The Irish Times

Playwright Nancy Harris: Her new play The Beacon opens at the Gate Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw/The Irish Times

Nancy Harris: ‘Plays are kind of cool now’

Stage
Peter Crawley
September 21, 2019, 05:00

With two new plays opening simultaneously in Dublin and London, the playwright lays bare both a family and a political drama, full of art and ambiguity

How to Win Against History, at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, is a celebrated musical about the immensely flamboyant, almost-erased Henry Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey

Event of the Week: Dublin Theatre Festival gets its history on

Stage
Peter Crawley
September 21, 2019, 05:00

Whether it’s looking back or casting forward, this year’s festival is rooted firmly in the now

Marina Carr: ‘There’s a whole world of women’s work that isn’t being seen’

Stage
Sara Keating
September 7, 2019, 05:00

The playwright comes full circle with the Irish premiere of Hecuba at Project Arts Centre

How It Is (Part 2): Conor Lovett in a continuing exploration of Samuel Beckett’s prose. Photograph: Claire Keogh

How It Is (Part 2): Beckettian murmurs in the existential mud

Stage
Mary Leland
September 16, 2019, 13:38

Theatre review: Judy Hegarty Lovett directs Gare St Lazare Ireland in a world premiere

Jane Brennan: ‘I feel him here in a very benign way. He is still around’

‘Tom was very good at expressing his emotions, so I always felt his love. He didn’t bottle that up’

Stage
Deirdre Falvey
September 16, 2019, 12:45

A year after his death, playwright Tom Murphy is being celebrated by actors keen to share their experience of working on his plays. His widow, actor Jane Brennan, talks about life with – and without – Murphy

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

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

Stage
Fintan O'Toole
June 15, 2019, 05:00

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

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

Stage
Peter Crawley
July 17, 2019, 09:59

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

Anne Enright and Lucy Vigne-Welsh in Top Girls by Caryl Churchill in 1985. Photograph: Alan Byrne

Rough Magic theatre, 35 years on: ‘Dublin in those days was so bohemian’

Stage
Gemma Tipton
September 16, 2019, 12:42

Company reflects on decades of casting spells and pushing the envelope with its productions

Members of the cast of The Big Chapel X rehearse at St Brigid’s College in Callan, Co Kilkenny. Photograph: Alan Betson

A whole town is the set for a giant church-state battle

Stage
Deirdre Falvey
August 3, 2019, 05:00

The Big Chapel X, an adaptation of Thomas Kilroy’s novel, sees the community of Callan, Co Kilkenny, revisiting a dark period of its past

Spliced: Timmy Creed’s insider position, and love of the sport, give him credibility in discussing how to tackle some of masculinity’s less appealing aspects

‘I felt like a spy infiltrating the IRA’: The hurler who exposed his sport

Stage
Tim Jonze
August 16, 2019, 21:00

Timmy Creed quit disillusioned, then returned to tackle hurling’s ‘toxic masculinity’

Actor Mark Smith and Aisling Byrne, his friend and longtime collaborator. “Mark has an amazing story. A lot has happened in his life. He has done some amazing things”

The incredible but true stories of Mark Smith

Stage
Sara Keating
August 24, 2019, 05:00

Making documentary theatre about his life has given the actor his first opportunity to tell his own story

Anna Shiels-McNamee takes an unusually wry view of the process of going blind.

Journalism and blindness: This week’s theatre highlights

Stage
Peter Crawley
September 16, 2019, 12:37

Two stand out productions from last year’s Dublin Fringe Festival go on tour

Writers and co-directors Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd

The play with no performers: Beckett’s Room is something between a conjuring act and a weird dream

Stage
Peter Crawley
September 7, 2019, 05:00

As the world that made Samuel Beckett who he was becomes magically apparent, the point of Dead Centre’s unusual approach begins to makes sense

The Examination: at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival

Crime and punishment and gorilla suits: this week’s theatre highlight

Stage
Peter Crawley
August 31, 2019, 07:00

Brokentalkers’ sharp and stealthy new production asks us to examine our prejudices about the roots of crime, and the inhumanities of the prison system, offering no easy escapes

This Beautiful Village: Lisa Tierney-Keogh’s comedy recapitulates the salient political talking points of our time within a nostalgic form. Photograph: Pat Redmond

This Beautiful Village: One-note characters addressing a symphony of concerns

Stage
Peter Crawley
September 6, 2019, 13:46

Theatre review: Lisa Tierney-Keogh’s middle-class satire is somewhere between Yasmina Reza and Bernard Farrell

The Big Chapel X: Niall Boland, Eoin Byrne, Grace Collender, John Rice, Derek Dooley, Stephen Lafford, Kevin Tynan and Sean Bryan on the streets of Callan. Photograph: John D Kelly

The Big Chapel X review: A story of schism brings a community together

Stage
Peter Crawley
August 13, 2019, 12:43

This huge adaptation of Thomas Kilroy’s novel is both an impassioned critique and a persuasive illustration of crowd control

Ask Too Much of Me: as one housemate explains, with only mild exaggeration, ‘everyone here is gay and vaguely communist’. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Ask Too Much of Me review: A sharp, compassionate take on being young in Dublin

Stage
Peter Crawley
August 22, 2019, 13:41

Veronica Coburn directs the National Youth Theatre in Dylan Coburn Gray’s compelling portrayal of the Repeal generation

Locked and loaded: The Roaring Banshees

Cumann feel the noise: This week’s best theatre

Stage
Peter Crawley
August 24, 2019, 05:00

The Roaring Banshees is a counter-factual history of feminist discontents with the Free State

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