The Irish Times

Lauren Coe is excellent as Emma in ‘Asking for It’. Photograph: Hugh O’Conor

‘Asking For It’ stage review: An unsettling anatomy of rape culture

Theatre
Peter Crawley
June 18, 2018, 13:17

This gruelling adaptation of Louise O’Neill’s novel is alarming for good reason

Tadhg Murphy in the Numbered at Fitzgerald Park, Cork, which runs until June 30th. Photograph: Krzysztof Zielenski

The Numbered review: an interrogation of our futile anxiety over death

Stage
Mary Leland
June 19, 2018, 14:00

Elias Canetti’s play presents a world where everyone knows the age at which they’ll die

Lauren Coe as Emma in Asking For It. Photograph: Hugh O’Conor

Asking For It and The Kite Runner: This week’s theatre highlights

Stage
Peter Crawley
June 9, 2018, 05:00

An Irish rape case exposes a culture of victim-blaming in the stage adaptation of Louise O’Neill’s novel; repressed desires drive a boy’s own story from Kabul to San Francisco

Selina Cartmell. Photograph: Tom Honan.

Mending the Gate: ‘Michael Colgan’s style was very different to mine’

Stage
Peter Crawley
June 9, 2018, 05:00

The Gate Theatre turned 90 this year. Nobody noticed. Selina Cartmell on a challenging first year in charge

In the book, which has now been adapted for the stage, young boys in 1970s Afghanistan fly bright, elegant kites which have been weaponised for attack

The Kite Runner at Gaiety review: Becomingly naive stage version lays much of subtext bare

Theatre
Peter Crawley
June 5, 2018, 14:00

Khaled Hosseini’s novel inspired by Taliban’s ban on kite flying is given the stage treatment

Mary Murray: magnetic focus

No Smoke Without Fire: This week’s theatre highlights

Stage
Peter Crawley
June 2, 2018, 05:00

Mary Murray fleshes out several characters, ‘Buridan’s Ass’ battles with a philosophical paradox

For all its self-awareness, mad gags and sometimes impenetrable idiosyncrasies, ’The Rehearsal’ is one of the most faithful representations of ‘Hamlet’ you could hope to find

Theatre highlights of the week

Stage
Peter Crawley
May 26, 2018, 05:00

Tough choices: audiences get to elect their own prince in Pan Pan’s brilliant alternative take on ‘Hamlet’ at the Abbey; while Veronica Dyas, Bertolt Brecht and Maxim Gorky share a Mother in Dyas’s new production ‘My Son My Son’

Aisling O’Sullivan and Brian Doherty in Annabelle Comyn’s production of ‘The Wake’, by Tom Murphy, at the Abbey Theatre in 2016. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Tom Murphy: ‘How do you write a play? I don’t know’

Stage
Peter Crawley
May 16, 2018, 16:59

Murphy gave the Irish canon a series of masterpieces. Peter Crawley assesses his drama

“Tom Murphy would have given every one of his great plays for one short hour of that pure, transcendent self-expression.” Photograph: Bryan O’Brien

Fintan O’Toole on Tom Murphy the Irish Orpheus

Stage
Fintan O'Toole
May 19, 2018, 15:39

This is the text of O’Toole’s eulogy delivered at the service in the Mansion House

Ruth Negga: the Oscar-nominated Irish actor will play ‘Hamlet’ at the Gate theatre

Ruth Negga as Hamlet: Outsiders are in at the Gate theatre

Stage
Deirdre Falvey
May 14, 2018, 18:00

Gate breaks from its painful recent past with ‘The Snapper’ and an innovative ‘Hamlet’

President Michael D Higgins and Tom Murphy: “I had the pleasure of presenting Tom with the Aosdána torc in his home in 2017, a great acknowledgment by his contemporaries of his outstanding abilities as a writer”

‘I loved him’: Tributes to Tom Murphy

Stage
Deirdre Falvey
May 16, 2018, 15:31

The late playwright’s friends, colleagues and admirers remember the man and his work

Gary Perkins III as Frederick Douglass, with fellow cast members Tiffany Byrd, Kevin Collins, Louis Davis, Jenny Donovan, Madeline Mooney. Photograph: Rex Daugherty

Frederick Douglass’s Irish ‘transformation’ after escaping slavery

Stage
Suzanne Lynch
May 10, 2018, 05:00

Solas Nua’s Washington production aims to highlight abolitionist leader’s links to Ireland

Daniel Monaghan and Marie Ruane in The Good Father

‘The Good Father’ and ‘Minding Frankie’: this week’s best theatre

Stage
Peter Crawley
May 12, 2018, 05:00

An unlikely couple face up to parenthood, and Maeve Binchy’s evergreen story

Denise Gough: Tony Award nominee for ‘Angels in America’, which also stars Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane. Photograph: Tom Jamieson/The New York Times

Irish actor Denise Gough nominated for Tony Award for ‘Angels in America’

Stage
Deirdre Falvey
May 1, 2018, 17:37

Actor from Ennis almost gave up after 10 years struggling to make it in London, before landing her big break

Cyprus Avenue: Stephen Rea is in David Ireland’s provocative comedy on the Peacock Stage at the Abbey Theatre

Cyprus Avenue and The Plough and the Stars: the best theatre of the week

Stage
Peter Crawley
April 28, 2018, 05:00

Stephen Rea stars in David Ireland’s scabrous comedy; the Abbey’s O’Casey returns

Maeve Binchy with her husband, Gordon Snell. Photograph: Joe St Leger / THE IRISH TIMES

Gordon Snell on writing alongside Maeve Binchy

Stage
Gordon Snell
May 5, 2018, 05:00

Gordon Snell: We are all lucky that in such stories and characters, Maeve still lives on

Marie Mullen as the ‘brilliantly delusional grandmother’, Shalome in On Raftery’s Hill

‘On Raftery’s Hill’ review: a striking and pummelling production

Theatre
Peter Crawley
May 2, 2018, 20:16

Marina Carr’s bleak topical tragedy is like the fresh jolt of a recurring nightmare

Dave Duggan, jazz trumpeter Linley Hamilton and actor Orla Mullan

Jazz comedy that plays with space and form

Stage
Freya McClements
April 26, 2018, 05:00

In ‘Chezzie’s Chance’, the conceit is that audience and actors are at a jazz gig

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Sondheim’s ‘Assassins’: dark side of the American dream plays at the Gate

Sondheim’s ‘Assassins’: dark side of the American dream plays at the Gate

Now at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, the multi-award-winning musical lays bare the lives of nine people who assassinated (or tried to assassinate) the President of the US

Sponsored by Gate Theatre

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