
<rss version="2.0">
 <channel>
  <title>Irish Theatre Magazine reviews RSS</title>
 <link><![CDATA[/]]></link> 
  <description>Irish Theatre Magazine RSS Feed</description>  
    
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/All-Over-Town]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[All Over Town]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Seán (Dylan Kennedy) is young, gay, and eager to free himself of the baggage of his life in Ireland. A prosaic family goodbye at the airport and he&rsquo;s on his way to Australia by way of Bangkok: forced to wear the Dublin jersey his mother has given him as a going away present because its made of a breathable fabric.
Seán&rsquo;s story is related to us through a monologue by Phillip McMahon, darling of the Fringe since winning the Spirit of the Fringe award in 2006, and All Over Town has that small intimacy and energy you might associate with a small, sweaty venue where it might come as an...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:17:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/All-Over-Town]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Red-Lola]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Red Lola]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the more charming productions at the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival was a non-verbal piece of work that explored theatre as joyous fantasy and magical possibility. Devised by Asylum Productions, Cleaner, which offered us a glimpse into the life of a bored housemaid, made use of mime, puppetry and movement over half an hour of playful fun within the intimate setting of the Unitarian Church in the city centre.

It is an interrogatory process that Asylum has clearly set about pursuing, and this year the company expands upon its initial inquiries with a darker, more surreal piece of work that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:21:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Red-Lola]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hollander]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hollander]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As was the case with Hammergrin Theatre&rsquo;s 2008 production for the Cork Midsummer Festival, one suspects there is a coherent narrative underlying this year&rsquo;s tale of the strange and wondrous Hollander House on Cork&rsquo;s North Mall. However, this is a play with so many interludes, diversions and meanderings from the central storyline that, to be frank, it is not always easy to keep up.

While those of us who have been here before - at K: The Iowa Project last year, or at one or other of Hammergrin&rsquo;s projects - will know what to expect, and know also that any confusion we feel...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:28:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hollander]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Krapp's Last Tape]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Revolutionary? Obtuse? Bleak? There are several tattered tags attached to Samuel Beckett. For Irish audiences, the name reverberates in a manner similar to the Bard&rsquo;s across the water: a nationally celebrated and iconic playwright but one who is a tad intimidating. There must also be a couple of uninitiated in an audience who watch heads emerge from amphorae in the dark or an actress buried up to her neck in sand, and, despite genuflecting to Beckett&rsquo;s celebrity, wonder guiltily whether the whole thing is an elaborate, inaccessible jape. Fergus Cronin and Moving Still Theatre Company...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:41:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/DNA-(Deoxyribonucleic-acid)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Given the increase in violent behaviour within and between teenage gangs, group dynamics and the processes of adolescent cruelty is an especially topical concern. It&rsquo;s also a contentious, sensitive issue. Thoughtful analysis in the media is often eclipsed by emotive campaigns, characterised by a sensationalist blame-game and the search for a scape-goat. These issues, and the concomitant agendas they throw up, are ripe for theatrical exploration. Dennis Kelly&rsquo;s DNA is an examination of a group of teenagers who hang out together in a wood. The play begins after a catastrophe: the group&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:45:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/DNA-(Deoxyribonucleic-acid)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Gigli-Concert]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Gigli Concert]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the clichés of Irish theatre historiography is that drama in this country is excessively verbal &ndash; that our dramatists write for the voice, but not for the body. But if you actually go to the theatre here, it soon becomes obvious that the distinction between text and movement is a false one. Many of our great actors are great precisely because of their ability to embody the text: their movement is always based on their breathing as they deliver lines, and their decisions about where, when and how to move always seem to begin with their lungs. I'd think in this context of how Owen Roe...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:49:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Gigli-Concert]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lipstick-and-Spitting-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Lipstick and Spitting Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Two plays focusing on the problematic nature of love within male/female relationships make up the first outing from new Cork-based theatre company Roundhouse. The company&rsquo;s premise is that artistic directors Jennifer Rogers and Rachel Yoder will operate together as writers, and the playwriting in both instances is notable for its fluidity and accomplishment &ndash; particularly so in Rogers&rsquo; case. An organised bravery also fuels both productions, suggesting Rogers and Yoder have both guts and directorial ability. Despite the fact that each writer directs her own play, neither text is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lipstick-and-Spitting-Love]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Present-Laughter]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Present Laughter]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Written in 1939, Noël Coward&rsquo;s drawing-room farce focuses on the life of aging matinée idol Garry Essendine (Brennan). Just weeks before he is due to tour in Africa, Essendine becomes a victim of his own vanity and posturing, as women and men throw themselves at his feet, marvelling at his good looks and talent, and insisting on tagging along. Flattered, but exhausted, the caddish actor increasingly despairs of public life, seeking refuge among his more pragmatic inner circle of friends that includes his erstwhile wife (Jefferson) and loyal secretary (Bell).

Brennan is suitably sly and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:00:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Present-Laughter]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cat-and-the-Moon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Cat and the Moon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Cat and the Moon is Blue Raincoat&rsquo;s fourth production this year, conveniently taking place alongside the 50th Yeats International Summer School. Sure enough, the crowd that fills the foyer of the Factory space for this 30-minute lunchtime show seems to fit this studious demographic, and the clutched books and overheard conversations confirm as much. The British man behind me had recently seen a version in New York, and was looking forward to a local take, while the American with whom he chatted had seen Blue Raincoat&rsquo;s version the day before, and fancied a second analysis. Such...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:04:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cat-and-the-Moon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Hostage]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Hostage]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brendan Behan&rsquo;s The Hostage is rarely performed, and Wonderland&rsquo;s recovery reminds us why. The play that began as An Giall, and premiered at the Damer theatre, Dublin in 1957, was subsequently translated into English by Behan, and later developed further by Joan Littleword for her Theatre Workshop in 1958. A hybrid beast since birth, The Hostage contains an unruly mix of characters, ideas, politics, and styles that would scare off most companies.

Set in a Dublin guesthouse-cum-brothel in the 1950s, Behan&rsquo;s drama portrays the detention of a young British soldier by the IRA in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:09:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Hostage]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/New-Writing--Epilogue-and-Shafted]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[New Writing:]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[New Writing at The New Theatre is a week long initiative of new plays by emerging writers. In what promises to mark an on-going commitment to staging new work, the programme features short plays by Jane McCarthy and Arnold Thomas Fanning.

In McCarthy&rsquo;s Epilogue, Henry (Harrington) wakes in the waiting room between life and death, where a presiding lawyer (McDonough) introduces him to significant people in his life, presumably for one last time. With more than a nod to A Christmas Carol, Henry is forced to reckon with his dark deeds, repressed memories, and personal disappointments. He...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:14:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/New-Writing--Epilogue-and-Shafted]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Blackbird]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Blackbird]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is a misfortune that Decadent Theatre should choose to produce David Harrower&rsquo;s play Blackbird so soon after its Irish premiere in 2007: a memorable production by Landmark Theatre Company, which made national headlines because of its controversial subject matter. Comparisons between the productions are unfair, but are nonetheless unavoidable. Blackbird is a stunning play, dense with philosophical and ethical issues about human sexuality that have not been explored with such visceral honesty since Nabakov&rsquo;s novel Lolita, and Galway audiences deserve an opportunity to see such a quality...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:18:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Blackbird]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faithful]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faithful]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Faithful is a comic three-hander &ndash; or more correctly, a two-hander in the first act that becomes a three-hander in the second half. It tells the tale of a husband, Jack (David O&rsquo; Meara) who hires a hit man, Tony (Don Wycherley) to knock off his wife, Margaret (Carrie Crowley). Ostensibly, the murder is set up by Jack because his wife is cheating on him. At least, this is what Jack has lead Tony to believe. However, as the drama unfolds other motives emerge with each passing scene. There are even quite a few points where we&rsquo;re not quite sure who has paid who to do what to whom....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:22:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faithful]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seagull]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Seagull]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Love stinks. As far as premises go, this covers a fair few texts, if not entire theatrical oeuvres. In NYT's production of Martin Crimp&rsquo;s concertinaed version of Chekov&rsquo;s very long and often turgid text, this rock &lsquo;n&rsquo; roll notion is foregrounded and indeed illuminated by director Wayne Jordan and his youthful cast. Within moments, one thinks: Ah! That&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s always been so irritating about this play! The characters, almost without exception, are spoiled, petulant adolescents! 

Happily, they are somewhat easier to take when played by actual teenagers.

It...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:27:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seagull]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-Am-Of-Ireland]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[I Am Of Ireland]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bosco Hogan, resplendent with flowing gray locks and stern spectacles, wears the character of W.B. Yeats like a comfortable pair of old slippers. It&rsquo;s a comforting and plausible impersonation, providing an opportunity to revisit, through Hogan&rsquo;s confident interpretation, so many of the poems that are ingrained in heart and mind, from schooldays.

Hogan speaks with an authoritative voice that carries the narrative text and the verse with easy conviction. He is every inch the educated and articulate Anglo-Irishman &ndash; only occasionally moving accents into the West of Ireland (Red...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:32:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-Am-Of-Ireland]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Rivals]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Rivals]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When The Rivals premiered in London on the 17th of January 1775, author Richard Brinsley Sheridan&rsquo;s prologue to this tale of misconstrued love took the form of a conversation between a Sergeant-at-Law and an Attorney, appealing to the audience as &lsquo;jury&rsquo; to give the play a fair trial. The audience was unimpressed and the production received a critical drubbing. Chastened, Sheridan whipped the play offstage for a hasty rewrite. He acknowledged the work&rsquo;s lacklustre beginnings in a new prologue, and the re-jigged Rivals re-opened on the 28th of January 1775 with the character...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:44:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Rivals]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Corpses-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Breathing Corpses]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a brilliant structure to Breathing Corpses. Young English playwright Laura Wade&rsquo;s 2006 play presents us with what at first seem like disparate and unconnected tales that all feature, at some point, a corpse &ndash; but as the drama unfolds we realise that we are watching events that are deeply and tragically connected. Each dramatic vignette is delivered achronologically in terms of the play&rsquo;s timeline. Thus, every scene makes us reflect back, as an epiphany, on what we&rsquo;ve already seen, whilst simultaneously allowing us to bring to bear what has gone before on what we...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Corpses-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Friel-Festival]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Yalta Game and Afterplay]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Gate | Friel, a selection of Brian Friel&rsquo;s plays are restaged to mark the writer&rsquo;s 80th year and his relationship with the Gate theatre.  Following a successful tour of the Sydney Festival and the Edinburgh International Festival with the help of Culture Ireland, Faith Healer (1979), The Yalta Game (2001) and Afterplay (2002) are back on home ground.

Under Patrick Mason&rsquo;s direction, the action of The Yalta Game takes place around ten loosely grouped chairs. Designed by Liz Ascroft, the set anchors the otherwise uncertain geography that shifts between a bedroom, a café, and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:47:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Friel-Festival]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Little-Gem]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Little Gem]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[[This is a review of the September 2009 run of this production.]
Little Gem has already garnered a number of awards including the Stewart Parker for playwright Elaine Murphy. The most recent laurel was the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Fringe accolade which sees this three-hander of grandmother, mother and daughter head for a run at the renowned Flea Theatre in TriBeCa off Broadway in New York in January. Wherever it has been so far, actress and debutante author Murphy&rsquo;s play blazesa trail of humanity, humour and, on this showing, truly memorable performances from the all-female cast.

The...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:04:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Little-Gem]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lonesome-West]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Lonesome West]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[At the outset of his punchy play, London Irishman, Broadway darling and black-humour&rsquo;s lodestar Martin McDonagh might have some of theatre&rsquo;s denizens believing that Irish country life is cruel, heartless, and still entirely peopled by hessian-suited farmers, frustrated priests and lusty colleens. Further into this exuberant co-production of The Lonesome West however, it becomes clear through McDonagh&rsquo;s linguistic japes rollicking around the script that the entire work is not much more than a mischievously satirical cartoon with very few sacred kows to tow to. 

On their family...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:15:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lonesome-West]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Last-Train-from-Holyhead]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Last Train from Holyhead]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Digging up the past is textural to Irish Theatre. Put two disaffected Irish men with a twenty-year generational gap on a long train journey late at night, post Christmas. Give them two glasses and a bottle of whiskey and one of them is sure to shovel up a tortured history. 

As its title screams, Last Train From Holyhead, the debut outing of Haw Theatre from Galway, delves into the pickings of the Irish Diaspora, disinterring a human tale around the themes of identity, belonging and displacement. 

Jack (Mick Lally) and Pat (Tony Dowling) are the odd couple trapped together in a railway carriage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:52:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Last-Train-from-Holyhead]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Johnny-Patterson-the-Singing-Irish-Clown]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Johnny Patterson the Singing Irish Clown]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mesmerising. Enchanting. Magical. Touching. Ingenious. Innovative. Quirky. Endearing. Experimental. Different and highly imaginative. All words that appropriately describe Barabbas&rsquo; latest theatrical offering. This time it&rsquo;s a collaboration with Little John Nee, an inimitable and very Irish troubadour, storyteller, writer, actor and (even if he might baulk at the description) avant-garde clown, in the broadest meaning of our hitherto historically circus-confined red nosed buffoon. Actually, in the case of Little John Nee and this production, Shakespearean Fool and Patrick Kavanagh-esque...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:40:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Johnny-Patterson-the-Singing-Irish-Clown]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Government-Inspector]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Government Inspector]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Greystones Theatre is an unlikely venue, tucked in almost obscurely behind Church Road, between the car park and Super-Valu, with a very low ceiling, a lot of wood panelling and a serviceable stage better suited to gigging or stand-up comedy than to a play &ndash; not a very promising start.
Yet the effect of the cast of six erupting onto the stage is electrifying and transformative. Corruption and chicanery in the face of public apathy (even if it&rsquo;s only an insignificant town called Baccabiondi) has a contemporary resonance. Here the pigs at the trough are portrayed in bizarre caricature...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:50:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Government-Inspector]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Transparency]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Transparency]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Australian playwright Suzie Miller&rsquo;s new play Transparency, developed by the National Theatre in London and premiering with Ransom Productions, explores the troubling issue of violent crimes perpetrated by children. The questions that these cases pose about the nature of evil, the limits of responsibility, and the balance between rehabilitation and punishment are explored through the relationship of Simon (played by Richard Dormer) and his wife Jess (Dorothea Myer-Bennett). As the play begins, the marriage is reaching a crisis because of Simon&rsquo;s reluctance to start a family. His sudden...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:13:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Transparency]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dead-School]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Dead School]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Almost every second person educated in an Irish primary school up to the 1970&rsquo;s has woeful stories of brutality featuring a cane, a hard duster or the twisting of an ear. It&rsquo;s a far cry from whiteboards, &lsquo;Well Done Stars&rsquo; and &lsquo;Good Effort Robert,&rsquo; irrespective of the achievement.
Pat McCabe&rsquo;s The Dead School is set at that time in the 1970&rsquo;s when the wheel began to turn; where the salvation of the person came through membership of a community of the faithful and through loyal service to the Holy Father and his bishops but where individualism and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:18:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dead-School]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/When-the-Hunter-Returns]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[When the Hunter Returns]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Is there a problem when one wants to rave about the venue &ndash; the extraordinary, atmospheric Boys&rsquo; School at Smock Alley &ndash; rather than the play, the production or the acting? It&rsquo;s a breathtaking, gaunt three-storey cuboid, stripped of flooring and ceiling, to make one dark, cavernous space, with three church-like openings and some granite projections. The audience was dispersed on three levels &ndash; standing mostly, the action was intimately close. Marcus Costello (Set) and Sophie Bradshaw-Power (Lighting) wisely applied their skills sparingly and allowed the stones to dictate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:09:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/When-the-Hunter-Returns]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Shadowmen]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Shadowmen]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Poet Debbie Caulfield works with composer and musician Réa Curran on this carefully researched fable of climate change and sustainable development. The text originated as a long poem, but the underlying science is accurate and is the fruit of the writer&rsquo;s collaboration with the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, the University of Ulster, and Queen&rsquo;s University. Though primarily aimed at schoolchildren aged 12 and upwards, evening performances were open to the general public and each show was followed by a panel discussion with representatives of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:40:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Shadowmen]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There exists in Waterford a practice by professional and non-professional arts practitioners to work together without being fixated on who is the professional and who is the volunteer. Red Kettle maximised on this collaborative tendency and responded to the current financial climate (being felt particularly keenly in the city with the closure of Waterford Crystal) with their production of A Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream.
The show was advertised as an &ldquo;epic production&rdquo;, enlisted a cast of forty seven cast members (and a dog) and was performed in a circus tent adjacent to the People&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:03:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Setanta-Murphy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Setanta Murphy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[They do not address death directly, yet in Setanta Murphy it is there, floating over this heartwarming dialectic between youth and old age. Cream dust covers hang predatorily above a simple room of a bare wooden table and chair, telegraphing what is to come. In this two-hander, one man shuffles towards a certain death and the other shuffles uncertainly through life. The question the play raises - how to confront death &ndash; shines light on another: how to live a life.
Paddy McDonnell (Garrett Keogh) is 90 and despite a life of vigour, lumping slabs of beef around Dublin markets from dawn 'til...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:43:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Setanta-Murphy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Alcina]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Alcina]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Creating a satisfying production of a Handel opera is always a difficult nut to crack for directors. For a start, there's the 'star turn' of aria after aria beloved of eighteenth-century audiences which goes against the natural arc of a modern narrative. Add to this, the economic necessity of eliminating choruses and ballets and it&rsquo;s a real challenge. Yes, the music is fantastic with virtuoso singing and baroque ornamentation &ndash; but to assemble all of this into a plausible dramatic whole for contemporary audiences takes a lot of thought. Opera Theatre Company's latest production of Alcina...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:23:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Alcina]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cracked-Eggs]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Cracked Eggs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Scarlet Exchange is a newly established collective of playwrights who graduated from the Fishamble playwriting course last year. Cracked Eggs is a showcase of six short plays that emerged in the intervening period. Under Tracy Ryan&rsquo;s direction, the 15 minute long pieces are simply staged in rapid, and often dizzying, succession.
First up, Helen Ryan&rsquo;s Project Dating takes as its subject the phenomenon of Internet dating. Kelly (Christine O&rsquo;Donovan) snuggles up on a couch with her Mac as she talks us through some of her adventures, checking messages as she goes. As she recalls...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:21:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cracked-Eggs]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Black-Milk]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Black Milk]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Frankie McCafferty's narrator opens Black Milk with a rich description of the non-place in which the action is to be set, his arms outstretched at shoulder height, basking in the reflected twirling lights of a glitter ball, there was the promise that this production would glory in its own theatricality. However, almost as quickly as McCafferty is reduced to the role of a drunkard sleeping on a bench, the play's sense of adventure evaporates. It is not that there are not possibilities in the story of how two young Muscovite scammers, the heavily pregnant Poppet (Amy Molloy) and Lyovchick (Packy...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:33:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Black-Milk]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jack]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jack]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mike Kenny&rsquo;s version of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' moves the familiar storyline to some thoughtful questioning of the roles of mothers and wives. The target audience (4-7 year-olds) was absent at the TYA &lsquo;Gathering&rsquo; event, but one can be fairly well assured that they would have enjoyed the broad strokes of the piece and found some food for reflection in the more nuanced sections, as would their elders.
The production owes much to Andrew Clancy&rsquo;s set design: he achieves clarity and simplicity with a humble cottage - a careful line drawing on foldaway flats - that doubles as...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:16:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jack]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Permutations-and-Palpitations]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Permutations and Palpitations]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Playwright Ray Scannell and director Emelie Fitzgibbon have come together once more, this timeon a piece that articulates and amplifies the experience of young adults in a world of impromptu actions and decisions. It takes the haphazard lives of the young, anxious for highs, in revolt against the cosseting of parents and the tedium of school. They engage in subterfuge to evade the adult eyes, yearning to be older than they are. Twin girls and two brothers play hooky to get to a rock festival. The boys want to lose themselves in a blur of intoxication, and the girls want to offer up their virginities:...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:08:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Permutations-and-Palpitations]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Seanfhear-Beag]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[An Seanfhear Beag]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Theatre for children and young people occupies a spectrum that ranges from the didactic (more frequently the domain of the adolescent productions) to the magical, aimed at a younger age-group. An Seanfhear Beagis unequivocally on the side of the magical and it ticks almost all the boxes for children&rsquo;s theatre of the highest order, drawing on both local and national influences: it is Irish, in that the few words employed in the course of the action are Gaelic; it is European in that the company took a child&rsquo;s story from Sweden (by Barbro Lindgren) and transposed it to an Irish village....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:38:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Seanfhear-Beag]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS-Showcase-2009]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Rough Magic SEEDS Showcase 2009]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The directors&rsquo; projects at this year's SEEDS Showcase are a study in contrasts. Where Dying City is a restrained and intimate study of grief for two actors, Serious Money is a complex, multi-stranded, postmodern performance piece for an ensemble of fifteen. However, both of the plays present problems for the young directors. Dying City is so structurally and theatrically understated that it allows for little directorial flourish, while Serious Money &shy;&ndash; as with most of Caryl Churchill&rsquo;s work &ndash; is deeply embedded in the social context of Thatcherite Britain and in the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:34:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS-Showcase-2009]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Doll-s-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Doll's House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Henrik Ibsen&rsquo;s deployment of economics as a root for dramatic tension makes his work entirely apropos in the age of recession. Without even needing to push the text into the realm of allegory, any story of fiduciary mismanagement and the confrontation of ethical responsibility for moral evasion has to belong on the Irish stage.
Second Age Theatre Company&rsquo;s presentation of A Doll&rsquo;s House certainly brims with a sense of the importance of money troubles not as a loose symbol of social class but a real, living force at the core of the moral conundrums its characters face, but its...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:18:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Doll-s-House]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Musician]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Musician]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Was the Pied Piper evil from birth or did his villainy and bitterness result from traumatic childhood experiences? In a vibrant and engaging production, The Musician attempts to explore this question through a whirlwind of music and melodrama. Written and composed by Conor Mitchell, Cahoots NI&rsquo;s exciting and original new opera for children draws upon the child spectator&rsquo;s own cultural knowledge by constructing a prequel to a familiar childhood story. It documents the Piper&rsquo;s boyhood up to the point where he leaves his own village and sets off for Hamelin. For those familiar with...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:10:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Musician]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Observe-the-Sons-of-Ulster-Marching-Towards-the-So]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[NOMAD and Livin&rsquo; Dred, fresh from their successful run of The Dead School at The Dublin Theatre Festival, present their interpretation of Frank McGuinness&rsquo;s iconic play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme throughout their midland home base. It is a glorious fluorescent production that encapsulates the yearning, the haunting, the dreams and the nightmares of each of its eight protagonists with fervour and vigour; the power and poetry of McGuiness&rsquo; language as it see-saws between love and hate, tunnelling through hope (little hope) and anguish with laughter and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:47:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Observe-the-Sons-of-Ulster-Marching-Towards-the-So]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/This-is-What-We-Sang]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[This is What We Sang]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, this new production from Kabosh is a thought-provoking piece of theatre that uncovers a much neglected history of the Jewish Community in Belfast. Performed in the Belfast Synagogue, the play follows the story of several Jewish characters, all from the same extended family, and their varying relationships with Belfast, from a Latvian immigrant in the nineteenth century to a recently unemployed New York businessman returning to settle family accounts. Written as a series of monologues, Gavin Kostick&rsquo;s new play is a predominantly humorous exploration...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:34:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/This-is-What-We-Sang]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/One-is-Not-a-Number]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[One is Not a Number]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Last year, Meridian Theatre Company staged an adaptation of Kevin Barry&rsquo;s award-winning short story collection There are Little Kingdoms. The result, although on many levels engaging, was more akin to a staged reading of the stories than successful drama, lacking focus, narrative arc and dramatic tension.
Despite the production&rsquo;s shortcomings, the difficulties of putting the printed word on the stage are normally not lost on Meridian artistic director Johnny Hanrahan, who has made something of a virtue out of adapting books and short-stories for theatre. In 2002, he took Gaye Shortland&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:49:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/One-is-Not-a-Number]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dispersia]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dispersia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Where have all the flowers gone? In Fregoli Theatre Company&rsquo;s offering to the 2009 Galway Theatre Festival, they&rsquo;ll be sandwiched between the toasters and vinyl records and piles of lost or unwanted detritus fromthe throw-away-world of writer Shane McDermott&rsquo;s purgatorial play, Dispersia. They may be catalogued by a tormented St. Christopher and his confessor: a single, down-at-heel pink sock called Claude. Not a puppet, one should note, or a metaphorical sock, but a frail sounding actress wrapped up in a long knitted blanket. She speaks with a Franglais accent. Zany? Profound?...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:09:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dispersia]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jane-s-Hero]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jane's Hero]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Peadar de Burca is well known in his native Galway as an actor, director and writer ofplays such as What Men Want and Why Men Marry. His latest offering with MorWax productions is Jane&rsquo;s Hero, a one man show about an Irish army officer and his time with the UN peace keeping forces. De Burca&rsquo;s script is based on a series of interviews carried out with Lt. Eamon Colclough who has seen service in many of the world&rsquo;s troubled spots over the last three decades.

Colclough began his career in the 1970&rsquo;s at the height of IRA activity. It is upon this tapestry that the central...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:10:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jane-s-Hero]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Rite-of-Spring]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Rite of Spring]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For choreographers, The Rite of Spring has become a rite of passage. Since the first, fabled, production of the ballet by Diaghilev&rsquo;s Ballets Russes in 1913, Stravinsky&rsquo;s radical score has posed a challenge to generations of dance artists. It invites them to pitch themselves into its ferocious, propulsive rhythms and attempt to hold their own. If successive re-stagings of the work can sometimes seem to be a contest for dominance between dancers and the composer, in the case of Fabulous Beast&rsquo;s new version, Stravinsky&rsquo;s position as supreme innovator remains unthreatened.
Leaving...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:28:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Rite-of-Spring]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Knives-in-Hens-by-David-Harrower]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Knives in Hens]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is so much talk of God in David Harrower&rsquo;s 1993 play, it stirs up one&rsquo;s internal catechism. The following sprang from the recesses of memory: &ldquo;In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God&hellip; Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.&rdquo; (John 1.1)

Okay, so that verbatim delivery of biblical text required some googling, but the first bit, &ldquo;The Word was God&rdquo;,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:29:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Knives-in-Hens-by-David-Harrower]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Clean-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Clean House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Matilde (Villegas) is a cleaner who would rather be a comedian. Her mother died while laughing with her father, and he subsequently shot himself. So she leaves Brazil in search of the perfect joke, even though she fears that when she finds it, it will kill her.
Although the premise is a bit whimsical, it is also rather intriguing. Matilde believes deeply in the power of laughter to disrupt the banalities of life. When she finds herself working for the ambitious doctor Lane (Leahy), and in cahoots with her equally neurotic sister Virginia (Clancy), she has her work cut out.
When Lane&rsquo;s husband...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:55:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Clean-House]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Helter-Skelter---Union-Square]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Helter Skelter / Union Square]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Neil LaBute&rsquo;s theatre usually involves presenting us with seemingly ordinary situations that swiftly enough end up having a very dark underbelly. His dramas invariably confront audiences with deeply disturbing and complex moral dilemmas; ostensibly quotidian situations become examples of extreme behaviour. The two short plays here by LaBute &ndash; Union Square and Helter Skelter &ndash; invigoratingly remain true to type as far as the Michigan-born playwright&rsquo;s obsessions are concerned.
Union Square pops up first. Dermot Magennis excellently distils the quiet desperation of a blue-collar...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:01:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Helter-Skelter---Union-Square]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macbeth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Is Macbeth a prisoner of fate or in charge of his own destiny? Will the prophecies be fulfilled regardless of what he does, or could he resist the witches&rsquo; tempting words and his ambitious wife&rsquo;s pressure? In Opera Ireland&rsquo;s new production of Verdi&rsquo;s first adaptation of a Shakespearian play, Macbeth does not have much of a choice: after his first encounter with the witches, three of them morph into domestic servants and join him at Dunsinane, observing and manipulating proceedings there. Not only do they operate the two mobile wall elements that create the interiors and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:14:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Revenger-s-Tragedy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Revenger’s Tragedy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As you take your seat at the Belltable&rsquo;s off-site space on Cecil Street, the ugliness of the scaffolding cyclorama that reaches all the way up to the flies, surveying a bleak detritus of discarded rubbish - mattress springs, a cement mixer, graffiti walls and a grotto of religious iconography -a picture of the impending depravity is well conjured before a single character utters a swear. Emma Fisher&rsquo;s set depicts an aptly crude setting for Mike Finn's retelling of a Jacobean black comedy.
Finn takes Thomas Middleton&rsquo;s script and grafts it on to an up-to-date carnival of black...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:51:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Revenger-s-Tragedy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wallace--Balfe-and-Mr--Bunn]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Wallace, Balfe and Mr. Bunn]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brendan Farrell&rsquo;s new musical play is set in the Theatre Royal in the present day and is presented as the posthumous production of Mr Alfred Bunn, the original producer of composers William Vincent Wallace, Michael Balfe and Sir Julius Benedict, contemporaries working in musical theatre in London the 1800s. The play features a cast of four actors supported by a musical chorus, soloists and an orchestra and is a light-hearted look at the respective careers of the eponymous characters, interspersed with musical interludes featuring some of their popular compositions such as Balfe&rsquo;s 'The...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:58:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wallace--Balfe-and-Mr--Bunn]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Strandline]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Strandline]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Jim Culleton&rsquo;s production of Abbie Spallen&rsquo;s newest play Strandline has all the outward shows of a murder mystery in full tilt. Taking place, for the most part, in a modern gothic mansion during a dark and stormy night, unlikely suspects are expertly grilled by a self-appointed inspector who quickly discovers no one is who they seem. That the players in this arch tale of intrigue are four disaffected women living in an insular village in Northern Ireland offers us the promise of a thriller turned on its head. This disparate gathering of women following the death of a town favourite...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:21:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Strandline]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Seafarer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Reviewed during the original run, 14th May 2008.
Following on from a hugely successful National Theatre London premiere production that recently garnered four Tony nominations for its Broadway transfer, the Abbey production had a serious benchmark to match. A last-minute cast change had forced the opening night to be postponed by a week further raising the bar of expectation. Having seen the London production, I was convinced that this was McPherson&rsquo;s best play to date but I always knew that its rightful home was in Dublin.
Jimmy Fay&rsquo;s production does not disappoint; he knows the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 May 2008 21:39:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Terminus]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Terminus]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Reviewed during the original run, 4th July 2007.
Mark O&rsquo;Rowe&rsquo;s re-adoption of the monologue was not without risks, given his previous mixed fortunes with the form. His first monologue play Howie the Rookie, featuring back-to-back monologues by two surburban Dublin thugs, has enjoyed enormous success since its premiere in 1999 and was revived last year in the Peacock&rsquo;s &lsquo;4 x 4&rsquo; season. His monologue play for women (Crestfall), however, produced by the Gate Theatre and directed by Garry Hynes in 2003 played to poor houses and critical ire. In it, three rural Irish women...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:52:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Terminus]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Santaland-Diaries]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Santaland Diaries]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Reviewed during its original run, 8th December 2008.
A 33-year old aspiring actor looking for his break in New York ends up spending the festive season working as a Santa elf in a New York Department store. A fate worse than death one might have imagined or, as it turns out, rich territory to mine for the actor/essayist /humourist David Sedaris whose semi-autobiographical tale this is. The highs and lows of this Santaland prison are the elements which Sedaris first broadcast as an audio essay in the early 90's on National Public Radio in the US.
Adapted for the stage, one suspects it has lost...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:10:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Santaland-Diaries]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Weein]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Weein]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Weein will be the last production staged at the Old Museum Arts Centre, which will reopen in its new purpose built space, the MAC, in 2011. Though many of Northern Ireland&rsquo;s theatre companies could stake their claim on the OMAC&rsquo;s studio, The Weein seems like a fitting finale since, with its inventive approach to both dramaturgy and performance, it typifies the work that the OMAC has presented and supported over the past twenty years.
Opening with the performers entering through the auditorium, dressed in bloodstained white clothes with whitened faces, cackling and heckling at the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:30:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Weein]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Theatre Machine Turns You On]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What are the chances that two out of three plays should include choreographed umbrella sequences, quasi-Dionysian alcohol spewing, and the comparison of a little heartache to the bombing of Hiroshima? Maybe it&rsquo;s just a coincidence, or maybe the cast of Bang Shoot Blast and In Touch were sharing a rehearsal space. Whatever the reason, it seems as if a new generation of Irish theatre-makers is competing for the right images and metaphors to make sense of more familiar problems like broken hearts and poor finance. On the opening night of a mini-festival spread across five days, the line-up revealed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:22:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Skin-and-Blisters]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Skin and Blisters]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is the special remit of theatre-in-education to explore an educational topic through the lens of drama. Working as a live-simulation of an unfolding challenge or context, theatre stimulates active participation rather than passive absorption, and complementary drama workshops allow students to work out alternative outcomes within the safety of a classroom setting. TEAM Theatre have been leaders in the field of Educational Theatrein Ireland since 1975, applying these lessons in a primary and post-primary setting. Skin and Blisters, a play about body image, identity and individuality, is a welcome...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:25:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Skin-and-Blisters]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sleep-Eat-Party]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sleep Eat Party]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What does it mean to be a young man in contemporary Northern Ireland? Or more to the point, what does &lsquo;being a man&rsquo; actually mean? In this new piece of verbatim theatre, Tinderbox presents a range of masculinities and diverse experiences of manhood in an attempt to answer such complex questions. Based on forty hours of interviews with young men and women, Sleep Eat Party is made up of dialogues and monologues and focuses on the stories of five young adults, four men and one woman, as they battle to cope with the trials of young adulthood. Gorman&rsquo;s script raises many issues that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:25:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sleep-Eat-Party]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Moment]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Moment]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How would you react if your teenage son killed your daughter&rsquo;s best friend? How would you react if your brother served his time for murder and went on to have a successful career and a relationship? These are the core questions facing a mother and her two daughters in Kinahan&rsquo;s excoriating examination of a family on the verge of perpetual breakdown years after the murderous episode tore them all apart. The unexpected return to the family home in Dublin of son and brother Nial with his new wife provides the cue for the family to attempt to exorcise the demons that have been haunting...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:22:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Moment]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Motions-of-the-Heart]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Motions of the Heart]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[To the accompaniment of a slow sixteenth-century piece for viols and continuo ('Sit Fast' by Christopher Tye), a young female corpse in white is slowly wheeled on to the main performance area of the chandeliered and elegant Shaw Room of the National Gallery. Ina pool of warm amber, three masked and gowned surgeons with terpsichorean languish remove her heart and ceremoniously offer it to a renowned surgeon (Sir William Harvey) who is of the same vintage as the music. Holding the heart aloft, Sir William disappears as the lugubrious music concludes.
This opening kaleidoscope of imagery and music...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:40:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Motions-of-the-Heart]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Human-Voice]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Human Voice]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Written in 1932 The Human Voice is a monologue play which consists entirely of a woman speaking with her former lover on the telephone. He has left her for another woman and is calling to request that his belongings be returned. The ex is not seen or heard and so, in his absence, the telephone as an object gradually exerts a somewhat insidious presence; however perfunctory the objective behind his call may be, it operates as a lifeline to the distraught, abandoned woman. &ldquo;I knew you would give me a ring&rdquo; she says, with deliberate irony.
To illustrate the telephone&rsquo;s sustaining...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:02:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Human-Voice]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/At-Swim-Two-Birds]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[At Swim Two Birds]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The decision to produce a stage adaptation of Flann O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s 1939 At Swim-Two-Birds will strike many as an enormous gamble. Yes, Blue Raincoat did a great job with their version of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s The Third Policeman back in 2007. And, yes, the novel has been adapted a few times before, most recently by Alex Johnston at the Peacock in 1998. And of course, we know that Brendan Gleeson has managed to assemble an amazing cast for his forthcoming screen adaptation of the book. But it still seems a monstrously difficult task.
One reason for that difficulty is that the book&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:54:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/At-Swim-Two-Birds]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Christmas-Carol]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Christmas Carol]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If you&rsquo;re not close to bursting into tears every time Tiny Tim says &ldquo;God bless us every one&rdquo;, you might not be a fit reviewer of an adaptation of A Christmas Carol.  But Dickens is my favourite novelist, Christmas, my favourite time of the year, and I can be relied on to bawl for Tiny Tim every time.

That&rsquo;s why this Gate production disappointed me so much. Because I wasn&rsquo;t convinced that the cast or the director would ever bawl for Tiny Tim. Certainly not at a matinée performance a week before Christmas, anyway.

A novella does not become, to repeat the cliché,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:29:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Christmas-Carol]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/City-of-Mirrors]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[City of Mirrors]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[City of Mirrors by Real Illusions deserves our admiration in the first instance because it attempts quite a difficult theatrical feat, namely, the staging of a production without words that is neither mime nor modern dance. The company describe it as a visual performance, which of course it is, but it&rsquo;s the fabulous, predominantly jazz based musical soundtrack which as much as anything provides the emotional and dramatic webbing to this homage to film noir and in particular, American gangster movies of the 1940s and 1950s.
One of the difficulties of a performance without words that is also...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:19:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/City-of-Mirrors]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Turning-Turtles]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Turning Turtles]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Beyond the Bark&rsquo;s Christmas offering transports its young audience into a world of nautical nature adventure that is neither twee nor old fashioned but rather mesmerising and enlightening.
Turning Turtles is the story of the altruistic Trevor who sets out on his boat every day to Turtle Island where he helps the erudite 100-year old turtle, Gertrude, turn the young turtles when they are endangered by falling on their backs. Also living on the island is the comical and apparently menacing bird, Reginald (portrayed by a skeletal marionette), who is scathing of and indifferent to the turtles&rsquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:25:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Turning-Turtles]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bacchae]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Bacchae]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Flipping through the programme for The Bacchae, you get the sense that Classic Stage Ireland is desperate to be taken seriously. Endorsements from Sir Michael Gambon and Seamus Heaney; extracts from ecstatic reviews of previous productions; a full and detailed outline of the company&rsquo;s ethos; and two fine essays contextualising the play are presented as a kind of stern clearing of the throat that says, &quot;You WILL pay attention.&rdquo; Granted, a straight but comparatively no-frills presentation of classic Greek drama without a Seamus Heaney or a Michael Gambon attached might well find...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:28:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bacchae]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faun---As-You-Are]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faun / As You Are]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It's a long shadow. Almost a century after his choreography redefined dance and its relationship to the other arts, Vaslav Nijinsky still holds a fascination for choreographers. The attraction isn't just his mould-breaking movement vocabulary, but also the personal tragedy of his descent into madness &ndash; vividly captured in the unexpurgated edition of his diary &ndash; and the raw deal of history: the choreography for Le Sacre du Printemps was every bit as innovative as Stravinsky's score, but while the boos and hisses at the Paris premiere killed the ballet, they bestowed a mythical status...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:38:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faun---As-You-Are]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/We-Carried-Your-Secrets]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[We Carried Your Secrets]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Northern Ireland &lsquo;Troubles&rsquo; have prompted countless theatrical responses over the decades, from community-based performances to full-scale conventional plays, but We Carried Your Secrets, which is currently being performed in a variety of venues across the region, is unlike any other I have seen. What sets it apart is the direct agency of its protagonists. Many theatre-makers in the past have sought to access the authentic experience of those involved, but this has usually been mediated by others &ndash; writers, directors and actors. The &lsquo;performers&rsquo; in a Theatre of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:58:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/We-Carried-Your-Secrets]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Decked]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Decked]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There&rsquo;s something both mind-boggling and encouraging about the idea of opening a new theatre in the middle of the country&rsquo;s worst economic crisis on record, not to mention in light of already effected and anticipated funding cutbacks within the arts. Located just above Lanigan&rsquo;s Plough Bar on Middle Abbey Street, directly opposite the Abbey, Theatre Upstairs @ the Plough is a new non-funded, profit-share venue which promises to stage lunchtime and evening shows. Although the intimate, terracotta-daubed space had to close following its initial opening on the 18th &ndash; its Facebook...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:45:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Decked]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Greta-Garbo-Came-to-Donegal]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Greta Garbo Came to Donegal]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In his latest play, Frank McGuinness brings together many of his favoured techniques, themes, and dramatic influences. As in Mary and Lizzie, Mutabilitie, and Gates of Gold, he fictionalises around real-life figures, here the eponymous film star, who in the 1970s really did visit a wealthy English artist in Ireland&rsquo;s North-West. McGuinness pushes the time of Garbo&rsquo;s visit back to 1967, in order to create a temporal and cultural setting of maximum socio-political tension and imminent change, the type of environment familiar from Carthaginians, Dolly West&rsquo;s Kitchen, and Someone...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:02:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Greta-Garbo-Came-to-Donegal]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/10-Dates-with-Mad-Mary]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[10 Dates with Mad Mary]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This play is a result of Calipo's 'page2stage' programme for emerging young writers who are given workshops and dramaturgical support from this well established company based in Drogheda. Yasmine Akram, writer and performer, has a created a monologue piece about a foul mouthed and aggressive girl who has just emerged from a spell in prison and is trying to find her feet in the face of a dysfunctional mother and a bride-to-be sister, Charlene, who looks down on her misfortunate sibling. The ten dates of the title is the play's coat-hanger, as Mary desperately tries to find a boy to bring to her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:08:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/10-Dates-with-Mad-Mary]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/House-of-Crossed-Destinies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[House of Crossed Destinies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Take five dancers, one choreographer, five solos, one director, no soundscape, and make of it an evening of engaging dance theatre. This unusual show was a masterclass in how intense, focused work, driven from within the artist, can enhance in every way the concept of performance &ndash; especially, if you are lucky, as here, to be in the company of choreographer Deborah Hay and the distilled refinement of these young dancers. 

