatory dramaSat Oct 04 2025 - 13:59
Deep Burn by Brendan Mac Evilly: A rural Irish thriller that doubles as an art-world satireBehind the art-world lampooning lies a portrait of the creative mindSat Oct 04 2025 - 12:46
Konstantin, at Dublin Theatre Festival, is an intelligent, quick and cracklingly alive take on ChekhovDublin Theatre Festival 2025 review: This inventive play asks what happens after The Seagull’s gunshotFri Oct 03 2025 - 09:42
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai: A novel of tremendous scope and richnessDesai returns to the most radical ambition of novels: making the complexity of other lives shareableTue Sept 30 2025 - 04:27
Hair is the only part of the body we can easily and endlessly revise - it grows backRare though it is, when we actually achieve it, it makes all the fussing feel worth itMon Sept 29 2025 - 06:00
Self Esteem in Dublin review: A masterclass in pacing and performance that leaves the room buzzingBeneath their bubbly surface, Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s pop songs hide a volcanic emotional terrainThu Sept 25 2025 - 10:17
To quit smoking you have to sincerely want to, and I’m not sure I doI had my first cigarette at 15, for the same reason as most people: because you weren’t supposed toMon Sept 22 2025 - 06:00
Hamlet starring actors with Down syndrome: ‘It profoundly reconfigures the meaning of to be or not to be?’Chela De Ferrari is bringing a new vision of Shakespeare’s play to DublinSat Sept 20 2025 - 05:11
Last Gig Ever!!, at Dublin Fringe, is less performance than audience endurance testDublin Fringe Festival 2025 review: In Last Gig Ever!!, two performers in oversized dark suits thrash around for an hourFri Sept 19 2025 - 09:45
Alison Spittle’s show Big, at Dublin Fringe, is harrowing and hilariousDublin Fringe Festival review: Spittle is a fearless confessional comic and a great storyteller, as she shows in this bracingly honest account of life in a fat bodyThu Sept 18 2025 - 14:16
Clash at the Quays! II: Lokomania, at Dublin Fringe, is sweaty, sexy and mischievousDublin Fringe Festival 2025: Ahmed, With Love marshals the kind of collective energy you hope to find in underground shows but rarely doMon Sept 08 2025 - 10:07
Marina Carr and Caitríona McLaughlin on The Boy: ‘We’re constantly being told what to do, what to think. We’ll turn into zombies’Dublin Theatre Festival 2025: The writer and director on their new production, a retelling of Sophocles’ Theban playsSat Sept 06 2025 - 05:21
Conversation with the Sea by Hugo Hamilton: A novel of near-perfect beautyEmotional and moral depth makes this so refreshing, like meeting the only adult in the roomWed Sept 03 2025 - 04:36
Kings of Leon at Electric Picnic 2025: Plenty of anthems, but this polished headline set also feels a little distantThe Followills may not seem to be having much fun, but they deliver the hits the audience have come forMon Sept 01 2025 - 09:44
Electric Picnic 2025 highs and lows: Chappell Roan hits like a typhoon, €20 burgers like a lead balloon It was festival’s biggest year so far, with 80,000 people in Stradbally for the weekend. Here’s what we loved and hatedMon Sept 01 2025 - 05:31
High emotions as Dermot Kennedy joins The Cranberries to sing Dolores O’Riordan’s immaculate songs at Electric Picnic 2025Noel and Mike Hogan welcome the star to perform with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in a tribute to their late bandmateSun Aug 31 2025 - 19:19
‘I’m not cool. I’ve never been cool,’ Robbie Williams tells Croke Park on night of naked honestyNo dead air for two hours of hits and surprises as Williams asks the audience for adorationSun Aug 24 2025 - 09:54
Remember When by Fiona Phillips: An unflinching first-person account of the slide into Alzheimer’s Phillips writes with the help of her husband, whose presence in the narrative grows as her illness progressesSat Aug 23 2025 - 14:38
The Compound by Aisling Rawle: An engrossing and confidently executed dystopian novelThe novel’s power lies in its atmosphere, its pacing and the completeness of the author’s narrative controlWed Aug 20 2025 - 04:16
Men in Love by Irvine Welsh: The Trainspotting gang return with a new addictionWelsh’s deeper ambition is sincerity in a novel about growing up and searchingFri Aug 15 2025 - 12:07
The Lunch Punch Power Hour in Conference Room 4: Fun and refreshingly anarchic, but more valiant revolt than workplace revolutionRaymond Keane directs Caoimhe O’Malley, Fionn Foley and Emma Dargan-Reid in Caitríona Daly’s new playThu Aug 07 2025 - 09:47
Rosie O'Donnell's Dublin show: Despite considerable comic timing, her vision of Ireland is ridiculousAt Common Knowledge, you might end up wondering if you’ve bought tickets to the wrong showMon Jul 28 2025 - 11:03
So many jobs are a laughable waste of time. The greater part of any job is learning to look busyWe’ve inherited a strange cultural hangover from better times: the idea that the thing you do to survive should also double as your identity and source of prideSun Jul 27 2025 - 06:00
Wolf Moon by Arifa Akbar: On the night shiftMemoir, cultural criticism and feminist theory are threaded together in this serious but ultimately tame narrativeSat Jul 26 2025 - 07:23
Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt: A novel with impressive scopeThis novel’s achievement lies in making the sweep of history profoundly personalThu Jul 24 2025 - 05:37
Esther Freud: ‘My sister always wants me to be harder, be meaner, be tougher. To cut through’ In My Sister and Other Lovers the novelist returns to the highly autobiographical terrain she first mined in Hideous KinkyWed Jul 16 2025 - 05:17
Taylor Tomlinson at 3Arena review: more personal, more vulnerable but few surprisesLike all good comics, Tomlinson commands not just the laughs but the silences between themMon Jul 14 2025 - 10:17
To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong: Ambitious, stylish novel is like The Bell Jar for Gen ZArmstrong has crafted a style that is urgently contemporary and unmistakably her ownSat Jul 12 2025 - 10:30
In Plain Sight review: A sharp and graceful new way to tell a difficult story and start vital conversationsTheatre: This new work by Noelle Brown and Camille O’Sullivan shifts between modes - guided reflection, documentary theatre, archival reading, songFri Jul 11 2025 - 11:39
It’s Terrible the Things I Have to Do to Be Me: the spectacle’s sinister pullTaking its title from a courtroom lament by Anna Nicole Smith, this read is a study of how fame transforms a woman into an imageFri Jul 11 2025 - 04:31
Camila Cabello at 3Arena review: Fast, loud and fun – except for one humiliating momentIn Dublin the star pulls a fan onstage and gets the crowd to chant that the poor girl’s ‘a 10 out of 10′ before launching into a motivational speechThu Jul 10 2025 - 11:19
Love Forms by Claire Adam: A novel of cumulative forceThe Trinidadian-Irish author brings a refreshing seriousness and sincerity to her study of the mysteries of loveFri Jul 04 2025 - 04:13
Static review: A stranded astronaut, an Irish radio ham and snatches of a strange, poignant frequencyJimmy McAleavey’s play, at the Peacock, fictionalises and slightly flattens a moment of unlikely connectionThu Jun 26 2025 - 15:58
The Second Woman review: Eileen Walsh’s 24-hour performance reveals something astonishing about usCork Midsummer Festival 2025: Playing the same break-up scene on a loop, with 100 different men, the actor is up for anything, alive to each variationMon Jun 16 2025 - 09:33
