Theatre News | Stage Listings, Reviews & More |The Irish Times

These Stupid Things: As the characters’ desire for each other flickers and flares, will their own judgement become clouded by emotion?

The week’s best theatre: Two new plays going by their gut

Peter Crawley
July 20, 2019

These Stupid Things at Smock Alley Theatre and Cleft at O’Donoghue Theatre are his week’s highlights

None of the eight guests quite know what they’re doing here

Epiphany review: The play that’s a meditation on theatre itself

Peter Crawley
July 19, 2019

Those who gather to celebrate Epiphany aren’t quite sure what it’s all about – can this Joyce-inspired play make it any clearer?

Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) runs until Saturday. Photograph: Steve Tanner

Dead Dog in a Suitcase review: An abrasive, ragged comic opera

Peter Crawley
July 19, 2019

Galway International Arts Festival: However crude the satire, nothing can compete with reality in 2019

Dublin Youth Theatre’s rehearsals of The Sleepwalkers. Photograph: Aoife Herrity

Can experimental theatre be sentimental?

Peter Crawley
July 18, 2019

Inspired by the loss of its home, Dublin Youth Theatre partners with Pan Pan to contemplate youth and adulthood in The Sleepwalkers

Karl Shiels appeared in RTÉ’s Fair City, and in many stage productions. Photograph: RTE/PA Wire

Karl Shiels: Maybe because he had been an electrician he was aware of the capacity to shock

Peter Crawley
July 17, 2019

A passionate advocate for originality, he knew that theatre could be electrifying

Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) comes to Galway International Arts Festival later this month. Photograph: Steve Tanner

Dead Dog in a Suitcase: High-octane theatre for turbulent times

Deirdre Falvey
July 13, 2019

Kneehigh’s reworking of The Beggar’s Opera tale of corruption, ineptitude and irresponsibility is coming to Galway

Kneehigh Theatre perform Dead Dog in a Suitcase at Bailey Allen Hall, NUI Galway, July 16th-20th. Photograph: Steve Tanner

Epiphany and Dead Dog in a Suitcase: theatre shows to catch this week

Peter Crawley
July 13, 2019

Druid Theatre Company stages Brian Watkins’s new play Epiphany, a serious comedy with Joycean inspiration, Cornwall’s Kneehigh turn The Beggars Opera on its head

Brendan Grace worked in the entertainment industry for 50 years.

Comedian Brendan Grace had ‘the kindest, kindest heart’

Jack Horgan-Jones
July 11, 2019

Funeral to take place in the Liberties in Dublin on Monday

Comic Brendan Grace pictured at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, in 2001. File photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

‘One of the greats’: Comedian Brendan Grace dies aged 68

Aine McMahon
July 11, 2019

Lord Mayor of Dublin opens book of condolence for veteran entertainer

Brendan Grace at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, in 2001 Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

Brendan Grace obituary: Ireland’s most popular live comedian

July 11, 2019

Father Ted role as Fr Fintan Stack brought his talents to a modern generation

Brendan Grace preparing before his show in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 1986. Photograph: Independent News and Media/Getty Images)

Brendan Grace: The best bits from a life in comedy

Brian Boyd
July 11, 2019

These eight YouTube clips show Brendan Grace’s pioneering, inimitable comedy style

Brendan Grace at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 2001. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

Brendan Grace: His big break came when he gave the gig of his life for Frank Sinatra

Brian Boyd
July 11, 2019

Grace was a pioneer in Ireland, writing and performing his own comedy as a headline act

Bullfight on Third Avenue by Eddie Naughton

The Bull Will Come Out Tomorrow: this week's best theatre shows

Peter Crawley
July 6, 2019

A new play imagines the fractious compatibility between Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald, while an old musical makes a comeback for the summer

Brian Watkins: The staircase was his own eureka, ‘the predominant image which guided the whole creation of the thing’

‘I don’t think I would be a writer were it not for Irish writers’

Peter Crawley
June 29, 2019

US playwright Brian Watkins takes inspiration from Joyce’s The Dead for his latest work, Epiphany

Theatre for One: Eileen Walsh in Bait, by Louise Lowe. Photograph: Jed Niezgoda/venividi.ie

Thought-provoking theatre where the audience is just you

Peter Crawley
June 25, 2019

Review: Theatre for One’s six microplays are bracing, intimate-as-a-whisper performances

The Small Things: Pauline McLynn and Peter Gowan face off on a pair of small separate stages

The Small Things: Blood and violence and love, but no chemistry

Gemma Tipton
June 20, 2019

Review: Pauline McLynn and Peter Gowan work from an extraordinary script by Enda Walsh, but the setting leaves things out in the cold

Co Armagh man Conor Mitchell set up the Belfast Ensemble in 2017.

The Belfast Ensemble brings its 3-day Bash to the Lyric Theatre

Jane Coyle
June 19, 2019

A retrospective celebration of the extraordinary canon of work in just two years

Evening Train: its song are given beautifully graduated renderings by Kate Stanley Brennan, Ger Kelly, Ian Lloyd Anderson and Deirdre Donnelly. Photograph: Bríd O’Donovan

Evening Train review: Two young men on the edge of escape, one reckless, the other desperate

Mary Leland
June 17, 2019

It’s the simplicity of the story that resonates in this musical based on Mick Flannery’s concept album

The Abbey: Ireland’s national theatre. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Was it for this? Fintan O’Toole on the existential questions facing the Abbey Theatre

Fintan O'Toole
June 15, 2019

If the national theatre is not world class or keen on Ireland’s dramatic canon, what is it for?

Fionn Foley as Brendan Galileo

Theatre highlights: Unmanageable Sisters returns to the stage

Peter Crawley
June 15, 2019

Fionn Foley’s solo show Brendan Galileo for Europe onstage ahead of fringe outings

What are we like back there in The Stalls? Picture: Miki Barlok

The Stalls review: original, confident and hilarious

Mary Leland
June 14, 2019

Skilful skewering as opera ensemble shows audience exactly what it’s like

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