In a reconfigured Project space, creating an oblong with the audience on three sides, we watched the five commissioned solos, performed within the strict and regulated...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:46:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/House-of-Crossed-Destinies]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Limerick-Unfringed-Performance-Festival]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Limerick Unfringed Performance Festival]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Memory Deleted presented by Anu Productions 
Directed by Louise Lowe
Designed by Sarah Jane Shiels
With: Deirdre Burke, Dave O&rsquo;Sullivan, Niamh Shaw, Brenda Meaney, Stephen Murray, Robbie O&rsquo;Connor, Zara Starr, Cathy Walsh, Annette Treacey and Roisin Connelly
Boutique Hotel, Denmark Street, Limerick
Reviewed 28thJanuary
Imagine any sojourn you&rsquo;ve had in a hotel and imagine if the lamps and walls could talk and tell you of the previous occupants&rsquo; stay. At this years&rsquo; Limerick Unfringed, the audience was offered a fly-on-the-wall opportunity to observe the weekend...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:35:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Limerick-Unfringed-Performance-Festival]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Girl-Who-Forgot-to-Sing-Badly]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Drizzle and an early-morning start did not dampen the exuberance of the youthful cohort of &lsquo;miniature humans&rsquo; gathered in the Ark. For clarification &ndash; and pleasure &ndash; I was accompanied by a critical friend, Lucy - at seven-and-a-quarter a fully eligible member of the Theatre Lovett target audience.
Before things really got underway, Louis Lovett, the sole performer, had to manage those children, bringing them from intrusive banter to respectful attention, and it was a solemn moment when they became dedicated to giving their concentration and respect to the piece. Lucy was...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:49:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Girl-Who-Forgot-to-Sing-Badly]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Party--after-Anton-Chekhov]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Party, after Anton Chekhov]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Anton Chekhov&rsquo;s short stories are miniatures of characterisation, and a variety of writers have made the connection between their taut narrative voices and the tone of his plays by adapting them for the stage, the most notable of adaptations being by Brian Friel. The frustrated young wife and mother to be Olga Mihalovna in The Party might have walked straight out of Three Sisters. Bound by bodily immobility and the limitations of her social role, she spends her husband&rsquo;s name day - a stifling summer&rsquo;s day - alternately bored and bemused by the revelry around her.
The narrative...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:20:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Party--after-Anton-Chekhov]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jo-Bangles]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jo Bangles]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[David Lordan has been garnering awards as a poet (The Boy in the Ring, 2007) and this is reflected in the language of his first play, Jo Bangles. Lordan is in love with words and the sounds of words, emerging from a fuzzy soundtrack at the start into a textured and variegated verbal tapestry &ndash; visually and emotionally vivid, forceful and playfully alliterative. He revels like Patrick Kavanagh in the&quot;ordinary plenty&quot;; he evokes the freshness of early morning awakening, as well as the fetor of humanity &ndash; in the pub, in the bed, in the butcher&rsquo;s and the baker&rsquo;s. Although...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:57:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jo-Bangles]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bad-Faith]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bad Faith]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Not to be confused with the Sartrean notion of playing out a role of inauthentic being, the bad faith of the title of this production by a new Irish company has more to do with flawed religious belief and its psychological trappings, as well as the folly of trusting too much in personal figures of authority. In a monologue powerfully and impressively delivered by Ben Mulhern, Bad Faith takes us through a series of pivotal and retrospectively epiphanic snapshots of the life of a young man by the name of Gerard Boylan.
Gerard has returned home for his father&rsquo;s funeral. It&rsquo;s the night...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:12:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bad-Faith]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faith-Healer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faith Healer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[During the last decade, Owen Roe has emerged as one of Ireland&rsquo;s very best actors &ndash; yet, until now, he&rsquo;srarely filled a major leading role. His performance as the Irishman in Ben Barnes&rsquo;s 2001 Gigli Concert was astonishing precisely because it was so well matched by Mark Lambert in the role of JPW King. Likewise, his work as Petruchio in the 2006 Rough Magic Taming of the Shrew was memorable because it was so thoroughly complemented by Pauline McLynne&rsquo;s Katherina. Roe, in other words, is the kind of actor one could build a company around: he excels when he works with...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:34:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faith-Healer]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Haunted]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Haunted]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Edna O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s new play, Haunted, displays a light, comic touch. The dialogue between husband and wife, Jack (Niall Buggy) and Gladys Berry (Brenda Blethyn) swings between taut repartee and tender ritual exchanges. The writing here is sharp and forceful and the actors relish the opportunity to deliver pitch-perfect barbed lines, as when Gladys tearfully appeals to Jack and he responds that &ldquo;crying was always one of your weapons.&rdquo; The audience greets such lines with equally sharp laughter, recognising, perhaps, elements of their own relationships. Middle-aged couples can...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:42:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Haunted]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Off-Plan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Off Plan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s often been noted that Irish dramatists seem to have an unusual affinity for Greek tragedy &ndash; but perhaps that reputation disguises the fact that the majority of Irish adaptations have been unsuccessful, both artistically and commercially. Marina Carr, for instance, re-imagined Medea as By the Bog of Cats in 1998, giving us one of the best productions of that decade &ndash; but her attempt to adapt The Oresteia as Ariel in 2002 was an enormous flop. Likewise, Conall Morrison followed up an amazing 2003 version of Antigone with The Bacchae of Baghdad, a sincere but confusing response...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:51:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Off-Plan]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hamlet]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hamlet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The current Second Age production of Hamlet, with Marty Rea in the title role, interprets the Danish prince as less the hesitant decision maker or manic depressive, and more the savvy political inheritor of his royal blood. Although it is the annual offering from the Leaving Cert syllabus, this production is exquisitely realised for a wider audience.
Updated to a Brontë-era setting, with a gothic feel reminiscent of Wuthering Heights imagery, the impressive set design from Maree Kearns sees a simple array of grey panel doors on either side of the stage and an illuminated slanting platform, rear...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:29:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hamlet]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Christ-Deliver-Us!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Christ Deliver Us!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There&rsquo;s a moment in Thomas Kilroy&rsquo;s new play when a group of clerics gather to discuss the fate of a boy who is suspected of drawing &lsquo;filthy pictures&rsquo; in his classmate&rsquo;s copy. As they huddle around a table it&rsquo;s hard not to be reminded of other images currently appearing in the media depicting the Irish bishops summoned to Rome. Fr Seamus (Hickey) grows increasingly agitated with the emerging consensus that Michael Grainger (Monaghan) must be punished. He rises to his feet, shaking, to condemn his Church in an impassioned stutter: &ldquo;Hypocrites! The lot of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:04:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Christ-Deliver-Us!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sweeney-Todd]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sweeney Todd]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In celebrating the opening of their brand new theatre, Theatre at the Mill have taken on an ambitious production set in the dark and murky nineteenth-century streets of London. The tale of Sweeney Todd is known to many and the first song recaps on this urban legend. From the outset, the chorus and ensemble cast all work well together, delivering an opening number that both engages the audience and sets the scene for the horrific and bloody events that are to follow. Indeed, with their dark clothes, ghoulish make-up, and strong voices, the chorus deliver musical numbers of a consistently high standard...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:43:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sweeney-Todd]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Absence-of-Women]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Absence of Women]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Although set in a bleak London hostel, this is a play about Belfast: about the people who were forced to leave its geographic location but bound to carry with them memories of their home place. Owen McCafferty&rsquo;s thought-provoking new play brings us on a series of journeys with the protagonists, Ger (Karl Johnson) and Iggy (Ian McElhinney), from their public pasts and the contribution they made to the building of British transport systems, to their private memories of their youth and the burdens which they are now left with.
Stuart Marshall's simple set emphasises the bleakness of the two...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:23:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Absence-of-Women]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Stretching-Larry]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Stretching Larry]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stretching Larry takes its title from an old anonymously composed Irish traditional ballad from the early nineteenth century called 'The Night Before Larry Was Stretched'. The tune tells the tale of a good lad by the name of Larry who faces being hanged for probably resisting the imperial British forces though the song doesn&rsquo;t explicitly state this. One of the first utterances the play Stretching Larry greets us with is Anthony Morris as Larry screaming out a verse from the song.
Unlike the Larry of the song, however, the Larry of this short play by Bryan Delaney, is about to hang himself....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:31:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Stretching-Larry]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Resistible-Rise-of-Arturo-Ui]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In times of national economic crisis, sometimes it appears that the best option is to support powerful individuals in a blinkered fashion, placing our faith in them to get us out of this mess, despite our knowledge of their past corruptions and their tendencies to create &lsquo;jobs for the boys&rsquo;. Such is the theme of Bertolt Brecht&rsquo;s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a parody of Hitler&rsquo;s rise to power but set in a gangster-ridden Chicago rife with warring factions in the cauliflower trade and political corruption at the highest level. Its relevance to contemporary culture of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:47:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Resistible-Rise-of-Arturo-Ui]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Les-Liaisons-Dangereuses]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Les Liaisons Dangereuses]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a delicious text. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from Choderlos de Laclos&rsquo; 18th century epistolary novel charting the correspondence between several parties involved in a set of interconnect sexual conquests aimed at destroying virtuous reputations and enhancing wicked ones, it is alternately sharp, sweet, spicy, cool, and intoxicating - a luxurious meal of flavoursome self-indulgence.
Hampton&rsquo;s icy and ironic reframing of the original novel presents scenes of dialogue and confrontation described or implied in the letters. This produces genuine dramatic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:43:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Les-Liaisons-Dangereuses]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Still--the-Blackbird-Sings--Incidents-at-Ebrington]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Still, the Blackbird Sings: Incidents at Ebrington Barracks]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Francis Ledwidge was a poet and a patriot, born in Meath in 1897. As the title of the play draws to our attention, Ledwidge was also known as &lsquo;poet of the blackbirds,&rsquo; on account of the subject matter of his verse. Duggan&rsquo;s commission for the Playhouse takes Ledwidge&rsquo;s time at Ebrington Barracks in 1916 as his starting point, and uses it as the basis to explore tensions arising from the man&rsquo;s nationalist background, his British alliance, and his artistic sensibility.
While these seem like viable pressures for dramatic treatment, they are also overly familiar. As we...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:09:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Still--the-Blackbird-Sings--Incidents-at-Ebrington]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sticks---Stones]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sticks & Stones]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In California in 1991, Rodney King&rsquo;s abuse at the hands of the LAPD was a shot of video heard round the world. The blatant use of force &ndash; in the form of repeated and relentless attack on the part of police with their batons, 56 blows all told &ndash; sparked a nationwide reaction; all the way over on the other side of the country, almost one year later, I remember being let go from work in the middle of the day due to threats of riots in reaction to acquittal of the police officers involved.
One expects that Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan&rsquo;s one act play, Sticks and Stones, would...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:31:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sticks---Stones]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-et-Juliette]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Roméo et Juliette]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As the Gaiety theatre curtain slowly rises during the overture, a chorus eyeballs us from the Stygian gloom and we know that we are going to witness a particularly dark version of this well-known story.
And no better way to achieve this than to give it the Victorian Gothic treatment, with the House of Capulet's massive wall of faded peeling wallpaper unable to cover the fault lines, about to erupt into a full blown tragedy of seismic proportions, which &ndash; as the chorus constantly reminded us - will rock the very foundations of society. Even the opening act birthday party for Juliette's coming...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:02:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-et-Juliette]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Una-Santa-Obscura]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Una Santa Oscura]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Just what kind of a person was Hildegard von Bingen? Was she, as history records, a devout 12th Century anchoress and mystic, cloistered not only in her abbey, but also in her devotional music compositions and frequent ethereal visions? Or can we make the case for a tortured shut-in, expressing herself in erratic fits and starts; somebody whom the neurologist Oliver Sacks would later diagnose as having one of history&rsquo;s most famous migraines? Ian Wilson&rsquo;s Una Santa Oscura, a fragmentary composition for violin embedded in an ambient burble of electronic soundscapes and realised for stage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:44:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Una-Santa-Obscura]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Medea-Redux]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Medea Redux]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The choice of plays by young companies honing their skills usually speaks volumes for their judgement and calculated risk taking, and on this front Bluepatch score highly for their production of Neil LaBute&rsquo;s Medea Redux which was given a third airing on International Women&rsquo;s Day in Smock Alley as a fundraiser for Women&rsquo;s Aid.
The play does what it says on the tin, as it were: a familiar Greek tragedy given a contemporary twist and concise enactment (a mere forty minutes), and the inherent device of knowing the general outcome, if not the details, in advance is finely handled...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:34:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Medea-Redux]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sodome--My-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sodome, My Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The curtain rises like a heavy tombstone to reveal a women sitting on a bench, her feet turned inward, her head looking away, motionless. Gradually, an image of her face fades into focus on the back wall. Serene and ashen, she could be dead. But suddenly, water breaks from the skies, and the figure preserved in salt for thousands of years is slowly washed back to life. &ldquo;Sodome &ndash; city of joy and excess,&rdquo; she exclaims, before leading us through the story of how she came to appear before us.
Written by Laurent Gaudé, and translated and performed by Olwen Fouéré, Sodome, My Love...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:26:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sodome--My-Love]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Haunting-of-Helena-Blunden]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Haunting of Helena Blunden]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In his recent review of Andrew Lloyd Webber&rsquo;s Love Never Dies, critic Ben Brantley compares the modern musical to something like a theatrical amusement park ride. No one goes to them looking for finely detailed acting or a subtle drawing of the complexity of human relationships; they go to them because the chandelier falls at the end of the first act to the titillating swell of a live orchestra. Musical theatre is now synonymous with repetitive melodies, synthesized emotion, and the implacable beat of drum machines. This tends to be what audiences can expect from their musicals and what they&rsquo;re...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:35:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Haunting-of-Helena-Blunden]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-Song]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love Song]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If Gerry Springer and his human rarities or the Enron debacle can become operas, if a Swedish pop quintet can become a blockbuster film, if an Irish soccer squad captain can score in a musical, then one of poetry&rsquo;s most notable creations, T.S.Eliot&rsquo;s wonderfully befuddled J.Alfred Prufrock, should be able to tread the boards too. WATERDONKEY Theatre fiddle with this anti-hero&rsquo;s disjointed and de-humanised world for their latest production Love Song, but despite its worthily artistic intentions, it rather malingers, is a bit obtuse, &ldquo;and, at times, indeed, ridiculous.&rdquo;
Twenty...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:49:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-Song]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Tinker-s-Curse]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Tinker's Curse]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Michael Harding&rsquo;s adaptation of his widely-praised 2007 three-hander into a monologue may come with the qualifying approvals of being &ldquo;a result of ongoing collaboration with members of the Travelling community&rdquo;, as the flyer tells us, but is at its best as a core experience of supremely orchestrated theatrical storytelling. It is theatrical in the best sense of the word: structured and designed to aesthetic principles reflecting and representing personal, cultural, and social experience, but artificial (in the sense of being &lsquo;crafted&rsquo;), skillfully executed through...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:34:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Tinker-s-Curse]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Philadelphia--Here-I-Come!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Philadelphia, Here I Come!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brian Friel&rsquo;s Philadelphia, Here I Come! returns to the Gaiety where it was first performed in 1964 during the Dublin Theatre Festival. Director Dominic Dromgoole brings with him extensive experience working with classics from different periods. Proceeding with due respect for both playwright and play, he invests the production with the energy needed for a successful revival.
The exclamatory response to emigration in its title belies the play&rsquo;s genesis in the wake of the dire 1950s. Friel&rsquo;s Gar O&rsquo;Donnell is, importantly, a voluntary émigré in waiting, not one compelled...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:29:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Philadelphia--Here-I-Come!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Behanding-in-Spokane]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Behanding in Spokane]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Premiered in New York, Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s American play, A Behanding in Spokane, gives us a tall man in a tall tale. The tall man in question is the actor Christopher Walken whose stage presence is pivotal to this production&rsquo;s success. The tall tale is the story of Carmichael (Walken), a self-styled white supremacist, who, when a child, had his hand held down by some &ldquo;motherfucking hillbillies&rdquo; until it was severed by a train, and who has been searching for the lost hand for forty-seven years. Two hapless pot-dealers, Toby (energetically played by Anthony Mackie) and Marilyn...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:59:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Behanding-in-Spokane]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Broken-Croi-Heart-Briste]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Broken Croí/Heart Briste]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Broken Croí/Heart Briste is a dramatic and linguistic experiment. Written and performed by Manchán Magan, it seeks to investigate the limitations of language as a means of communication and the limitations of the Irish language in contemporary theatrical culture. As the spliced title suggests, the play is written in Irish and English, though a stream of invective neologisms in both languages points towards the instability of language as a system of meaning. As René Magritte scrawled across the bottom of his eponymous landmark postmodern painting 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (This is not a pipe); language...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:07:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Broken-Croi-Heart-Briste]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Coconut-Raft]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Coconut Raft]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Based on an idea by Alice Bourke, Coconut Raft precariously floats on two plot lines. The first relates to a jailbreak in 1930s Ireland by three convicts, and the second pertains to a regaling of that event, seemingly in 1950s America, through music by Gustavo des Balera and his troupe. Some of these finer details are not so easy to discern from the performance itself, but thankfully a programme note supplies some useful background information.
Over the course of fifty minutes, the two threads intermingle, although not without friction. Some of this has to do with the fact that we are presented...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:48:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Coconut-Raft]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sign-of-the-Whale]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sign of the Whale]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;In Gaelic mythology there are tales of monstrous fish being washed up on shore. These would often transform themselves into other creatures or indeed people with magical powers. The sighting of one of these sea monsters was considered a portent.&rdquo; (The Sign of the Whale, pg 28)
In 1977, a killer whale appears in Belfast Lough. Then it vanishes &ndash; but newspaper sub-editor Dermy believes it has found its way into the network of underground rivers beneath the city streets, and is swimming through the geography of war-torn Belfast. Recently blinded, and confined to a hospital room,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:33:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sign-of-the-Whale]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/London-Assurance]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[London Assurance]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For those who know Boucicault only for his exaggeratedly Irish plays, The Colleen Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue, and The Shaughraun, London Assurance may come as a bit of a shock, for there is nothing easily identifiable as Irish about it. It&rsquo;s a town and country comedy, set between the English capital and Gloucestershire, that lightly sends up the pretensions of the class system but has mainly served, from the time it was written (the early 1840s) forward, as a vehicle for star-turn performances.
These are delightfully provided here by Simon Russell Beale as the self-deluding, middle-aged fop Sir...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:08:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/London-Assurance]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dove-and-the-Crow]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Dove and the Crow]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The combined silence and stillness of actors on stage can have a profound impact, especially when such moments of calm are as rare as they were in Artemis Flow&rsquo;s production of Philip Doherty's newplay,The Dove and the Crow.
Following the death of his mother, the play&rsquo;s protagonist, Cormac, has returned to Ireland from America. Re-immersed in his past, he is forced to face up to a secret that he has, until now, managed to evade. The plot hinges on the gradual, cathartic revelation of this secret. The poles of Cormac&rsquo;s conscience are embodied on stage as characters: Good (Eimear...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:31:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dove-and-the-Crow]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macbeth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter,&rdquo; is probably not the most memorable line in Shakespeare&rsquo;s tale of havoc wrought by blind ambition and naked greed, but in director Jimmy Fay&rsquo;s despairing new production at the Abbey, it has particular significance. The line is spoken by Rory Nolan, who emerges from a trapdoor with old-world Shakespearian aplomb in Act II, Scene III, coughing and spluttering, then emoting to the audience in a style most unlike anything else on the stage throughout the show. Most of the performances in this production are low key to the point almost...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:50:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-Party]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Birthday Party]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Harold Pinter&rsquo;s The Birthday Party received its London premier at the Lyric Hammersmith on 19 May 1958, by and large, critics were not impressed. Many took issue with the writer&rsquo;s refusal to clarify motivation and action. What Pinter reveals without ambiguity is that the play is set in a boarding house owned by Meg and Petey, somewhere in coastal Britain. Former pianist Stanley lodges with the couple, and not long into the first of three acts, Meg decides to throw him a birthday party, despite his insistence that her dates are off. They are joined by McCann and Goldberg, mysterious...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:43:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-Party]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Weaving-the-Cry--based-on-Riders-to-the-Sea]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Weaving the Cry, based on Riders to the Sea]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Nervousystem make all the right noises. They talk a lot about the need to experiment. They refreshingly extrapolate on the laboratorial constituents of drama and the need for performance research as well as the desire to explore their own ongoing interrogation of the theatre space alongside and connected to sometimes traditional texts and forms. Hence, Weaving the Cry, a re-enactment of J.M. Synge&rsquo;s short dramatic piece Riders to the Sea. Synge&rsquo;s tale tells the story of a mother and her two daughters on an island off the West of Ireland, and how they cope with the imminent and inevitable...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:56:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Weaving-the-Cry--based-on-Riders-to-the-Sea]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Over-the-Bridge]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Over the Bridge]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[First performed in January 1960, Sam Thompson&rsquo;s Over the Bridge is one of the most controversial plays in Northern Ireland&rsquo;s theatre history. Fifty years ago, the Ulster Group Theatre&rsquo;s board of directors refused to produce the play because of its content. However, Thompson and his colleagues successfully mounted a production independently and it was seen by more than 46,000 audience members in its first six weeks. This anniversary production from Green Shoot Productions is a new adaptation of the play by Martin Lynch and reminds audiences of the significance of the play in the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:07:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Over-the-Bridge]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-End---The-Calmative]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The End & The Calmative]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In this double-bill, Gare St Lazare Players Ireland bringtheir tenth piece of Beckett prose to the stage. Written shortly after WWII, and first published in French in 1954, The End and The Calmative can be seen to bridge Beckett&rsquo;s earlier short writings in English, and the more substantial Molloy trilogy, also staged by the company in the past.
In these novellas, each narrative is relayed by a male voice in various stages of isolation and decrepitude. The End begins as the figure recounts dressing in the clothes of someone recently deceased, and concludes with the consumption of a sedative;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:13:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-End---The-Calmative]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Andersen-s-English]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Andersen’s English]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sebastian Barry extends his fascination with storytellers and storytelling in this new bio-play, which springs from the fact that in 1857, Hans Christian Andersen paid an extended visit to Charles Dickens&rsquo; home in rural Kent, just as Dickens&rsquo; marriage to the mother of his ten children was crumbling. This is an interesting literary-historical nugget, to be sure, but finds Barry, a great novelist, again at sea in attempting to create a viable dramatic structure. The attempt here may be (in homage to Dickens, perhaps?) to simulate the multi-track narrative form of the novel onstage, but...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:30:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Andersen-s-English]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/What-s-Left-of-the-Flag]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[What’s Left of the Flag]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;To be a good Jew, you have to have a good conscience; to be a good Israeli, you have to have a good memory.&rdquo; So says Jacob, one of two Mossad agents holed up in the top floor of an abandoned building on Abbey Street in Jimmy Murphy&rsquo;s new play. The fragmentation of identity into ultimately self-destructive dualities provides us with the core conflict of What&rsquo;s Left of the Flag, and the choices of either/or, then/now, and us/them are thrown into sharp relief. This is paradoxically the play&rsquo;s strength and also the seed of its uneasy relationship with the political realities...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:08:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/What-s-Left-of-the-Flag]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Picture-of-Dorian-Gray]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Picture of Dorian Gray ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The problem with The Picture of Dorian Gray is that it is seriously over-written, even by Oscar Wilde's standards. However, the style of the book is a self-conscious gesture of verbosity. When the book was first published in 1890, it attracted notoriety for being &quot;unclean,&quot; &quot;effeminate,&quot; and &quot;contaminating.&quot; Republished in 1891, Wilde was at pains to disguise the homoerotic undertones of the story in as much social decorum as he could pile on, resulting in several extra unnecessary chapters. This is the form of the book that exists in print today, and while The Picture...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:22:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Picture-of-Dorian-Gray]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-of-the-Infanta]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Birthday of the Infanta]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Let&rsquo;s say it clearly: Bewley&rsquo;s Café Theatre is an undervalued cultural resource in the heart of our capital city; we neglect it at our peril. When it&rsquo;s good, which is the case with Bairbre Ní Chaoimh&rsquo;s adaptation of the Wilde story, it&rsquo;s very, very good. With a cast of three doubling and trebling up to fill the acting space, and with a form of enriched economy of presentation, The Birthday of the Infantafits the Grafton Street venue perfectly. This is the stuff of &lsquo;little gems&rsquo; &ndash; more&rsquo;s the pity that, on the day this reviewer was there, the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:41:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-of-the-Infanta]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Good-Thief]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Good Thief]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Conor McPherson&rsquo;s The Good Thief is a monologue that features your common-or-garden Dublin hoodlum who, paradoxically, has a heart of gold -that is, when he&rsquo;s not beating the crap out of all and sundry for a pittance on behalf of his criminal boss, Joe Murray. As recounted here, McPherson&rsquo;s nameless thug gets caught up in events not of his own making and which spiral out of control with both darkly humorous and tragic consequences.
The story, then, is that of how our errand-boy-cum-enforcer and all-round nasty threatener is sent on a mission to put some pressure on a business...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:16:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Good-Thief]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Candy-Flipping-Butterflies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Candy Flipping Butterflies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A kind of genre has been created in Irish theatre that couples elements of the monologue play with the plight of a generation that, swamped by the overwhelming tide of a consumerist culture, turns to drug use and/or clubbing as a means of release. The thematic centres mostly around disaffected youths who attempt to carve out their own private, fantastical culture as a rejection of a soulless, everyday existence. In this way Karl Argue&rsquo;s Candy Flipping Butterflies carries the genealogy of Enda Walsh&rsquo;s Disco Pigs and Sucking Dublin, Mark O&rsquo;Rowe&rsquo;s Howie the Rookie, or Gary...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:15:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Candy-Flipping-Butterflies]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sanctuary-Lamp]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sanctuary Lamp]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The furore around the first production of The Sanctuary Lamp at the Abbey Theatre in 1975 tells us more about the tyrannical and despotic hold the Catholic Church had over the minds and hearts of the nation than it does really about Tom Murphy&rsquo;s brilliant drama itself. Granted, there are some glorious tirades against, jibes at and critiques of the Catholic Church and its cruel dogma &ndash; and Murphy was unafraid to voice these critical incisions at a time when it wasn&rsquo;t popular to do so. However, a truly big play with large themes, there&rsquo;s so much else going on. At the very...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:15:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sanctuary-Lamp]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-West-Awakes]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The West Awakes]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In his first utterances, the tour guide correctly indicated that it is a difficult task to sum up eight hundred years of Irish history. Nevertheless, over the course of three and a half long hours of walking, he does his best to do so. He&rsquo;s not an actor in a role, but a former member of the IRA and an ex-political prisoner who brings the tour group/audience to various sites of note along the Falls Road in West Belfast. As he speaks, it becomes evident that his version of history is a narrow one, and that his own personal experiences have shaped his view of the past. However, throughout the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:28:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-West-Awakes]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Krapp's Last Tape]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It took Samuel Beckett about three weeks to write Krapp&rsquo;s Last Tape. During that time, the play went through seven distinct stages which, according to the scholarship, involved a gradual stripping away of sentimentality: the text retained some realistic qualities, but it also became more surreal and more comical. Perhaps as a result of that textual history, actors playing the role of Krapp often try to avoid evoking too strong an emotional reaction from audiences: we might sympathise with Krapp, but will usually find it difficult to relate to him &ndash; and we&rsquo;ll rarely feel inclined...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:16:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Yellow-Moon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Yellow Moon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Rife with poignant, imagistic narration &ndash; akin to the work of our own Sebastian Barry &ndash; David Greig&rsquo;s Yellow Moon yields a poetic tale of teenage lovers on the run. Sparsely punctuated by dialogue, much of this work is a story told by its main characters: Lee, Leila, Frank, Billy and Lee&rsquo;s mother. While the work requires only four or five actors, director Andrew Flynn included thirteen of GYT&rsquo;s members by also introducing eight storyteller figures. This effectively maximised the drama&rsquo;s performance potential.
Stag Lee Mcalinden (Ó hAoláin) and Silent Leila (Ní...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:11:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Yellow-Moon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Ones-Who-Kill-Shooting-Stars]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Ones Who Kill Shooting Stars]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Ones Who Kill Shooting Stars is set in the midst of The Emergency in Ireland during the Second World War. Since Drogheda-based Upstate Theatre&rsquo;s mission statement promises to draw upon the culture and history of the town and its county, this absurdist and strangely romantic drama particularly focuses on an area of the coast of County Louth &ndash; Clogherhead Beach to be precise. As the programme note by archaeologist Dr Geraldine Stout informs, Ireland&rsquo;s coast was littered with lookouts and watchmen on guard in case of invasion, though whether from the English or the Germans no...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 07 May 2010 21:42:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Ones-Who-Kill-Shooting-Stars]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Marriage-of-Figaro]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Marriage of Figaro]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Marriage of Figaro is possibly one of the most re-imagined operas of all time &ndash; having been done in every conceivable period, style, and setting. In this OTC production, we are in the swinging sixties. Designer Adrian Linford has been up and down Carnaby Street grabbing floral-patterned shirts, slim dresses in aquamarine blues and tangerines for the girls and boys of the Almaviva household and picking up some matching wallpaper for the bathroom and living room on the way. The 'swinging' bit of this nomenclature extends well beyond the décor of course, and is short-hand to describe the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 May 2010 21:58:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Marriage-of-Figaro]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fragile]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Fragile]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As the Gay Theatre Festival goes, we&rsquo;re in familiar territory with Fragile. Aaron Rogers&rsquo; play is essentially a tale of a young man coming out to his family and friends, and wrestling with the inevitable affairs of the heart.
The action takes place on a raised, slightly staggered stage in the Cobalt café. The three actors who form the cast dip between dialogue and direct address. While everyone has a part to play, the focus is on protagonist Nick (Grindel) while so-called &lsquo;Boy&rsquo; (McCarthy) and &lsquo;Girl&rsquo; (Kemperman) are there to primarily relate his story, occasionally...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 06 May 2010 22:30:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fragile]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Billy-Redden]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Billy Redden]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Two minutes into this performance, as young Billy Redden (Kelly) talks to himself on stage, a man suddenly emerges from the toilet adjacent to the core action, strides across the space, and leaves through the door we just entered. For a few awkward moments, there&rsquo;s still a chance that this is part of the play, but when neither man nor boy interact, and the convulsive flush has settled, we realise that the strange loo-user was just that. Not so strange, unfortunately, that no less than four other people are allowed to walk in and out of the theatre during various stages of the performance...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 10 May 2010 22:40:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Billy-Redden]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brighton]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Brighton]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brighton celebrates friendship, hope and the resilience of the human spirit and centres on the characters of Lily, an elderly Irish woman and Fulham supporter who has spent all her working life in England working in the Civil Service, and former actor Jack Dunhill, just turned sixty, who has recently suffered an accident paralysing him from the waist down. The pair meet in the Sisters of Calvary Nursing Home in which works Dave a young care assistant in his twenties. As the story unfolds we witness Lily&rsquo;s deteriorating health, Jack&rsquo;s mental recovery, the oscillations of Dave&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 03 May 2010 22:01:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brighton]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Husbands---Hats--A-Revival-of-Two-Classic-Plays]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Husbands & Hats: A Revival of Two Classic Plays]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[After a long absence, lunchtime theatre makes a welcome return to Galway. Hosted by Kelly&rsquo;s Bar and featuring contributions from Galway&rsquo;s most dynamic theatre companies, the opening season proffered an exciting range of work. A combination of factors, including low overheads and cheap cover charges, mean that companies tend to make bold decisions in their choice of material for a lunchtime slot. New writing and obscure chamber plays are given a platform, reinforcing the idea that diversity and lunchtime theatre go hand-in-hand. Significantly, the opportunity to explore work which might...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:18:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Husbands---Hats--A-Revival-of-Two-Classic-Plays]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Scarborough]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Scarborough]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Scarborough by Fiona Evans is a two act play set in a hotel room, so Prime Cut have taken it out of the theatre and put it into real hotel rooms, in the latest of a number of performances by various theatre companies that experiment with staging outside of theatre spaces. The audience for this show gather in the new Ramada Encore in an area of Belfast that is being developed as a new arts quarter, a largely deserted area still behind scaffolding and hoarding. Perhaps coincidentally, this exterior landscape retrospectively adds to the sense of secrecy and hidden things which is at the core of the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 09 May 2010 22:20:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Scarborough]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Slaughterhouse-Swan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Slaughterhouse Swan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Transvestitism, lesbianism, veganism, sexual misconduct, fililal abscondment and marital breakdown: when it comes to broaching hot button issues, you can&rsquo;t accuse writer and director Elizabeth Moynihan of being shy. However, in her hour long piece for the Absolut Gay Theatre Festival Dublin, there&rsquo;s just so much going on in content, tone and style that it&rsquo;s hard to know what, if anything, should be taken seriously.
Foreboding music kicks off the performance as estranged son Canais (Mackay) returns home to rural Ireland having spent the previous ten years in Australia. Although...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2010 22:58:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Slaughterhouse-Swan]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Manny-Quinn--The-Musical]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Manny Quinn: The Musical]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stage a musical in a pub &ndash; Break for the Border, at that &ndash; and you immediately blur your audiences' expectations. It&rsquo;s easier to &lsquo;see things differently,&rsquo; as the Absolut slogan commands, with a drink at hand. Stage a musical about Irish Eurovision entries in the weeks leading up to the Oslo final, and a dedicated fan base will readily fill the seats. Happy just to hear their favourite numbers from yesteryear, a plot, a set and live performers are all a bonus.
In a charity shop, somewhere in Dublin, assistants Linda (Fitzpatrick) and Martin (O&rsquo;Sullivan) bemoan...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 23:04:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Manny-Quinn--The-Musical]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Henna-Night]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Henna Night]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The opening of Rawlife&rsquo;s new production of Amy Rosenthal&rsquo;s 1999 play Henna Night, immediately draws the audience&rsquo;s attention to the act of listening. The play begins in darkness, forcing the audience to listen rather than merely hear. As the heartbroken Judith (Rachel Logan) leaves a message on the answering-machine of her ex-boyfriend, Jack, her ambiguous cry for help is in fact answered by his new girlfriend Ros (Colette Lennon). When Ros turns up at Judith&rsquo;s flat each woman is forced to listen to the other&rsquo;s story, a process that provides both with a catharsis of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 03 May 2010 23:15:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Henna-Night]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Night-With-George]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Night With George]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[From the opening of the production, there is a definite sense that this is a narrative in the form of Shirley Valentine, but from a West Belfast perspective. As the audience find their seats, they are greeted by tunes from Cyndi Lauper and Dolly Parton. It&rsquo;s evident that this play is either about a night on the tiles with the girls, or a girly night in with a vodka and coke. It turns out to be the latter. As Bridie Murphy (Donna O&rsquo;Connor) returns from a night out carrying a recently-stolen cardboard cut-out of George Clooney, it is clear that she has a story that she wants to tell George....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 May 2010 17:27:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Night-With-George]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Arcadia]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Arcadia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Et in Arcadia Ego: Even in Arcadia, there I am. The philosophical and aesthetic mantra that gives Tom Stoppard&rsquo;s finest play its title is also its guiding principle. Even in this small stage paradise the author&rsquo;s own ghost is everywhere, as the diametrical arguments that his characters pose represent the variety of intellectual positions and literary conceits that Stoppard&rsquo;s earlier work has dealt with and its broad range of style and tone.
Set in the fictional Derbyshire country estate of Sidley Park, Arcadia presents itself as a literary mystery. Spanning two time periods &ndash;the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2010 22:35:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Arcadia]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Burn-The-Bad-Lamp]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Burn The Bad Lamp]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This production was reviewed on 24th April, 2010; it is currently being revived for a short tour, October 2010 - see opposite for tour dates. 
If banks need the descent of a billionaire Nama to rescue them from the doldrums, then theatre audiences need the occasional light whimsy to jollify the bits avant-garde art doesn&rsquo;t always tickle. Kevin Barry celebrates the &lsquo;deus-ex-machina&rsquo; most literarily with a genie from a lamp in Burn the Bad Lamp, his short story adapted for the stage by himself and Rod Goodall, produced for Cúirt 2010.  The resultant work, a quirky consort between...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:22:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Burn-The-Bad-Lamp]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Marathon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Marathon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In darkened surroundings, the set for Marathon consists only of a large rectangle of loose road chippings where our two protagonists Mark (Brian Hutton) and Steve (Matthew Ralli) jog. True to the title of the play, they do actually run for the majority of the 55 minute performance. As real as their running is, we are also always aware that it&rsquo;s metaphorical through and through. The area of road and our two heroic joggers are well-lit in contrast to the darkness around them. It is, after all, night time as they conduct their ritualistic exercise. The ostensible goal of their punishing training...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 21:44:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Marathon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tea-Set-and-The-Candidate]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tea Set and The Candidate]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sidhe is Limerick&rsquo;s newest theatre company. It promises to produce new and emerging Irish writers and to focus particularly on women writers. For its debut outing it engaged Gina Moxley to direct two of her own plays, Tea Set and The Candidate.
In Tea Set, Maeve McGrath - co-founder of Sidhe, with Sinead Vaughan - plays a disaffected young woman with nowhere she wants to go on the eve of the Millennium, and so takes a job looking after an elderly lady as her daughter jets off to the Caribbean sun. The play opens with McGrath&rsquo;s mournful character fondling a broken tea set &ldquo;made...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 05 May 2010 22:00:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tea-Set-and-The-Candidate]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bombshells]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bombshells]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith has built a successful career examining the nuances of contemporary life, particularly those surrounding relationships, love and the struggle to communicate. Her work, replete with big themes, transcends borders: it has made the leap from Australia to the British stage and now to these shores, with a comedy that shines the spotlight on modern womanhood, staged by new Irish company Jasango Theatre.
Despite her commercial and critical success, however, Murray-Smith&rsquo;s work has also come in for attack. Germaine Greer famously dismissed her satirical...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 May 2010 22:47:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bombshells]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bookworms]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bookworms]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s try to show everyone that, recession or no recession, we are contented and happy &ndash; and this evening is going to be fun!&rdquo; Spoken by deluded book club hostess Ann, this optimistic manifesto might well be the motto for Bernard Farrell&rsquo;s frothy comedy of manners, Bookworms, which turns a sentimental eye to post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and its bankrupt middle-classes, who are still clinging to the civility of social rituals like book clubs with their buffed and well-manicured nails. In true Farrell style, there is resentment and chaos simmering underneath the polished...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:50:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bookworms]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Miser]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Miser]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The phrase that comes irresistibly to mind when watching The Miser is &lsquo;rollicking romp&rsquo;. David Johnston&rsquo;s new translation-adaptation of L&rsquo;Avare is the Lyric&rsquo;s latest production of Molière, directed by Dan Gordon with Andy Gray in the title role. The production manages to include passing references to French neoclassicism in the set design, along with Commedia dell&rsquo;Arte, pantomime and music hall, and the various elements combine to create an energetic interpretation of the text that relies on physical comedy and audience interaction. There is a sense &ndash; both...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 May 2010 22:45:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Miser]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Language-UnBecoming-a-Woman]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Language UnBecoming a Lady]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[James Joyce maintained, through the voice of Stephen Dedalus in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, that theatre was the most public of art forms. It&rsquo;s only fitting then that the stage should air stories that have been of the most private nature mainly because they were a part of an oppressed minority. The history of a gay man or woman in Ireland was excluded from the public realm in Ireland by coercion, not by choice.Myles Breen&rsquo;s Language Unbecoming A Lady sets about redressing that injustice. As such, it is eminently worthy but worthiness alone does not make great art. It doesn&rsquo;t...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:20:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Language-UnBecoming-a-Woman]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Parting-Glass]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Parting Glass]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[With the play In High Germany, first staged in 1990, Dermot Bolger dramatised the decision of a group of three young Irish men to emigrate from Ireland. The three men &ndash; Eoin, Shane and Mick &ndash; went in different directions: Mick to America, Shane to Holland, while Eoin settled in Hamburg. Now, twenty years later, Bolger&rsquo;s new play The Parting Glass brings to life the counter decision, when Eoin gives in to his yearning to return to Ireland. The Parting Glass, a one-man show, is a record both of the need to come home, and the consequences of return and Ray Yeates gives a warm, funny...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:47:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Parting-Glass]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Strike!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Strike!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Strike! is an ambitious dramatic rendering of the anti-apartheid strike by eleven Dunnes Stores workers which began in July of 1984 and ended in victory over two and a half years later. The playwright, Tracy Ryan, and producer Helen Ryan last worked together on 'Cracked Eggs' in reverse capacities at the New Theatre and have credits between them which include acting and writing novels and screenplays. The production, in conjunction with the UCD School of English, Drama and Film, showcases recent or current students of both its BA and MA programmes.
The play faces the primary task of docu-drama...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 May 2010 22:24:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Strike!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Not-I]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Not I]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Not I (1972) is typical of Beckett&rsquo;s late theatre in so far as it focuses on fragmented corporeality and affective force in a manner that tests theatre&rsquo;s representational limit. The piece is written as an aestheticized logorrhea delivered by a carefully illuminated mouth. Although only 14 minutes long, Beckett hoped that the play would have a powerful viceral effect on its audience in performance, telling Jessica Tandy, who premiered the role, that it should &ldquo;work on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect.&rdquo;
This production of the infrequently staged play opens an...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:43:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Not-I]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Importance of Being Earnest]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There are many ways of delivering the most famous exasperation from Wilde&rsquo;s last play, although most actors tend to go with robust indignation. Not so Stockard Channing who, as Lady Bracknell, responds to Jack Worthing&rsquo;s (Keenan) tale of abandonment on the Brighton line with a barely audible &ldquo;A handbag?&rdquo;, rapidly swallowed up with a sharp intake of breath. An understated take, to be sure, but with such a well-known play, packed full of witticisms and aphorisms with a life of their own, it&rsquo;s the little things that make a difference.
The importance of being Stockard...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:18:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/World-Apart--Same-Difference]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Worlds Apart, Same Difference]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Michael Collins sets out to articulate the experience of the Irish Traveller from the inside and it is appropriate that he has hit upon a dramatic framework that strongly echoes that of the fit-up show. While sitting in the Cube, I was transported to a field in Donegal, more than twenty years ago, when a touring company of three pitched a tent, with benches on the grass and an open-sided caravan for a stage. Apart from the raffle and the dance that formed pack of the total package, the audience was treated to an episodic melodrama that unfolded in a series of short scenes &ndash; scaled to the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2010 00:03:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/World-Apart--Same-Difference]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Andy-Warhols-Nothing-Special]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Andy Warhol’s Nothing Special]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brimming with aphoristically laden dialogue wrapped in a stylistically produced piece, Spilt Gin&rsquo;s Andy Warhol&rsquo;s Nothing Special is truly reminiscent of the infamous Factory era. Warhol is all over this tight production where set, acting, directing and musical arrangement coalesce to bring a strange and cool post-modern existential story of love and art, life and death to satisfying fruition. Elegantly clad in mostly shades of silver and announcing themselves on stage in identical white wigs, the quartet cast&rsquo;s uniformity and beauty mirror the iconic images of Warhol&rsquo;s tributes...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 00:22:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Andy-Warhols-Nothing-Special]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Plasticine]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Plasticine]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set in rural Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Vassily Sigarev&rsquo;s Plasticine presents an ever-sickening series of disturbing scenarios that, to its inhabitants, are seemingly experienced as banal slices of a doomed life. That&rsquo;s where the play&rsquo;s punches land most effectively. In spite of its gratuitous displays of rape and vulgarity, what the audience sees as desperate, horrifying, or pitiable is regarded by most of the characters as another day in a life that&rsquo;s expected to get steadily worse. While this summation doesn&rsquo;t exactly promise a cheering evening...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:05:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Plasticine]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Early-Bird]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Early Bird ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s a pleasant shock to walk into the Project Cube and find the actors already at work in Donnacadh O&rsquo;Briain&rsquo;s production of Leo Butler&rsquo;s two-hander. Encased as they are in a clear Perspex box, primarily lit from below, and wedded with the rank smell from the fertiliser strewn about the floor, it&rsquo;s impossible not to feel like a visitor at the zoo, come to observe a rare and dangerous species whose antics fascinate even as the stink they give off repels.
Debbie (Catherine Cusask) and Jack (Alex Palmer) are a couple whose daughter has&hellip; disappeared? Been abducted?...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:30:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Early-Bird]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Outsiders]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Outsiders]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Outsiders is a one-man-show by journalist and economics pundit David McWilliams, essentially a distillation of the views he has put forth in various forums including radio, television and print throughout the Recession. McWilliams stands alone on a set depicting the unfinished roof of a building under construction. The wall behind him is a screen onto which various slides are projected, a mixture of graphics and photographic images depicting miscellaneous charts and figures, the faces of well known politicians and developers, and also some &lsquo;colour&rsquo; shots that form a backdrop to McWilliams&rsquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:44:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Outsiders]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mickey-and-Lionel]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mickey and Lionel]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dealing with the trials of childhood, Mickey and Lionel is based on Aesop&rsquo;s fable 'The Mouse and the Lion', written down by Valerius Babrius in the second century A.D. This tale of the strength and importance of the small and the seemingly weak is simple: captured by the lion, the mouse is set free with the understanding that the mouse may one day be in a position to help the lion, and so he does. Taking the basic tale, Vicky Ireland transforms it into a somewhat complicated story of two young friends who grow to know and help each other.
Mickey (Michael Lavery), called Mickey Mouse, and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 22:08:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mickey-and-Lionel]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/New-Writing-Week]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[New Writing Week]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Two new plays by two new playwrights &ndash; this is the double-bill running at The New Theatre this week (14th-19th June). In a theatre world which is feeling the pinch more than ever, with small companies and spaces particularly under pressure, it is particularly welcome to see a great space like the New Theatre promoting new talent. And, on the basis of these two short plays, there&rsquo;s a lot of talent to be put out there. 
The stage and production for both plays are spare &ndash; a minimal set of three black boxes, small lighting changes to highlight individual characters, and snatches...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:12:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/New-Writing-Week]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Letter-Project]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Letter Project]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Young theatre company Meantime follows its assured debut production of The Good Father last year with a show structured around the idea of the letter as theatrical text. The production, which is performed at this stage as a work-in-progress, uses a series of anonymous letters, sought by and posted to the company, as the basis for an exploration into the power, beauty and insight of the written word. The idea, of course, is that &ndash; in an era of text, email and tweets &ndash; very few of us take the time to put pen to paper in order to express our thoughts. The piece is a showcase for the articulate,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:30:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Letter-Project]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Trailer-of-Bridget-Dinnigan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Trailer of Bridget Dinnigan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Waiting for the show to begin, a man behind me quips back to his friends: &ldquo;No haggling in the back row.&rdquo; The joke ripples, before talk turns to who knows who in the production. The proud parents beside me are back for the second time, and their daughter has made it to the cover of the programme note. It&rsquo;s not very often that so many members of the Travelling community gather to see a play in the Project, but tonight, knowing many of those involved, there&rsquo;s a real air of enthusiasm and even ownership.
Developed in conjunction with Blanchardstown Traveller Development Group...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:41:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Trailer-of-Bridget-Dinnigan]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/See-No-Evil]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[See No Evil]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[See No Evil is Sole Purpose&rsquo;s most recent production, which has been touring periodically since last year. The company&rsquo;s work plays in small community venues as well as in professional theatres across Ireland and in the UK, and aims to raise debate and awareness around specific social and political issues. Some of their recent productions addressed domestic violence (Don&rsquo;t Say a Word), global warming (The Shadow Men), and the conflict in the Middle East (Clouds on a Mountaintop, a collaboration with Israeli playwright Orna Akad). See No Evil addresses the issue of &lsquo;elder...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:41:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/See-No-Evil]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Buddy-Buddy-and-Starman-Fisher]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Buddy Buddy / Starman Fisher]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Despite a somewhat chaotic start &ndash; a late change of venue and time, a further delay in advance of the performances &ndash; these two workshop productions offered interesting, if not always fully realised, interrogations of the theatrical process.
Of the two shows, Starman Fisher, which is a short, twenty minute or so inquiry into the subject of human cloning, is the more effective. Devised by Dee Roycroft and performed with the help of Jason Byrne, it is a mix of discussion, delivery of facts and fantastical - or maybe not so fantastical - visions of the future. Against a backdrop of moving...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:12:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Buddy-Buddy-and-Starman-Fisher]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/FML-F-uck-my-life]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[FML F*uck My Life]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Fintan O&rsquo;Toole&rsquo;s perceptive article in last Saturday's Irish Times, he says of David McWilliam&rsquo;s Outsiders, currently showing at the Peacock, &ldquo;But it doesn&rsquo;t feel like a piece of theatre, and it forces you to ask why not.&quot; Likewise FML raised questions about its own value as theatre and, for this reviewer, was found lacking.
FML (Fuck My Life) is one of the headline events of this year's Cork Midsummer Festival and is the culmination of over a year of co-production involving the festival, CAMPO Gent, LIFT, Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen&rsquo;s and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:45:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/FML-F-uck-my-life]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Monsters-and-Things]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Monsters and Things]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[You can&rsquo;t argue with a child&rsquo;s appreciation. A large group of school-going children aged between five and seven years old are PigNut Productions&rsquo; audience at the Belltable in Limerick for Monsters and Things. This bunch simply lap up the story of Jacko and his friend Podi who, in true contemporary style, are setting their sights on winning 'The X Factor'.
Jay Ryan, Artistic Director of PigNut and the puppeteer for Jacko, his hapless friend Podi, a wise old wizard and a host of small creatures from mice to snails, enthrals his young audience in fifty minutes of adventure and misadventure....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:51:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Monsters-and-Things]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romek-and-Julie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Romek and Julie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Romeo has left fair Verona far behind to become Romek, a Polish cigarette smuggler smitten by a Cork beauty for whom he writes sensitive love songs. His would-be father in law is a Cork businessman now busily losing his mind as a financial house of cards tumbles down around himself and his family. Roundhouse Theatre Company, through the twin talents of Jennifer Rogers directing and Rachel Yoder writing, are very keen to engage with the changing face of contemporary Irish society. In order to do so they have chosen to change the face of Shakespeare&rsquo;s celebrated love story.
Their approach...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:18:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romek-and-Julie]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bogboy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bogboy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a literate, thoughtful script at the core of Tall Tales and Solstice Arts Centre&rsquo;s staged version of Bogboy, originally developed and produced for RTÉ Radio. Designed for voices communicating without eyelines or spatial blocking, delving into the sonic and emotional echoes of memory in careful, easy-to-connect blocks of dialogue linking scene to scene in the mind&rsquo;s eye, it would be easy to dismiss as being all about the script, and confine critical observation to its structural and literary qualities (which are considerable).
Initially, the play invites such consideration,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:30:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bogboy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Be-My-Love-in-the-Rain]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Be My Love in the Rain ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Be My Love in the Rain is a monologue very impressively presented by Linda Teehan, all the more so because she does so unaided by props, scenery, sound effects or the usual conventional stage settings. She&rsquo;s not entirely on her own, of course. Writer of the play Paul Kennedy also directs and under his guidance Teehan keeps a good reign on her pacing. She also never over-acts. Her tone is perfect throughout as she brings us through a romantic yet dark time in the life of a young Dublin working class woman.
The performance takes place in the Powerscourt Gallery, which has excellent acoustics...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:56:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Be-My-Love-in-the-Rain]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Penelope]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Penelope]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Four grotesquely inept cocktail-quaffing men are trapped in an empty swimming pool on a Greek Island. They tempt fate trying to escape a grisly end in Penelope, Enda Walsh&rsquo;s latest work to be premiered by Druid. This is Walsh&rsquo;s stab at sitcom, but in its uncompromising ambition, breadth and brushes with a darkly delightful lunacy, it is also his most daring drama.
What actually unfolds is a tragicomedy awash with ironies, classical allusions and flooded with a devoted reverence for theatre and theatrical device: Penelope overflows with generous offerings to groundlings and gods alike...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:13:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Penelope]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Fellow]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Quare Fellow]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In reviving Behan&rsquo;s 1954 play, Ronan Wilmot asserts his sense of theatrical history (identifying warmly with the work of Caroline Swift and Alan Simpson in the Pike Theatre on the original production), and &ndash; in some of the best moments - a sensitivity for Behan&rsquo;s capacity to write of the horrors of a hanging, both graphically and with a degree of lyricism.
But The Quare Fellow has not weathered well. Capital punishment has been erased from the statute books in Ireland and, for a long time, film has proved to be the medium most sympathetic to portraying grim prison life. Besides,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:07:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Fellow]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Grippe-Girls]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Grippe Girls]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Co-founded by Gibbons and Gregg in 2001, Electric Bridget has, since its inception, aimed to entertain through darkly comic means. Penned by Gibbons, The Grippe Girls signifies precisely the company&rsquo;s fundamental aspirations. This two-hander stitches together the bawdy and unsavoury stories of the ancient Grippe twins Hildegarde (Gregg) and Obstina (Gibbons), who embody the diminishing remnants of a once great Anglo-Irish family. The advent of a &ldquo;woman-journalist&rdquo;, who wishes to record an interview with the sisters, provides a realistic forum for the characters to communicate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:34:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Grippe-Girls]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tusk-Tusk]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tusk Tusk]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Since her 2007 debut, Polly Stenham has become one of the most talked-about young dramatists in Britain. But, as so often happens with female writers, much of that attention has focussed on her life rather than her work &ndash; so we know much more about her looks, her sexuality, and her relationship with her parents than we do about her writing. 
She is certainly an interesting personality, and her achievement in having her first play, That Face, staged when she was only 20 is impressive. But because of the excessive focus on who she is, she hasn&rsquo;t received the critical attention that her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:49:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tusk-Tusk]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Slattery-s-Sago-Saga]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Slattery's Sago Saga]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The formidable Crawford MacPherson (Clare Barrett) arrives at Póg mo Thóin Hall by car, greeted by nervous Tim Hartigan (Malcolm Adams), taking instruction from MacPherson&rsquo;s husband, absent estate-owner Ned Hoolihan (Louis Lovett), to accommodate her. MacPherson has a plan. She intends to rid Ireland of its indolence and licentiousness by banishing the potato. She intends to introduce a system of irrigation and share-cropping around the cultivation of sago, a tropical plant that produces edible gloopy starch. At the nearby Baggeley Hall, a dopey handyman (Lovett again) works against the decay...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:59:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Slattery-s-Sago-Saga]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Death-of-a-Salesman]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Death of a Salesman]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Designed by Michael Pavelka, the set of the Gate Theatre&rsquo;s production of Death of Salesman angles backwards giving the impression that the characters are trapped inside a giant &lsquo;V&rsquo;, the jaws of which could bite down at any moment. Upstage, a suggested strip of brownstones hovers overhead. The glassless façades are chased through by the mischievous branches of a large tree shooting from the left, as obstinate in its twilight as Willy Loman (Yulin) himself. Ostensibly growing through the Loman family&rsquo;s Brooklyn home, the tree is a constant reminder of the precarious nature...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:51:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Death-of-a-Salesman]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Oedipus-the-King]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Oedipus the King]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Classic Stage Ireland have been quietly carving a niche for themselves in the Irish theatrical landscape over the last seven years. Devoting themselves exclusively to producing &ldquo;the classics&rdquo;, they have concentrated for the most part on Shakespeare and the Greeks, and their annual repertoire alternates between an ancient tragedy or comedy and a Shakespearean drama. More commendable than the company&rsquo;s classic commitment, however, is their commitment to showcasing the less well-known plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus and their Elizabethan counterpart. In the last 12 months, for example,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:25:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Oedipus-the-King]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Plough-and-the-Stars]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Plough and the Stars]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sean O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s classic tragi-comedy has for long been strangled by  its  realist form. To glance through the text is to get side-tracked by detail. Every cup and saucer, every chair, every changed location (and there are four distinct spaces over four acts) is described as if the writer is creating an entirely new and unfamiliar universe. However,  Wayne Jordan&rsquo;s stylish, brave production at the Abbey Theatre sweeps away the representational rigour of O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s drama and brings an expressionistic epic quality to the work instead; a quality that O&rsquo;Casey himself...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:19:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Plough-and-the-Stars]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Colleen-Bawn]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Colleen Bawn]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dion Boucicault&rsquo;s melodrama is enjoying a resurgence of popularity, but in truth it has rarely been out of fashion for long in more than a century. The convincing staging of such melodrama requires a consistently calibrated approach in which acting, costuming, staging and direction convey a single relation to melodrama as concept. A pick and mix relationship to this genre doesn&rsquo;t work. A full-scale commitment to the artistic requirements of another age is admittedly a tall order, especially when a postmodern sensibility is shared by those on stage, behind the scenes and in the audience....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:33:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Colleen-Bawn]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/At-the-Hawk-s-Well]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[At the Hawk's Well]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Wisdom must have a bitter life,&rdquo; sing the Musicians near the end of Blue Raincoat&rsquo;s production of W.B. Yeats&rsquo;s At the Hawk&rsquo;s Well, a curious, if oddly satisfying lunchtime diversion now playing at Sligo&rsquo;s Factory Perfomance Space. There are bitter lessons for the characters and the playwright alike here.
In At the Hawk&rsquo;s Well, we find Yeats looking eastwards in pursuit of a more timeless theatre, particularly towards the Japanese Noh tradition. While one feels something would be lost in translation if the great practitioners of the classical Japanese...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:15:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/At-the-Hawk-s-Well]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Vincent-River]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Vincent River]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[First produced in 2000, Philip Ridley&rsquo;s Vincent River is a stark reminder of the continued occurrences of hate crime and homophobic attacks in society. Drawing upon events of his youth and the murder of a friend in the 1980s, Ridley creates two characters trying to come to terms with a death which has resulted from homophobic violence: Anita (Eleanor Methven) &ndash; the mother of Vincent &ndash; and Davey (Kerr Logan) &ndash; the young man who found Vincent&rsquo;s body &ndash; talk through and share their stories, each trying to piece together the narrative of Vincent&rsquo;s life and death....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:51:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Vincent-River]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bondi-Beach-Boy-Blue]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bondi Beach Boy Blue]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set in Kilkenny and Sydney in the year 2000, Bondi Beach Boy Blue dramatises the story of Declan, a talented young hurler, whose dream of making the senior county panel is ended by a crippling knee injury.
Declan is 17 and about to leave school; his mother has died four years previously and his relationship with his father is strained. Following his injury and a break-up with his girlfriend Lisa, he and best friend Gary escape boredom and frustration by heading off to Australia. There they meet up with Emma who persuades them to take part in the 14km 'City to Surf' road race from Sydney to Bondi...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:38:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bondi-Beach-Boy-Blue]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Baglady]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Baglady]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The most remarkable aspect of Frank McGuinness&rsquo;s monologue play is its ability to implicate an entire society while focusing on a lone soul torn asunder by an act of familial violation. While the centerpiece of Baglady&rsquo;s fragmented narrative is the eponymous character&rsquo;s rape at the hand of her father, the spectral figures of Catholic Ireland&rsquo;s clergy haunt the periphery, blaming the victim and burying any evidence of the crimes committed. The resonances with widespread allegations of systemic child abuse within Irish society as a whole are unmistakable here. Baglady&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:32:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Baglady]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Where-Did-It-All-Go-Right-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Where Did It All Go Right?]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Where Did It All Go Right? is a highly engaging and charming adrenaline rush of a contemporary dance piece, where the emphasis is most definitely on contemporary. With no little skill, Ponydance manage to recreate an intense clubbing-cum-pop sensibility and style of dance that yet is underpinned and subtexted by the abstractions and vocabulary of the more familiar and traditionally abstract modern form of choreography most of us know, as they retell a familiar tale of four people out enjoying themselves, getting out of their heads and out of their bodies.
The setting for this production - upstairs...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:08:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Where-Did-It-All-Go-Right-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Citizenship]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Citizenship]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Towards the end of Mark Ravenhill&rsquo;s Citizenship, a plastic doll hangs on the background wall of the stage. A childlike voiceover tells us that Mommy and Daddy slept together that night and that she is the result. She continues to tell us the end of the story we have just watched unfold. It is a beautiful and poignant summing up on the consequences of youth&rsquo;s natural folly. The happy little voice explains that they no longer speak to each other now.
Mommy is Amy and Daddy is Tom and theirs is the story of teenage love and angst in a 21st century MySpace, chatroom context where social...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:18:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Citizenship]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Land]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Quare Land]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This new production from Decadent Theatre is described in the programme as the company&rsquo;s fourth &ldquo;world-premiere&rdquo;. That claim might seem extravagant for a group that isn&rsquo;t well known beyond Galway, but it captures well the ambition &ndash; and, more importantly, the achievements &ndash; of the company, which has been producing some excellent work recently. In 2008, for instance, they gave us an intriguing revival of Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s The Lonesome West, while last year they premiered Here We Are Again Still, which is probably Christian O&rsquo;Reilly&rsquo;s best play...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:59:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Land]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tarry-Flynn]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tarry Flynn]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Patrick Kavanagh&rsquo;s semi-autobiographical character Tarry Flynn reveres literature and, like a Romantic poet, fancies himself as a specially-inspired mediator between nature and man. He believes that all ordinary objects and acts can carry within them &ldquo;the energy of the imagination&rdquo;. As infuriatingly detached and egotistical as Tarry is, the character&rsquo;s poetic ideals provided Conall Morrison&rsquo;s muse when he adapted this work for the Abbey stage in 1996. The result: a work of vibrant theatricality that offers theatre practitioners vast artistic opportunities. Attracted...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:58:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tarry-Flynn]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Disco Pigs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Permeated by a sense of entrapment, the theatre of Enda Walsh is at its best when performed in intimate spaces. While real freedom seems just beyond the grasp of many of his characters, his romantic two-hander Disco Pigs is more hopeful than much of his later work. As the adventures of Pig and Runt descend into chaos, we anticipate that Runt, at least, will break out of the psychological box the two have built around themselves. In this context, the creative approach of Fregoli, under the skilled directorship of Rob McFeely, was fitting; throughout, there was a palpable sense that Galway&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:23:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Dream-Play]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Dream Play]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A few furry spectators mark their territory as the audience file in to watch the National Youth Theatre&rsquo;s production in the Peacock theatre. The humanoid bunnies that fill a few seats, and eventually kick off the performance by eyeballing us from the gallery, are an obvious nod to Wonderland, or even Donny Darko. Although quickly hidden from sight, for Caryl Churchill&rsquo;s version (2005) of August Strindberg&rsquo;s A Dream Play (1901) this quirky conceit nicely sets the tone for a drama that confounds the distinction between reality and fantasy. 

The action begins as Agnes, a daughter...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:04:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Dream-Play]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Gingerbread-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Gingerbread House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If you&rsquo;ve ever wondered how the parents of Hansel and Gretel coped after abandoning their children in the woods, before the wicked step-mother died and the children returned for the happy-ever after, John Chambers&rsquo; The Gingerbread House, takes you into their den of domestic hell and tries to show you what lack of conscience and weakness of will can do to the soul.
His ambition is, I suppose, a fine one; to take a classic fairytale and deconstruct it to enlighten on parental responsibility, the consequences of neglecting this responsibility and the traumatic fatalistic horror of a bad...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:30:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Gingerbread-House]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Silver-Tassie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Silver Tassie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the more memorable moments in Druid&rsquo;s epic production of Sean O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s first World War lament The Silver Tassie, has nothing to do with battle. In the beginning of the final act, Sylvester Heegan (Eamon Morrissey) and Simon Norton (John Olohan) are enjoying some banter at a dance in honour of Irish World War veterans when a phone rings. The duo is frightened at first, and then both thwarted in their attempts to communicate with the voice inside the machine. The caller and his message are never known and the drama quickly returns to O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s central task: relentlessly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:41:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Silver-Tassie]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Happy-Days]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Happy Days]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[AC Productions brings commitment and dedication to Happy Days, even if it is a somewhat thankless task (there were eleven at the performance being reviewed). Happy Days can be a challenging work but, to echo Miller&rsquo;s line in Death of a Salesman at the Gate, &ldquo;attention must be paid.&rdquo; When we have the privilege of a fine production of a key text, we should show more willing to lend our support.
This Happy Days demonstrates a meticulous fidelity to Beckett, down to each single move. Director Peter Reid and actor Alex Cusack (Winnie) have carefully crafted every nuance of language...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:04:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Happy-Days]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mouth-to-Mouth]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mouth to Mouth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Crooked House Theatre Company are developing a reputation for staging difficult and narratively layered and complex modern drama. Following last year&rsquo;s very successful Breathing Corpses, they have now put their skilful hands to Kevin Elyot&rsquo;s funny and tragic drama Mouth to Mouth, a play about the absurd respectability of the middle classes in the light of personal despair and loneliness.
Although there is fine ensemble playing on show, Mouth to Mouth essentially focuses on the existential angst of a playwright called Frank, played here by Nick Devlin who beautifully understates Frank...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:49:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mouth-to-Mouth]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/TIC]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[TIC]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The central motif in Elizabeth Moynihan&rsquo;s &ldquo;full length premiere&rdquo; at the Focus Theatre is a syndrome, named after the French neurologist, Georges Gilles de la Tourette who, in 1885, identified the combination of involuntary tics &ndash; both motor and vocal &ndash; which, in this play, afflicts a young Anglo-Irishwoman, who has been incarcerated in a folly in the grounds of the &lsquo;big house&rsquo;.
The nineteenth-century setting allows Moynihan to introduce Tourette&rsquo;s as something of a novelty and also to give some credence to the husband&rsquo;s decision to simply lock...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:54:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/TIC]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lily-Lally-Show]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Lily Lally Show]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In the programme notes to the original production of Hugh Leonard&rsquo;s The Lily Lally Show at the Abbey Theatre in 1994, the author proposed that there had only ever been one great comedienne in Irish entertainment. Typically, Leonard didn&rsquo;t name her but it was understood that he was talking about the late, great Maureen Potter. Leonard went on to stress that Mary Moone was his attempt to create the second great Irish comedienne. Thus, with obvious and deliberate, even comical, disingenuousness, Leonard&rsquo;s statements were, like many of those uttered by the stars of that popular vaudeville...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:40:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lily-Lally-Show]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Boss-Grady-s-Boys]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Boss Grady's Boys]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sebastian Barry&rsquo;s Boss Grady&rsquo;s Boys hearkens back to another time. No, not the time to which the elderly farming brothers Mick (Pat Shortt) and Josie (Tom Hickey) constantly look as they frame their present, dull and empty experience of life with reminiscences of their deceased mother and father. No, not the time when such a breed of rural Irishman could be realistically encountered any day of the week, and when references to Stagecoach and Duck Soup would not be lost on an audience. No. The play hearkens back to another time in Irish theatre: before Martin McDonagh made it de rigeur...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:08:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Boss-Grady-s-Boys]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beauty-Queen-of-Leenane]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Beauty Queen of Leenane]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s Leenane plays first appeared in Ireland, they seemed exciting for many reasons: their delinquent humour, their rootedness in (but distance from) the Irish dramatic tradition, their wilfully transgressive attitude &ndash; and, in particular, their disorientating blend of the past with the present. The environment that McDonagh presented seemed like a skewed representation of 1950s Ireland: eternally rain-filled and poteen-soaked, his Leenane was populated by an over-familiar rabble of frustrated spinsters, lonely priests, ape-like peasants, and kind-hearted but feisty...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:23:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beauty-Queen-of-Leenane]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Chicane]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Chicane]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[



When Agatha Christie&rsquo;s Witness for the Prosecution played in the old Metropole Cinema, in the 1950s, latecomers were barred and the entire audience was sworn to secrecy about the final disclosures in the plot (by the way, Tyrone Power did it &ndash; I was a child at the time, exempt from the gagging order!) Anthony Brophy&rsquo;s new play occupies the same territory. It is part of a genre based on chicanery: &ldquo;clever talk intended to mislead, a dishonest argument, trickery, deception&rdquo; (Collins 21st Century Dictionary.) Shades of Death Trap and Sleuth: nothing is as it appears;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:05:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Chicane]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Diary-of-Anne-Frank]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Diary of Anne Frank ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Anne Frank (the subject of this opera) and Grigory Frid (the composer) have a lot in common. She, with her whole life ahead of her, is obliged to hide in a secret annex for two years; he, having studied composition intensively as a student, graduates from the Moscow Conservatory with gold medal in hand and his career as a musician about to take off, is obliged to join the army when the second World War breaks out. Like the heroine of this &quot;mono-opera&quot;, as Frid calls it, he witnesses the horrors of war first hand. In his illuminating programme note for this production, the composer says:...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 11 Sep 2010 17:26:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Diary-of-Anne-Frank]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Women-In-Power]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Women In Power]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In a production committed to bringing the lessons of the drama to bear on our own times and circumstances, Limerick Youth Theatre lends a contemporary twist to Aristophanes&rsquo; Greek comedy, Women in Power. It is set in Athens &ldquo;where something is rotten&rdquo; - but not in ancient Athens, no man: this political and literary satire is ensconced in the battle for power at the Academy of Theatrical Humanities (and Extraordinary Notions of Stardom), a performing arts high school for talented young theatre students.The late Kenneth McLeish&rsquo;s adaptation and, apparently, world premiere...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:37:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Women-In-Power]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Set-in-Stone]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Set in Stone]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The road to the present in any Irish town is paved with colourful events, brave, tragic and notorious characters and the fight for freedom, whether personal or political. John Sheehy&rsquo;s &ldquo;world premiere&rdquo;, Set in Stone is a condensed history of Kilmallock from its 1569 Fitzmaurice siege to its busy thoroughfare of people and vehicles going about their daily lives in 2010, recession or no recession. Limiting the audience to a maximum of forty, Call Back Theatre organise a congregation at Kilmallock&rsquo;s beautiful Dominican Abbey before leading on to Friar&rsquo;s Gate Theatre where...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:49:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Set-in-Stone]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dear-Frankie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dear Frankie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dear Frankie follows the true story of the rise and decline of Ireland&rsquo;s first on-air agony aunt. Unfortunately, one of the things that debilitates Niamh Gleeson&rsquo;s new play, is the tyranny of fact. The work is circumscribed by the parameters of the biography of Frankie Byrne, a household name for the (now wrinkled) listeners to the Rádio Eireann of the late fifties. Gleeson ends up with a clunky, fragmented construction, which spends too much time in the studio as Frankie doles out commonsense advice to the bachelor farmers and worried housewives of yore.
The playwright is absorbed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:24:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dear-Frankie]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Elegies-for-Angels--Punks-and-Raging-Queens]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s twenty-one years since Bill Russell&rsquo;s and Janet Wood&rsquo;s Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens first opened in an off Broadway Theatre at a time when its theatrical musical thesis on the stories of the beautiful and the damned was all too contemporary; in a time when the execrating news of the AIDS virus imposed its sentence on the lives of so many in so many places. That time has passed. The drugs have been tested and prevention is being practised. Like the birth of much great theatre, Elegies was born from pain and told beside joy. Numerous productions have been staged...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:39:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Elegies-for-Angels--Punks-and-Raging-Queens]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Low-Pay--Don-t-Pay!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Low Pay? Don’t Pay!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bruiser Theatre Company&rsquo;s new production, Low Pay? Don&rsquo;t Pay is a translation of Dario Fo&rsquo;s classic piece of political comedy, Can&rsquo;t Pay? Won&rsquo;t Pay! Written in 1974, the play has been revised by Fo for the current economic crisis, and this translation by Joseph Farrell for the Irish and Scottish premiere of the work has a distinctive local flavour in the use of idiom and slang. Set in Milan, the central characters are two women from a low income housing estate who can no longer feed their families and pay their rising mortgages. Margherita encounters her friend Antonia...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 24 Sep 2010 22:12:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Low-Pay--Don-t-Pay!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/True-North]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[True North]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As light rises on the cardboard set of David Ireland&rsquo;s Everything Between Us, we are bombarded by a sea of expletives. Sandra (Tara Lynne O&rsquo;Neill) has just taken her seat on the board of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee for Northern Ireland, when her long lost sister Teeni (Claire Lamont) bursts in and attacks the South African chairwoman. Grabbing Teeni around the neck, Sandra drags her to a storage room among the political chambers. As Teeni attempts to escape the chokehold, she screams lurid and racist slurs at the chairwoman beyond: &ldquo;Apartheid, Apartheid!&rdquo; &ldquo;You...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 01 Oct 2010 21:56:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/True-North]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orphans]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Orphans]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Orphans tells the tale of Helen and Danny, a young couple trying to make their life and marriage work in spite of the fact that they live in a tough, working class area, adjacent to an estate that is a no-go area. They both have jobs, have a young son and are expecting another child, though, initially at least, Helen appears to be having second thoughts about their second arrival. She doubts Danny&rsquo;s commitment, courage and manliness in an environment where being able to stand up for yourself means being prepared to kill.
Another factor which complicates Helen and Danny&rsquo;s relationship...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:31:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orphans]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Early-Hours]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Early Hours]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Established by Bernard Field, Haw Theatre had its debut production around this time last year with Last Train from Holyhead, written by Field and staring the late Mick Lally. Following this success, the company is back again with another blast of Field&rsquo;s psychological realism. The Early Hours dramatizes the interactions between Kate French, an American lawyer living in Dublin, the intruder she finds one night in her home, and the police inspector who investigates the case.
Relaxed and happy after returning from a night on the town, Kate (Anarosa De Eizaguirre Butler) returns to her apartment....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:41:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Early-Hours]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Scent-of-Chocolate]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Scent of Chocolate]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Timing is often everything. Not only is there a Polish theatrical invasion into Dublin these weeks, but there is also activity from within - and Scent of Chocolate by Radoslaw Paczochka, the innovative debut from the newly founded Polish Theatre Ireland, sees more connections emerge by way of the emigrant theme.
Many memories are triggered for Irish audiences: of parallel endeavours in recent Irish cultural history, when, during the 1980s in New York, London, Chicago and other cities where the Irish theatrical diaspora gathered, new experiments were fanned and came to life. The Irish Arts Centre...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:50:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Scent-of-Chocolate]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Adventures-of-the-Wet-Senor]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Adventures of the Wet Senor]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Towards the end of the 1500s, in Antwerp, retired Spanish conquistador Francisco de Cuellar sat down to write, in letter form, an unbelievable story that happened to be true - of his accidental odyssey across Ireland after the Spanish Armada&rsquo;s disastrous attack on England, encountering odd people and imperial armies. One imagines contemporary readers would have questioned the veracity of his tale, not only because so many of his fellow beached soldiers were promptly hanged by their obliging hosts. It&rsquo;s an irrelevant point, I suppose, as history subsequently forgot about Francisco de...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 08 Oct 2010 22:28:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Adventures-of-the-Wet-Senor]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/In-the-Pipeline]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[In the Pipeline]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A bare stage of just two chairs positioned across from each other and a vase of flowers is all that greets the audience in Welsh playwright Gary Owen&rsquo;s In the Pipeline. These three items could be said to represent the trio of characters &ndash; Andrew, Dai and Joan &ndash; in this warm, understated play about how a huge gas pipeline and its imminent installation affects the lives of our triumvirate of disparate protagonists in a small Welsh village.
The beauty of In the Pipeline, though, lies partly in the way Owen tackles the theme of big business violating the everyday lives of ordinary...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:55:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/In-the-Pipeline]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cripple-of-Inishmaan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Cripple of Inishmaan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How you serve the rural desperations of Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s reimagining of a bygone Irish landscape largely defines what an audience takes away from it. From the early Leenane Trilogy to The Lieutenant of Inishmore, McDonagh&rsquo;s riff is largely focused on tearing the heart out of his subjects and presenting grotesqueness at its most beastly. Mostly directors have chosen to overkill on this aspect. For The Cripple of Inishmaan, strangely McDonagh blurs the horror in the narrative in favour of a touch of sentimentality which has led some critics to declare that he has a heart after all. Druid...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:05:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cripple-of-Inishmaan]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Stone-Soup]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Stone Soup]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This is poor theatre: no real props (unless you count some kitchen utensils and some vegetables), no set (apart from a kitchen table and a sheet), minimal on-off lighting, so it makes significant demands on the actors. They don&rsquo;t pretend to be puppeteers: they have no puppets. There is no overt attempt to create illusions. They simply make do with what&rsquo;s in front of them: a wooden spoon that talks to a food mixer, an old sheet that becomes a mountain, two kitchen knives who become local butcher and son.
Joe Moylan and Amy Conroy draw the audience in - they cross the proscenium at first,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:20:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Stone-Soup]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Mai]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Mai]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[First staged in 1994, Marina Carr&rsquo;s The Mai marks the shift in her oeuvre towards a more mainstream style. This work stages the memories of Millie, the title character&rsquo;s daughter; the adult Millie narrates the drama performed on stage, but participates in the action as a child, and reconstructs the summer of 1979 (when The Mai&rsquo;s estranged husband returns after a five-year absence) and the summer of 1980 (when their relationship has disintegrated again).
Newman&rsquo;s set of large Victorian-style patterns in muted pinks and golds helped to contextualise the play within the late...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:27:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Mai]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Secret-Garden]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Secret Garden]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Devised by Moonfish from the children&rsquo;s book, The Secret Garden brings to life a tale of grief, isolation, companionship and reconciliation. Following the death of her parents, Mary Lennox is sent to live in her Uncle&rsquo;s home on the moors. With her uncle away travelling, the mansion appears deserted apart from a few servants. The vast, remote space compounds this petulant young girl&rsquo;s loneliness. Then, she becomes intrigued by the mysteries surrounding her, finding friendship in unlikely places.
This production was expertly developed as an ensemble. The whole team contributed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:46:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Secret-Garden]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/National-Anthem]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[National Anthem]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;A poet is the conscience of a nation&rdquo;: so rattles off Dessie O&rsquo;Hare (Miche Doherty), the third rate poet that&rsquo;s been hired to write Northern Ireland&rsquo;s new national anthem. Forced together by Stormont authorities in a rush attempt to conceive an anthem in time for a diplomatic visitor, he and new-age muzak composer Gary Miller (Stuart Graham) must imagine a collaboration that acknowledges the region&rsquo;s troubled past but heralds a brighter future. From Ballymena to Ballyhalbert, Bateman and Ransom Theatre Company take us on a somewhat stilted journey of self-discovery.
The...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:34:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/National-Anthem]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Between-Foxrock-and-Hard-Place]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Between Foxrock and a Hard Place]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ah, zeitgeist. There&rsquo;s nothing like the snap of connection when time meets spirit, and we as a society/audience are given the opportunity to do what we love to do best: watch ourselves and our times unfold before us, whether on the silver screen or on the stage. When the Olympia&rsquo;s big red curtain rises on the sitting room of the O&rsquo;Carroll-Kellys' Foxrock mansion, revealing son of the house Ross (Rory Nolan) in all his smug khakied-and-Docksided splendour, the house is more than ready to enjoy another round of identification and hilarity, the latest in a series that Paul Howard...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:59:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Between-Foxrock-and-Hard-Place]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dancing-at-Lughnasa]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dancing at Lughnasa]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s twenty years since Friel&rsquo;s play first astonished audiences and, to judge by this Second Age production, the passage of time has facilitated a further unearthing of its riches. If the first encounter with Maggie&rsquo;s dance is like a first kiss (nothing ever quite as memorable; never ever quite the same again), a revisiting of Lughnasa offers the compensation of a more detached and objective view of the play.
David Horan&rsquo;s sensitive and compelling production is about clarity. He captures the almost imperceptible disintegration in a place where the household gods of domesticity...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 22 Oct 2010 23:29:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dancing-at-Lughnasa]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Date-with-Mercy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Date with Mercy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Jane Mulcahy&rsquo;s new play for Plastic Theatre is a pseudo-Elizabethan mash-up that includes elements of The Duchess of Malfi, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet. Set in a royal court, Queen Mercy (Mulcahy) falls in love with Fierce (O&rsquo;Brien), a lowly Irish thief, enraging Duke Karmo (Byrne), her rejected suitor, in the process. When Fierce falls for the Queen&rsquo;s maid Weib (Jennings), she has him imprisoned in her dungeon. Meanwhile, Karmo has set in motion a plan to kill her Highness, and the action slides to an end in a blood-bath.
The production is nicely suited to the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:03:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Date-with-Mercy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Gingerbread-Man]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Gingerbread Man]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Through the imaginative use of simple puppets, Miriam Lambert&rsquo;s rendition of The Gingerbread Man truly invigorates an age-old tale. The show is introduced by her signature characters, Pick and Boo. These very basic puppets are the forefingers of Lambert&rsquo;s gloved hands, anthropomorphised only by tufts of fluffy hair on top. Speaking in the international language of gobbledygook, the slapstick comedy of Pick and Boo sets the scene wonderfully for the adventures of the mischievous Gingerbread Man.
Throughout the story of the runaway cookie, Ronan Tully&rsquo;s music added ambiance and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:04:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Gingerbread-Man]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Postcards-from-Dumbworld]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Postcards from Dumbworld]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The performance of this new opera begins with the procession of the Brian Irvine Ensemble into the orchestra pit where Irvine conducts them, and the audience, in the overture. The musicians play as they walk, creating an image of street performers or minstrels which sets the playful mood for the work; the fact that some of them are masked hints at the strange nature of the Dumbworld&rsquo;s fictional universe. Irvine is well known for his creative combination of elements from different musical genres, producing work which manages to be startling or discordant without being difficult to listen to....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:44:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Postcards-from-Dumbworld]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lay-Me-Down-Softly]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Lay Me Down Softly]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Before the drama begins to unfold in Wexford Arts Centre, Bui Bolg brings the audience into a world of light and shadows by masking the entrance and interior of the performance space with canvas and naked bulbs, creating the candy-striped boxing arena of The Academy Boxing Arena of Delaney&rsquo;s Travelling Road Show, in which the play is set. Best use is made of the limited space available in the arts centre as the audience, seated on three sides of the boxing ring which forms the centrepiece of the stage, completes the picture and the often claustrophobic world of the play. Paul Keogan&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 16 Oct 2010 22:32:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lay-Me-Down-Softly]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Big-Ole-Piece-of-Cake]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Big Ole Piece of Cake]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sean McLoughlin&rsquo;s new play Big Ole Piece of Cake  charts familiar territory. In the tradition of Irish naturalism, it places familial dysfunction under the microscope in a rural domestic setting; in this instance in the home of lonely bachelor Clarence, who is so desperate for company that he adopts two strange young men, Colin and Ray, as substitute sons. Meanwhile, in the tradition of contemporary playwriting McLoughlin examines modern urban masculine identity by displacing it; Colin and Ray are two vagabond Dubliners in exile in the idyllic Wicklow countryside.
In Jim Culleton&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:57:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Big-Ole-Piece-of-Cake]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jumping-the-Sharks]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jumping the Sharks]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There are a lot of things to enjoy about Jumping the Sharks, the new play from Blood in the Alley Theatre Company. There&rsquo;s the competent central performance from Don Wycherley; the darkly comic script from Michael Lovett; and the subtle direction of Geoff Gould, former artistic director of the Everyman Theatre in Cork. But despite the fact that there are quite a few laughs to be had, it doesn't seem to be about anything &ndash; certainly not anything new, and leaves one feeling a little hollow when the humour subsides.
Meet Nick Cross, the CEO of Pegasus Holdings, a philanderer, thief, user,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 26 Oct 2010 22:22:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jumping-the-Sharks]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Shape-of-a-Girl]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Shape of a Girl]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Graffiti&rsquo;s latest production fulfils a number of criteria that makes it suitable for theatre in education but the most salient box it ticks is the capacity to generate post-match discussion. It&rsquo;s a provocative play that should stir the teenagers who get into workshops after seeing it in their schools.
Before hitting the road to the classroom it was given a showcase production by Graffiti at their impressive base on Assumption Road in Cork. This converted old church is rich with character and is now well designed as an intimate theatre space. Graffiti&rsquo;s work in educational theatre...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 23:01:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Shape-of-a-Girl]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bulletproof]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bulletproof]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bulletproof grew out of the determination of Replay to address issues of mental health through the medium of &lsquo;verbatim theatre&rsquo;. So the language of the &lsquo;play&rsquo; is authentic, it draws exclusively on the spoken or written words of &lsquo;real&rsquo; people. It is task of the writer, in this case Gary Owen, to act as curator of those words, editing and shaping them into a dramatic work.
In Bulletproof the experiences conveyed are stark: Michael (Brian Markey) and Alex (Kerry Cleland), barely out of their teens, speak of mental disorder, ADHD, hyperactivity, obsessive behaviour,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:50:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bulletproof]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beauty-Queen-of-Leenane-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Beauty Queen of Leenane]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the great achievements of Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s 'Leenane Trilogy' is the mixture of consciously caricatured, stylised and silly stage-Irishness in the language and much of the behaviour and references, which is contrasted with its diametric opposite, that of a murderously brutal and cruel underbelly. Thus it is that any successful production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane must first of all seduce audiences into a false sense of complacency with its Father Ted-like lightness only to sucker punch them with the inevitable horror that is ultimately unleashed. Happily, for the most part, the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 06 Nov 2010 21:49:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beauty-Queen-of-Leenane-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Happy-Days-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Happy Days]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Up to her waist in crap, Winnie (Simpson) knows what it&rsquo;s like to be us. Engulfed by earth, and separated from her beloved Willie (Bennett), Beckett&rsquo;s protagonist refuses to give in to despair in the face of certain annihilation. &ldquo;Begin your day&hellip; mustn&rsquo;t complain,&rdquo; she repeatedly affirms, swapping her pistol for lipstick.
That a company as playful as Corn Exchange would produce work as heavily protected as Beckett&rsquo;s may come as a surprise to many. But some say there is freedom within his rules. While the group has been moving away from the Commedia dell&rsquo;Arte...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:54:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Happy-Days-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Oedipus]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Oedipus]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The difference between Sophocles Oedipus Rex and Seneca&rsquo;s Oedipus are striking from the get go. In Company D&rsquo;s production of Seneca&rsquo;s version of the tragedy we&rsquo;re introduced to Oedipus as a fearful and indecisive politician, hunkering down within the safety of a bunker as his adopted city of Thebes succumbs to the ravishment of an insatiable plague. Gone is the confident king of Sophocles&rsquo; version, whose pride compels him to get to the bottom of the disaster, invoking a deeply felt sense of civic duty in actively pledging himself publicly to discovering its cause....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:35:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Oedipus]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Men-of-Tortuga]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Men of Tortuga]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Men of Tortuga is a sharp, pacy thriller set in an anonymous corporate suite where three executive types plot the assassination of an enemy. There&rsquo;s Maxwell (Gerry O&rsquo;Brien), the senior leader, ideologically opposed to the man he intends to kill and once committed to his action, inflexible. There&rsquo;s Kling (Dermot Magennis), the hungry, fiery, explosive type: quick to react, but not without the capacity to re-think. Finally there&rsquo;s Avery (Steve Wilson), a leader-in-waiting: seemingly hesitant, seemingly friendly, but equally capable of decisive action to the point of murder....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 12 Nov 2010 21:29:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Men-of-Tortuga]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jane-Eyre]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jane Eyre]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The history of stage adaptations of novels is long and illustrious, and the reworking of the writings of the Brontës includes stage, film, dance and operatic treatments, and Ireland seems to have a particular propensity for such literary theatrical versions. It is not surprising, then, that Alan Stanford&rsquo;s dramatic rendering of this 19th century prose work has re-appeared. It is, after all, very much within the remit of The Gate.
Charlotte Brontë&rsquo;s tale of an orphaned girl who lands on her virtuous feet after many perils, is larded with Victorian favourite touches &ndash; a Gothic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:47:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jane-Eyre]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wet-Paint]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Wet Paint]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Actor Shane Casey developed the idea for this play about male friendship and the limits of masculine communication in order to create, among other things, &ldquo;a show that his parents would enjoy seeing.&rdquo; True to this ideal, this no fuss production offers a straightforward, humorous antidote to the barrage of grim news awaiting us each morning, and, as such, provides its audience with a solid night&rsquo;s entertainment, unfolding as it does effortlessly over a 50 minute period.
Despite its simplicity, however, Casey&rsquo;s script &ndash; developed in association with director Evelyn...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 31 Oct 2010 22:04:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wet-Paint]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Grenades]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Grenades]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Originally produced as a radio play, Grenades is an award-winning one-hander that depends largely on narrative. As she waits in a prison, the play&rsquo;s protagonist Nuala Kelly weaves together significant memories from her childhood, relaying them to the audience in an enthralling, heart-wrenching monologue. Mephisto&rsquo;s production of Grenades simultaneously showcased the skills of two expert storytellers: playwright, Tara McKevitt and actor Emma O&rsquo;Grady.
Set in Northern Ireland during the 70s and 80s, this work dramatises the immense impact of the external, socio-political milieu...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:59:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Grenades]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tosca]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tosca]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[First, the drama before the drama. Soprano Cara O'Sullivan was meant to share the role of Tosca with Orla Boylan for this, Opera Ireland's final production. Unfortunately, as rehearsals began, a leg injury of some kind sustained by Cara put paid to that. What a fantastic idea to get two of our own international singers to front the swansong of Opera Ireland &ndash; especially right now. It would have celebrated the fact that we can get some things right, at least &ndash; but alas it was not to be, and Italian Soprano Amarilli Nizza stepped into the breach.
Nonetheless, it was fascinating to see...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:59:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tosca]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Memory-Palace]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Memory Palace]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bluepatch&rsquo;s Memory Palace is an experimental, experiential meditation on the protective, encrypting functions of memory. Appropriating Greek mythology, the piece imagines the Amazonian queen Hippolyta&rsquo;s posthumous meeting with Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Encouraged by Mnemosyne (here called Mimi) to remember, Hippolyta (here called Lottie) struggles with her repression of how she stormed her former husband&rsquo;s wedding to Phaedra. Memory Palace explores how we hide traumatic experiences from ourselves. It reminds us that, although the ephemeral nature an event may allow us...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:54:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Memory-Palace]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ellamenope-Jones]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Ellamenope Jones]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ellamenope Jones doesn&rsquo;t take no for an answer. Attractive, determined, ruthless, she&rsquo;s a &lsquo;yes&rsquo; woman who&rsquo;ll do anything to get what she wants. &quot;If life gives you shit, polish it&quot; is just one of her many mantras. This sassy Dublin lady knows what it&rsquo;s like at rock bottom, and there&rsquo;s no way she&rsquo;s going back. The mastermind of a pyramid scheme, Ellamenope sniffs out the tragedy in women&rsquo;s lives and forces them to dream better, harder, faster. &quot;What do you want for your liiiiiife?&quot; she asks her prey with a rising inflection;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:59:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ellamenope-Jones]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Anything-But-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Anything But Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Post Celtic Tiger and firmly rooted in a modern secular Ireland, Mary Coll&rsquo;s new play and only her second reflects with acuity its time and its place. Anything But Love, the opening production of Limerick&rsquo;s long-awaited and beautifully refurbished Belltable, is inspired by Kate O&rsquo;Briens&rsquo; novel The Ante Room, published in the 1930&rsquo;s and set in the 1880&rsquo;s, about a pair of sisters in love with the same man: one unhappily  married to him, the other consumed by her Catholic guilt for loving him.
Political freedom, economic prosperity, technological advancements and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:07:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Anything-But-Love]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Richard-III]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Richard III]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is the evening before the government&rsquo;s draconian budget is about to be revealed and itis snowing heavily outside. The opening lines of Shakespeare&rsquo;s Richard III have never seemed so resonant: &ldquo;Now is the winter of our discontent&rdquo; indeed. However, Fast + Loose Theatre Company&rsquo;s production at the Chapel Royal does not set out to make Shakespeare&rsquo;s thrilling tragedy of a king corrupted from the inside out prescient; in fact, it is unclear whether the productionhas anything much to say at all.
In the opening moment of this flaccid production the cast gather in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 07 Dec 2010 21:15:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Richard-III]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Carmo!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Great Carmo!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Harry Cameron - aka The Great Carmo - was a highly regarded man of the theatre and the circus. The legendary Bertram Mills turned to him for advice and teamed up with him for a season prior to setting up what would become arguably the world&rsquo;s most famous tenting circus. Cameron had an eye for the spectacular and was one of the first to combine the appeal of magic and theatre with circus and animals. 

He forged a rather unexpected link with Ireland through rehearsing most of his shows in Bangor, County Down, helped by the Barry family, the owners of Portstewart&rsquo;s famous amusements,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:55:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Carmo!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Bed-Among-the-Lentils]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bed Among the Lentils]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Susan introduces herself to us, in homely cardigan and handbag, as the hapless wife of Geoffrey, a vicar on the outskirts of Leeds. She switches on a table lamp (in Peter Reid&rsquo;s simple sitting room design) and begins to sip enthusiastically from her sherry glass while sharing her story of a bleached life in the parochial vicarage. Sheexhibits plenty of self deprecation and awareness, damning perception and laser wit, all features she shares with Alan Bennett&rsquo;s clinically brilliant script.
Talking Heads were written in the late 1980s for BBC television: telling stories, the interior...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:47:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Bed-Among-the-Lentils]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faustus]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faustus]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[We live in an era of soul selling. Whether in return for a taste of dubious celebrity, bulging property portfolios, ludicrously lavish lifestyles or vast sums of cash, an astonishing number of individuals are queuing up to enter into perilous faustian pacts, destined to change their lives beyond recognition.
What could be viewed as the ultimate cautionary tale of a man, who sold his soul to the devil in return for endless pleasure and absolute knowledge, was written over five centuries ago. Its creator was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, who rose to become a scholar and a gentleman. But the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:38:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faustus]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Grooming-Veronica]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Grooming Veronica]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The plot of Grooming Veronica is pretty convoluted, but here is an attempt to summarise it.The Taoiseach of Ireland (not Brian Cowen but an entirely fictional one!) has had a stroke and sits paralysed in a chair tended by a nurse who revels in not doing her duty and being as negligent as she is cheeky towards the family of the vegetated leader. The said incapacitated political chief is uniformly hated by his two daughters, Veronica and Fran, and his wife Hilary. Furthermore, Fran (who is also a heroin addict) claims both she and Veronica were sexually abused from age four to 14 by their father...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:31:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Grooming-Veronica]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Gulliver-s-Travels]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Gulliver's Travels]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bravo Alice Coghlan and Wonderland for taking on Jonathan Swift! Gulliver&rsquo;s Travels holds, as &lsquo;twere, a highly distorted, yet revealing, mirror up to human nature, as the hero confronts his image in miniature, in magnification, in bestiality and noble rationality. Coghlan joins a growing band of writers who seek to render a prose work (pitched at the eye and imagination of the individual reader) for the stage.
Swift chose to use the traveller&rsquo;s tale as the vehicle for a complex array of thoughts &ndash; philosophical, political, morbidly human &ndash; and Coghlan tries to encompass...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:23:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Gulliver-s-Travels]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Arrah-na-Pogue]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Arrah-na-Pogue]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Abbey has offered Christmas &lsquo;craic&rsquo; in Dion Boucicault&rsquo;s &ldquo;rollicking good tale of romance and misadventure&rdquo; and by and large director Mikel Murfi&rsquo;s production delivers exactly that. It&rsquo;s relentlessly exuberant, both vocally and in physical movement. Aided by built-in trampolines on the floor, the cast is committed to a form of bounce that allows little or no pause for breath. Murfi allows the tirelessly lively business to dominate much of the lengthy first section (combining Acts I and II); it eventually shows signs of wearing thin.
Regardless of that,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:17:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Arrah-na-Pogue]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Year-of-Magical-Wanking]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Year of Magical Wanking]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t knock masturbation,&rdquo; goes the old Woody Allen line. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sex with someone I love.&rdquo; That doesn&rsquo;t seem to be Neil Watkins&rsquo; credo in The Year of Magical Wanking, or the version of Neil Watkins that he presents to us. A monologue of torment, shame, aggression and sexual isolation &ndash; self-abuse, in every sense &ndash; in outline, this one-man confessional performance could either be an exercise in onanistic self-regard or something that exposes its performer for a deeper purpose; something in which others can participate. There&rsquo;s a fine...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 22:37:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Year-of-Magical-Wanking]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Writers-Week-2010]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Writers' Week 2010]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is often lamented that there are so few women working as playwrights and theatre directors in Ireland. However, the recent Writers' Week at the Cork Arts Theatre delivered a promising amount of female work in both areas with three of the five plays produced written by women and four of the five plays directed by women. Unfortunately, the tendency to write mostly for male characters still exists with four of the five plays featuring a majority of males in the cast; Katie&rsquo;s Wake by Alice Lynch being the only exception.
During Writers' Week, six shortlisted plays selected from the annual...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:10:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Writers-Week-2010]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Celebrity-2]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Celebrity]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[I wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if some newsagents had inquires about Celebrity magazine this week. The striking poster for Jody O&rsquo;Neill&rsquo;s new play is designed like the cover of a leading glossy for women, bursting at the seams with gossip and advice. Online, you can even leaf through the magazine yourself, but it&rsquo;s the live performance that aims to offer a more resistant reading of celebrity culture, and more besides.
Under Carl Kennedy&rsquo;s direction, the production quickly establishes at least one of the objects of its attention. Performer Ralli leaps onto the raised stage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:57:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Celebrity-2]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Head-of-Red-O-Brien]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Head of Red O'Brien]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Red O&rsquo;Brien is in hospital. He is lying in a bed and is dreaming. A projector throws scenes of water, submarines, oranges onto the wall above his head. The significance of these images is eventually revealed in a monologue, and explained in terms of his trauma following an incident of domestic violence. He has been stabbed in the head by his wife, Mary. Following the stabbing, he entered a wonderful world without words: of sounds and sensations all the more vivid for not being literalised by language, and as he tells the audience his story, we must therefore assume his version of events is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:50:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Head-of-Red-O-Brien]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Leon-and-the-Place-Between]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Leon and the Place Between]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Family Hoffman emerged one by one &ndash; magically &ndash; from a small barrel organ perched in the middle of the stage. The purple smoke and the smell of damp earth created the perfect atmosphere for Cahoots NI's riotous adaptation of Leon and the Place Between. Part theatre, mostly circus, all spectacle, the show battled with the splashing rain in a circus tent in Belfast's Botanic Gardens.
The performance is based on the children's story book of the same name (by Angela McAllister, illustrated by Grahame Baker-Smith) which I had been lucky enough to discover by chance &ndash; or by magic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:14:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Leon-and-the-Place-Between]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Field]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Field]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Irish attitudes towards John B. Keane have changed a lot during the last ten years &ndash; due largely to Garry Hynes&rsquo; production of four of his plays during that period. Keane has always been popular, but he was also seen by many as populist: as someone who chose sentimentality over pathos, the grotesque over the tragic, and cheap laughs over careful characterisation. Hynes&rsquo; productions gave us a darker and more dignified Keane: his plays might be flawed, she showed &ndash; but they certainly shouldn&rsquo;t be dismissed. Nine years after his death, Keane is still seen as a popular...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:48:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Field]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shattering-Glass]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Shattering Glass]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When William Golding wrote in his 1965 essay Fable of &ldquo;the history that is dead and will not lie down&rdquo;, he could have been prefiguring the legacy of the &lsquo;Troubles&rsquo; that is explored in Shattering Glass, a trilogy of short pieces performed by Smashing Times. Watching the plays in Co. Donegal is to be surrounded by the place-names &ndash; Omagh, Strabane, Castlederg, Letterkenny &ndash; that resonate as part of a ghostly past locked inside the heads of the protagonists.
In Daniel, by Mary Moynihan, the mother who loses her son in an explosion relives in a first-person present-tense...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:41:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shattering-Glass]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/As-you-are-now-so-once-were-we]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[As You Are Now So Once Were We]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Like its Joycean inspiration, As You Are Now So Once Were We attempts to find the epic in the everyday. In this devised piece, which was first staged at last year&rsquo;s Dublin Fringe Festival, four performers relay the same day in Dublin from different perspectives. While each speaks in turn (Yergainharsian, Bennett, Wilson and McDermott), they repeatedly interrupt and correct each other, vying for attention or control of the narrative thrust. Moreover, the performers make and unmake the cityscape as they move, through the slick manipulation of cardboard boxes.

Like The Company&rsquo;s first...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:27:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/As-you-are-now-so-once-were-we]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cambria]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Cambria]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Cambria is another of Donal O&rsquo;Kelly&rsquo;s singularly imaginative plays which takes place on the high seas. His award-winning Catalpa (1995) retold the story of the 1875 voyage from New Bedford to Freemantle to rescue Fenians, and recently The Adventures of a Wet Señor took as its central incident the shipwreck of a Spanish Armada vessel and the fate of the survivor who washes ashore in Ireland in 1588. The Cambria is not a new play. It has had successful runs in New York and an Irish tour since it first appeared in 2005; but apart from a single night at Liberty Hall this is its first...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:44:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cambria]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Batsh-t]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Batsh*t]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Numerous red t-shirts hang on the sidewalls of the Project Cube theatre, with the word &lsquo;Him&rsquo; printed across the front. Performers slump on chairs underneath. A young man (Lehane) scales a ladder on the back wall, his face covered with a wolf mask, and one of the t-shirts that surround. Intervening the opening sequence, a female voice-over poetically relays the central character&rsquo;s fruitless search for meaning: orbiting the universe, he discovered that the stars were mere pins in a black cloth, the Earth an upturned pot.
Stepping forward, his girlfriend (Minto) describes how he...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:20:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Batsh-t]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mary-Motorhead]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mary Motorhead]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mary &lsquo;Motorhead&rsquo; is in prison. She lies on her bed reading, while scenes of the outdoor world as seen from the window of a car are projected onto the wall behind her. She is doing six years for stabbing her husband, Red, in the head with a knife. History is invention, she tells us, a story made up based on sometimes scant knowledge of the available facts. Each of us has a known history and a secret one. The secret history, she explains, is what really happened &ndash; what was going on inside &ndash; something that regular history, or reportage, or maybe representation, can never really...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:37:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mary-Motorhead]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/God-of-Carnage]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[God of Carnage]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[An early joke about the difference between Palmerstown Park and Bushy Park lets us know that Yazmina Reza&rsquo;s 2006 play, originally written in French, has been adapted to Dublin. Orwell Road is where Michael (Roe) and Veronica Fallon (Dent) purchase their tulips, and the living room in which the action is set has two blooming vases to show for it.
The couple are joined by Alan (O&rsquo;Hanlon) and Annette (Tierney) Reilly to discuss a playground incident between their two eleven-year-old sons. The Reilly&rsquo;s boy Ferdia lashed out at the Fallon&rsquo;s son Bruno with a stick, smashing his...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 08 Feb 2011 23:18:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/God-of-Carnage]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lady-Windermere-s-Fan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Lady Windermere's Fan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In its profile, The Everyman Theatre Company states that it was founded in 1963 &ldquo;to bring the best of world theatre to Cork audiences&rdquo;. It is a pity, then, that the company feels it has to look back as far as 1892 for the best of world theatre, as there is a lot of both young and old talent within the company whose talents would be better displayed through more modern and challenging writing.
Lady Windermere&rsquo;s Fan is a satire on the morals of Victorian society and marriage. Having been alerted to the sensationalist gossip surrounding the daily visits of her husband Lord Windermere...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 Jan 2011 21:48:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lady-Windermere-s-Fan]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shoot-the-Crow]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Shoot the Crow]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is a delight to welcome Shoot the Crow to Belfast in its first production in McCafferty&rsquo;s home town fourteen years after its first production by Druid and with plaudits from an extended West End run, including a nomination for an Olivier Award. While such success demonstrates that the play is far from parochial in its scope and interest, it is nonetheless rooted in the demotic speech of Belfast, re-shaped, heightened and made serviceable as a discourse through which the degrading grind of repetitive work is both resisted and expressed.
Four men spend a day tiling two adjacent rooms in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 11 Feb 2011 22:40:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shoot-the-Crow]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Connected]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Connected]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Project&rsquo;s Space Upstairs was full of the buzz one normally finds at festival time. This makes sense, as Connected, written and performed by Karl Quinn and Will Irvine, started life as a &lsquo;Show in a Bag&rsquo;, via Fishamble and the Absolut Fringe Festival 2010. Said buzz was created by the very demographic that, if you go to even one theatre seminar/festival talkback/prestigious theatre magazine forum, is often mentioned as the audience that theatre companies/festivals/artistic directors want to entice through their doors: the Youngs. This crowd, aged 20 to 30, are found to be elusive...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:15:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Connected]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-Am-My-Own-Wife]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[I Am My Own Wife]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Having survived both the Nazi and Stasi regimes while living her life openly as a transvestite, it is no wonder that one character refers to Lothar Berfelde aka Charlotte von Mahlsdorf as &quot;the most singular, eccentric individual the Cold War ever birthed.&quot; Her home in East Berlin acted as a safe haven for relics of a bygone era (which she opened to the public as a museum), as well as to the underground gay scene who flocked to a perfectly preserved gay bar in her basement during the 1960s. Piquing the interest of playwright Doug Wright, who summed her story up as &quot;a slam dunk (grant)...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:51:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-Am-My-Own-Wife]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/THEATRE-MACHINE-turns-you-on--vol--II]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Theatre Machine Turns You On: Vol. II (1)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This is the first of two reviews by Jesse Weaver of theTheatre Machine Turns You On: Vol II festival of new work; read the second review here.
While a range of themes permeates THEATREclub&rsquo;s second five-night festival of new work, none manifests itself more potently than that of disconnection, within the spheres of both the public and the personal. This theme finds particular resonance when considering that the bulk of the theatre artists who contributed to the festival are members of a generation that is increasingly described as &lsquo;lost&rsquo;: lost to emigration, lost to the disillusionment...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:21:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/THEATRE-MACHINE-turns-you-on--vol--II]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/According-to-Sydney]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[According to Sydney]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The studio at the Mill is an unprepossessing cuboid; the set for According to Sydney uninspiring (a garden bench and some scraps of ferns to denote a park) so there is little to prepare the lunchtime audience for the animation that Rose Henderson brings to the space.
The energy derives from a number of things: Gerry Lynch has written an intelligent and, for suburbanites everywhere, a piece that trades in the familiar. Lynch cut his playwright teeth on radio, so while the action is static, the writing sparkles with sharp observation &ndash; &ldquo;Domestic dialogue was not an option&rdquo;, a glorious...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:33:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/According-to-Sydney]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pasqual-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pasquale]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Opera Theatre Company enters its 25th year with a topical production of a modernised Don Pasqual&euro;, Donizetti&rsquo;s swan-song on the opera buffa from 1843, a genre soon after replaced by the operetta in the styles of Offenbach, Johann Strauss or Gilbert &amp; Sullivan. The earliest masterpiece of opera buffa, Pergolesi&rsquo;s La serva padrona from 1733, presents us with a rich old man falling in love with and subsequently under the thumb of a poor, young, beautiful girl; more than a century later this is also Donizetti&rsquo;s basic plot.
Many opera buffa roles are stock characters derived...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:39:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pasqual-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lost-Prince]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Lost Prince]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Lost Prince beautifully and touchingly interweaves the narratives of storytelling, fairytales and acts of reading in a drama that mixes animation and multimedia with good old-fashioned on-the-knuckle acting to ultimately distil a gentle lesson about the importance of not forgetting to love what is in front of our eyes and under our nose.
Two stories run concomitantly. On the one hand, we are treated to a tale about a young prince, Johann, (Shane Byrne) who announces to his father that he is &ldquo;&hellip;tired of this little place&rdquo; and &ldquo;..wants to go out and see the world.&rdquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:45:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lost-Prince]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On--Vol-II-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Theatre Machine Turns You On: Vol II (2)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This is the second of two reviews by Jesse Weaver of theTheatre Machine Turns You On: Vol II festival of new work; read the first review here.
Scanning the programme for THEATREclub&rsquo;s festival of new work, the range of work presented in terms of styles, genres, and subjects suggests a sort of bustling democracy of performance. From dance to devised work to documentary theatre on the busking life, the curators seemed to have left no stone unturned in building their lineup. And what&rsquo;s most impressive is that these are all young practitioners who may not have had a venue or a platform...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Feb 2011 21:21:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On--Vol-II-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Glass-Menagerie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Glass Menagerie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Poverty is a well-documented progenitor of fear, desperate dealings, and oppression. The emphasis on this aspect of The Glass Menagerie is one the most apt features of TheatreCorp&rsquo;s competent production of Tennessee Williams&rsquo; drama of an impoverished family suffering in the &ldquo;dissolving economy&rdquo; of 1937 America. It is as if director Max Hafler, by focussing on poverty, develops a formidable character that inveigles itself into every facet of the play, almost out-doing the infamously fraught and overbearing mother who otherwise dominates.
Williams&rsquo; play is framed with...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:23:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Glass-Menagerie]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brian-Cowen-(Micheal-Martin)-and-the-7-Deadly-Sinn]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Brian Cowen (Micheál Martin) and the 7 Deadly Sinners]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The story, as the title suggests, is a familiar one at this stage. Clocking in at around 50 minutes, Brian Cowen (Micheál Martin) and the 7 Deadly Sinners once again rakes over the tale of how those who have now gone off to graze on fat pensions ruined the country with a mixture of arrogance and ignorance and seeming indifference to the plight of the majority of the citizens of this country.
Under the assured and measured direction of Anthony Fox, the ensemble cast are first presented as classic criminals in a line-up identity parade with narrated similarities made between these politicians and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:51:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brian-Cowen-(Micheal-Martin)-and-the-7-Deadly-Sinn]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mimic]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mimic]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Julian Neary joins a long line of Irish men at odds with their families, especially their fathers, and their nation. Like James Joyce&rsquo;s Stephen Dedalus, Brian Friel&rsquo;s Gar O&rsquo;Donnell, and even Pat McCabe&rsquo;s Francie Brady, Scannell&rsquo;s Neary struggles to internalise and replicate the oppressive culture his adoptive parents promote. Born in the 1980s, and raised by a conservative rural family stuck in the 1950s, Julian feels completely out of time and place.

As a young child, the pressure to mimic family norms and interests is dodged by a compulsion to repeat music by...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:28:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mimic]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sit]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sit]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Are young(ish) men the new women in corporate culture? Gavin Kostick&rsquo;s one act, The Sit seems to think so, making entertaining use of a societal paradigm shift. However, when you&rsquo;re flipping an idea on its head, and shifting the assignment of roles, there are inevitably things that don&rsquo;t get teased out fully, in the main due to the constraints of the form. Nevertheless, the style, focus and wit of this play is incredibly impressive, given its short format.

Paul (Cronin) has made a huge mistake: he&rsquo;s given the wrong Starbucks to the CEO of the embattled company for whom...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:36:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sit]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Citizen]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Citizen]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Tomorrow is upon us. The current recession is a thing of the past. President Bono is the head of state. World food riots have resulted in the introduction of draconian new policies to control rationing and immigration. If we think today&rsquo;s economic and political situation is lamentable, Vincent Higgins&rsquo; astute, insightful new play strongly suggests that things could get worse, much worse.
This satirical 50-minute piece for teenagers is directed with pace and a penchant for the subversive by Replay&rsquo;s new artistic director Anna Newell. It paints the picture of a dystopian future,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 02 Mar 2011 21:22:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Citizen]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hamlet-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hamlet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The numerous second level students attending Second Age&rsquo;s production of Hamlet collectively laugh at the apparition of the dead King (David Heap). Side-lit from behind a frosty screen, his hand beckoning in appeal, the recently deceased monarch's sudden appearance is a cause for comedy among the target audience. Other approaches similarly provoke giggles, in particular the Ghost&rsquo;s electronically reverberating voice and Gertrude&rsquo;s (Jane Brennan) shrieks of horror. This evening at least, deaths are a constant source of amusement, especially those of Claudius (Frank McCusker) and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:42:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hamlet-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/No-Romance]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[No Romance]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s fairly obvious there&rsquo;s been somewhat of a sea change in Irish social mores when a line about Ryanair losing business if abortion becomes legalized in Ireland induces riotous laughter in an audience. Nancy Harris&rsquo;s smart and endearing No Romance runs roughshod over what were once delicate taboos, putting front and centre issues of sexuality and desire in an Ireland that has, needless to say, changed utterly in the past few decades. That issues of gay marriage or the intertwining of sexuality and illness barely register an uncomfortable shifting of seats in the Peacock audience,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 05 Mar 2011 22:30:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/No-Romance]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beauty-Queen-of-Leenane-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Beauty Queen of Leenane]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Martin McDonagh may have moved on to movies but his award-winning Leenane trilogy has inscribed itself into the essential canon of Irish theatre. As such, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the first and arguably the most popular of McDonagh&rsquo;s triumphant triumvirate, is destined to be performed, with varying success, over and over by theatre groups of disparate backgrounds and standing.
McDonagh&rsquo;s greatest achievement in the writing of Beauty Queen is the equality he achieves between the outlandish humour of the surreal, ironic and knowing stage-Irishness portrayed and the real darkness...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:32:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beauty-Queen-of-Leenane-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Passing]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Passing]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Days before her family home is due to be sold, Catherine (Walsh) returns to her Dublin roots. Although some time has passed since her last visit, she immediately spots a new picture on the dining-room wall, and quizzically readjusts a vase. The security alarm shrieks at her entry, alerting neighbour Stephen (Connolly) to her unexpected arrival. Brandishing a bottle of courage through the clamour and confusion, the prodigal daughter seems relieved to be back.
Shafts of light shoot across Anthony Lamble&rsquo;s realistic street backdrop, as dawn cracks over the suburban neighbourhood. Before the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:56:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Passing]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Othello]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Othello]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For some unaccountable reason, Othello has never quite established a place in the pantheon of great Shakespearean tragedies. On the surface, its content would seem to tick all the boxes: a flawed hero, a smiling villain, a doomed love story, deceit, treachery, intrigue, ambition and copious amounts of blood-letting. But its lovers are neither star-crossed nor thwarted by the gods, their happiness is cut short neither by witches nor ghosts nor airy spirits. On the contrary, their tragedy is wrought entirely by the mundane frailties of human nature.
Could it be then that the plot is too earthbound,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:25:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Othello]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Silent---Forgotten]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Silent & Forgotten]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The miscellanies of old age and poor mental health are not the easiest or most attractive subjects to entice audiences. Fishamble, a theatre company known for its uptake of novel and challenging work, takes these two subjects in two separate plays, back to back over two nights, and in two eighty minute one man performances, Pat Kinevane delivers a choreographed journey into the frailty of body and mind. The performances are quite haunting and delivered by Kinevane in a fusion of dance and monologue that blend into a kind of theatrical extravaganza, engendering superb audience appreciation. Kinevane,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 Feb 2011 20:40:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Silent---Forgotten]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-East-Pier-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The East Pier]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Endometriosis rarely presents itself in Irish theatre. In Paul Mercier&rsquo;s The East Pier, it lies at the heart of a misunderstanding that has kept Jean (Irvine) and Kevin (Wycherley) apart since school. Having spotted each other earlier in the day, the pair meet in the foyer of a hotel that overlooks the pier where Kevin once coerced Jean into a sexual encounter as teenagers. Racked by guilt for years, he eventually manages to apologise, only to have his one-time girlfriend admit that she wanted to have sex with him too, but was afraid because of her condition. Endometrial metaplasia, Jean...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:20:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-East-Pier-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/DNA]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[DNA]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Emerging from under the wing of Graffiti Theatre Company 15 years ago, there is an impressive degree of professionalism about Activate Youth Theatre not least in their latest production of Dennis Kelly&rsquo;s ever-topical play. The young cast of Activate Youth Theatre certainly have an honesty, commitment and keen work ethic that augurs well for their future in theatre. Here they are marshalled well through what are sometimes elliptical scenes.
The play which emerged from the Shell Connections project has become a successful piece around the world for youth theatres staging Dennis Kelly&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:42:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/DNA]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Not-a-Game-for-Boys]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Not a Game for Boys]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Table tennis, ping-pong... call it what you will, one thing is certain: it would appear, on the surface, to be the most unpromising subject matter for a play. But Simon Block&rsquo;s Not a Game for Boys, which was premiered at London&rsquo;s Royal Court Theatre in 1995, has since been performed all over the world, which implies that there is more to it than earnest debates about volleys and serves and drop shots. In fact, it&rsquo;s a smart piece of writing, whose content, language, humour and attitudes are very much of its time, slotting it effortlessly into the genre of laddish, &lsquo;in-yer-face&rsquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:49:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Not-a-Game-for-Boys]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/47-Roses]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[47 Roses]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[47 Roses, a one-man show devised from Peter Sheridan&rsquo;s memoir of the same title and performed by the author, draws on Sheridan family inner-city Dublin life recognizable from the work of both Jim and Peter Sheridan in various media. This is the tale of a triangular stalemate forged by Sheridan&rsquo;s parents, Peter and Anna, and Doris, a Lancashire woman who was a regular visitor to their home. Sheridan gives us both a familiar plot and a true story &ndash; an adult child uncovering a damaging secret in the life of a recently dead parent. The genre necessitates imaginative speculation to...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:43:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/47-Roses]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/My-Best-Friend]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[My Best Friend]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[My Best Friend opens up with a dialogue about time - in particular, the conundrums around whether or not you gain anything in terms of sleep by putting the clock forward for the summer. It&rsquo;s a conversation most of us have had in one form or another. The two characters here, Bee and Em, end up very confused as a result. This initial tête-à-tête not only serves to forge common ground with the audience it also signals that time plays a major role in this dark, verging-on-the-psychotic comedy centred around the tensions and old wounds that emerge when three former school-friends get together...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 26 Mar 2011 22:30:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/My-Best-Friend]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Time-to-Speak]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Time to Speak]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[She was a dancer to the very core of her being. It was the thing by which she defined herself. And why would it be otherwise? For it was dance that saved her from the gas chambers, rescued her from scheduled deportation on the dreaded lorry, which arrived into Auschwitz-Birkenau every week to collect its human cargo for extermination.
Over the years, Helen Lewis&rsquo;s remarkable holocaust memoir A Time to Speak has been translated into many languages and published in many countries around the world. Now, her account of &ldquo;surviving the unsurvivable&rdquo; has been adapted for the stage by...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:39:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Time-to-Speak]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Honest]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Honest]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Matchbox Theatre, an excellent new venue in the heart of Dublin inside the Cafe des Irlandais, proved to be the ideal setting for DC Moore&rsquo;s Edinburgh Fringe hit from 2010, Honest. Matchbox give a free beer with your ticket and since a good deal of Honest is taken up with a night-in-the-life of everyman type Dave as he drinks himself to a nightmarish denouement, it was the ideal place to stage this monologue about an individual living a normal life but, in the words of Thoreau, one of quiet desperation.
As DC Moore is an English playwright, a good job is done of converting the script...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:58:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Honest]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cat-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Cat on a Hot Tin Roof]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A Southern US family gathers to celebrate the birthday of its patriarch, who is seriously ill but from whom the truth has been hidden. Though his elder son is keen to inherit his sprawling estate, it is his younger, less successful son for whom he holds true affection. As the story begins, this son is in alcoholic decline following the death of a close male friend, and his frustrated wife, who has been instrumental in forcing him to face difficult truths about himself that he continues to deny via the bottle, is trying once again to engage with him. She&rsquo;s the titular cat on a hot tin roof,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 05 Apr 2011 21:50:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cat-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Song-from-the-Sea]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Song from the Sea]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Barnstorm is celebrating its twentieth year with its fifth production of work by Mike Kenny, a writer who brings positive vision, fresh inventiveness and provocative reflection to the stage for very young people.
In The Song from the Sea, Josh is the child who hears the things that the adults miss. Granddad is glued to the telly and, anyway, his ears are &ldquo;too old and too tired.&rdquo; Mum is preoccupied &ndash; the whine of the Hoover is all that she can hear. His sister, Elsie, has her headphones on and is in a world of her own. The underlying observation is that when you&rsquo;re four...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:40:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Song-from-the-Sea]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tosca-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tosca]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As her show-stopping aria &lsquo;Vissi d&rsquo;arte&rsquo; (&lsquo;I lived on art&rsquo;) in Act 2 tells us, Tosca&rsquo;s is a story of art being suddenly caught up in war. In an ITM feature the week before the run, director Oliver Mears was quoted as saying that Derry&rsquo;s conflicted past, as expressed by the historical aura of some of its iconic buildings, made it the perfect place to stage an opera about the turbulence of Napoleonic Europe. Events proved him right, but not for the right reasons: a bomb-scare near the courthouse on Friday morning meant that the first act of the performance...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:23:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tosca-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rum-and-Vodka]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Rum and Vodka]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Conor McPherson&rsquo;s Rum and Vodka was first staged in 1992 when he was still a student at UCD, and in many ways it marks the beginning of a wave of Irish theatre to explore troubled men using the monologue form. Moreover, well before binge-drinking became a national concern, and we posted our hangovers on Facebook, McPherson&rsquo;s drama took a studied look at our dysfunctional relationship to alcohol.
Played by Kieron Smith, the twenty-four year old protagonist from Raheny is initially propped up at the back of the theatre, before swaggering to the stage to relay his tale. He is ostensibly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:42:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rum-and-Vodka]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sunday-Morning-Coming-Down]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sunday Morning Coming Down]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s been a while since there has been such palpable excitement about a new play in Galway. Mick Donnellan worked with Druid to present Sunday Morning Coming Down as a public reading in 2009. Word of mouth regarding its production in Galway&rsquo;s Town Hall Studio &ndash; Donnellan&rsquo;s directorial debut &ndash; spread rapidly, leading to sell-out performances every night. The buzz is well-merited. Donnellan eschews pandering to the pretensions of some contemporary audiences: there are no postmodern bells and whistles here. Instead, he wows us with a refreshing blast of riveting realism.
Sunday...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:08:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sunday-Morning-Coming-Down]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cure]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Cure]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Conal Creedon has extricated The Cure from his highly successful Cork trilogy of short plays premiered in 2005 during the European City of Culture year. Under his own direction this time, the one man show is standing on its two feet and shows no signs of jetlag after its arrival back in Cork from the Shanghair Jue Festival in China. It&rsquo;s amazing to think of this play moving audiences in Shanghai, given that it is so deeply and colloquially Cork to the dirt under its fingernails - but it returned garlanded in very favourable reviews from that festival.
Perhaps it is the simplicity of the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:28:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cure]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-am-a-Home-Bird-(It-s-Very-Hard)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[I am a Home Bird (It’s very hard)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In a recent Irish Times opinion piece, Fintan O&rsquo;Toole argued, in part, that the generations growing up during the Celtic Tiger era are unique in the State&rsquo;s history, as no other generation before them has had the hope of sustained success dashed so utterly. This is also true of their experience of forced emigration. They were made to believe, with the heady days of the 1990s and early 2000s, that the Irish had at last escaped a cycle of self-imposed exile prompted by a baseline of economic hardship. Ireland had nowhere to go but up and, while previous generations had any kind of optimism...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:03:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-am-a-Home-Bird-(It-s-Very-Hard)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Merchant-of-Venice]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Merchant of Venice]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This is a stimulating, provocative and deeply-flawed production trying to find a style of its own and to accommodate William Shakespeare to our times. Lianne O&rsquo;Shea&rsquo;s world is more board-walk Dublin than Venice &ndash; restless, edgy, intimidating and capable of erupting into deep antagonisms and violence. The characters speak almost as if they were texting, incorporating the intonations and gestures of the Noughties: Ross O&rsquo;Carroll Kelly&rsquo;s in there somewhere, as is that flappy little wave (&lsquo;Hi! I&rsquo;m here!&rsquo;) and that oozing sigh of sympathy that&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:44:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Merchant-of-Venice]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Silence-and-Darkness---Rockaby--Catastrophe--A-Pi]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA['Silence and Darkness': Beckett x 4]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mouth on Fire was established last year with the intention of staging the shorter plays of Samuel Beckett. Directed by Cathal Quinn, 'Silence and Darkness&rsquo; is a programme of four pieces rarely performed in Ireland.
In Rockaby (1980) an old woman (Nolan) swings back and forth on a rocking chair, her body rhythmically emerging into light and receding into darkness. Her pre-recorded voice carries the narrative, which is comprised of events recalled from her own life, as well as that of her mother&rsquo;s. The play is structured into four sections, and Nolan speaks live only to punctuate her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:03:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Silence-and-Darkness---Rockaby--Catastrophe--A-Pi]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Exodus]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Exodus]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Exodus is fairly representative of a strand of practice within Northern Irish theatre where the default aesthetic is a kind of dreary naturalism. Jonathan Burgess&rsquo;s new play concerns the events surrounding the displacement of Protestant families in the late 1960s and early 1970s from the west bank of the River Foyle in Derry (now a largely Catholic area on the City side) to the relative safety of New Buildings and other areas on the predominantly Protestant Waterside area of the city. Burgess is right when he says in a programme note that &ldquo;With the award of UK City of Culture [to...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:50:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Exodus]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Ugly-One]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Ugly One]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A rising star in German Theatre, Marius von Mayenburg gives us the &ldquo;unspeakably ugly&rdquo; Mr. Lette, inventor of a plug known as the 2CK Convertor. Lette (O hAoláin) is astonished to find out that he will not be presenting the appliance at an upcoming convention: his assistant Karlmann (Tierney) has been chosen instead. When he confronts his boss, Scheffler (O&rsquo;Meara), Lette finds out that he&rsquo;ll never be able to sell the plug because his face is &ldquo;unacceptable&rdquo;. Having lived most of his life blissfully ignorant of his unfortunate condition, Lette&rsquo;s wife Fanny...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Apr 2011 22:50:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Ugly-One]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pygmalion]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pygmalion]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Shaw&rsquo;s theatre may have preceded television shows like 'Britain&rsquo;s Got Talent' and 'The X Factor', yet in Pygmalion (1912) the playwright anticipates the pleasures and dangers of harnessing the dreams of a working class girl and attempting to turn her into a star. Modest by today&rsquo;s ambitions, Eliza Doolittle&rsquo;s (Murphy) wish is to be a lady with a flower shop, and so Professor of Phonetics Henry Higgins (Cooper) and linguist Colonel Pickering (Dunning) admit her to their version of boot camp, where she is scrubbed, clothed, and subjected to intensive lessons in diction. For...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 May 2011 21:45:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pygmalion]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Crucible]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Crucible]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The very spareness of Sabine Dargent&rsquo;s set for The Crucible strikes the eye with the force of a Rembrandt painting. Dark wood-panelled walls enclose on three sides a simple bed stage left and a chair and table stage right, set on a floor of stained boards. Overhead hangs a truss of heavy wooden beams in the same ruddy hue. This strong visual impact resonates throughout the production in the adroit use of chiaroscuro in Ben Ormerod&rsquo;s lighting: in moments where action is frozen momentarily as a form of gestus; and in the beautiful transitions within the mise-en-scène. Panels open to reveal...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2011 21:52:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Crucible]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fight-Night]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Fight Night]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Fight Night is a straightforward piece of storytelling exploring the mind/body dynamic of an Irish male boxer who fights inside and outside the ring for much the same reasons. This is a classic narrative/psychological archetype that dates, if not quite to antiquity, to far enough back in the popular consciousness to fulfill Rise Production's stated aims to reinvestigate quintessentially Irish stories with universal potential.
Near the climax, Daniel Coyle III, known as 'Dan Junior' (performed by Aonghus Óg McAnally) reflects on the drama that defines his life in the shadow of his boxer father,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 May 2011 09:52:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fight-Night]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/One]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[One]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Michael Scott&rsquo;s latest work makes for one lovesick evening of poesy. The first of a trilogy of plays, One introduces us to the deadbeat, despondent victim of lost love (Byrnes), who exhibits all the symptoms of inconsolable heartbreak, from his vacant stare to his un-ironed shirt.
Scott&rsquo;s exploratory study of the complex subject of love opens with a delicate and child-like performance of &lsquo;Simon Says&rsquo; between Byrnes and an anonymous voice-over, a game often used as an alternative means of expression during bereavement counselling, the play&rsquo;s programme explains. Before...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 May 2011 13:55:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/One]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Walking-Man]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Walking Man]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Jody O&rsquo;Neill transforms a universal story into a morality tale for children in this captivating piece of theatre, which is told through the use of wooden puppets and live music. The play&rsquo;s hero is Walking Man, destined from childhood to follow in the footsteps of his father, and to work at the best job at the top floor of the tallest building in the whole city. Walking Man&rsquo;s father had no time to stop in his pursuit of success; nor does Walking Man, the woman he marries, or the baby they produce. Everyone must keep going, in case they fall behind. &ldquo;I have to keep moving,&rdquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 May 2011 22:01:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Walking-Man]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pineapple]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pineapple]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set in contemporary Ballymun, Phillip McMahon&rsquo;s new play presents a range of themes from the joys and disappointments of first sex to the break-up and disintegration of communities. Most of the action takes place in a flat and in what seems to be a playground area nearby. Focusing on single mother Paula (Caoilfhionn Dunne) and her relationship with her sister Roxanna (Jill Murphy), her friend Antoinette (Janet Moran), and Dan (Nick Lee) &ndash; a strange man promising to make her happy &ndash; the production offers an insight into the complexities and contradictions of standing by your family...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 May 2011 22:23:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pineapple]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Iron]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Iron]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A moment of madness costs a mother her daughter, and a grown woman her childhood memories. Meeting sixteen years later in a prison visiting room, one tries to fill in what's missing in the other, trading real life experiences for lost recollections as they re-establish a relationship where physical contact is forbidden.
Fay (Eileen Pollock) is serving life for the murder of her husband, the father of her child; Josie (Liz FitzGibbon) can't remember anything before the age of 12. Over the course of a year, they try to reconnect through weekly visits. For the former, it's a chance to live vicariously,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 15 May 2011 22:41:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Iron]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Re-presenting-Ireland--Mixed-Bills]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Re-Presenting Ireland: Mixed Bills]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[From Emma Martin&rsquo;s opening salvo to Liv O Donoghue&rsquo;s gentle, textured duet at the close, there was a note of confidence emanating from the two programmes in Re-Presenting Ireland, part of Dublin Dance Festival (DDF). These internationally curated programmes have become a regular feature of the festival: co-hosted by Dance Ireland, Culture Ireland and DDF, they are designed to showcase the diverse range of dance making in Ireland, and they subtly blended into the overall festival programming this year.
There were two Mixed Bills with three works apiece: solos, duets and ensemble works,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 20 May 2011 12:04:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Re-presenting-Ireland--Mixed-Bills]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bang-Shoot-Blast]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bang Shoot Blast]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Are movies heaping unrealistic expectations on real life romances? That is the question asked by Karl Watson's Bang Shoot Blast, which ran recently at the Back Loft. Interweaving scenes from classic movie romances with the first great dalliances of his young characters, it used choral work, party games and musical interludes to break down the fourth wall and encouraged the house to ruminate on their own early experiences via a series of plot forwarding audience participation numbers. It was silly, funny and a tad histrionic, but it was also warm, engaging and inquisitive of that loving feeling.
Issues...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 May 2011 22:27:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bang-Shoot-Blast]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Perve]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Perve]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stacey Gregg&rsquo;s Perve, currently being staged at the Peacock Theatre as part of the Abbey&rsquo;s 2011 new writing strand is an uneasy blend of Brechtian dramaturgy and soap-opera style. While the play seems to be striving towards the non-naturalistic strains of Epic theatre &ndash; several of the characters are referred to by their place in the hierarchy of Gregg&rsquo;s world: Taylor&rsquo;s Mum, for example, and a figure known only as Authority &ndash; there are also scenes that could have been lifted straight from &lsquo;Fair City&rsquo;. Róisín McBrinn&rsquo;s production doesn&rsquo;t...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:33:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Perve]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brendan-at-the-Chelsea]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Brendan at the Chelsea]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brendan at the Chelsea is the opening production at the Naughton Studio, the second performance space at the newly refurbished Lyric Theatre. The space is intended to host productions of new writing, intimate classics, and work in development, so it is perhaps fitting that its first show should be a recent (2008) piece of writing about Brendan Behan, so influential a figure in Irish literature and theatre. The work draws upon the wit and character of Behan&rsquo;s writing to imagine his time at the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York in the early 1960s, working on his commissioned travelogue, Brendan...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 May 2011 17:23:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brendan-at-the-Chelsea]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Here-We-Are-Again-Still]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Here We Are Again Still]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is something iconic about a bench sitting centre-stage. One of theatre&rsquo;s fail-safe emblems, it is a useful multi-purpose tool for an instant mise-en-scène: waiting, meeting, resting, watching; all are signified by this small, ubiquitous structure. Thus, as the lights go up on Christian O&rsquo;Reilly&rsquo;s gently humorous peek into urban survival inHere We Are Again Still, a bit of the story is already told before it unfolds.
Elderly Paddy (Eamonn Hunt) is a long-term resident of a housing estate overlooking a parkland of football pitches. Fiercely territorial, he defends both the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2011 14:23:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Here-We-Are-Again-Still]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Midsummer Night's Dream?]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Punctuation: what&rsquo;s it good for? It&rsquo;s much a bigger part of our communicating lives then ever before, actually: only consider all those colons and parentheses that are now doing heaving lifting as emoticons. The elegance of a semicolon, the incredulity of an interrobang1, the wistfulness of an ellipse&hellip; the power that these essential marks wield in our perception of a phrase is incontrovertible.
Take, for example, the question mark that raises its brows at the end of the title of Loose Canon&rsquo;s current production. Really? A Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream? That Shakespeare...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:19:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fewer-Emergencies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Fewer Emergencies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Granary Theatre has played its part in Cork in bringing the wonderfully warped world of Martin Crimp to the stage over recent years. And the artistic director of the Granary, Tony McLeane-Fay gives us a thoroughgoing engagement with a tough-minded piece of writing in his staging of what is described as a triptych of plays under the banner, Fewer Emergencies.
Even before we enter the auditorium the title tantalises with its sly challenge. And throughout this fascinating piece there is an intellectual tease and theatrical wickedness. Lesser writers pare down their words to bare bones and fall...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 22:45:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fewer-Emergencies]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dockers]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dockers]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The year is 1981. The economy is in a bad way, jobs are in short supply and in London there is a royal wedding. Sounds familiar, doesn&rsquo;t it? It was also the year in which a scruffy young Belfast writer took his first faltering steps into the world of professional theatre, when his play about the working class community in which he grew up was produced at the Lyric Theatre.

The writer was Martin Lynch. The play was Dockers. That landmark production, directed by Sam McCready, saw Louis Rolston turn in, arguably, one of the most memorable performances in his long career as the drunken but...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:25:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dockers]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Iphigenia-at-Aulis]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Iphigenia at Aulis]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A parched tree, an earthy stage floor and the suggestion of a blue sky are all that signify we are in Mediterranean territory. In Classic Stage Ireland&rsquo;s production of Euripides&rsquo; Iphigenia at Aulis, in a crisp new version by director Andy Hinds, the focus is very much reserved for the clear delivery of text above all else.
The play opens as Agamemnon (Bates) learns that he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia (Moore) to Artemis in order for the winds to sail his army to Troy. He sends his wife Clytemnestra (Thurman) a letter claiming that their daughter is to be married to Achilles...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:48:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Iphigenia-at-Aulis]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Latch]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Latch]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As if in direct response to drama critic Fintan O'Toole's recent assertion that contemporary playwrights are no longer writing the &ldquo;big, important plays&rdquo; that interrogate Irish society, upstart company Hammergrin has set its latest work in that most representative feature of the disintegration of the country's sense of itself: the ghost estate.
Latch, as with Hammergrin's previous work &ndash; Hollander (2009) and K: the Iowa Project (2008) &ndash; interweaves a linear narrative with elements of the surreal, creating a production that is by turns hilarious, surprising, thought-provoking,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:02:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Latch]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Magic-Flute]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Magic Flute ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Magic Flute is in many ways a hybrid of an opera: as a &lsquo;singspiel&rsquo; &ndash; a German comic opera &ndash; meant to entertain the middle and lower classes, it also highlights serious issues of enlightenment and the victory of reason over emotion (based on Masonic symbolism; Mozart himself was a member of a lodge in Vienna). Much ink has also been spilled over the fact that almost an hour into the opera the Queen of the Night &ndash; so far the piece&rsquo;s wronged heroine &ndash; suddenly turns out to be the baddie who would even sacrifice her daughter to serve her selfish goals.
Glasthule...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:16:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Magic-Flute]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Man-of-Valour]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Man of Valour]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ashen-faced Farrell Blinks leaves home, hops on a bus to work, and takes the elevator to his office in Dublin. &ldquo;Hi Farrell,&rdquo; a female colleague coyly greets as he strolls to his desk, desperate to grab his attention. Switching on his computer, his mind immediately starts to wander far away from his humdrum job. In many ways, Blinks is cut from the same cloth as his predecessors in Everyday (2006): frustrated with life, alienated from other people, he scuttles through life alone. But in Corn Exchange&rsquo;s terrific new one-man show, Blinks seems a more tragic character still, having...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:53:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Man-of-Valour]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Request-Programme]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Request Programme]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Just getting to the apartment where Request Programme takes place involves navigating numerous lifts, stairs, and a showy Japanese garden. We enter the modern two-bed residence at different stages, one by one. Before the central figure in this performance (Walsh) arrives home from work, we have up to 15 minutes to inspect the space, and attempt to build a picture of her personal life. Designed by Paul Keogan, aside from rows of books, a few childhood photographs, cosmetics and bills, it&rsquo;s a fairly impersonal expanse, most likely still furnished in the style in which it was bought. A large...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:35:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Request-Programme]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Francis-and-Frances]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Francis & Frances]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Almost two years after the centenary celebration of Bacon&rsquo;s birth in 1909, his name(s) makes a welcome return in Brian McAvera&rsquo;s latest work, Francis &amp; Frances.
In a play about the life and work of Francis Bacon (and his alter-ego Frances), one might expect to see something of the speckled disarray of the artist&rsquo;s infamous matchbox studio reproduced in a theatre space that is similarly diminutive and confined, but set designer Sarah Jane O&rsquo;Neill chooses instead to embellish the walls of the stage with bits of broken mirrors, reflecting the audience as an image of a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:05:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Francis-and-Frances]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Molly-Sweeney]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Molly Sweeney]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brian Friel&rsquo;s 1994 play Molly Sweeney is rarely performed, perhaps because there are so many better Friel plays to choose from. This is not to suggest that Molly Sweeney is a bad play, but when placed alongside the radical experiments of early plays like Philadelphia, Here I Come!, the potent politics and epic love story of Translations, or the joyous celebration of life and lament for lost culture that is Dancing at Lughnasa, the monologues of Molly Sweeney seem a cautious, modest affair. Of course, one of Friel&rsquo;s greatest plays, 1979&rsquo;s Faith Healer, takes the form of interweaving...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:20:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Molly-Sweeney]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Translations]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Translations]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In a time of austerity and inexorable pressure to conform to a nominally benign but fundamentally aggressive centrism that is threatening the  erasure of sovereignty, the native Irish face the challenge of holding onto their uniqueness. Education may be the key to preserving the sense of the &lsquo;why&rsquo; that comes with the &lsquo;how&rsquo; of learning language and history: the meaning of how things come to be seen or to be named, the process by which they are understood, and the consequences of the differences that arise when uses and interpretations of those meanings differ are ever more...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:24:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Translations]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Water]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Breathing Water]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[With its rhythmic dialogue and rapid character changes, Raymond Scannell&rsquo;s award-winning first play, Breathing Water, seems like it was written for Fregoli. The experimental piece is comprised of narrative fragments and dramatic vignettes which render the story of Jonah and his mysterious fear of water.
The play begins with a lyrical, evocative speech. This, along with a subsequent focus on the everyday routines of the four central characters, works to obscure both the source and the nature of Jonah&rsquo;s psychosis, mirroring the main character&rsquo;s repression. Flashbacks uncover Jonah&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:24:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Water]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Tragedie-Of-Hamlet--Prince-Of-Denmark]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Frailty, thy name is woman.&rdquo; The declaration in the first act of Hamlet is not merely the grief-stricken Prince of Denmark's attempt to rationalise the flight of his widowed mother into the arms of his father's killer. It can also be read as a subtle put-down of all of womankind. After this, every all-female production of Hamlet, like Plastic Theatre's version at the Pearse Centre, inevitably contains an undertone of rebuke to the Bard.
Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet in 1899, and all-female productions of the tragedy are hardly new. Plastic Theatre promises a new twist to this formula...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 05 Jul 2011 23:03:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Tragedie-Of-Hamlet--Prince-Of-Denmark]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Secret-Life-of-Me]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Secret Life of Me]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[An interesting facet of a drama that denounces the falsity of vicarious living is that play-acting itself must be the most vicarious of all professions ever to have evolved. The Secret Life of Me, written by Fregoli Theatre Company&rsquo;s actors, seems to gloss over this irony, at the same time that they themselves hold that teaching, motherhood and office work (amongst other activities) are to be damned as second-hand existences.
The work is a series of monologues presented by three women; each is a narrative, of sorts.  The intertwining speeches describe the forces - the writers argue - that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:45:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Secret-Life-of-Me]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pinching-for-the-Soul]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pinching for my Soul]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ever prayed to be stricken by a 24-hour bug or searing migraine so that you could put life on hold for just one day? The pressures of modern life sometimes exhaust a person&rsquo;s soul to the point where physical immobility is preferable to the prospect of having to get out of bed and start the day all over again. Such is the case for Brona, the well-heeled politician&rsquo;s wife played by Geraldine Plunkett in Elizabeth Moynihan&rsquo;s new play, Pinching for my Soul. &ldquo;Sometimes I dream I am disabled,&rdquo; she declares. &ldquo;I often think, 'if that disabled dream were true then I could...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 04 Jul 2011 22:03:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pinching-for-the-Soul]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Misterman]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Misterman]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Flying in from the tinselly world of Hollywood movie blockbusters, Cillian Murphy touches down as an avenging angel in the gritty Galway Arts Festival premiere of a new version of Enda Walsh's darkly funny Misterman. In a transformed Black Box Theatre, the powerful forces of Catholic guilt, small-town oppression and dominant Irish mammies work their nasty ways on the vulnerable and weak. Landmark Productions and the Galway Arts Festival&rsquo;s big budget, big bang is a high-octane dramatic rush.
Thomas Magill (a hirsute Cillian Murphy) is a well-meaning evangelist who has an obsession with sin....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:14:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Misterman]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Plaza-Suite]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Plaza Suite]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Neil Simon&rsquo;s Plaza Suite, three separate stories are linked by a shared space: suite 719 of New York&rsquo;s Plaza Hotel in 1968. In the first, a workaholic man in a mid-life crisis is frustrated by his wife&rsquo;s acceptance of his symptoms, from an obsession with weight loss to a potential affair, particularly as he cannot accept it himself. In the second, a successful Hollywood producer tries to reclaim a lost authenticity by meeting his high school sweetheart, now a New Jersey housewife obsessed by celebrity. In the third, an hysterical mother and father of the bride try to cajole...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:38:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Plaza-Suite]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Blonde--the-Brunette-and-the-Vengeful-Redhead]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The audience is met by a row of stiff and faceless mannequins with their backs to us, each draped in disparate costumes and each topped with a wig of varying colour and style. While one of these on their own would be a banal sight to behold, the odd phalanx they form at the back of the playing space offers an eerie greeting, and adds an unnameable menace to a story which could potentially be chalked up as another soap opera rehash. It&rsquo;s from these figures that performer Clare Barrett dons the duds and hairdos of the broad array of characters that populate the world of the play.
Barrett first...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 16 Jul 2011 21:26:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Blonde--the-Brunette-and-the-Vengeful-Redhead]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Nuts-and-Bolts]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Nuts and Bolts]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The use of monologue in the theatre is generally a device, within the larger aspect of a play, whereby we are allowed to hear the inner thoughts of a character to which we would not normally be privy. The use of monologue as the whole play is not something new and strange, and indeed some of Ireland&rsquo;s best-known and most revered plays are monologue-based. However, there are ways and ways of communicating a story, and if it&rsquo;s going to be told on a stage, then it does need to have a certain degree of drama apart from the emotions inspired by the pathos of the tale. It really does in fact...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Nuts-and-Bolts]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/1984]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[1984]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In light of recent game-changing revelations about the extent of unethical journalistic practices and links between the media, politicians, and the police in the UK, a theatrical staging of George Orwell&rsquo;s 1984 seems especially apposite. Orwell&rsquo;s novel is a classic work of modernist angst ruminating on the dangers of the totalitarian state and media control. Big Brother&rsquo;s cold, censorious gaze constantly surveys its Citizenship from television screens, directing daily actions and thoughts as the Party works to stop free thinking, rewrite history, and denude language of any seditious...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 09 Jul 2011 17:43:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/1984]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Devil-s-Spine-Band]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Devil’s Spine Band]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In an explanatory programme note, composer Trevor Knight discusses the impetus for The Devil&rsquo;s Spine Band: that &ldquo;music and sound would act as the backbone to the performance.&rdquo; Knight&rsquo;s boozy bluegrass score is certainly the most coherent element of this unusual cross-cultural collaboration, which brings Knight together with visual artist Alice Maher, actor Olwen Foueré, and two Japanese Butoh dancers, Maki Watanabe and Gyohei Zaitsu.
This is the second time that Knight has come together with Maher, Watanabe and Zaitsu, the first collaboration being 2007's Slat, also at...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 23 Jul 2011 17:22:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Devil-s-Spine-Band]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-and-Fury--The-Passion-of-Jonathan-Swift]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love and Fury: The Passion of Jonathan Swift]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The resonance generated by a performance of Jonathan Swift&rsquo;s later writings in a lecture hall in St. Patrick&rsquo;s Hospital is even more keenly felt when it&rsquo;s realized the majority of the audience are made up patients who reside there. Swift&rsquo;s role in the hospital&rsquo;s foundation is greatly overshadowed by his own literary legacy, but its establishment at Swift&rsquo;s bequest signalled an attempt to treat and understand mental illness at a time when those who suffered its effects were considered beasts or worse.
Swift&rsquo;s gift to Dublin also reflected his fears for...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:13:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-and-Fury--The-Passion-of-Jonathan-Swift]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/City-of-Clowns]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[City of Clowns]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Barabbas lives on, despite the vicissitudes of funding cuts that threatened its survival. This version of City of Clowns is, in the words of Peter Crawley &ldquo;a pared-down post-boom show.&rdquo; Crawley&rsquo;s interview with the Director, Maria Fleming, gives a fascinating background to the contraction of vision which she and Raymond Keane were obliged to make to the original concept of City, in the face of post-tiger penury.
At An Grianán, City of Clowns is fundamentally a one-man tour-de-force by Keane, red-nose supremo, touching on the history and state of mankind, playing exuberant games...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:09:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/City-of-Clowns]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-End-of-the-Road]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The End of the Road]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The title of Fishamble&rsquo;s production refers both to the outermost point of Temple Bar - Fishamble Street - and to the looming death of its central protagonist, Bill. Produced in conjunction with the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, this site-specific piece aims to offer glimpses into Dublin&rsquo;s social history by focusing on the life of a terminally-ill patient at St. Francis Hospice, Raheny, who recounted his life in interviews to writer Gavin Kostick.
Directed by eminent site-specific theatre-maker Louise Lowe, the piece begins in Project Arts Centre. In the foyer, an intimate group gathers...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:14:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-End-of-the-Road]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hay-Fever]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hay Fever]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Hay fever, or allergic rhinitis in its medical parlance, is a reaction brought on by the ingestion of dust or pollen, matter that is barely visible but everpresent in the world. Noël Coward's play of the same name features the Bliss family, also susceptible to wild fits in response to obscure elements all around them - but instead of coughing or sneezing, the family suffers an unusual and incurable comic madness.
In the Gate Theatre's assured production of this capricious romp, a large lurid drawing of a buxom woman supine on a couch is superimposed upon the curtain. When housemaid Clara (Barbara...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:42:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hay-Fever]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tabernacle]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tabernacle]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Reviewed 27 May 2011 at the Project Arts Centre.
If you melded together all the gestures, postures and body contours which emerged in the choreography of this extraordinarily intense work, which premiered at the 2011 Dublin Dance Festival, it would probably resemble a film montage of religious iconography. From the prostated bodies in the opening sequence to the subtle moves and gestures evoking   kneeling, praying, breastbeating, adoration or veneration, choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir made tremendous use of the visual and physical language of artistic religious representation in Tabernacle.
Throughout...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 06 Aug 2011 21:42:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tabernacle]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Big-Deal]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Big Deal]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Big Deal is a compelling portrayal of exceptional friends in exceptional circumstances. Although born male, Cathy and Deborah &ndash; formerly Patrick and Sean &ndash; grew up identifying as female, undergoing gender reassignment surgery as adults. Drawing on interviews, diaries and letters exchanged between the pair as they transitioned during the 1990s, The Big Deal is a moving and unflinching portrayal of lives rarely accounted for in Irish culture, let alone on the Irish stage.
The text from which the performance is built is quite extraordinary in its frankness and depth of feeling. Although...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:57:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Big-Deal]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bedbound]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bedbound]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Enda Walsh just can&rsquo;t stop talking, can he? Or, more appropriately, his characters can&rsquo;t. A number of Walsh&rsquo;s plays have characters that vomit forth language, as if the act of speaking were as crucial to moment-to-moment survival as the involuntary beating of the heart. This is particularly true in his 2000 play Bedbound, where a monomaniacal furniture salesman from Cork has imprisoned himself and his adult daughter, a polio victim, in her childhood bed. The daughter (Sara Joyce), has been there for a decade, every since contracting the disease and thus derailing her father&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:16:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bedbound]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/the-living-room]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[the living room]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Intimacy is the defining feature of the experience of outlandishtheatre co.&rsquo;s the living room. In a tiny space at the Pearse Centre (three rows of seats, one row of cushions down in front), the audience faces the dividing doors that open out into a &lsquo;living room&rsquo; (read: place for living) where Bernie O&rsquo;Reilly and Maud Hendricks enact an emotionally intense and multi-layered drama.
Mother (Hendricks) and Daughter (O&rsquo;Reilly) exist on (at least) two planes: one where daughter has just become engaged to a man of whom other does not approve, and one where they inhabit roles...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:13:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/the-living-room]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Title-and-Deed]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Title and Deed]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Can you have a performance about a solitary, disconnected figure, who has strayed far from home, without making a departure? &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not from here,&rdquo; begins Conor Lovett&rsquo;s nameless speaker, his eyes darting to the still-open door of the auditorium. &ldquo;I never will be, I guess.&rdquo; Why, then, does he seem so securely at home?

With only teasing, slippery references to place, if Will Eno&rsquo;s new play Title and Deed is set anywhere it&rsquo;s the discomfort zone. It isn&rsquo;t the first new play that Gare St Lazare Players Ireland have staged, but since 1996 the company&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:36:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Title-and-Deed]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/All-That-Fall]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[All That Fall]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The first thing to say about Pan Pan&rsquo;s performance of Beckett&rsquo;s 1956 radio play is this: if you&rsquo;re planning on going to it, please don&rsquo;t read this review &ndash; it would be a shame to spoil the surprise that awaits you. 

And perhaps the second important point is how refreshing (and unusual) it is to be surprised by an Irish production of a play by Beckett &ndash; a writer whose works are usually treated so reverentially that they&rsquo;re in danger of becoming museum pieces. While this is a very faithful rendition of the play, Pan Pan provide an experience that is genuinely...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/All-That-Fall]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Curse-of-the-Starving-Class]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Curse of the Starving Class]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s not often a lamb gets to upstage a penis, but in Jimmy Fay&rsquo;s production of Sam Shepard&rsquo;s Curse of the Starving Class (1978), this succession of surprise appearances is crucial to establishing the performance&rsquo;s unnerving blend of humour and carnality.
Shortly after the play opens on this dysfunctional American family, who fight over everything from a lack of food to the desire to escape, son Wesley (Ciarán O&rsquo;Brien) intervenes in an antsy interaction between his mother Ella (Irvine) and younger sister Emma (O&rsquo;Loughlin), by urinating on the latter&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 27 Aug 2011 19:43:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Curse-of-the-Starving-Class]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Holy-Mary]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Holy Mary]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Holy Mary, Eoin Colfer&rsquo;s 55-minute piece, deals with the perennial themes of Catholicism and bullying. It explores territory so wonderfully worked in Frank O&rsquo;Connor&rsquo;s 'First Confession'. The fear and apprehension around sin and guilt, confession, and penance are all there. Colfer does particularly well in capturing the child&rsquo;s confused management of catechism and church-speak. He offers a gentle, if belated, send-up of the pomp and mystery of ritual, while steering well clear of the topical issue of clerical abuse. This is pre-Murphy Report, dated in a charming manner, signified...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:04:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Holy-Mary]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Come-Forward-to-Meet-You]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Come Forward to Meet You]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Isn&rsquo;t it funny how silence seems to amplify all sounds? A heavy door creaking in a distant corridor; the illicit whispers of secret lovers; the painful, hushed tones of a lullaby to a dead child&hellip; How difficult it must have been for the servants who lived and worked in Irish stately homes a mere 90 years ago to steal fleeting moments of privacy. In this, the second run of Upstate Theatre Project's Come Forward to Meet You, the real-life memoirs of servant Angela Mitchell are realised on the site where she lived and worked during the 1920s and beyond: Oldbridge House in Drogheda, a vast...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:08:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Come-Forward-to-Meet-You]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/It-Only-Ever-Happens-in-the-Movies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[It Only Ever Happens in the Movies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The course of true love never did run smooth, particularly when you&rsquo;re getting rubbishy advice from Cillian Murphy.
The National Youth Theatre&rsquo;s yearly productions are more often than not plays of the canon, updated to appeal not only to youthful audiences, but also to their youthful performers. They are always staged with exuberance, more often than not are injected with a dose of pop music, and in the case of certain classics, are generally trimmed to move at a vigorous pace. This year, under the direction of Mikel Murfi, there is all that and more, as the cast of 16 had a hand in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:05:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/It-Only-Ever-Happens-in-the-Movies]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Guerrilla-Days-in-Ireland]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Guerilla Days in Ireland]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In 1949, Tom Barry, a former field commander in the Irish War of Independence, published his memoir, Guerilla Days in Ireland. In it, Barry describes the exploits of the 3rd West Cork Brigade, which had become famous for its discipline, efficiency and bravery. Barry himself had garnered a reputation as the most brilliant field commander of the war and his autobiography subsequently became both a classic account of the war and an influential guide on guerilla warfare.
Theatre director Neil Pearson, who has adapted Barry&rsquo;s memoir for the stage, recently described his decision to stage the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:27:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Guerrilla-Days-in-Ireland]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cosas]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Cosas]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Clowning is a restrictive kind of art form, imposing strict discipline and conventions on its practitioners - no speech, expression broad rather than nuanced, a tendency towards the absurd, a clear and uncomfortable incongruity between the individual and the environment.
Angelica Santander, the lone red-nose in Cosas, bent on employing a kind of scrap-yard technology to transcend her immediate circumstances, uses her face like an instrument &ndash; wide eyes, cavernous mouth and scintillating teeth, particularly apt for exuberance and bemusement &ndash; but it remains to be fine-tuned, the range...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:47:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cosas]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Honey-Spike]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Honey Spike]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mephisto Theatre Company&rsquo;s first sortie onto the boards of the main stage at Galway&rsquo;s Town Hall Theatre is an epic step in the company&rsquo;s five year theatrical voyage. Aided by a production team of sixteen, a cast of thirteen performers sing, dance and fight on a set that stretches to the bulwarks of this theatre; all to tell a tale of near Odyssean proportions. Whilst its scale causes the occasional wobble, it is an ambitious embarkation for a company which receives no public arts funding.
Breda Claffey, the main character in Bryan MacMahon&rsquo;s The Honey Spike searches for...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:33:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Honey-Spike]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Futureproof]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Futureproof]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Viewed on 7th August, 2011.
Only in the Edinburgh festival, with its enormous profusion of theatre, would you be unsurprised to come across not one but two plays involving the separation of conjoined twins. One was Mokwha Repertory Company's production of The Tempest in the Edinburgh International Festival. Drawing on Korean folklore, it presented Caliban as a squabbling two-headed monster called Ssangdua who was eventually split in two by a benevolent Prospero.
The other one was Futureproof by Lynda Radley, one of the founder members of Cork's Playgroup and now resident in Glasgow. The final...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:04:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Futureproof]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Blackbird-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Blackbird]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[David Harrower&rsquo;s Blackbird is not an easy or straightforward play. Its narrative brings face-to-face Ray, a middle-manager in a small town factory, with Una, a woman in her late twenties who he abused when she was twelve. She has returned to confront him, to wreak a kind of revenge for the years she has lost since the night he abandoned her in a ferry port when he ran away with her. That revenge is to threaten the new life he has formed since his release from prison. So far, so simple. The crux of the issue is not, however, that she has been scarred by his sexual abuse of her; rather that,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:00:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Blackbird-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faith-Healer-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faith Healer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Lalor Roddy&rsquo;s darkened body, only his mouth illuminated, takes to the stage reciting place names of Welsh villages in a concentrated, pained and panicked tone, Frank Hardy is once again re-imagined as the tortured roving healer endowed with the gift of healing and the propensity to con. Ralph Fiennes' portrayal a number of years ago brought to Hardy the lacerating vanity of a dreamer and a demon, whilst Donal McCann is revered by many as the one true Hardy, tortured narcissist, spitting those twisted syllables of Welsh place names on to the bare boards of the stage, like a beast in pain.
And...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 03 Sep 2011 22:17:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Faith-Healer-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Disco Pigs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Disco Pigs was a risky choice for Cathal Cleary, winner of the prestigious JMK Trust award, which enables an emerging director to stage a production at the award&rsquo;s host theatre (this year the Young Vic). This was, of course, the play that gave Enda Walsh (and Cillian Murphy) to the world: Pat Kiernan&rsquo;s world premiere production for Corcadorca in 1996 was an unprecedented success for the &lsquo;90s wave of independent Irish theatre companies, touring the world and earning practically unanimous rave reviews.
Though it&rsquo;s been staged several times since in Ireland in professional...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:57:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-and-Money]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love and Money]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Denis Kelly&rsquo;s Love and Money was first produced six years ago, there was prescience in its revelations about early twenty-first century Mammon and its taboo demigod: crushing debt. Indeed, Kelly seems to have been more visionary than many contemporary analysts in throwing the spotlight on the anti-social and self-destructive consequences that would follow rampant consumerism and the associated deification of money. In their choice of this temporally specific play for the Arts Festival, Galway Youth Theatre seem to be attempting to shut the stable door a few years too late. At the same...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:11:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-and-Money]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Real-Inspector-Hound]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Real Inspector Hound]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In his famous parody of the cut-throat West End theatre scene, the brief and brilliant The Real Inspector Hound, Tom Stoppard describes London&rsquo;s theatre critics with little affection. Pompous, verbose, envious, long-winded, living vicariously and obsessed with their own self-importance and pride in seeing things that are simply not there, the critics&rsquo; ability to make or break a play, director or actor endows them with far too much power. Fortunately, Dingle&rsquo;s long-established Beehive Theatre Company is not often subject to such critical attack, defending an enviably promininant...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:54:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Real-Inspector-Hound]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Voices-from-the-Cailleach]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Voices from the Cailleach]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The central character here yearns for the possibility of being able to cross over to the spirit world from time to time. And this theatrical venture seeks something similar in the production of a piece based on the Rooney prize-winning book of poems by Leanne O&rsquo;Sullivan, Cailleach, the Hag of Béara. Under a glaring light placed at either end of the main floor space at Bandon Town Hall, five actors work to bring us tip-toeing between this world and the next.
An elderly woman simply called Missus is confined to some kind of institutional home. She vividly recalls an encounter with a fisherman...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:50:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Voices-from-the-Cailleach]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cooking-with-Elvis]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Cooking with Elvis]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The trouble with a well-crafted preview or rehearsed reading is that it runs the risk of eliminating or diluting that exquisite first gasp of disbelief when an unexpected plot twist or turn of events subsequently occurs in full production.  Bruiser took the opportunity offered by the Pick&rsquo;n&rsquo;Mix Festival of new work in April to try out extracts from its forthcoming production.  It worked a treat.  Nothing could have prepared the audience for the shock-horror moment when Bruiser&rsquo;s company manager Stephen Beggs erupted out of a wheelchair and morphed from a mute, vacant, moon-faced...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 24 Sep 2011 21:09:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cooking-with-Elvis]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Taste-of-Pinter-(three-shorts-plays)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Serving of Pinter (three shorts plays)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the most chilling moments in Harold Pinter&rsquo;s One for the Road is when the almost silent, battered-looking prisoner realises that his wife and son are also being tortured.  He looks up at his interrogator and says &ldquo;kill me&rdquo;.   It comes across as a plea &ndash; one human being to another &ndash; to end the nightmarish suffering he is going through.  One for the Road is the centre-piece of A Serving of Pinter, a co-production by Clinic Media and MooCow Theatre of three short Pinter plays.  It serves as an uncomfortable reminder of how potent Pinter&rsquo;s political plays...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:58:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Taste-of-Pinter-(three-shorts-plays)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Playboy-of-the-Western-World]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Playboy of the Western World]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In the middle of the last decade in Ireland, we had the Playboy wars: back-to-back stagings within months, by then-Abbey artistic director Ben Barnes and Druid&rsquo;s Garry Hynes, of the Synge classic: the former a bizarre stylistic muddle, the latter a consummate slice of heightened realism that successfully launched Druid&rsquo;s now-storied Synge Cycle. Then we had the global Playboys: at the Abbey, Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle&rsquo;s controversial (yet popular) updating to contemporary Dublin, with Christy as a Nigerian immigrant; and Pan Pan&rsquo;s production in Mandarin, set in a Beijing...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:13:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Playboy-of-the-Western-World]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bother-with-the-Brother]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Bother with the Brother]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This is the Mylesian Year &ndash; the centenary of the birth of Brian O&rsquo;Nolan, also known as Myles na gCopaleen, author of the tales of The Brother which appeared regularly in his column in The Irish Times. We don&rsquo;t think of Brian O&rsquo;Nolan in the first instance in connection with the theatre &ndash; it was his journalism and novels which were the foundation of his reputation under various noms de plume &ndash;  but O&rsquo;Nolan wrote for the stage and dramatizations of his work by others have appeared regularly.
In Val O&rsquo;Donnell&rsquo;s adaptation, The Bother with the Brother...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:37:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bother-with-the-Brother]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Painkiller]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Painkiller]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Painkiller is a new adaptation of Francis Veber&rsquo;s Le contrat, which was filmed in 1973 as L&rsquo;emmerdeur (usually translated as A Pain in the Ass) with Jacques, and again in 1981 as Buddy Buddy, with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. It tells the story of a contract killer who checks into a hotel while on a job, only to find his mission disrupted by the presence of an irritating, suicidal guest in the next room. In this new adaptation by Sean Foley, Kenneth Branagh plays the sniper, Ralph, who plans to shoot his target from his hotel room window. In the next room photographer Dudley,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:29:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Painkiller]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Hen-Night-Epiphany]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Hen Night Epiphany]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[With his new play, The Hen Night Epiphany, playwright Jimmy Murphy set outs to deconstruct the complexities of the female bond. When bride-to-be Una drags her two friends, her future mother-in-law and her fiancé&rsquo;s godmother to her newly purchased run-down shack (&ldquo;only 80 minutes from Dublin&rdquo;) for her hen night, an evening of bickering and revelation is on the cards. That the play&rsquo;s programme describes it as being &ldquo;in the raucous vein of the recent movie Bridesmaids&rdquo; might send many potential theatre-goers running in the opposite direction &ndash; but far from...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:42:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Hen-Night-Epiphany]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Airswimming]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Airswimming]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There are no bad women in Ireland, only fresh virgins and married mothers. That was the dominant narrative of twentieth-century Ireland, agreed by Church and State and complied with by family and community. For those fallen women, witches, deviants and the mentally ill, high walls and stolen decades became their story.
Idir Mná, a company dedicated to addressing the lack of meaty female roles in theatre, puts solid effort into telling this story, produced in support of Justice for Magdalenes, a group campaigning for state acknowledgement and redress of Magdalene history in Ireland. Centred on...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:20:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Airswimming]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Egg]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Egg]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If children&rsquo;s theatre is to be effective it needs to be as uncompromising in its production values as that of adults. With a backstage team of ten supporting a cast of three, Cahoots take seriously the task of making a play out of an egg, inside a black box. Directed with exacting precision by Paul McEneaney, Egg combines technical excellence with literal flights of imagination. He takes full advantage of the dark to create a place that is &lsquo;other&rsquo; (mostly charming, but occasionally scary) and with sophisticated light and sound, combined with cleverly-conceived props, weaves an...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:40:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Egg]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Veil]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Veil]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Consider these ingredients for drama: a crumbling big house in the Irish countryside ca. 1822. Financial desperation on the part of the widowed lady of the house, extreme enough to prompt marrying off her only daughter in England. Increasingly impoverished and restive tenants. A spirit presence in the house to which the daughter is attuned. A defrocked priest sent to convey the daughter to her marriage. His sidekick, addicted to laudanum and Hegel. Bonkers granny. Gun introduced in the first act. Onstage séance. Maid in love with estate manager. Estate manager in love with lady of the house. Lady...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:10:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Veil]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Winter-s-Tale]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Winter's Tale]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The chill in the air is unmistakable, reinforced by the holographic image of fat snowflakes falling projected onto a progressive series of scrims stretched across the entirety of the Cork Opera House stage. Layered on top of this are washed out home movies depicting the fragmented images of childhood summers long since past. Underneath rumbles composer Mel Mercier&rsquo;s icy and insistent score. The first indications suggest director Pat Kiernan and designer Paul Keogan have taken to heart the admonition &ldquo;a sad tale&rsquo;s best for winter&rdquo; in staging Shakespeare&rsquo;s idiosyncratic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:50:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Winter-s-Tale]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Both-Sides]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Both Sides]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What does the future hold for a terrorist when the war is over? It&rsquo;s not the first time that question has been asked in a play about Northern Ireland but it&rsquo;s the first time that two playwrights from different generations and backgrounds have been commissioned to write interlocking pieces on the same subject.
Belfast-based Ransom was born in 2002 out of the imperative to develop and stage new Irish writing. It was formed by director Rachel O&rsquo;Riordan and actor Richard Dormer as a means of producing Hurricane, Dormer&rsquo;s coruscating one-man show about snooker champion Alex...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:38:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Both-Sides]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shipwrecked]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Shipwrecked]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;Renaissance Cabaret Oratorio&quot;. It's a curious tag to hang around a new piece of work, and a safe bet that it has never previously been utilised in the entire history of music theatre. It&rsquo;s nonetheless a fair summary of the various strands of influence which have gone into the making of Shipwrecked, a hybrid production telling the true story of Francisco de Cuéllar, a Spanish Armada captain whose ship foundered in 1588, in a hurricane off Streedagh Strand near Sligo. De Cuéllar subsequently spent seven months on the run from English occupiers, engaging in a series of picaresque...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shipwrecked]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Skullduggery]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Skullduggery]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There are any number of &lsquo;road trip&rsquo; touchstones to be consulted when faced with a road trip play, and in this case Thelma and Louise seems most relevant, despite the gender of the characters and the reasons for the journey. In Skullduggery, we&rsquo;ve got two inner city lads hopping into the car to take their particular brand of mayhem and casual drug use down the country. There seems to be nothing more on the agenda than drinking, shagging, and petty larcenies; and yet, there&rsquo;s also a bid for freedom involved in this escapade, one that manifests itself with tragic results.
Rollo...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:40:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Skullduggery]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Clann-Lir--and--Mise--Sceal-Cailin-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Clann Lir & Mise, Scéal Cailín]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The power of the imagination to create magic or &lsquo;draíocht&rsquo; is central to Branar&rsquo;s two recent works of puppet theatre, Clann Lir and Mise, Scéal Cailín. As the puppeteers explained before each show began, music is central to conjuring the enchanted worlds that Branar&rsquo;s characters inhabit. Original compositions inspired by traditional Irish melodies helped to captivate each audience, with gentle harp notes adding to each piece a particularly magical quality. These works are without dialogue. However, Clann Lir&rsquo;s puppeteers (Keily and Ní Chunaigh) narrated the action...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:13:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Clann-Lir--and--Mise--Sceal-Cailin-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Country-Girls]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Country Girls]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Edna O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s first novel, The Country Girls, originally published in the UK in 1960 was banned in Ireland for its then shocking portrayal of two young girls&rsquo; social and sexual exploits. Set in the 1950s in a parish in the West and then Dublin, the stage play expands on the novel dramatising the teenage years of the innocent  and beautiful Kate Brady (Holly Browne) and her friend, the caustic and worldly wise Baba Brennan (Caoimhe O&rsquo;Malley).
After the tragic death of Kate&rsquo;s mother and the girls&rsquo; expulsion from school, Kate and Baba head to Dublin and a grubby...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 Oct 2011 22:46:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Country-Girls]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Phaedra-Backwards]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Phaedra Backwards]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;I just got bored with the 'well-made play' &ndash; beginning, middle, and end, you know? We&rsquo;re all kind of bored of it.&rdquo; So said playwright Marina Carr on why her latest work, Phaedra Backwards, is set in &ldquo;Now and Then. Then and Now. Always.&rdquo; Premiering in the McCarter Theatre Center at Princeton University, New Jersey, Phaedra Backwards deliberately mangles the past with the present, life with the afterlife, and humanity with the monstrous. This cross-breed is the playwright&rsquo;s attempt to offer a more complex (and complicated) perspective on the eponymous queen....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:44:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Phaedra-Backwards]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Guidelines-for-a-Long-and-Happy-Life]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Guidelines for a Long and Happy Life]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Once upon a time there was a world. And then it got fucked&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s a terse summary of the starting point for Paul Kennedy&rsquo;s Guidelines for a Long and Happy Life, Tinderbox Theatre Company&rsquo;s contribution to the 2011 Belfast Festival at Queen&rsquo;s. It&rsquo;s voiced by Man, one of six characters inhabiting the post-apocalyptic earth of Kennedy&rsquo;s imagination, in a long, painfully intense scene culminating in the brutal rape of the bedraggled mess of a figure named Woman, who struggles doggedly across the blasted landscape of an almost totally denuded planet.
How...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:01:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Guidelines-for-a-Long-and-Happy-Life]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Murder-of-Crows]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Murder of Crows]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[You can learn something new every day. &lsquo;Murder&rsquo; is the collective noun for a significant number of crows, and there is an abundance of crows associated with death and decomposition: Shakespeare filled Macbeth with carrion as sinister harbingers of fatality; Ted Hughes took his Crow to the extremes of nihilism and obscenity, the antithesis of godliness &ldquo;screaming for Blood/Grubs, crusts/Anything.&rdquo; The crows in Barnstorm&rsquo;s take on 'Hansel and Gretel' may not go as far as Hughes&rsquo; monstrous creation, but, by hovering  over the action as chorus (led by Shane O&rsquo;Reilly),...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:40:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Murder-of-Crows]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orpheus-in-the-Underworld]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Orpheus in the Underworld]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Most of the pre-publicity for Orpheus in the Underworld, the first production of Northern Ireland Opera&rsquo;s first full season, focused on the new libretto the company had commissioned from comedian Rory Bremner. It was an astute investment, as much of the comedy in Offenbach&rsquo;s 1858 operetta centres on in-jokes aimed at the Second Empire establishment in the French capital, references entirely lost nowadays on all but well-read history graduates.
Bremner certainly blows away the historical cobwebs from Offenbach&rsquo;s original, peppering the new libretto with references to contemporary...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:54:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orpheus-in-the-Underworld]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-Festival]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Galway Theatre Festival]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Now in its fourth year, Galway Theatre Festival took place from 25 - 31 October, 2011 and was the biggest yet, running across Nuns Island Theatre and Town Hall Theatre (Studio), along with non-traditional spaces. ITM critics attended some of the productions on offer - read what they thought below.

All Things Considered It&rsquo;s a Nice Place to Start
Kate Nic Chonaonaigh and Louise White
Town Hall Theatre Studio
Reviewed 28 October, 2011
Snail-mail may be moribund but not if you&rsquo;re several characters in search of a play. All Things Considered It&rsquo;s a Nice Place to Start is based...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:04:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-Festival]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Little-Women]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Little Women]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Gate Theatre tends to avoid obvious choices for its holiday shows (A Christmas Carol aside), instead settling on stage adaptations of much-loved literary classics. This year is no different as Louisa May Alcott&rsquo;s Little Women, adapted by Anne-Marie Casey and directed by Michael Barker-Caven, receive a pleasant, though fairly straightforward, production.  The story of the four March sisters coming of age at a time of great national and personal upheaval is touching and, indeed, inspiring. However, despite the charms of its talented cast, this adaptation of Alcott&rsquo;s novel [incorporating...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:51:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Little-Women]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tyranny-in-Beckett--4-plays]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tyranny in Beckett: 4 plays]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mouth on Fire presents a rare performance of four short works by Beckett, addressing themes of inhumanity, imprisonment, power and torture.  Against the asperous stone walls of Smock Alley&rsquo;s Boys School, the make-shift wooden stage straddling the balcony arches provides the perfect unadorned focal point for the programme&rsquo;s central action within this lofty space.
The ensemble opens with a reprieve of one of Beckett&rsquo;s last short plays, Catastrophe (1982), performed earlier this year as part of the company&rsquo;s Silence and Darkness production. Cathal Quinn reassumes his befitting...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:21:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tyranny-in-Beckett--4-plays]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Romeo and Juliet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Fair Verona meets Dublin's Fair City in devise+conquer's energetic new production of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This tragedy of &ldquo;starcross'd&rdquo; lovers from warring families has been endlessly adapted in the four centuries since it was written, but this latest version manages to stay entertaining throughout most of its five acts exactly because of its propulsive dose of bawdy inner-city Dublin swagger.
On the face of it, Verona of antiquity and contemporary Dublin are a world apart. But Shakespeare's Romeo &amp; Juliet contains enough raw violence to fill a Scorcese or Tarentino...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:37:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Big-Maggie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Big Maggie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Overheard while leaving the Gaiety theatre in November 2011: &ldquo;It was a different time then than it is now.&rdquo; When Garry Hynes directed Big Maggie on the Abbey stage with Marie Mullen in 2001, I recall thinking (and writing) something very similar. Maggie Polpin&rsquo;s virtually sociopathic disavowal of sentiment and adherence to austerity and pragmatism seemed remote to the early noughties. John B. Keane&rsquo;s chilling 1969 savaging of the clichéd Irish mammy didn&rsquo;t seem to make a lot of sense then, except as a kind of museum piece. Not so much now, though. No. Now watching...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:46:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Big-Maggie]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love--Peace-and-Robbery]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love, Peace and Robbery]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[That stalwart of many a crime caper, &lsquo;the one last heist&rsquo;, is used to hilarious effect in a new production of Liam Heylin&rsquo;s Love, Peace and Robbery. With a distinct Limerick accent as well as setting, two bungling ex-cons and a talking terrier take the audience along for the getaway ride. 

Darren and Gary have just been released from Limerick Prison but their freedom is limited by a court-ordered substance abuse program and curfews. Over cans and spliffs, the men re-think the past, vowing to right wrongs to girlfriends and children. Darren wants to emigrate to join his ex in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 24 Nov 2011 22:19:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love--Peace-and-Robbery]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/1-in-5]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[1 in 5]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[On a day when a major supermarket was asking me to donate some of the food they had just sold me to a local charity for distribution to the poor, a play about poverty seemed particularly urgent. No-one can fault the ambition of director Paula McFetridge to prick the conscience of a society where the one in five of the title is the number of people living in poverty. McFetridge&rsquo;s vision extended further to create a multi-authored mosaic of performance, installation and film in a venue far from the trendy lights of the big cities. Built around the original Victorian Workhouse, the venue is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 26 Nov 2011 22:10:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/1-in-5]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Magic-Flute-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Magic Flute ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As recently as a year ago the death-rattle was sounding in the throat of Opera Theatre Company, whose forced closure, along with that of Opera Ireland, was intended to clear a pathway for the establishment of a single national opera company. A year later OTC is still fighting fit, with funding through till March 2012, and a cracking new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute touring eighteen different venues across Ireland, boldly perpetuating the company&rsquo;s proud reputation for taking its productions to locations normally on short rations operatically, if not starved completely.
The most...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:23:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Magic-Flute-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Government-Inspector-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Government Inspector]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sometime in the early nineteenth century in a nondescript Russian village the political establishment is thrown into a state of panic when they hear a Government inspector may be on his way, or worse, he&rsquo;s already arrived incognito. Hearing a young man has been staying at the local inn and won&rsquo;t leave but won&rsquo;t pay either, they naturally assume he must be a representative of the State, and so lavish attention and bribes upon him.  They&rsquo;re wrong of course, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean their behaviour would have been any more noble if they were right. In the end, when the townsfolk...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:03:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Government-Inspector-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Prophet-of-Monto]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Prophet of Monto]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Dublin monologue play, thanks to the success of Conor McPherson and Mark O&rsquo;Rowe (and the persistence of their imitators) has become its own predictable genre. This is said not to dismiss The Prophet of Monto as yet another ho-hum monologue play, but to point out that there seem to be certain basic expectations to be met with a play in the monologue form that features a theatrically heightened inner-city Dublin. Oddball, overly sentimental and casually violent working class characters must populate it. The dialect of the street must be poeticized to reveal its inherent lyricism. There...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:05:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Prophet-of-Monto]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Seafarer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is hard not to look at the tawdry sitting room that the Harkin brothers inhabit on the Christmas portrayed in Conor McPherson's The Seafarer without recalling Kierkegaard's definition of despair: &ldquo;the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair&quot;. McPherson's play about a poker game between northside Dublin drunks and a Satanic stranger is on an obvious level highly comical and oddly heartwarming holiday fare, but Decadent &amp; Nomad's joint production prods at a grimness that underlies the cutting banter of these boozy buddies.
Light fills the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:59:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Making-of--Tis-Pity-She-s-a-Whore]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Making of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How many people walked into The Making of Tis Pity She&rsquo;s a Whore by John Ford expecting a behind-the-scenes dramatization of an obscure film by the director of The Quiet Man? I&rsquo;ll sheepishly raise my own hand. The John Ford that has tantalised the imagination of Siren Productions artistic director Selina Cartmell is actually the 17th century English playwright &ndash; but, as it turns out, this mistake was a helpful avenue into this engrossing and at times captivating piece of theatre, obsessed as it is with the complicated relationship between celluloid and the stage.
Audiences will...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:51:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Making-of--Tis-Pity-She-s-a-Whore]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Setanta]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sétanta]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Imagine the Rubber Bandits in a cage fight somewhere in the middle of Afghanistan and you come close to getting the concept for this show. Muscular wrestlers in latex masks command the stage with explosive energy, circling each other like fighting dogs, roaring and trash-talking. Paul Mercier and Fibín have re-imagined the myth of Sétanta for the twenty-first century with multiple contemporary references seamlessly woven into this ancient story.
In Scotland, Sétanta and his friend Ferdia are young wrestlers at the top of their game. Sétanta&rsquo;s manager persuades him that glory awaits him in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:09:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Setanta]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Rainbow-s-End]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Rainbow's End]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When The Rainbow&rsquo;s End acts up as a panto, it almost succeeds. That&rsquo;s in the latter stages of the piece when the familiar elements &ndash; &ldquo;He&rsquo;s behind you!&rdquo;, cross-dressing handsome hunk, swashbuckling Principal Boy, knockabout comic duo, appeals to the audience for assistance in weaving the magic spells, etc. etc. &ndash; all come together. At that stage the hard-working Ofegus cast have the children, mummies, daddies and, in my case, grandpas in their hands.
But they&rsquo;ve left it too late. The play lingers too long at the start over a convoluted plot that is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:43:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Rainbow-s-End]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Gibraltar]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Gibraltar: An adaptation after James Joyce's Ulysses]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&lsquo;The book called the most important of the preceding hundred years is also notorious for its inability to be read without special help&rsquo; &ndash; Julie Sloan Brannon, Who reads &lsquo;Ulysses&rsquo;? (Routledge, 2003)
It's interesting to Google &lsquo;readership Ulysses&rsquo; and find entries that agree with the perception that the &lsquo;common reader&rsquo; struggles with Joyce&rsquo;s novel. (As an undergraduate I went at the book like a high jumper who scrapes over the bar on the umpteenth attempt.) So one way to circumvent this problem, real or perceived, is to adapt it for the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:51:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Gibraltar]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Those-Sick-and-Indigent]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Those Sick and Indigent]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[We&rsquo;ll all die with secrets, every one of us. Despite the papers, the clothes, the objects we leave behind that map out a life lived, gaps in our personal narratives will persist. This is the reality of our lives and deaths: everything that we are is guaranteed to dissipate after we die, as the objects associated with us begin to lose their significance. For those who have been forgotten by society, &lsquo;those sick and indigent&rsquo; who pack the shelters and doorways of Dublin, that process of erasure has already begun, as we ignore not just their basic plight for food or sanctuary, but...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:08:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Those-Sick-and-Indigent]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Minute-After-Midday]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Minute After Midday]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s a bright, sunny morning in a busy market town in County Tyrone.  As midday approaches, a young girl and her mother set out on a shopping trip for a special birthday present; a man sneaks his wife&rsquo;s wicker basket into the back of his car and heads off to watch a GAA match in a local bar; two teenage brothers prepare to go out for a drive.
Ordinary people living ordinary lives on just another ordinary summer day.  But the instant the town is identified as Omagh and the date as 15 August 1998, everything about this carefully crafted piece changes. Audience expectations and apprehensions...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:51:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Minute-After-Midday]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Kreutzer-Sonata]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Kreutzer Sonata]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Either by twist of programming fate or design, Irish playwright Nancy Harris is making a splash on the London theatre scene in early 2012. At the same time as her new play Our New Girl premieres at the Bush Theatre, her adaptation of Tolstoy's notorious novella The Kreutzer Sonata is being revived at the Gate Notting Hill, in advance of a March run at La MaMa in New York (funded in part by Culture Ireland). Though the Bush and the Gate are small theatres, they are important ones, and it is rare indeed for the same writer to be showcased at both simultaneously.
One of a number of director-led reinterpretations...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:52:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Kreutzer-Sonata]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Our-New-Girl]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Our New Girl]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What do you give the woman who has it all &ndash; a beautiful London home; a handsome, plastic surgeon for a husband; and a healthy eight year old son, with another child on the way? A nanny, if you&rsquo;re Hazel Robinson&rsquo;s (Fleetwood) husband Mark (Bazeley), who sends Annie (Gough) from Sligo without discussion or warning, while he&rsquo;s on a charitable trip to Haiti. Nancy Harris&rsquo; new play for the Bush opens as both women try to rationalise the arrangement &ndash; not a &lsquo;mistake&rsquo;, according to the arrival, but a &lsquo;misunderstanding&rsquo; &ndash; while Richard remains...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:06:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Our-New-Girl]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Family]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Family]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How do you solve a problem like The Family? Make a cup of tea, of course.  But there comes a time when even that &ndash; our nation&rsquo;s reflex action to anything remotely real &ndash; becomes an impossible task.  Behind the whiter-than-white picket fence perfection cracks appear, holes show, the plywood walls tremble and things begin to crumble.  Thankfully, it&rsquo;s a much more enjoyable experience watching it happen to someone else&rsquo;s family.  In fact, we are drawn to it, addicted to it, in the daily doses of Soaps and reality TV we consume in terrifyingly desensitized states of semi-consciousness....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:51:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Family]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hostel]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hostel]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Hostel, written and directed by Fionnuala Kennedy, is a short but vivid performance that explores the plight of young women in a homeless hostel in Belfast. The work was first performed for two nights during the Belfast Fringe Festival before Kabosh decided to take it on tour as part of their social cohesion work. It aims to uncover some of the unexpected realities behind statistics, newspaper headlines and social prejudices about homelessness, and it does so very effectively. It played for women&rsquo;s groups during the International Women&rsquo;s Day Celebrations, and Open Door Housing Association...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:47:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hostel]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hollywood-Valhalla]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hollywood Valhalla]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Aidan Harney&rsquo;s play examines a decisive moment in the life of Rock Hudson, the 1950s Hollywood heartthrob who became something more than just an icon in his final days by publicly acknowledging that he had AIDS. Hudson&rsquo;s sexuality had been an open secret, carefully controlled to preserve his on-screen persona. Though the public and press were divided as to the meaning of this revelation, the balance was largely in favour of sympathy, making Hudson a kind of test case for recognition that AIDS was not a mystical Biblical plague affecting the hidden margins of society. As playwright William...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:53:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hollywood-Valhalla]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Play-on-Two-Chairs]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Play on Two Chairs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In some ways Michael West&rsquo;s A Play on Two Chairs, written in 1989, should be considered a period piece. When West devised and staged his play as student at Trinity College Dublin, laws allowing the widespread availability of contraception was still being debated, the Celtic Tiger had yet to take hold, and the passing of the constitutional amendment repealing the prohibition of divorce was still six years away. Obviously, a lot has happened since then. After twenty years of economic and social upheaval, not to mention the proliferation of alternative approaches to making theatre in Ireland,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:13:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Play-on-Two-Chairs]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brothers-in-Arms]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Brothers in Arms]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Almost eighteen years may have passed since the paramilitary ceasefires were called, but an uneasy, simmering peace continues to hang over Northern Ireland.  From time to time,  particularly during the summer Marching Season, evidence of the alienation and marginalisation felt within the loyalist communities rears its head.  But in the ranks of republicanism, too, there is profound internal disaffection, much of it emanating from the bitterness felt in some quarters towards those designer-suited politicians who stalk the corridors of power at Stormont and are judged as having sold out the armed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:19:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Brothers-in-Arms]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fly-Me-to-the-Moon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Fly Me to the Moon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Wiping piss and shit up for &pound;6 an hour&rdquo;. That bluntly summarises the job description of Frances and Loretta, the community care workers in Fly Me To The Moon, a new two-hander by Marie Jones which also marks her debut as a stage director. Jones doesn&rsquo;t explicitly offer the paltry wages that the women earn as an excuse for the &ldquo;runaway train&rdquo; (as she puts it) of financial legerdemain and deception they become embroiled in when their elderly patient Davy dies. But it&rsquo;s certainly there in the background as an extenuating factor, and emphasised in a tendentious...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:52:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fly-Me-to-the-Moon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Da]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Da]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Toby Frow&rsquo;s smoothly-directed revival of what is arguably Leonard&rsquo;s best play prompts questions about the precise focus of the work. Its surface is unashamedly entertaining, built on a foundation of vivid characterisation. Frow draws poignant performances from his cast - particularly from Owen Roe, as Tynan the gardener, the eponymous Da, full of the bluster and braggadocio of a servile, ignorant man; his portrayal of Tynan as the bewildered old widower is precise and tinged with pathos - and from Ingrid Craigie, as the little bitter sparrow of a Mother, trapped in an arranged marriage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:56:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Da]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Master-Builder]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Master Builder ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Perhaps given the national tragedy brought on in recent years by feckless building and development, Irish theatre audiences might have a particular soft spot for the existential musings of a world-weary architect. I like to think Vincent A. O&rsquo;Reilly had this in mind when he decided to reimagine Henrik Ibsen&rsquo;s The Master Builder. Halvard Solness, the architect in question here, stares pitilessly into a spiritual chasm over this three act play, pondering how a career full of promise has left him paranoid, joyless and the verge of total breakdown.
The Master Builder was written in 1892,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:05:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Master-Builder]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Uncle-Vanya]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Uncle Vanya]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Chekhov and Friel, Friel and Chekhov... over the years, the names of these two master playwrights have become almost inextricably linked.  Their finest plays focus on resignation in the face of seismic social change, on papering over deeply suppressed personal turmoil with ceaseless chat, on facing into an uncertain, bleak future with stoical determination, gathering one&rsquo;s inner resources and going on.
Friel has said that among the possible reasons for his attraction to Chekhov is that his characters behave as if old certainties were as sustaining as ever, even though they know in their...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:32:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Uncle-Vanya]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Water-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Breathing Water]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;Fear death by water&quot; is one of the most chilling of the 434 lines in TS Eliot&rsquo;s 'The Waste Land', among whose gallery of colourful characters is the clairvoyante Madame Sosostris, the wisest woman in Europe.  She pulls from her tarot pack the card of the drowned Phoenician Sailor and instructs the poem&rsquo;s narrator to beware of the watery fate suffered by the handsome mariner Phlebas.
The central conceit of Raymond Scannell&rsquo;s award-winning play Breathing Water echoes that warning.  A consuming phobia haunts the all too short life of  sensitive, aptly-named Jonah (Chris...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:06:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Water-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Goddess-of-Liberty]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Goddess of Liberty]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There&rsquo;s a quote from Carl G Jung that goes like this: &quot;Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking.&quot; In The Goddess of Liberty, this power struggle is centred around the physical and mental disability of the central character, Frankie (Geraldine Plunkett). Due to stroke, the formerly vibrant and dominating woman is relegated to a wheelchair, and her disability changes the playing field for all the relationships in the play, loving and otherwise. Yet, despite this theme seeming to be central, the play doesn&rsquo;t seem to focus on it...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:24:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Goddess-of-Liberty]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(3)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macbeth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;Life,&quot; Macbeth famously declares in Act V of Shakespeare&rsquo;s timeless tragedy, with the armies of Malcolm and Macduff encroaching upon the castle of Dunsinane &ldquo;is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing&rdquo;. They may be the ramblings of man accepting the certainty of his own death, but Macbeth&rsquo;s musings also seem to contain an implicit challenge to every company that produces Macbeth: how to impose something loftier and meaningful upon a work of theatre with more bloodshed than your typical action film? There is no shortage of primal rage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(3)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Zeitgeist]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Zeitgeist]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bernard Field&rsquo;s earlier plays, The Early Hours (2010) and Last Train from Holyhead (2009), are tours de force of psychological realism that raise challenging questions. The Dublin-born dramatist endeavours to continue this work by adding to his latest play Zeitgeist another layer of authenticity, incorporating historical documentation with fictive drama. Zeitgeist intensifies the already striking details of an actual interview with a doctor who had worked at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Originally published in Der Spiegel, the English translation (which Field uses as his source) appeared in the Guardian...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:47:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Zeitgeist]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Melmoth-the-Wanderer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Melmoth the Wanderer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Task: take one clunking 700-page Gothic novel, and distil it to a 100-minute drama for the theatre. Impossible? It is, especially if you're aiming to faithfully trace the narrative intricacies (and occasional opacities) of Charles Maturin's glowering 1820 fable Melmoth the Wanderer, whose brooding, darkly obsessive atmosphere so influenced Balzac, Baudelaire, and Maturin's great-nephew Oscar Wilde, who used 'Melmoth' as an alias in his years of post-incarceration exile in Paris.
Nicola McCartney has wisely avoided trying to pack too much incident into her dramatisation. Instead she chooses five...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:43:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Melmoth-the-Wanderer]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Touch-Me]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Touch Me]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What makes you happy? What makes you sad?

Questions that seem simple enough, yet which stumped members of the Irish population when choreographer David Bolger posed them as part of his research for CoisCéim&rsquo;s current work, Touch Me. The responses, featuring much &lsquo;eh-ing&rsquo; and &lsquo;ah-ing&rsquo;, form part of the soundtrack of a piece which positions itself firmly in a modern Ireland amid the rubble of the recent economic collapse. 

This end-of-days milieu is pictured by Monica Frawley&rsquo;s post-apocalyptic stage set, with shredded wallpaper and a forlornly-abandoned...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Touch-Me]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sweet-Dreams-Mr-Heroin]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sweet Dreams, Mr Heroin]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Originally commissioned by the Drugs Awareness Board, Sean Ronan&rsquo;s Sweet Dreams, Mr Heroin serves as a potent reminder, if one were needed in Dublin where the ghosts of heroin roam the streets daily, of the ruination that the drug causes in lives and communities.
Sweet Dreams, Mr Heroin is a two-scene, two actor play with each scene anchored by one cast member. Ronan&rsquo;s objective is to show the effects of heroin from the vantage point of both the user and those who lose loved ones to heroin abuse. The performance begins with Ronan on stage on his own, wearing a skull cap and hoodie,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:33:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sweet-Dreams-Mr-Heroin]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Purple]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Purple]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Are you nostalgic for the days when you stood around, bashfully staring at your shoes, while desperately wanting to say &ldquo;I kind of like you&rdquo; to the boy/girl you really, actually, if you admitted it, liked a lot? Seeing Jon Fosse&rsquo;s Purple, in a translation by David Harrower, gives you the opportunity to go back in time, to be voyeurs in scenes of teen angst, but without having to experience the angst yourself. The play is set in a band rehearsal room &ndash; sorry that&rsquo;s too glamorous a description, it&rsquo;s set in a grim cellar where a dysfunctional band that&rsquo;s &ldquo;going...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:48:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Purple]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Body-Duet]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Body Duet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[John Scott's Irish Modern Dance Theatre is twenty-one this year, although he choreographed previously with Dublin City Ballet, Irish Theatre Ballet and as an independent artist. It's an artistic career that has displayed consistent regard for disparate influences, going beneath the surface movement and finding truth.

Scott's artistic heroes and sheroes come from all sorts of disciplines, so that the emotional landscape of Edgar Allen Poe might have a stronger aesthetic presence than any movement reference in any particular dance. Although the movement vocabulary in his earliest work showed a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Body-Duet]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-All]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love All]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Screw your courage to the sticking-place&rdquo; cries not Lady Macbeth but French native Marie Violet Giordin (Aideen Wylde), wife to Irish tennis champion and Waterford boyo Vere St Ledger Goold (1853 &ndash; 1909). Following his defeat by a man of the cloth at Wimbledon in 1789, Vere Goold (Tadhg Hickey) lived a life both dramatic and tragic. With a plot no less large than any of Shakespeare&rsquo;s greatest tragedies, or indeed a Hollywood blockbuster &ndash; from an Anglo-Irish upbringing, to sporting fame, love, loose living, Monte Carlo casinos, murder and finally, death by suicide...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:52:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-All]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Carthaginians]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Carthaginians]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stuart Marshall&rsquo;s set for Millennium Forum's new production of Carthaginians is a minimalist pair of raked platforms set before a blazing blue trapezium of sky. The white stone facings on the platforms evoke Derry&rsquo;s famous walls, a graveyard, and a bleak, sun-bleached space of classical tragedy. The three women who are the first characters on the stage, one of them nursing a sick bird, also suggest mythic figures: the Three Graces or the Judgement of Paris; and their presence in the graveyard recalls the three Marys at the tomb of Christ. As the plot unfolds, the goddesses in the Judgement...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:14:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Carthaginians]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Doubt---A-Parable]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Doubt - A Parable]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Truth makes for a bad sermon.&rdquo; So says Father Flynn, the progressive and controversial priest at the heart of John Patrick Shanley&rsquo;s 2004 parable play. Flynn is of course arguing that the power of a parable to succinctly teach a lesson far exceeds the illustrative potentials of the messy reality we find ourselves mired in on a daily basis. That Shanley&rsquo;s play is itself an illustrative fiction seems to validate in part Flynn&rsquo;s point. While this taut drama effectively accesses in a matter of ninety minutes the painful uncertainties that have resulted from the Church&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:06:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Doubt---A-Parable]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Turn-of-the-Screw]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Turn of the Screw]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There are, as historian R.F. Foster puts it (in another context), &quot;strange nullities&quot; at the heart of Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw. Is it an opera about child abuse? Probably, but it's unclear what form the abuse takes. Is it a ghost story? Possibly, though the word is not used by the children's Governess, nor in Henry James' original story. Is Quint a predatory homosexual? Probably, but there's nothing in the libretto or stage directions to prove it.
The most striking feature of Oliver Mears' new staging of The Turn of the Screw is his refusal to populate those &quot;nullities&quot;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:55:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Turn-of-the-Screw]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/TAN]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[TAN]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The rituals of young women getting ready for a wild night out are laid bare in Wildebeest Theatre Company's boisterous new comedy, TAN. Limerick girls, Aisling and Siobhán, are preparing for a typical Saturday night. Not only is there a lot of preening to be done but there is an equal amount of drinking, gossiping and teasing. Will Aisling nab the man of her dreams, or at least the one who liked her status on Facebook? Will Siobhán get stuck with boring friend, Carmel? The only certainty is that their cheap tanning products will make them look like zebras by the night&rsquo;s end...
The Loft is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:24:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/TAN]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Improbable-Frequency]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Improbable Frequency]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Improbable Frequency is an inventive and witty Irish musical with book and lyrics by Arthur Riordan, who, since its first production in 2004, has become the master of this particular sub-genre. The Irish musical is not like the West End or Broadway blockbuster, or even like Riverdance. It is more like the quasi-parodic off-Broadway show that strives for sniggers and delight in the one breath, and can occasionally rise to something special.
This is what happened to Improbable Frequency, which was a disarming surprise in 2004, given an added frisson by going for the jugular on the issue of Irish...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:17:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Improbable-Frequency]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Marianne-Dreams]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Marianne Dreams]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Marianne is ten years old, and sick with a fever. Bed-ridden and constantly attended to by Mother and a crisply efficient doctor, she relieves the tedium by drawing pictures. At night, dreaming, Marianne finds herself outside the house that she has sketched earlier. There is a boy in it. But who is he? And why can he not come down from his first-floor window to see her?
These, in outline, are the bare bones of the story playwright Moira Buffini has filleted from Marianne Dreams, Catherine Storr&rsquo;s 1958 fantasy novel for children. The problem for any company staging the piece is simple: how...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:18:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Marianne-Dreams]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Memory-of-Water]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Memory of Water]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Memory of Water tells the story of three sisters, Mary, Teresa and Catherine, who have returned to the family home to attend the funeral of their mother, Vi, who has died of Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease.  Teresa, the eldest sister, is played by Tina Kellegher as worn down by the sorrow and toil of being her mother&rsquo;s primary carer. She is busy organising wreaths and undertakers while Mary, a successful psychotherapist, played with a wry grace by Jenni Ledwell, would rather occupy her mind with treatment plans for a patient&rsquo;s post-traumatic amnesia than the practicalities of the funeral...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 12 Mar 2012 21:28:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Memory-of-Water]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Agamemnon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Agamemnon ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Classic Stage Ireland&rsquo;s production of Agamemnon continues its series of Greek dramas staged in Dublin since 2010. It is the first offering of director Andy Hinds&rsquo; intended production of Aeschylus&rsquo; trilogy, The Oresteia.Hinds, who makes no claim to being a Greek scholar, takes the ambitious decision to use his own version of the text, in consultation with classicist Martine Cuypers. The result is an iambic pentameter rendering which adheres sufficiently to tradition not to distract from the powerful tragedy of the fall of the House of Atreus. While CSI's claims to be providing...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:02:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Agamemnon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beckett-Trilogy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Beckett Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The St Patrick&rsquo;s Bacchanalia was in full swing on the streets when the Beckett fans took shelter in the Cork Opera House where Gare St Lazare Players were staging a number of Beckett prose works, alongside Gaitkrash&rsquo;s wonderful production of Play. Meanwhile, over at the Granary, the UCC Drama and Theatre Studies Department was presenting American actor Michael Murphy in Krapp&rsquo;s Last Tape, and a group of MA students were performing their own multi-media devised response to moments and characters from Beckett and his contemporaries. So Conor Lovett&rsquo;s bravura performance of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:39:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Beckett-Trilogy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tiny-Plays-for-Ireland]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tiny Plays for Ireland]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Many may presume that theatre critics hate theatre, in that, well, they are always criticising it, aren&rsquo;t they? In fact, it might be that the opposite is true: those of us who are drawn to write about this aspect of our culture care about it to an almost painful degree. Even after many years of attending the theatre, after countless productions, after endless ups and downs, even the most careworn and jaded and downright fed up critic can be reminded of what the whole point of the art form is. Fishamble have done that for all of us with Tiny Plays for Ireland.
Twenty-five three minute plays...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 24 Mar 2012 14:17:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tiny-Plays-for-Ireland]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/White-Star-of-the-North]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[White Star of the North]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;This white heat in you for living, like a star in the sky&quot;. The line's addressed to Crawford Massey by his father Robert, and from it Rosemary Jenkinson's new Titanic play takes its title. The reference to White Star Line (Titanic's owners) is there, of course, but it's peripheral. The focus is on family, not sinking funnels: &ldquo;Titanoraks&rdquo; (as they're being labelled in centenary-fevered Belfast) will find little in it to titillate their inner boat-fancier.
White Star of the North focuses on the political situation in 1912, with Home Rule on the horizon in Belfast and Carson's...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:55:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/White-Star-of-the-North]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Fall]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Fall]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As a member of the Genesis Collective from 2003 until 2011, Ella Clarke spent many hours engaging with the conundrum-based works of the American choreographer Deborah Hay. Initial perceptions of her latest work, The Fall, might suggest a fracture with that practice, with Hay's rarified stripped-back aesthetic replaced with a highly visual prop-filled stage. But looking beyond the surface, the viewer finds that Clarke is still deeply engaged in revealing truth through movement and stepping inside the human experience to question how we are who we are.

The choice of computer-generated avatars...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Fall]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/King-Alfred--A-Mystery-Play]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[King Alfred: A Mystery Play]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What is it that marks and preserves history? What forces circumscribe and maintain meaning? Such questions, posed by Side-Show&rsquo;s second production, are pertinent to the play&rsquo;s inspiration: the filming of the MGM flop King Alfred the Great in Galway, 1968. A massive event at the time, employing thousands of locals as extras, the film has been widely forgotten - ostensibly because of its failure at the box office.
The relationship between the play&rsquo;s title and its content seems tenuous. Set in Galway 2012, two moderators - played with deadpan humour by Guinnane and Tivnan - lead...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:49:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/King-Alfred--A-Mystery-Play]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Joyced!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Joyced!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It was a tall order for James Joyce to stuff the moment-to-moment significance of a single day into a novel, and it seems an even taller order to try to cram the nexus of persons and events that influenced Ulysses into an hour-long, one-person show. But Donal O&rsquo;Kelly has made that his mission, all in the effort to, as the narrator of his play asserts, rescue Joyce from the haughty, labyrinthine criticism of stodgy academics. In doing so, O&rsquo;Kelly leads us along a rather rudimentary path to meet the flesh-and-blood inspirations that, over the course of 1904, sparked Joyce into the eventual...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:52:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Joyced!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Spell-of-Cold-Weather]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Spell of Cold Weather]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;We used to enjoy the farm. We used to enjoy work. We used to be happy.&rdquo;
Charles Way&rsquo;s A Spell of Cold Weather has been produced in Britain, Ireland and further afield many times in the last two decades. It tells the tale of a little girl, Holly, who brings happiness back into the lives of her down-in-the-mouth aunt and uncle, Betty and Bob, with a little bit of help from a mischievous Puck-like fairy and a talking animal or three. Betty and Bob have worked on the farm their whole lives, it seems, and have isolated themselves from society, and from each other. They have become...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 31 Mar 2012 23:11:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Spell-of-Cold-Weather]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Alice-in-Funderland]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Alice in Funderland]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Alice (Sarah Greene) is a nice Cork girl recently bereaved and facing the humiliation of her sister&rsquo;s forthcoming wedding. While in Dublin on the hens&rsquo; night, she gets a little drunk, hooks up with a delivery boy (Ian Lloyd Anderson) in a club, and then goes on a hallucinatory journey through the Dublin streets looking for his home. When she finds him, she must contend with the fact that the young man already has a fiancée (Lisa Byrne), and a powerful, overbearing mother-in-law-in-waiting (Tony Flynn). 

This is not an inherently interesting story. In fact, it is downright pedestrian....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Alice-in-Funderland]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Doll-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Doll House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[No, it&rsquo;s not a typo. Adaptor/director Gavin Quinn explains in the programme notes for Pan Pan Theatre&rsquo;s production that he purposely omitted the customary possessive in this translation of the title of Ibsen&rsquo;s 1879 humanist drama. The doll doesn&rsquo;t own the house, after all. No: flighty, borderline hysterical Nora Helmer (Judith Roddy) doesn&rsquo;t own anything, or at least appears not to, as she lives by the wallet of her husband Torvald (Dermot Magennis), recently promoted to manager of the bank where he works with childhood friend Krogstad (Charlie Bonner) who has, unbeknownst...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:12:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Doll-House]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Titans]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Titans]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Since its inception in 1994, Kabosh has set out to challenge the notion of what theatre is and where it can be staged.  In reinventing ways in which stories can be told, the company&rsquo;s raison d&rsquo;etre is to commission a steady flow of new writing and devise additional work for site-specific environments and installations.  
Created specially for the commemorative programme of this year&rsquo;s Titanic Belfast Festival, the unique selling point of this promenade production is the fact that it affords an 'access all areas' pass to two spectacular, contrasting buildings, standing cheek by...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 08 Apr 2012 23:26:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Titans]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Better-Boy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Better Boy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;There is not a better boy in heaven ...&rdquo;  These words were written not by a close relative of Thomas Andrews, chief designer of RMS Titanic, but by one of the hundreds of people, who were moved to send messages of condolence to the family after he went down with his ship in the North Atlantic a century ago.
This scholarly, minutely researched monologue play has been written by Belfast-born academic John Wilson Foster, who lived in the United States for many years.  It is the second of Kabosh&rsquo;s world premieres for the 2012 Titanic Belfast Festival and in form, content, presentation...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:42:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Better-Boy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-Matters]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love Matters]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Gary Mitchell seems at first an unlikely playwright to have play produced in the Irish language. But such is the cultural dividend of the peace process that a Protestant from Rathcoole now sees his work translated expertly by Andrea Higgins and produced by Belfast-based theatre company Aisling Ghéar. Their production of Love Matters at Project Arts Centre gives parity of esteem to both languages: providing headsets and a simultaneous translation to any audience member who wanted one, thus opening up the audience beyond the usual Gaeilgeoir contingent. This is to be welcomed and would go a long...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:03:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-Matters]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Spinner]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Spinner]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Who believes in fate anymore? There&rsquo;s really no room for such a fanciful notion in this enlightened day and age, but it was a concept the ancient Greeks set a lot of store by. In DISH Dance Collective&rsquo;s The Spinner, choreographer Aoife McAtamney takes the Greek legend of the three Fates, or Morai, and turns it on its head to present a commentary on ideas of mortality and free will.

In the original tale from Greek mythology, the Fates dictated the lifespans of mortals through the medium of sewing, spinning the threads of each human life and cutting them at the moment of death. In...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Spinner]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tea-Chests-and-Dreams]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tea Chests and Dreams]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As Dermot Bolger says in the programme notes to his new play, one would be hard pressed nowadays to find tea chests to use for packing up house in order to move. Regardless of packing methods, the event of moving house, as Bolger&rsquo;s play effectively expresses, calls up a spectrum of anxieties and hopes, and intimates how, in spite of the time one spends in a house, the state of feeling truly settled can be frustratingly elusive.
The play, a series of interlocking monologues and duologues performed ably by Kelly Hickey and Donna Anita Nikolaisen, spans a forty-year continuum in a housing estate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:21:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tea-Chests-and-Dreams]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Chastitute]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Chastitute]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Cork Arts Theatre has a long history as a tiny venue in the heart of Cork city. Beloved of many an actor and stage hand over the decades, the CAT Club, as it was affectionately known, provided a late night jar for theatre people from the city&rsquo;s theatres. It also had a tiny stage with about 40 seats which became the venue for many am-dram productions, and for professional theatre it was a useful testing ground for work before it was taken &ndash; if at all &ndash; to a bigger venue. Several years ago this tiny upstairs theatre moved to a new purpose-built space, which is a classic 100-seat...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:26:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Chastitute]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Velvet-Revolution]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Velvet Revolution]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mick Donnellan has proved himself a highly prolific writer since the premiere of his first play, Sunday Morning Coming Down, in March 2011. Since then, he has added Shortcut to Hallelujah and Gun Metal Grey to his dramatic repertoire, as well publishing his novel, El Niño. While his first three plays form a loose &lsquo;Ballinrobe&rsquo; trilogy, he departs from his ensemble of well-drawn Mayo characters in his latest drama, Velvet Revolution: a two-hander concerning a dysfunctional couple living in a basement studio in an undisclosed, rural Irish town.
The production opened on Fyodor (Cathal...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:37:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Velvet-Revolution]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Durand-Durang]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Durang Durang]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Absurd. Bizarre. Surreal. These adjectives are prerequisites for any review of the work of American playwright Christopher Durang, but they are ultimately inadequate at describing the full extent of his unusual sensibility. His plotlines, on the other hand, are far more revealing. Take Business Lunch at the Russian Tea Rooms, one of his six short plays that feature in Brazen Tales&rsquo; production of Durang Durang.  A Hollywood executive asks a playwright to develop an O Henry-esque romantic comedy about a Catholic priest and a rabbi who fall in love, but both get sex changes without telling the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:30:30 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Durand-Durang]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Danny-and-Chantelle-(Still-Here)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Danny and Chantelle (Still Here)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A lot can change in six years. Booming businesses can run aground. Economies can crash and burn. National moods can switch from ebullience to despair. A lot has changed, one assumes, for playwright Phillip McMahon since his first play Danny and Chantelle (Still Here) was produced in 2006. McMahon has gone from writing plays for the Fringe to creating big-budget musicals for the National Theatre. It is impossible not to view the latest production of Danny and Chantelle, which is timed to harness the buzz around McMahon&rsquo;s Alice in Funderland [currently running at the Abbey Theatre], in the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:56:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Danny-and-Chantelle-(Still-Here)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Monster-Clock--A-Monster-s-Play-on-Time]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Monster/Clock]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Towards the end of Monster/Clock, our hero Toby asks the titular villain, &quot;What happens when you drink Mmbela Kolo Pop?&quot; &quot;Simple&quot; he replies. &quot;It leads to an increase of synapses firing and serotonin production, causing a brief but intense feeling of euphoria. It also leaves a nice feeling in the tummy.&quot;
What's true of Mmbela Kolo Pop is also true of Monster/Clock, Collapsing Horse's new puppet comedy which ran at Smock Alley Boys' School in April. With a Do It Yourself aesthetic and sweet yet sinuous performances, the script melds adult humour and universal themes...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:32:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Monster-Clock--A-Monster-s-Play-on-Time]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dubliners]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dubliners]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Director Alice Coghlan has come up with an idea for Dublin One City One Book: to make Dubliners come to life in a site-specific audio-tour of the Joycean city, giving the responsibility to the listener to navigate the streets, broad and narrow, while being regaled with dramatized excerpts from the short stories at appropriate points in the promenade.
Sounds complicated? It is a bit! The participant needs to be prepared: bring rain-gear, wear sensible shoes and to give it time (3-4 hours on the 'Half Day&rsquo;s Adventure', 6-7 hours for the 'Full Day&rsquo;s Epic', to be completed mostly on foot)....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:31:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dubliners]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/My-Cousin-Rachel]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[My Cousin Rachel]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Daphne du Maurier's best novels are like multi-faceted diamonds: different lights transform them. The light of the reader's perspective, that is. I was pretty much marked for life when I saw Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) as a child, particularly when my mother intoned the opening line: &ldquo;Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.&rdquo; But I took the Gothic romance at face value. Reading it a couple of years ago I was stunned by its complex anti-imperialist, feminist narrative told by a gloriously flawed narrator. It's a great mystery thriller, alright, but it is the reader's own romantic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:57:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/My-Cousin-Rachel]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/TITANIC-(Scenes-from-the-British-Wreck-Commissione]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, 1912)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Over the past month or so, there have been enough Titanic-related events in and around Belfast to sink a ship.  An impressive amount of new work has been commissioned, including two site specific pieces by Kabosh, a play for the Lyric Theatre, a musical and a requiem.  But throughout the Titanic Belfast Festival, which this year commemorates the centenary of the disaster, keen attention has been focused on the final fixture, the premiere of a tantalising play by one of Ireland&rsquo;s most accomplished writers. To add to the anticipation, its opening marks the inauguration of Belfast&rsquo;s spectacular...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/TITANIC-(Scenes-from-the-British-Wreck-Commissione]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Housekeeper]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Housekeeper]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s rare nowadays to see a playwright weave together a plot using the classical unities as assuredly as Morna Regan does in The Housekeeper, her tale of post-recession desperation. No brief and choppy scenes or sudden blackouts here. The Aristotelian virtue of the unification of time, place and action is as solidly established as the walls of the Manhattan brownstone that serve as the play&rsquo;s setting. Indeed, this adherence to classical structure hints at an aspiration to invoke a mythic resonance within a modern context. The grand concrete columns of Bláithín Sheerin&rsquo;s interior...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:01:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Housekeeper]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Hunger]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Great Hunger]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The madness and magic of Tom MacIntyre&rsquo;s response to The  Great Hunger has become locked down tight with the theatrical history of the Patrick Kavanagh poem - Tom Hickey [in the 1983 Abbey Theatre production] creating a riot of manic energy as that play engaged in a highly physical and visual manner with the demons haunting Monaghan farmer, Patrick Maguire. Deeply rooted as that ground-breaking production is in contemporary Irish theatre, it might be better to put it far out of mind for a more low-key and gentle presentation of the poem in Cork.
Theatre Makers Ltd. in association with the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 02 May 2012 21:24:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Hunger]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Galway-Girl]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Galway Girl]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the remarkable things about the Bewley&rsquo;s Café Theatre is that it is both un-theatrical and yet highly theatrical simultaneously. There is very little mystique as you sit in the room, eating (very good) soup and bread, listening to the noises from Grafton street, looking around at the fellow patrons in the dim light from the chinks between the curtains, the clatter of china a companionable sound in the tearooms below. The space is limited, so that the stage is a raised dais across one corner, fitting a couple of actors, two chairs, a table and a coat stand. There aren&rsquo;t any footlights...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 03 May 2012 20:53:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Galway-Girl]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Greener]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Greener ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Money isn&rsquo;t everything, as far as Greener is concerned, but it&rsquo;s certainly enough to air the true colours of one&rsquo;s dirty laundry in public. The conclusion of the Dandelions trilogy, this play has everything and the kitchen sink (two, in fact). A double lottery win, a dangerous affair, a dead kitten and a missing brown wheelie bin are just a few mentionable ingredients thrown into the pot of Fiona Looney&rsquo;s latest domestic concoction.
Best friends and next-door neighbours Jean O&rsquo;Shea (Deirdre O&rsquo;Kane) and Nóirín Dawson (Pauline McLynn) lead similar, if not parallel,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 May 2012 20:57:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Greener]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Darwin--A-Life-in-Poems]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Darwin: A Life in Poems]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Darwin: A Life in Poems was published in 2009 amid a surge of cultural activities celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin&rsquo;s birth. Its author, Ruth Padel&mdash;a nature writer, poet and literary critic&mdash;is Darwin&rsquo;s great great grand-daughter. Fittingly, Padel demystifies the static image of Darwin, the naturalist, to add to our understanding of Darwin, the man. The book is a biography in verse, offering five chapters of poems, sensitively conjured and connected, as well as displaying Padel&rsquo;s technical skills through a variety of stanza forms.
For Mephisto&rsquo;s stage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:31:30 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Darwin--A-Life-in-Poems]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Civilisation-Game]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Civilisation Game]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Tim Loane&rsquo;s previous stage plays, Northern politics loomed large with a capital P. In Caught Red Handed (2002) and To Be Sure (2007) &ndash; the so-called &lsquo;comedies of terror&rsquo; &ndash; he gleefully lanced the bloated self-importance of, respectively, the unionist and republican camps, holding them up to scrutiny, ridicule and scorn. Skilfully executed political satire plays well when the other side is under attack.  When it&rsquo;s your tree that&rsquo;s being shaken, the fall-out is painful and undignified.  But if you&rsquo;re simply an objective observer, it&rsquo;s a delicious,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 10 May 2012 21:37:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Civilisation-Game]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dickens-at-the-Ulster-Hall]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dickens at the Ulster Hall]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Charles Dickens visited Belfast a second time in 1867, he was 54 years old, but prematurely aged and careworn. A decade of public readings of his work had progressively drained him, as had the guilt and aftershock of separation from his wife Catherine, which he himself had initiated. Yet on he went: a punishing American tour began in December 1867, and two years later he was dead, his constitution burnt out by the demons of perpetual activity which drove him pitilessly forward.
Sam McCready's one-man show about Dickens, part of the year-long Dickens 2012 NI celebrations, takes the afternoon...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2012 21:51:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dickens-at-the-Ulster-Hall]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Body-and-Forgetting---The-Wake]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Body and Forgetting | The Wake]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Down the half-lit corridor, the figure in a print frock walked backwards, moving slowly on screen into our view and that of the four dancers on stage. From that moment, we were watching two performances in parallel, on film and on stage, our attention drawn from one to the other in turn, the dancers both present and absent at the same time.
Body and Forgetting, a film/live performance collaboration between choreographer Liz Roche and film/theatre director Alan Gilsenan, was a dreamlike seamless partnering &ndash; and was gently but insistently galvanising. The work exploited cinematic possibilities...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2012 22:07:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Body-and-Forgetting---The-Wake]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Baths]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Baths]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Baths is the third show in Louise Lowe's collaboration with Prime Cut Productions, the other two being Demeter: Still Life Still and Right Here Right Now. It is based in the Victorian Templemore Baths which opened in 1893 to serve the densely populated terraced streets of East Belfast, near Harland and Wolff and the Ropeworks. The workers' homes normally only had an outside toilet, so the Baths provided hygienic bathing facilities for the families in the area. The Baths also had a swimming pool and generations of local children learned to swim there. The Baths still has a pool &ndash; though...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 10 May 2012 21:38:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Baths]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Falling-Song]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Falling Song]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A young man perched atop a ladder, from which trails a hanging looped rope, begins to peel an apple. It happens towards the end of this adrenalin pumping and unsettling new work from junk ensemble and we watch the curling skin of the fruit winding down to the core in a seamless loop. Is it luscious fruit or soured to the core? Or, like the bitter sweet memories of male friendship and physicality, which The Falling Song evokes and explores with huge aplomb? 

Part chamber work, part dance opera, The Falling Song plays with life&rsquo;s light and shadows, where reality can sometimes fall short...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Falling-Song]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Straight-to-DVD]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Straight to DVD]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ponydance Theatre Company have come a long way since their first performances back in 2005. Following on the success of their award for Best Dance Show at the Adelaide Fringeearlier this year, they opened their latest show, Straight to DVD in the Upstairs space of Belfast&rsquo;s spanking new Metropolitan Arts Centre. This was commissioned by the MAC, which has championed the company since its appearance at the Pick &lsquo;n&rsquo; Mix Festival in 2009. Not that they need a bespoke venue, given that their repertoire of work includes shows on the street, pubs and the Aviva Stadium, and they have...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 25 May 2012 22:35:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Straight-to-DVD]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pigeon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pigeon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Pigeon is a play with masks, without words, but with a clear, satirical narrative for the times we live in.  Ciarán Taylor and the members of Carpet Theatre evoke a recession in the suburbs through a form of physical theatre, close to dance, in which the movement and expression are orchestrated and syncopated. For nearly an hour-and-a-half there is not a single pause in the comings and goings. Three doors feature on the set: one never opens but another closes. The action is restlessly committed to a perpetual, mesmerising rhythm, played out in a compulsive nervy frenzy.
Three masked figures struggle...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 22:53:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pigeon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Chairs]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Chairs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Never have the members of an audience wreaked as much havoc in the theatre - pushing and shoving their way to their seats, trotting on the toes of the elderly, even going as far as calling the lady selling programmes and Eskimo pies a cow.  Invisible they may be, but the gathering of society&rsquo;s most colourful intellectuals and proprietors before us, including the violinists, the chemists, the cabinet-makers, the miners, bankers and designers - even his Majesty (&ldquo;Jesty&rdquo;), the Emperor himself - makes for a wonderfully anarchic and engaging occasion of eloquent and frequently poetic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 May 2012 22:04:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Chairs]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macklin--Method-and-Madness]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macklin: Method and Madness]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A clever telescoping of history is one of the more intriguing features of Gary Jermyn's and Michael James Ford&rsquo;s two-man show about Charles Macklin, a Donegal native who took the eighteenth-century London stage by storm. From the seats of the cosy Viking Theatre in twenty-first century Clontarf, the audience peers into a bare 1940s BBC Radio studio (designed sparsely and efficiently by Padraig O&rsquo;Neill) during the height of the Blitz. Here, as air raid sirens scream overhead, two seasoned actors, dressed to the nines in black tuxedos, transmit over the airwaves of wartime Britain an...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 May 2012 22:00:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macklin--Method-and-Madness]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tic-Teac-Tic-Teac]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tic Teac, Tic Teac]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[She stands there on the bare stage as we enter, resplendent in a dress shaped like a sliced pizza. You can&rsquo;t help but laugh, and the ice has been broken. Curious as to whom this strange person is, the children, aged 3-6, turn to their parental units, point, question and quarrel amongst themselves as to what is going on. Having uttered nary a word Niamh Lawlor has got the children in attendance engaged with her one-woman show Tic Teac, Tic Teac. The challenge now is to keep them on side.
Púca Puppets developed this bi-lingual puppet piece for young children with a group of pre-schoolers....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:32:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tic-Teac-Tic-Teac]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sweet-Charity]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sweet Charity]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Broadway, Bruiser and Brecht...  it&rsquo;s a tantalising, tricky combination, offering exactly the kind of creative challenge that Belfast-based Bruiser has thrived on during the fifteen busy years of its life.  Inspired by its founder and artistic director Lisa May and managed from the onset by actor/comedy writer Stephen Beggs, the company has gone on many a theatrical adventure over the years, forging a highly individual performance style based on its commitment to &ldquo;minimum set for maximum impact&rdquo;. It has taken audiences and actors into strange new worlds and ground-breaking experiences,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 31 May 2012 20:00:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sweet-Charity]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Glengarry-Glen-Ross]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Glengarry Glen Ross]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Automobile magnate and paragon of American wealth in the 1980s Lee Iacocca once said that&shy; &ldquo;The trick is to make sure you don&rsquo;t die waiting for prosperity to come.&rdquo; A poster of Iococca hangs on the back wall in the real estate company where the salesmen in the Gate&rsquo;s production of David Mamet&rsquo;s Glengarry Glen Ross ply their trade, and each has taken Iacocca&rsquo;s commandment to heart. Virtually every conversation and every deed carried out in this two-act play is, in one way or another, part of a big, desperate sell.
Nearly thirty years after it was first produced,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 May 2012 21:55:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Glengarry-Glen-Ross]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Blatha-Bana-(White-Blossoms)-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Blátha Bána (White Blossoms)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Three years ago, Graffiti Theatre Company, the educational theatre company based in Cork, began work on a play for young children aged eighteen months to three years. The process of creating a piece of work with which tiny children would engage in non-interactive fashion &ndash; Blátha Bána is meant to be watched in relative silence &ndash; took this length of time and involved Graffiti researching the work of educational theatre companies across Europe, in places such as Bologna in Italy, and in Belgium.
The result is a piece of work designed specifically to introduce children to what the programme...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 May 2012 23:03:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Blatha-Bana-(White-Blossoms)-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Travesties]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Travesties]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s nearly forty years since Tom Stoppard&rsquo;s Travesties first appeared on the London stage and it&rsquo;s difficult to calculate the degree of seismic postmodern shift in sensibility since then. Bolstered by technology that facilitates the fracturing of chronology and narrative, recent drama is littered with instances of historical figures engaged in activities more imagined than verifiable. What are theatrical tropes now, were new and electrifying when Stoppard&rsquo;s early work bounded onto the boards.  The job of today&rsquo;s director is to keep that shock immediate and the crucial...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 09 Jun 2012 23:16:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Travesties]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Plants-and-Hopes]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Plants and Hopes]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Gardening, it is said, represents the ultimate form of hope.  A tiny seed lies dormant in the cold, dark ground, entirely at the mercy of the elements, its ultimate survival a hair&rsquo;s breadth removed its withering away on the vine.  And so it is with an unborn child, waiting patiently in the womb for many months, hoping for safe and healthy passage into the world.
These two parallel threads meet and merge with an altogether more menacing presence in this challenging new dance piece, created as a result of a combination of circumstances few people would wish to experience.
When she began...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 06 Jun 2012 21:32:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Plants-and-Hopes]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Frankenstein]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Frankenstein]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One benefit of adapting literary classics for theatre is that their core issues can be presented in snappy fashion to digital-age audiences who may forever have lost the habit of patiently traversing bulky nineteenth-century novels for their leisurely edification. Patsy Hughes&rsquo; lean distillation of Mary Shelley&rsquo;s Frankenstein is, in that respect, an intense experience, cutting to the quick in its short, sharp focus on the rawly existential questions raised in Shelley&rsquo;s Gothic masterpiece.
Dividing the intimate performing area of the Brian Friel Theatre down the middle, Hughes...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:05:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Frankenstein]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-being-Earnest-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Importance of being Earnest]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Some curious decisions are made in this new staging of The Importance of Being Earnest, one being the casting of two male actors in the parts of Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism. Why do that? What&rsquo;s wrong with casting women? Are there serious artistic reasons for the decision? Or is it just a rather tawdry slice of pantomimic pandering to the lowest common denominator?
These questions buzzed around the bar of Belfast&rsquo;s Lyric Theatre at the interval, to some extent detracting from what had in fact been a notably successful traversal of Act One. The keynote of Graham McLaren&rsquo;s direction...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:36:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-being-Earnest-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a disturbing moment in the middle of Tom Murphy&rsquo;s late play The House when the play&rsquo;s &lsquo;hero&rsquo;, returned emigrant Christy Cavanagh, replies to an invitation to the local dance by &ldquo;straighten[ing] up as a man might to adjust his belt&rdquo; and banging the inviter&rsquo;s head repeatedly against the wall. It is a moment of extraordinary violence, made all the more shocking by the pedestrian banter that both precedes and follows it. Christy&rsquo;s savage outburst goes unremarked by his drinking partners, and his victim, Jimmy, is left reeling in surreal bewilderment,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 14 Jun 2012 20:41:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-House]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Man-Who]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Man Who]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Hot on the heels of its lively revival of Raymond Scannell&rsquo;s Breathing Water, Chatterbox has come to the 2012 Pick&rsquo;n&rsquo;Mix Festival primed and ready for a run at the Edinburgh Fringe in August.  Pick&rsquo;n&rsquo;Mix is the brainchild of Belfast&rsquo;s Old Museum Arts Centre (OMAC), where it was set up in 2007 to be an annual showcase of new work.  As the OMAC has morphed into the spanking new, all-singing, all-dancing multi-media arts space The MAC, so Pick&rsquo;n&rsquo;Mix has grown up, put on its gladrags and gone out on the town.
For The Man Who, Queen&rsquo;s University...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 09 Jun 2012 23:40:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Man-Who]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Griswold]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Griswold]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s always encouraging to see new writing on the Irish stage, and it's always slightly disheartening when a new script hasn&rsquo;t received careful consideration in terms of its development. Arnold Thomas Fanning&rsquo;s Griswold could have been a cracker of play that pointedly tackled issues of identity, existential anxiety and the interconnected nature of both historical and personal violence - but a muddled, repetitious dramaturgy ultimately robs the piece of momentum and impact. Even though it exhibits moments of inspiration, Griswold comes  across as a tangle of disparate themes and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 14 Jun 2012 22:37:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Griswold]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Appendage]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Appendage ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How do we mourn? Why do we mourn? What do we mourn about? These questions lurk lugubriously in Derek Murphy&rsquo;s Appendage, a two-hander set in a simply featured apartment, somewhere in New York City. Both protagonists, it turns out, are mourning the same woman. For Peter, it&rsquo;s his wife Jill, whom he husbanded indifferently. He sinks single malt as though it&rsquo;s soda water, drowning memories.
Memories, it seems, have driven Jack delusional and frantic. He was Jill&rsquo;s lover (one of many, apparently). He loved her to literal distraction, but fell short in the physical department....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:32:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Appendage]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/DruidMurphy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[DruidMurphy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Although Tom Murphy did not expressly write Conversations on a Homecoming (1985), A Whistle in the Dark (1961) and Famine (1968) as a trilogy, Druid&rsquo;s curation of the three plays invites us to see the dramas as being intimately connected. In the incredibly ambitious DruidMurphy production, the company that has been staging Murphy&rsquo;s work since the 80s, draws from his oeuvre plays, written across a twenty year span, that take an unflinching look at the impact of emigration on the Irish psyche over a hundred year period. While performances can be viewed separately, encountering them as...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:27:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/DruidMurphy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orfeo]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Orfeo]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Several of the first operas written around 1600 in Italy are dedicated to the myth of Orpheus. Developed by a group of Florentine aristocrats who wanted to revive ancient Greek tragedy as they understood it, opera was created as new type of drama in which music was not just occasionally inserted &ndash; like, for example, in the Shakespearean plays &ndash; but was instead permanently present with the characters singing all the time. That this was clearly not a reflection of real life as audiences then &ndash; or indeed today &ndash; experience may in part explain why the most famous singer of Greek...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:59:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orfeo]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sweet-Shop]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sweet Shop]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Award-winning actress and director Maria Tivnan shows that her skills extend to writing with her new two-hander The Sweet Shop. Here, Tivnan offers a work akin to plays that Fregoli has successfully produced in the past, such as Raymond Scannell&rsquo;s Breathing Water (2011) and Enda Walsh&rsquo;s Disco Pigs (2010). Through poetic dialogue, non-sequential vignettes and rapidly changing performance styles, The Sweet Shop weaves together the heartrending story of childhood sweethearts Michael and Cass, and their fraught links to the small Irish town they call home. As such, the play epitomises Fregoli&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:41:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sweet-Shop]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shortcut-to-Hallelujah]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Shortcut to Hallelujah]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Writer and director Mick Donnellan knows his audience and they seem to know him. This symbiotic relationship ensures that Shortcut to Hallelujah, Donnellan&rsquo;s cacophonous paean to pub politics, county football and life in Ballinrobe, strikes a chord with Truman Theatre Company&rsquo;s large and enthusiastic audience. Farces about rural recession would seem to be a novel and unlikely populist genre that is pulling in punters in the West - especially when they make prolific reference to the Mayo football team.
Like pundits on an anarchically drink-fuelled T.V. sports panel, four scoop-sinking...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:26:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shortcut-to-Hallelujah]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hungry-Tea]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hungry Tea]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Inside a terraced house painted pink and clothed on the outside with tea cups, which hang from hooks driven into the wall, wander a group of women. Maybe there are ten of them, maybe there are more. After a while, it becomes difficult to count. They move from room to room, or between upstairs and downstairs, pass by you on a corridor. After a while, it doesn&rsquo;t matter how many there are, because this site-specific piece of work is metaphorical rather than literal, and while each of the women has a definite narrative to tell, it is often more implicit than explicit, and the audience is as likely...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jun 2012 13:29:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hungry-Tea]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Record]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Record]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The drugs don&rsquo;t work, suggests Dylan Tighe, in his compelling new production about depression and mental illness, mined from the depths of his own struggle with the black demon and his distrust of a dysfunctional psychiatric health service that, he intimates here, will likely only make the situation worse.
Tighe, who was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder in 2004, also uses the occasion of this performance to introduce live music from his debut album, 'Record' &ndash; songs clearly inspired by his difficult experiences and his disillusionment with the rigidity of a health service that tends...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jun 2012 19:21:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Record]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dubliners-Dilemma]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Dubliners Dilemma]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Dubliners Dilemma, a one-man show devised and performed by Declan Gorman, delivers well in CityArts&rsquo; twenty-five seat theatre and would likely play to advantage in somewhat larger houses. It is Bachelors Walk Productions' aim to take the show &ldquo;worldwide&rdquo;, and to this effect they have devised &ldquo;a unique crowd-funding initiative&rdquo; of having patrons along the way sign an antique Signature Book dating from the period in which the work is set. It is hoped that donations from this source will fund their travels - an optimistic goal. This bit of codology should not detract...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:06:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dubliners-Dilemma]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sylvia-s-Quest]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sylvia’s Quest]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Wonderland&rsquo;s latest offering continues in their tradition of ambitious and imaginative work. Sylvia&rsquo;s Quest is the site-specific journey of Sylvia Sylvana, a young Bulgarian woman recently arrived in Ireland and working as a cleaner for the Mulhalls.
Sylvia&rsquo;s doubly redolent name, with its woodland and magical associations, is also linked to the name of her home place, and her memories are imbued with a vivid sense of its history. She had worked as an amateur archaeologist assisting her uncle, and her narrative reminds us of the past glories of this part of the world so little...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:45:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sylvia-s-Quest]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Perfidia]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Perfidia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Jimmy Murphy&rsquo;s new play Perfidia is ostensibly a probing of the national psyche in the wake of the collapse of the Celtic Tiger - though there is little allusion to that in the opening moments of the production, bar a solitary Sherry Fitzgerald sign. Metallic, industrial sounds drone before turning into melodic chimes. A somnolent Niamh (Una Kavanagh) wanders the threadbare stage. She tidies two badly-stacked boxes. She puts two family photos on a small table. She takes all of the change out of her pockets and throws it on the ground, before settling into a chair and staring into the deep...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:10:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Perfidia]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Goat-Bubble]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Great Goat Bubble]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&lsquo;Youtube&rsquo; has promulgated the concept of the family-friendly lecture: science, philosophy and economics are gracefully deconstructed in minutes by smiling Brian Coxes and Ken Robinsons for the benefit of TED, celebrity audiences, humankind, and other oiks. In fact, all that stuff you didn&rsquo;t quite digest at school is processed into clickable, likeable, byte-sized nuggets by stand-up professors and streamed direct to a tablet on your lap. Novelist Julian Gough does much the same with the Irish boom-to-bust phenomenon for the Galway stage with his bemusing but un-dramatic Shaggy-goat...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:13:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Goat-Bubble]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/My-Brilliant-Divorce]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[My Brilliant Divorce]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;My name is Angela Kennedy-Lipsky and I used to be one half of Angela and Max, the world&rsquo;s happiest couple.&rdquo; The opening lines of Geraldine Aron&rsquo;s My Brilliant Divorce, brought to the Draíocht Theatre by Jasango Theatre Company, initially seem to combine with the title to bolster the impression that this one-woman performance may not scratch too deeply below the surface of one of modern life&rsquo;s most emotive experiences. But with 11 years of touring worldwide, including successful runs in the West End and London&rsquo;s Apollo Theatre, and an Olivier Award nomination...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:37:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/My-Brilliant-Divorce]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Love-Hungry-Farmer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Love-Hungry Farmer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Des Keogh&rsquo;s adaptation of the John B. Keane book, Letters of a Love-Hungry Farmer, the  solo actor plays John Bosco McLaine, the bachelor farmer, and other vignettes. The production is directed by Charlotte Moore, one of the two founders of The Irish Repertory Theatre in lower Manhattan, where it premiered in 2002. Since then, the production has toured the US, Australia and Ireland.
Through John Bosco's narrative, the play brings life to the letters that are to, from and between people he trusts and who have influence on his life: his aunt, a close friend, his solicitor, the matchmaker...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 16 Jun 2012 23:18:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Love-Hungry-Farmer]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Woman-of-No-Importance]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Woman of No Importance]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Oscar Wilde had not yet truly hit his stride as a master of form and pace by the time A Woman of No Importance was first staged in 1893. It is classic Wilde in many respects: a comic melodrama populated by a combination of stuffy society types and devil-may-care Wildean stand-ins whose quips and paradoxical epigrams cut through the delusions and hypocrisies of their milieu. Specifically, here Wilde presents us with the company of Lady Hunstanton (Marion O&rsquo;Dwyer), including archetypal dame Lady Caroline Pontefract (Deirdre Donnelly) with long-suffering husband accessory (Tom Hickey), snake-eyed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:52:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Woman-of-No-Importance]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/D-R-A-G----Divided--Radical-and-Gorgeous]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[D.R.A.G. - Divided, Radical and Gorgeous]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Love across the barricades.  It&rsquo;s a familiar and recurring plotline in stories and plays about Northern Ireland.  But in Niall Rea's pithy, hour-long drama, the barricades are constructed upon sexual rather than sectarian politics.  Still, social and cultural division provides the climate for an intriguing examination of the struggle for personal identity in an inherently conservative society, fraught with violence and prejudice.

The piece forms an integral element of Rea&rsquo;s academic research into gay identities in the environment in which he was raised, and encompasses a variety...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:41:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/D-R-A-G----Divided--Radical-and-Gorgeous]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Overtime]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Overtime]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not how it is, it&rsquo;s how it looks.&rdquo; This is the common refrain in Jane McCarthy&rsquo;s Overtime, a play that is both a deranged man&rsquo;s conversation with himself, and a discussion between two businessmen on the ethics of the corporate world.
Overtime begins far past the end of the working day. John (Stewart Roche) is asleep on a day bed in his office.  A phone is ringing. Frank (Gerard Byrne) requests that he answer it. John refuses to budge.  Frank continues to needle him. The phone stops ringing eventually, but the barbs do not stop. If they were colleagues,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:52:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Overtime]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Heroin(e)-for-Breakfast]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Heroin(e) for Breakfast]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One was thrown for a loop upon entering the Smock Alley Studio, where Pillowtalk Theatre Company recently mounted their version of Philip Stokes&rsquo; Heroin(e) for Breakfast as part of the '10 Days in Dublin' festival. With a radio recording of the Queen's English protruding from the pounding score like a knackered shin bone, the sense of unease was compounded by a confusing seating layout and house lights which were turned down low. As a swing standard about not letting life get you down ('That&rsquo;s Life') kicked in, a couple burst onto the stage commencing a vigorous bout of copulation that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Jul 2012 23:03:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Heroin(e)-for-Breakfast]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Oleanna]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Oleanna]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Under Ruth Calder-Potts' direction, Company D's simple, sleek production of Mamet's Oleanna captures the complex power play between the two characters intriguingly well. In the first of three scenes, the college professor, John (David Scott) arrogantly claims that it is his job to provoke Carol (Sinéad O'Riordan), his student. In the second scene, he has changed his claim. It is now his job, he asserts, &quot;to tell you what I think&quot;. By the tense third scene, it is his job, he now announces &quot;to say no to you&quot;. This change in his own perception is a reflection &ndash; a refraction...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:10:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Oleanna]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jack-Kairo-and-the-Long-Hard-Kiss-Goodbye]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jack Kairo and the Long Hard Kiss Goodbye]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This isn&rsquo;t detective Jack Kairo&rsquo;s first time on stage. Conceived and performed by Simon Toal, the character previously featured in the one-man show The Friends of Jack Kairo, which premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2005. In this latest instalment, Toal is joined on stage by Patrick O&rsquo;Donnell, and the pair conjure a madcap array of bizarre characters and unlikely situations that the detective encounters while attempting to solve his case.
Although drawing on the 1940s film noir genre for inspiration, with a clear nod to Raymond Chandler&rsquo;s novels (especially the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 08 Aug 2012 21:53:23 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jack-Kairo-and-the-Long-Hard-Kiss-Goodbye]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Seo-Robert---Here-s-Robert]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Seo Robert / Here's Robert]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Given the scope of his cultural and commercial influence, surprisingly little is known of Robert Shipboy McAdam, a member of a remarkable generation of Northern Presbyterians, who saw no contradiction between loyalty to the British Crown and devotion to the Irish language. Within the recently-designated Gaeltacht quarter of West Belfast, McAdam, who, among his many achievements, founded the Ulster  Gaelic Society and compiled an unpublished English-Irish dictionary, is a revered figure. This venue, the Culturlann on the Falls Road, was named in shared memory of him and another distinguished Irish...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:01:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Seo-Robert---Here-s-Robert]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Basra-Boy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Basra Boy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Distressed brickwork on a grey-russet backdrop, tattered Union bunting draped slant-wise across it, and a battered city council wheelie-bin stage-centre: this is Rosemary Jenkinson&rsquo;s East Belfast, and a Michelangelo fresco it decidedly isn&rsquo;t. It spawns Speedy - teenage Orange fluter, smack-head, and king of &ldquo;the oul swagger&rdquo;. He stalks the streets with sidekick Stig, shooting up, shooting off, and generally raising Cain together. Stig eventually decides to &ldquo;play the big man&rdquo; (as Speedy puts it), joins the British Army (as many fluters do in reality), and is whisked...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 06 Aug 2012 22:24:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Basra-Boy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Frank-Pig-Says-Hello]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Frank Pig Says Hello]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Frank Pig Says Hello, Pat McCabe&rsquo;s stage version of his acclaimed novel The Butcher Boy, first appeared as part of the 1992 Dublin Theatre Festival. Yet, overshadowed by Neil Jordan&rsquo;s 1997 film adaptation of the novel, the play has rarely been revived since its premiere. This vibrant co-production by Galway Youth Theatre and Galway Arts Centre Community Drama resurrects and revitalises the forgotten play.
Originally, Frank Pig was staged as a two-hander. In the aftermath of the film&rsquo;s success, director Andrew Flynn wanted to offer a different take on McCabe&rsquo;s overlooked...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:28:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Frank-Pig-Says-Hello]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Titanic-Boys]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Titanic Boys]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[And still they come: in this centenary year of the great, perished liner, a slew of Titanocentric artworks continues to be launched from the creative slipways of its native city. This latest offering focuses on the little-known story of &ldquo;The Guarantee Group&rdquo;, a team of nine Harland and Wolff men headed by chief designer Thomas Andrews, comprising senior tradesmen from the yard and the best apprentices from its four main workshops (fitters, joiners, plumbers, electricians). All nine sail on the Titanic, tasked with monitoring the smooth operation of the majestic vessel on its maiden...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 08 Aug 2012 23:11:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Titanic-Boys]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Much-Ado-About-Nothing]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Much Ado About Nothing]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Although in existence as a professional, independent company since 2004, with a number of productions under its belt, it&rsquo;s fair to say that AC Productions straddles the line between amateur and professional standards. This is worth bearing in mind when viewing the work, not least of all because, in an ideal world, there would be room for everyone to do as they wished. Nonetheless, with Much Ado About Nothing, the company really seems to have over-stretched itself, and the result is a very weak production.
In terms of the script itself, this is about as light and straight-forward as Shakespeare...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:54:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Much-Ado-About-Nothing]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Watt]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Watt]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What Watt play by Samuel Beckett? In this Gate Theatre production, Galway Arts Festival audiences discovered that even Beckett will school-boyishly pun in actor Barry McGovern&rsquo;s engaging and quietly confident stage animation of the 1945 book.
The &lsquo;difficult&rsquo; original is purposely disjointed and told in a narrative voice that shifts and changes unpredictably. For this stage version, fortunately Watt is given a bit of linear plot. Although it is still tricky to link the events and to digest Beckett&rsquo;s meandering, inimitable language, the production creates a definite beginning,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:55:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Watt]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Mai-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Mai]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The work of a talented playwright such as Marina Carr is always eagerly anticipated, whether it is a new play or a revival. Unfortunately, Mephisto Theatre Company&rsquo;s production of The Mai disappoints. While there is much about this interpretation that is magical, it is Carr&rsquo;s writing and some outstanding performances that save the production, which falters on its casting, stage set and direction.
Carr&rsquo;s genius excavation of four generations of Irish women and their absolute compulsion to repeat the same tunes with a completely different orchestration is flattened by the casting...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 17 Aug 2012 23:03:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Mai-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Village-Wooing]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Village Wooing ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When a woman wearing a watch asks a man the time, perhaps he ought to be circumspect. Bernard Shaw&rsquo;s one-act comedietta of an unlikely romance is a delightful little lunchtime treat of delicious wordplay and verbal wit.
An aristocratic poet and occasional travel writer, A (Elliot Moriarty), sits working in a temporarily peaceful corner of the deck onboard &lsquo;The Empress of Patagonia&rsquo; as she cruises the Red Sea. His aim to pen 500 words before lunch is made impossible by the perpetual interjections of Z (Rebecca Grimes), a seemingly harmless and charming young phone operator who...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 21 Aug 2012 20:11:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Village-Wooing]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Fringe-Festival]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Galway Fringe Festival 2012]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The inaugural Galway Fringe Festival boasted over thirty theatre performances (including ten student productions), twelve dance shows, an exhibition featuring the work of over fifty artists, as well as a selection of rehearsed readings, cabaret, comedy, music gigs and workshops. Conceived by festival director, Claire Keegan, this open-access event served to complement the concurrent Galway Arts Festival by providing new and emerging artists the opportunity to showcase their work at the height of the busy tourist season.
Keegan, who has a longstanding background in theatre, worked for years at...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:08:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Fringe-Festival]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Weight]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Weight]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As I waited to enter the site specific performance space, at the AXIS theatre in Ballymun, various
notions of &lsquo;weight&rsquo; began to travel through the mind particular to dance performance; the physical
and metaphorical weighting of bodies in stillness or at speed, the emotional freighting of a piece,
the burden of tension, how pacing and rhythm affect the scale of weight. But also, the additional
loading brought by an observer, an audience; that unmoving partner in a performance. These
passing musing were to reverberate very particularly in this new show from Fluxusdance Company which...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Weight]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Moll]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Moll]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is not until well into the second half of John B. Keane&rsquo;s Moll that a world without a priest&rsquo;s wall is mentioned at all, and that is a brief reference to the poor in Peru. In Keane&rsquo;s parodying of a rural presbytery in Kerry, the incumbent priests&rsquo; obsessive preoccupations are about the size of their dinner portions, their waistlines and position in the hierarchy; there is no mention of the struggle facing the populace of an impoverished Ireland of the 1970s. Dingle&rsquo;s Beehive Theatre Company go for farce in their emphasis of a community&rsquo;s outrageous selfishness...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:50:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Moll]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Krapp's Last Tape]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Fifteen minutes into this production, with a single word yet to be spoken, I begin thinking that a better title for it might be Krapp's Last Tape: The Director's Cut. The director in question is Robert Wilson, legend of avant-garde and experimentalist theatre. He is acting Krapp in his own staging, the blue riband dramatic offering at 'Happy Days', the inaugural International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen. Is the quarter of an hour Wilson expends on getting through the first stage direction (a long one, admittedly) brilliantly insightful exegesis, or palpable self-indulgence?
A bit of both,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 25 Aug 2012 09:15:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Elevator]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: ELEVATOR]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[At a party in the woods under a blanket of snow in an anonymous place almost anything
and everything is possible. The six guests (and the maid), armed with an endless supply of
cocaine and enough money for an army to snort it with, waste no time in getting high and
staying there. Songs are sung, clothes removed, moves are made and buttons are pressed in
stunningly stylized moments played out by the cast as their chemically elevated selves. But if
life is like an elevator, this one soars high and falls hard.

Phillip McMahon&rsquo;s text is poetic, devastating and at times hilarious as it...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Elevator]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--CIRCA-STILL--RUPTURE-NOW]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: CIRCA STILL, RUPTURE NOW]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When fragments of our memories are scattered like particles of an atomic bomb, how do we begin to piece them back together? Lithium&rsquo;s Circa Still, Rupture Now challenges us to explore concepts of memory and perception through a disjointed assembly of powerful iconic images of war and conflict; before bringing the conflict to life right in front of our eyes. It&rsquo;s quiet, it&rsquo;s loud; it&rsquo;s warm, it&rsquo;s hostile; it&rsquo;s an Irish story, it&rsquo;s a global story; it&rsquo;s near and it&rsquo;s distant. 

The dancehalls, showbands and repression of a bygone Ireland are...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--CIRCA-STILL--RUPTURE-NOW]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SOLPADEINE-IS-MY-BOYFRIEND]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: SOLPADEINE IS MY BOYFRIEND]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Over literature&rsquo;s long history, great writers have eulogised the transcendent powers of opium, heroin and cocaine, to name but a few. In Solpadeine Is My Boyfriend, Stefanie Preissner documents one woman&rsquo;s attachment to an accessible, over-the-counter fix, solpadeine (which we learn is three parts paracetamol, caffeine and codeine) at a time when the world is falling down all around her. Part voyage from innocence to depression, part open letter to Generation Emigration, Solpadeine Is My Boyfriend is a brave, surprisingly moving production anchored by the endearing Preissner, its writer...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SOLPADEINE-IS-MY-BOYFRIEND]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--A-BLINDING-GLIMPSE-OF-THE-OBV]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: A BLINDING GLIMPSE OF THE OBVIOUS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sitting at the end of a long table, Fiona Sheil speaks quietly into a microphone, occasionally sipping on a glass of water, glancing down at her script &ndash; or perhaps we should say, her lecture notes. Sheil provides first-hand material by dissecting her own major heartbreak, from reliving the daydreams that provided respite from reality, to lip-synching a song when words don&rsquo;t suit. Stephen Hughes joins Sheil at the table to animatedly present a paper of Sheil&rsquo;s &lsquo;condition&rsquo; &ndash; that is, the common insanity that follows being dumped. Sheil&rsquo;s madness had been...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--A-BLINDING-GLIMPSE-OF-THE-OBV]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--TROMLUI-PHINOCCHIO---PINOCCHI]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: TROMLUÍ PHINOCCHIO / PINOCCHIO – A NIGHTMARE]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Teenage boys can be such blockheads. None more so than Pinocchio, of  course, the original runaway ingrate whose rebellion against parental  control leads him very far from the safety of home. Then again,  Gepetto's parenting credentials are not quite established here: ordered  by phone from a dubious tv sales outlet, we watch as two white-coated  manufacturers drill, saw, hammer Pinocchio into being. It's good fun and  really well done, but the father/creator and son relationship is not  really carved out before Pinocchio makes his escape.

But this is a  small quibble in what is otherwise a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--TROMLUI-PHINOCCHIO---PINOCCHI]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--FLATPACK]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: FLATPACK]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[With current uncertainly about the future direction of opera in Ireland, Ulysses Opera Company's IKEA-inspired FLÅTPÄCK proposes a cheap, easy-to-construct, yet stylish model. That metaphor, however convenient, is also unfortunately flatpack. Although this production ignores the weighty heirloom of tradition by cheerfully replacing red carpet and chandeliers with plywood and Allen keys, it also lays bare IKEA's empty catalogue promises of blissful living.

The Swedish company's spiritual tradition might lie in the 1930s notion of the folkhemmet (people's home), but however hard its marketing...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--FLATPACK]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--MASS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: MASS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A search for a satisfactory 21st-century cultural replacement for the religious ritual. Duncan Molloy&rsquo;s exploration of an alternate form of shared community experience in post-Christian Irish society. But it isn&rsquo;t as grim as all that, especially the raw onion-eating tour de force by Amanda Coogan. Her &ldquo;Reading&rdquo;, along with those of Darragh Kelly (reciting the gospel according to Charlie Haughey from a recognisable &lsquo;80s speech), and Eleanor Methven in a lyrical riff with a bit of help from Paul Simon&rsquo;s You Can Call Me Al, issue from the pens of the inimitable...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--MASS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--OH-LOOK--HUMMINGBIRDS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: OH LOOK, HUMMINGBIRDS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Way back in 1995, Bill Gates wrote: &ldquo;someday we&rsquo;ll be able to record everything we see and hear&rdquo;. Today that prognostication is a fact of life that most of us take for granted. Bluepatch and Floating World&rsquo;s production of Oh Look, Hummingbirds takes that once-radical notion to a fascinating and disturbing extreme: what if we could actually experience a recorded log of memories of someone we loved? 

While it has all the makings of a potentially intriguing sci-fi film, Oh Look, Hummingbirds makes for a rather uneven piece of theatre. It&rsquo;s stymied by its unusual conceit:...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 09 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--OH-LOOK--HUMMINGBIRDS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--FARM]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: FARM]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When talking about farming, it&rsquo;s knee jerk to wax lyrical about living on the land. Well, we all live on the land, be it ever so covered in concrete. The true issue is the yearning to live with the land, an idea that, ahem, is reaped to its fullest harvest in FARM.

The audience bovinely shuffle around the warehouse that contains the show, with the usual obstruction of sight lines that promenade theatre guarantees. Myriad scenes take us from an auction house to a lesson in untacking a cart horse; from an urban allotment to a barn dance; from a calving shed to a lonely field that doesn&rsquo;t...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--FARM]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DEATH-OF-THE-TRADESMEN]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: DEATH OF THE TRADESMEN]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;You&rsquo;re terrific. You&rsquo;re terrific. You&rsquo;re fired.&rdquo; Like so many, Willy waved goodbye to the school yard at twelve years old to hone his trade. With his two-tiered toolbox in his little soft hands and his blue van, off he went to fit his city&rsquo;s carpets. He found a girl, settled down and just relaxed, as the song goes. Life was good and work was endless, just like the offers of cups of tea from (almost) all the kitchens of Dublin.

Losing your job can be the death of anyone, but at fifty-four, with nothing to fall back on but a house built of toolboxes and a housewife...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 09 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DEATH-OF-THE-TRADESMEN]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dido-and-Aeneas]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dido and Aeneas]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Cork Opera House&rsquo;s production of Dido and Aeneas can teach the viewer a lot about Baroque opera and how it can be productively recreated in the twenty-first century. At a time dominated by the so-called 'historic performance practice', or the attempt to perform music from the Baroque and earlier periods as faithfully as possible in the style and on the instruments of the time of origin, this version shows that sometimes engaging with the spirit of the piece can be more rewarding than clinging to the letters of the score.
The opera begins with four female musicians standing on stage, commencing...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 06 Sep 2012 20:47:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dido-and-Aeneas]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe--RUMPUS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: RUMPUS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For magic and delight, Macnas has no match. With their characteristically beautiful creations and boundless energy, the label &lsquo;for all the family&rsquo; is truly deserved. Rumpus, we are told, is Macnas&rsquo; &ldquo;boutique travelling show&rsquo; and the atmospheric setting of the Civic Amphitheatre suits it down to the ground. A glowing, exquisite paper sculpture hare acts as both backdrop and central figure of the three stories of Rumpus. Love, madness and courage are the grand themes of these tales, interpreted with humour, music and a strong dash of mischief. 

Taken from a variety...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 09 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe--RUMPUS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BLACK-WEDNESDAY]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: BLACK WEDNESDAY]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;I wish I could tell a nice, simple story&rdquo;, says Danni, Dee Burke&rsquo;s persona in Black Wednesday. It&rsquo;s true &ndash; this story is not a straightforward one. We&rsquo;re warned at its outset: &ldquo;this isn&rsquo;t going to come out easy. It&rsquo;s going to come out in fragments.&rdquo; And indeed it does, covering the turbulent span of this young woman&rsquo;s life. Gavin Kostick&rsquo;s writing flows easily between humour and seriousness, balanced between the colloquial and the expressive. Moments are captured vividly in lovely language, and Wojciech Hupert&rsquo;s sound...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BLACK-WEDNESDAY]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--TONIGHT-EVERYTHING-S-GOING-TO]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: TONIGHT EVERYTHING'S GOING TO CHANGE]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Tonight Everything&rsquo;s Going to Change promises revenge when a group of newly unemployed young professionals gather together on their last night. Thankfully the play is more nuanced than that and what they are seeking by the end isn&rsquo;t simple retribution but something more sinister.

Adam O&rsquo;Keeffe&rsquo;s writing and direction captures a specific generation. The late- twenties, suited, (ex)-employees of city firms find a home on the stage in this production and both the strong naturalistic acting (Annette Flynn is stand-out) and observed dialogue mean it&rsquo;s as if we are eavesdropping...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--TONIGHT-EVERYTHING-S-GOING-TO]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--LAUREN-WHITE-GOES-ON-A-DATE]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: LAUREN WHITE GOES ON A DATE]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Facebook profile poster for Lauren White Goes On a Date did not bode well. Our increasingly cyber society has often been portrayed on stage, and rarely is it successful. White&rsquo;s approach is rather different in that she brings the virtual &ndash; a shortlist of males from okcupid.com &ndash; right onto the stage of The New Theatre. This is achieved with the help of the audience, who weigh in on each decision, from outfit to single male candidate.

White has no real problems with relationships or dating, she just hasn't found her perfect man yet (not an unheard of occurrence). Neither...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--LAUREN-WHITE-GOES-ON-A-DATE]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--THE-LIFE-AND-SORT-OF-DEATH-OF]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: THE LIFE AND SORT OF DEATH OF ERIC ARGYLE]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[






Normal
0




false
false
false

EN-IE
X-NONE
X-NONE









































































































































































/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--THE-LIFE-AND-SORT-OF-DEATH-OF]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SPARKPLUG]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: SPARKPLUG]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In this piece, Little John Nee becomes Sparkplug O'Callaghan, a singer who is compelled to sing the blues, finding cause, as he wanders around the shifting sands of the northern Tullyglen, represented by the boxes on stage that unfurl narrative props with each visiting. 

At one point, the boxes begin to resemble a lighthouse - an interesting symbol for this piece of storytelling which looks to search out small stories, creating an atmosphere where innocence and restlessness coexist; it's there in the children swinging idly on the gate, and in the pensioned-off guard obsessively stalking Ruby,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SPARKPLUG]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--ADVENTURES-OF-A-MUSIC-NERD--1]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: ADVENTURES OF A MUSIC NERD: 1 GUY, 2 CUPS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stand-up comedy meets aural autopsy in Ronan Leonard's too long but often funny dissection of the Irish obsession with World Cup songs. Slicing up eight of the 27 tracks penned in support of the boys in green, for contests in 1990 and 1994, it captures the mania and confusion it created in his then ten-year-old world, when he took the delusion expressed by the songwriters at face value. Looking back from his 2012 vantage point, he comically exposes the ludicrous fallacies, inaccuracies and recurring preoccupations in the songs, while providing us with smaller glimpses of his own world.

It&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--ADVENTURES-OF-A-MUSIC-NERD--1]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absoute-Fringe-2012--THE-CIRCUS-OF-PERSEVERENCE]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absoute Fringe 2012: THE CIRCUS OF PERSEVERENCE]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For anyone who feels they are living in a circus; sometimes playing the clown, walking a tightrope or even being fed to the lions, then the absurd world created in The Gonzo Theatre Company&rsquo;s The Circus of Perseverance won&rsquo;t seem completely surreal. Amidst bunting and popcorn, they have created a space where reality and the imagination fuse to give us an impression of our fair city, as confusing and colourful as we live it.

Seven interconnected stories come alive to the backdrop of a circus ring with clowns, a presiding ringmaster and live music. Interspersed between these scenes...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absoute-Fringe-2012--THE-CIRCUS-OF-PERSEVERENCE]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--PAYBACK]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: PAYBACK!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a great freedom that comes with being invisible. You can let appearances go, give up all pretence and relax knowing there is no longer any need to be self-conscious. According to Kitty and Mary, this is the great boon that middle-age affords you. Marion O&rsquo;Dwyer and Maria McDemottroe&rsquo;s PAYBACK! follows these two school friends on the day assigned for &lsquo;payback&rsquo;, or more accurately &lsquo;give back&rsquo;. 

McDemottroe's Kitty has tasted of the sweetness that was the Celtic Tiger whilst O&rsquo;Dwyer&rsquo;s Mary would never have known it happened. Their parallel...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--PAYBACK]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BYPASS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: BYPASS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Imagine a world where all the honeybees and earthworms are dead. Now imagine the last five remaining people (or rather &lsquo;Hibernonauts&rsquo;), barefooted in white overalls, playing out a series of domestic &ldquo;rituals&rdquo;- the doctor, the dentist, the salesman - with deliberately forced facades, as they await their final annihilation on &lsquo;Sunflower Estates Six&rsquo; a trillion miles from a long extinct planet, millenniums ahead of the present. Never fear, Jesse Weaver&rsquo;s new play does all that for us.
 
With Beckettian-like minimalism, using nothing but a teacup, a toaster,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BYPASS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--ALL-HELL-LAY-BENEATH]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: ALL HELL LAY BENEATH]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[






Normal
0




false
false
false

EN-IE
X-NONE
X-NONE








































































































































































/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--ALL-HELL-LAY-BENEATH]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: WHITE RABBIT, RED RABBIT]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The opportunity to see Stephen Rea ponder ending his own life via drinking a poisoned glass of water is not typical afternoon theatre faire in Dublin, and the fact that this situation is created by an Iranian playwright not allowed to leave his own country only contributed to the extraordinarily surreal atmosphere behind White Rabbit, Red Rabbit. 

Its simple structure is shaped by oppression: writer Nassim Soleimanpour is forbidden to travel outside his home country and has thus supplied a sealed script for a random actor to perform, as well as a few simple set requirements (a ladder, a chair,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BANDIT]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: BANDIT]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Having run from his past, his responsibilities, and his memories, Peter (Brian O'Riordan) is ready to run for real. Sort of. Like, he is in fact going to run the Dublin Marathon. Except, he&rsquo;s not registered. He is what is known in big race parlance as a bandit, and he&rsquo;s out to prove he can go the distance, even if he is essentially cheating.

We are treated to the story of his life as he runs the race: a precocious talent, he goes off the rails due to a family tragedy. As we get closer and closer to the finish line, we get closer to the core of his story, which makes perfect metaphorical...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BANDIT]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DOGS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: DOGS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;The moment of survival is a moment of power&rdquo; is the paradoxical tagline to Dogs and it provides a neat encapsulation of the choreography&rsquo;s revelation of individual human weakness as well as communal strength. A further subtext, reflected in the title, was the emergence of pack instinct when social norms are absent. This conceptual ambition was well-sustained, despite moments of dramatic unevenness.

Initial movements show fragmentation and asymmetry within the group of six dancers, mirrored in Stephen Dodd&rsquo;s crepuscular lighting and Tom Lane&rsquo;s deconstruction of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DOGS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--The-Lehane-Trilogy----A-Theat]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: The Lehane Trilogy... A Theatre Show in Six Parts]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ruth Lehane has been watching the dust settle on her silver tea set for four years; waiting for her life to take a turn for the better. Standing at a literal and metaphorical crossroads in her Aran jumper, woollen bikini, and bright red nose, Lehane is as disorientated as a trilogy in six parts. Where did it all go wrong? How did she become a cat lady? And, most importantly, where is &lsquo;he&rsquo;? &lsquo;He&rsquo; being the tall, muscle-bound, perfect, intangible man who will swoop in and sate her &ldquo;unsatisfied wants and unrealised dreams&rdquo;.

The axis that Lehane&rsquo;s one-woman...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--The-Lehane-Trilogy----A-Theat]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--CAUGHT]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: CAUGHT]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The term &lsquo;physical theatre&rsquo; can describe a whole range of performance, the one defining factor being bodies moving in space. Billing themselves as &lsquo;a pint-sized Cirque du Soleil&rsquo;, Fidget Feet thoroughly embrace this premise with Caught, a mish-mash of mime, aerial acrobatics, and dance. However, a little more movement of the bodies involved would have been welcome.

Despite the presence of a chops-licking wolf, this performance lacks meat. In a contemporary take on Little Red Riding Hood, company members Chantal McCormick and Lee Clayden cavort unconvincingly through a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--CAUGHT]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--U-R-HAMLET]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: U-R-HAMLET]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The first impression that Show in A Bag&rsquo;s U-R-Hamlet gives is that of tedious lo-fi blah blah blah: a detritus-strewn stage inhabited by a single actor disregarding the fourth wall talking about himself and apples and Brecht. We really don&rsquo;t come to a show to see actors be their own selves and give us theatre history lessons, do we?

Hmmm. In U-R-Hamlet, Conor Madden invites us into that messy, chaotic no-man&rsquo;s land between stage door and downstage centre, between real life and performance. In the process he deftly employs the tropes of Shakespeare&rsquo;s play to illuminate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--U-R-HAMLET]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe--BROADENING]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe: BROADENING]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How far could you be pushed away from who you think you are?

Broadening brings together a group of people who have signed up for a secret social experiment. Some knowingly, for money or escape, have agreed to be participants. Others think they are in control of the process, but even they are manipulated and recorded in the name of &lsquo;science.&rsquo;

In this excellent new play by Peter Dunne for Glass Doll Productions what is supposedly being tested is the limits of endurance in extreme conditions; the levels of tolerance when pushed by those in power.

Taking the nuclear structure of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe--BROADENING]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Night-in-November]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Night in November]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[
It may have been written almost 20 years ago and in a very specific political context; it may be laden with two-dimensional representations of the Catholic and Protestant communities of the North; its central Damascene conversion from smug, buttoned-up Ulsterman to rowdy, beer-swilling Irishman may come rather too easily, but it has always been hard to resist the dark, knowing humour of Marie Jones&rsquo; bittersweet A Night in November.

Now, Conor Grimes&rsquo; thoughtful, engaging solo performance as unfulfilled dole clerk Kenneth McCallister brings a new dimension to a play, which was in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:12:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Night-in-November]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012---The-Trick--and--Burning-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: 'The Trick' and 'Burning Love' an evening of Grand Guignol]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As the audience takes their seats on multiple levels of scaffolding down long corridors that suggest a descent into the dissident world of hedonism, The Trick&rsquo;s Shóna (Mary Cate Smith) is already gyrating in mock sexy moves on a lapdancer&rsquo;s pole. Staged at the Boys School of Smock Alley Theatre, the choice of location seems wonderfully ironic.
In their interpretation of two thrillers of the Grand Guignol, Carpet Theatre adopt a characteristically imagistic approach. However Shóna&rsquo;s erotica is the only instance of Carpet Theatre&rsquo;s trademark physical humour and the production...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:30:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012---The-Trick--and--Burning-Love]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Sequin-Dreams]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: Sequin Dreams]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Written and performed by Michele Moran, and part of the Show in a Bag initiative, Sequin Dreams explores a number of stories based around the 1960s, taking us from the lanes of Meath, to The Gateways Club in London, and Club Tropicana in Beirut. 

Jackie is our guide, and we follow her journey as an innocent 12 year old losing her mother, to life as a showgirl, with her dreams of &quot;beads and brocade&quot; quickly fading. Moran ably inhabits the role of Jackie, and several other characters that populate each community she talks of. Sometimes she is &quot;Clubfoot&quot; Tina, or her estranged...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Sequin-Dreams]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--HUNGRY-TENDER]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: HUNGRY TENDER]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Women&rsquo;s distorted relationships with food have been documented to a degree that implies total ownership &mdash; fat being a feminist issue and all that. For a man to get up there, centre stage, and start telling a story about how he hates his body? That&rsquo;s something. Or it almost is, in Hungry Tender, conceived, created and performed by Shane Byrne.

Byrne is seemingly trying to channel the King, perhaps calling upon Elvis as his protective spirit animal, whilst describing how much he dislikes his own body. He does this in the third person, which already serves to dilute the message,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--HUNGRY-TENDER]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--GREEN-STREET]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: GREEN STREET]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As we watch Robert Emmet (Elliot Moriarty) deliver his historic speech, after being sentenced to death for treason, the idea of a rotting system leaps out, providing topical resonances for today, the fulcrum of the efforts of this brilliant company that have woken ghosts from their haunted slumber. 

These ghosts include journalists, lawyers, judges, and the accused - for example, Myles Joyce, who was wrongly convicted of the Maamtrasna murders in 1882, and sentenced to death in a language he didn't understand. James Joyce, who often sat watching trials was moved to write about this in his 1907...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--GREEN-STREET]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--RSVP]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: RSVP]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[RSVP begins with a greeting delivered over an MP3 player out in front of the OReilly Theatre on Great Denmark St. We&rsquo;re not off to play, but a teenagers party and if anybody asks why we&rsquo;re there, we&rsquo;re supposed to tell them we know Enda. 

Our guide Rosa took us down the laneways and backstreets behind Dorset Street, talking incessantly about Enda, before guiding us to the headquarters of Dublin Youth Theatre, where with the help of trailblazing immersive UK theatre group Coney, a booze-free party is at full blast. As a guest at the party, the audience enters the performance,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--RSVP]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Constellations]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: Constellations]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Still in their infancy as a company (formed in January 2011), PaperDolls are ferociously determined. This is nicely reflected in the Spartan monochrome costumes worn by the performers and the utilitarian surroundings of D-Light studios, giving the cast the air of a pack of hungry wolves, lean and hard.

The show is billed as &lsquo;an experiment in risk&rsquo; and it certainly is that. Some performers have their upper torsos (arms included) bound in rope, before engaging in complex, ground-based and aerial, acrobatic sequences. A highlight is the opening section in which three performers swing...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Constellations]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--AN-OUTSIDE-UNDERSTANDING]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: AN OUTSIDE UNDERSTANDING]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Are you on the edge of the circle figuring out the inner action or standing inside the circle and musing about the external world? Ways of looking and perspective continued to fascinate choreographer Liz Roche and here she applies her customary reflective dance-making intelligence to that of physical difference.
Commissioned to make a work for Croí Glan, integrated dance company, Roche chose the form of the duet. She brings an intuitive subtle experience of the form to make partnering the central focus of the work, artfully mining it for her two dancers, Mary Nugent and Dawn Mulloy, one disabled,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--AN-OUTSIDE-UNDERSTANDING]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--MIRROR--MIRROR]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: MIRROR, MIRROR]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ether Productions are competing against the elements in their stunning aerial bedtime story, Mirror, Mirror. Those distractions include a bustling box office downstairs and the functioning elevator that stops and opens onto the playing space every few minutes, constantly tempting us out of the world the performers have created. Thankfully, through glorious physicality, impressive design and the sheer ingenuity of writer and choreographer Niamh Creely's feast for our inner fantasist, this never happens.

Upstairs in Filmbase, as the sun goes down, a company of three aerialists flesh out the darker...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--MIRROR--MIRROR]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--A-DANGERMAN]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: A DANGERMAN]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The definition of a dangerman in the Collins' dictionary is someone who is likely to inflict damage on
opponents. It can also be applied at parties for the person with whom a conversation can lead to a
broadening of horizons&hellip; or a hostage situation. That&rsquo;s kind of like this piece. A one-man-show with
conversational leanings, it&rsquo;s unlikely to be topped in the peculiar stakes. Left perplexed by its sudden
close, but intrigued by what had happened, I sensed I liked it, but couldn&rsquo;t quite say why.

Perhaps it was Walsh&rsquo;s tone. Calm, sombre with an edge of menace...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--A-DANGERMAN]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Playboy-of-the-Western-World-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Playboy of the Western World]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Conall Morrison&rsquo;s Playboy  has all the ingredients of the triumphant Crucible with which he opened the revamped Lyric a year ago. He has brought together an  ensemble cast of newcomers and veterans, a great design team and a commitment to a style of performance that emphasizes the physicality of interpersonal relationships, achieving at times a balletic quality.
Monica Frawley&rsquo;s design presents the single room in which Pegeen Mike (Orla Fitzgerald) tends bar alone. This is not a run-down shebeen, but a large barn of a place lit by a string of electric lights, a nod to modernity at...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:10:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Playboy-of-the-Western-World-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--JUST-IN-TIME]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: JUST IN TIME]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Playground strand of ABSOLUT Fringe is theatre that describes itself as immersive and interactive, and involves that most alarming of all phrases, audience participation. Just In Time, however, does not even come close to that particular form public torture. You don't have to studiedly avoid eye contact with cast members or be hauled up on stage to be embarrassed &ndash; mostly because there isn&rsquo;t even a stage involved. The labyrinthine streets of Temple Bar serves as the set, and can be traversed singly or in pairs as long as you are armed with a trusty iPhone or Android phone.

Máiréad...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--JUST-IN-TIME]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--HIPSTERS-WE-MET-AND-LIKED]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: HIPSTERS WE MET AND LIKED]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Hipsters are completely annoying, so the idea of a show about hipsters completely breaks the annoy-o-meter. What is even more annoying? When everybody in the audience are hipsters too, and they are all mates and are all taking and laughing &mdash; but then you see someone you know and you&rsquo;re like, oh hey, cool!

Earnestly self-absorbed, The Company&rsquo;s latest is a boy and girl meet each other in primary school, boy and girl are too nervous to hook up in secondary school, boy and girl are housemates and still too nervous to hook up sort of love story. Devised by Nyree Yergainharsian...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--HIPSTERS-WE-MET-AND-LIKED]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--EMPTY-ECHO-and-SOFTER-SWELLS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: EMPTY ECHO and SOFTER SWELLS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There&rsquo;s a fine (and sometimes indistinguishable) line between boundary-pushing and farce. Does something that strikes you forcibly as absurd and yet holds your attention count as the former or the latter? 
It&rsquo;s undeniable that DISH Dance&rsquo;s double bill Empty Echo/softer swells is defiantly experimental. To wit: a man in a toga with a ray gun slung over his shoulder marches in jittery squares in one corner of the stage; a woman in a hooded parka covets lumps of volcanic rock, letting out an ear-piercing scream when one is dropped to the floor; and, a couple of people inter themselves...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 16 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--EMPTY-ECHO-and-SOFTER-SWELLS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--THE-COCKROACH-AND-THE-INVENTO]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: THE COCKROACH AND THE INVENTOR]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Cockroach and the Inventor positions itself as outdoor theatre more than street spectacle. The story is a version of Pinocchio; a young cockroach grows beyond the expectations of his inventor-master and desires his independence.

As expected of Macnas, the grand-scale puppetry is stunning. The aesthetic is steampunk and the original cockroach is a copper skeleton of limbs and pincers, found materials cobbled together to create an enormous insect that moves gracefully in the small rotunda of the Civic Amphitheatre&rsquo;s stone stage. However, the production is limited rather than enhanced...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 16 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--THE-COCKROACH-AND-THE-INVENTO]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Time-Bomb]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: Time Bomb]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[From recollections of a sunny afternoon in a garden in southern Sweden to a clever re-enactment of that childhood summer idyll, memories were on the move in this gentle, affectionate show. Combining film, dance, text and design like fragments of memories, seemingly unconnected, the show conceived by Liz Nilsson and Kay Scorah was produced through a collaborative palette of experience. 

The process of reclaiming and then articulating memories is a journey in itself. To help us, the audience, locate our own personal time bombs of memories, we embarked on an assignment-filled bus journey to the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--Time-Bomb]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DEAD-CAT-BOUNCE----CLOWNS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: DEAD CAT BOUNCE... CLOWNS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Long before Bozo, Bobo and Binki, arrive on stage the tone is clearly laid out for the world&rsquo;s most
morose clowning troupe. With cardboard boxes and garbage strewn across a desolate room at
the centre of which a half empty bottle of whisky sits waiting to be attended to, the scenography fits
perfectly with a tale of three middle aged men with pockets full of balloons and painted on smiles.

These clowns possess less of the dignified sorrow of Stephen Sondheim&rsquo;s famous musical number
and more of the childish bickering that comes with pointing out each other&rsquo;s flaws; for example
messing...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DEAD-CAT-BOUNCE----CLOWNS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DISCONNECTED]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: DISCONNECTED]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Audiences get a particular thrill from stories of commonplace   situations; moments of recognition that offer them that narcissistic   &ldquo;aah&rdquo; that generally leads to reminiscing about their own personal   experiences. DISCOnnected is a mine rich with such moments. Invited down   into night-club we are presented with the usual Irish set-up; man and   woman meet, they panic, drink themselves silly and finally make the   beast with two backs.

Sarah Baxter and Stephen O&rsquo;Rourke go  through the motions of the  club-world with a free and fluid  choreography, where the specificity of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DISCONNECTED]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--I-M-NOT-A-D-H-D----I-M-B-O-L-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: I'M NOT A.D.H.D... I'M B.O.L.D]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The writers of Waiting for Ikea return for this year&rsquo;s Fringe with I&rsquo;m Not ADHD... I&rsquo;m BOLD; a comic
performance that holds a mirror up to society&rsquo;s obsession with slapping a label on everything. School
teacher Dana (Jacinta Sheerin) begrudgingly attends a therapy session with dramatherapist Ingrid
(Clare Barrett) after she assaults a lactose-intolerant, ADHD-suffering 'devil-child' with a milk carton
and verbal cannon of rhyming insults. We soon learn that not only is Dana&rsquo;s outburst owing to a
severe case of ADD, but that her therapist isn&rsquo;t short of a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--I-M-NOT-A-D-H-D----I-M-B-O-L-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SINGLEHOOD]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: SINGLEHOOD]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Alone again&hellip; naturally.&rdquo; The Gilbert O'Sullivan line is delivered with an open smile, as eight performers and two musicians enter one by one and take their seats in the circle for Singlehood, a piece of documentary theatre woven from the personal stories of fifty singletons (well, 49 plus one recent defector), threaded with witty tunes written and performed by platonic partnership, The Guilty Folk.

Suspended high overhead are five large bundles of boxes, 'HuntOffice' and 'Handle With Care' emblazoned on their sides, glowing pink, yellow, cold blue as the mood shifts in the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SINGLEHOOD]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BRB-(Be-Right-Back)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: BRB (Be Right Back)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This brief play gets off to a promising start as the three characters begin to emulate a young
woman in a YouTube clip as she demonstrates, in tutorial-like fashion on a big screen set
against the back wall of the space, the self-application of multiple coatings of make-up.
Layer after layer, her face is cosmetically transformed to a point where what is beautiful
becomes at once quite theatrically grotesque. The effect is quite mesmerising, and as our
two live characters kneel before us to wash themselves back to themselves, Fionnuala Gygax
gives a sultry centre-stage performance of Melody...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--BRB-(Be-Right-Back)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Woman-and-Scarecrow]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Woman and Scarecrow]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Ophelia now. She had a good death.&rdquo; In Woman and Scarecrow, playwright Marina Carr has moved from dramatizing the tragic Irish family to the flawed and somewhat bitter individual, Woman, seeking to give her &lsquo;a good death&rsquo;. This good death boasts of all the rawness, spite and mystery that only a Carr theatrical journey can offer.Dealing with the discourses of feminism and mortality in an Irish marital bedroom, Woman (Joan Sheehy) and her alter ego/inner consciousness &lsquo;Scarecrow&rsquo; (Noelle Brown), reminisce and interrogate Woman&rsquo;s faults and follies in her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2012 23:10:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Woman-and-Scarecrow]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--CODES]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: CODES]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[With CODES, Dublin-based digital collective MIDASpaces have collaborated with dancers Emma O&rsquo;Kane, Roisin Laffan and Rob O&rsquo;Shea, to create a show based on &lsquo;man&rsquo;s evolving relationship with technology&rsquo;. Unfortunately, any relationship between the dancers on-stage and the technological aspects of the piece is tenuous at best.

The opening deluge of snowy static spilling over the backdrop of the stage with drummer Adam Power featured in silhouette (probably the most atmospheric part of the show) is a fitting visual analogy for a piece whose impact is muffled by the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--CODES]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--(The-Making-of)-The-Frogs-aft]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: (The Making of) The Frogs after Aristophanes]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Equinox, a Kilkenny-based company, features artists with learning disabilities in collaboration with professional theatre practitioners and raises the bar for our understanding of the word ensemble, so tightly knit is this troupe.

An ambitious project, Frogs interprets Aristophanes&rsquo; great comic tale which, surely, must be the first
recorded version of &ldquo;where have all the great writers gone?&rdquo;, a question asked by Dionysius before he
undertakes a voyage to Hades to fetch one of them, namely Aeschylus, back to the world of the living.

Broadly comic staging by the company...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--(The-Making-of)-The-Frogs-aft]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SAINT]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: SAINT]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The last few years have, quite rightly, borne witness to a deluge of theatre productions
endeavouring to interrogate the state of the country. Yes there is a story to be told and an audience
to listen, but there is also the fear of saturation with the same topics &ndash; corruption, austerity,
unemployment &ndash; finding their way to centre stage time and again. Thus it is a relief to discover
that Fíbín Teo&rsquo;s dramatisation of Ireland&rsquo;s economic misfortune manages to break the mould of
recession theatre by addressing the matter through farce, puppetry, a fantastic live soundscape...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--SAINT]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--FUNK]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: FUNK]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[






Normal
0




false
false
false

EN-IE
X-NONE
X-NONE








































































































































































/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--FUNK]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--THE-LAST-TEN-YEARS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: THE LAST TEN YEARS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;People are nothing without the land&quot; - one of the ensemble cast of RADE (Recovery through Art, Drama &amp; Education) says - and throughout this humbling, interesting experience, this thesis is explored through the mapping out of the connections between the pharmaceutical industry, Afghani farmers and their poppy fields, fugitive Mexican drug lord Joaquín &quot;El Chapo&quot; Guzman (head of the Sinaloa Cartel, the world's most powerful drug traffickers), American drug policies, and these 11 performers, who have all struggled with addiction. 

What makes the production compelling is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--THE-LAST-TEN-YEARS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DRENCHED]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: DRENCHED]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The rollercoaster of romance, real and imagined, provided the literal and metaphorical backdrop for a new work, from choreographer Luke Murphy. His very physical duet piece with Carleye Decker seeks to ride the see-saw rhythm of love and rejection to a constant video projection of Hollywood images and its narrative of love and heartbreak.

The splicing of schmaltzy film scores and the video excerpts - slickly produced by David Fishel - with the live performances, often humorously underlined the small stories being played out on stage; expressions of longing and heartache, intimacy and betrayal....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012--DRENCHED]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-Am-My-Own-Wife-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[I Am My Own Wife]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[I Am My Own Wife is a one-man show about Lothar Berfelde, who lived his life from his early manhood as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. Though the play is based on a real person, Doug Wright dramatises his writing and research process rather than simply telling Charlotte&rsquo;s story. The play follows his first meeting with Charlotte at the Gründerzeit Museum that she created and managed in East Berlin, through his decision to write about her life and the story she told him, to her exile and her eventual death.
The Gründerzeit is the period from 1890 to the early 1900s, lovingly immortalised in the mansion...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:12:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/I-Am-My-Own-Wife-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tuesdays-with-Morrie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tuesdays with Morrie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Little did Morrie Schwartz realise during his lifetime that his wisdom would touch millions; a book, a movie and then a play and their cumulative impact on readers, movie lovers and theatre goers certainly proves the adage that one good teacher&rsquo;s influence on just one good student can affect positively on the lives of many.
Mitch Albom was a student of sociology professor Morrie Schwartz at Brandeis University in Massachusetts in the late seventies. Profoundly influenced by his professor, Albom - a gifted musician - did not go on to be a great pianist, though encouraged by Morrie to follow...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2012 10:33:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tuesdays-with-Morrie]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Down-by-the-River]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Down by the River]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As contemporary theatre becomes increasingly interactive, sensually stimulating, and collaborative, it is gradually less common to attend a performance which features a solo actor onstage with only a chair as a prop. Every so often a one-man show is produced that reconfirms our faith in the monologue play. Such is the case with Paul Kennedy&rsquo;s Down by the River, a play that reminds us of the powerful effect of non-dramatic theatre, whilst simultaneously engaging an engrossed audience in what is, ultimately, a really good story.
Matt, performed by Michael Bates, is a bus driver from Ringsend,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:49:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Down-by-the-River]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--DUBLINERS]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: DUBLINERS]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If ever there was a literary masterpiece ripe and ready for theatrical adaptation by The Corn Exchange, it&rsquo;s James Joyce&rsquo;s Dubliners.  Joyce&rsquo;s collection of short stories, capturing intimate portraits of  Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century, is richly populated with  characters from nearly every strata of society, each imbued with a  carefully constructed humanity. Taken together, the collection behaves  like a chameleon performer, effortlessly slipping in and out of  differing circumstances, transforming itself before our eyes but still  maintaining a strange, baseline...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--DUBLINERS]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Boys-of-Foley-Street]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: The Boys of Foley Street]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There are only two sets of headphones on the security desk in The LAB. Part of me had known that this show was probably not going to be in one of the well-appointed but decidedly untheatrical rehearsal spaces in the building, and yet, I had had hopes. I was my usual punctual self, and as the clock ticked closer to 6.30, I began to feel that particular dread that I wonder visits theatre-goers everywhere &mdash; am I going to be the only one at this performance?

The third in ANU Productions&rsquo; four-part Monto Cycle in which they tell the stories of Dublin sites that contain histories of despair,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Boys-of-Foley-Street]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Have-I-No-Mouth]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Have I No Mouth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[We can teach our children the &lsquo;Safe Cross Code&rsquo; until they know it word for word. We can tell them never to get into a car with a stranger, and not to accept sweets from people they do not know, even if those people happen to be disguised as their Mammy and Daddy. But there are several things in life we simply cannot protect our children from, however hard we try. Death- that ever so unthinkable, unpredictable and inescapable threat -is one of them.

The seemingly invincible presence of a child&rsquo;s parents and siblings can be, for the unfortunate few, the kind of invariable constant...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Have-I-No-Mouth]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Everyone-is-King-Lear-in-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Everyone is King Lear in his own Home]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[

Normal
0




false
false
false

EN-IE
X-NONE
X-NONE













MicrosoftInternetExplorer4




























































































































































/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Everyone-is-King-Lear-in-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Talk-of-the-Town]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: The Talk of the Town]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Almost two decades after the death of distinguished short story writer and journalist Maeve Brennan, the indelible marks this &lsquo;long-winded lady&rsquo; left on the body of Irish literature and the hearts of her New York readers are judiciously revisited in this copious dramatisation of some of the most significant moments in her life.
One of the most outwardly striking things about The Talk of the Town is the remarkable likeness in appearance between the late Miss Brennan and the play&rsquo;s lead actress Catherine Walker, whose staid-like black and white portrait adorns the front cover of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Talk-of-the-Town]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Politik]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Politik]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Company set out a year and a half ago to educate themselves about politics. Not unlike many young people, they had found themselves detached from politics. The only exception to this was every four years, when it was time to vote &ndash; in much the same way that unfit people take an interest in athletics when the Olympics come round. They visited the headquarters of the four main political parties in Ireland with the intent of joining all; they joined none. What was repeatedly said to them by all parties was that they had &lsquo;great ideas&rsquo; but that it was difficult to make changes...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 03 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Politik]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-House-That-Jack-Fille]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: The House That Jack Filled]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Whatcha gonna do about it?&rdquo; One of the audience members puts it straight to Jack McNally, proprietor of McNally's-by-the-Sea, a rundown family hotel whose loyal patrons have finally abandoned its creaking walls. This hotel is the 'house' that Jack fills with imagined guests, in the latest collaboration between Theatre Lovett and Tasmania-based playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer, a name so good you couldn't make up. (Could you?) Just 30, Kruckemeyer has won heaps of awards for his plays for family audiences, which have been performed across five continents.

Seeking to reprise the massive...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-House-That-Jack-Fille]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Long-Road]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Long Road]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Seven summers ago, fifteen year-old Thomas Devlin died in an unprovoked knife attack, a few hundred yards from his home in the leafy suburbs of north Belfast. The teenager and some friends were returning from buying sweets in a local garage when they were pursued and set upon by two men from a nearby loyalist estate. In the intervening years, his parents Penny Holloway and Jim Devlin have earned nothing but respect and admiration for the dignified manner in which they faced up to this unforeseen tragedy, as well as for the various funds and initiatives they have set up in memory of their son.
But...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:05:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Long-Road]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Diceman]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Diceman]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Anyone who  has lived in Dublin in years past and is over 30 remembers Thom McGinty, aka The Diceman.  He was one of those Dublin characters who materialises from time to time, each so different from the next - Zozimus, The Pope O'Mahony, Bang Bang - but similarly clasped to the collective heart of the city.

McGinty, a blow-in from Scotland, arrived in 1976 with street theatre experience behind him.  In Dublin with little cash, he began busking in the famed Dandelion Market.  His professional moniker originated as the name of a games shop he helped to advertise.  The name stuck and McGinty evolved...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:24:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Diceman]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Hamlet]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Hamlet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Though this be madness, yet there is method in it&rdquo; is a line spoken by Polonius in Act Two, Scene 2 of Shakespeare&rsquo;s Hamlet and is one of the most fitting utterances to come to mind in relation to The Wooster Group&rsquo;s radical reimagining of the infamously dark and deeply pensive revenge-tragedy. The &lsquo;method&rsquo; is clever in theory and complex in practice, and explained to us directly by Scott Shepherd (our Hamlet-to-be) in a kind of preface to the play from his seat centred among the screens, speakers and carefully angled video cameras of Ruud van den Akker&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Hamlet]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Face-Licker-Come-Home]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Face Licker Come Home]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Rita Ann Higgins&rsquo; poetry frequently tackles exclusion and survival in a voice characterised by irreverence and compassion. In both preoccupations and style, Face Licker Come Home &ndash; the first of Higgins&rsquo; six plays &ndash; is similarly imbued. Twenty-one years after its premiere, Mephisto Theatre Company revived the play for the fifth Galway Theatre Festival and, to mark this production, the author added a new scene.
Face Licker Come Home revolves around Ellen, a middle-aged woman who lives in her bathroom. She spends her time recounting her life with the titular estranged husband,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 06 Oct 2012 21:59:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Face-Licker-Come-Home]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Home]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Home]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Fregoli&rsquo;s latest work, as its title suggests, meditates on the meaning of home. Through a variety of monologues and vignettes, Home jumps between, and sometimes weaves together, the stories of six well-drawn characters. Ellie (Maria Tivnan) is an agoraphobic novelist living only through her work. An Australian wanderer (Seamus O&rsquo;Donnell) travels to Ireland in search of his roots and the home his father has sought to repress. Amy (Kate Murray), born into an environment of urban crime, has ended up on the streets. Brendan (Jarlath Tivnan) is a proud, &lsquo;culchie&rsquo; farmer who enjoys...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:01:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Home]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Halcyon-Days]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Halcyon Days]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&lsquo;You can see the dread in every visiting face,&rsquo; says the elderly Patricia in Deirdre Kinahan&rsquo;s new two-hander exploring the battles waged while trying hold on to one&rsquo;s dignity in the face of inevitable physical and mental collapse. Patricia (Anita Reeves) has recently been checked into a Dublin nursing home, much against her own will. The victim of increasingly frequent debilitating seizures, the fiercely independent Patricia immediately bucks against the home&rsquo;s infantilising power structure, and fully believes (at first) that her presence there is only temporary....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 10 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Halcyon-Days]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shibari]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Shibari]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Shibari, the Japanese practice of rope bondage informs both form and content of Gary Duggan&rsquo;s new play. The plot tells of a group of present-day multicultural Dubliners who both strain against and submit to the ties of family, relationships and grief. Reflecting the current national mood these characters seek command of and order in a world that seems beyond their control. A succession of short well-paced scenes reveals how these characters are all knotted to each other&rsquo;s fate. The piece is beautifully wound, and the production, its writing, direction by Tom Creed and acting are tight...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:19:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shibari]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Picture-of-Dorian-Gra]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: The Picture of Dorian Gray]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Oscar Wilde&rsquo;s novel The Picture of the Dorian Gray (1890) is not just about one man&rsquo;s narcissistic obsession with youth and beauty, let alone the twists and turns of socially policed homoerotic desire. It&rsquo;s also a book that explores the difficulties and dangers of representation, such as when a man presents himself other than who he really is; or that man is the subject of a painting; or even when that process is communicated in literary form. While Neil Bartlett&rsquo;s adaptation for the Abbey Theatre is certainly aware of the centrality of form to Wilde&rsquo;s novel, he stages...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 06 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Picture-of-Dorian-Gra]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Steel-Magnolias]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Steel Magnolias]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Hollywood star Mischa Barton plays it low-key in the central role of Shelby Eatenton in director Ben Barnes' production of Steel Magnolias for Solar Theatre. Robert Harling's play, which inspired a hit film starring Julia Roberts in the 1980s, is a crowd-pleaser, incorporating the emotional tugs of humour, pathos, and tragic loss in order to tell the story of female friendship and the bonds of love and loyalty between mother and daughter.
The casting of Barton is certainly something of a coup for the production, and her presence, along with that of actor Anne Charleston &ndash; who for many years...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2012 12:38:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Steel-Magnolias]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sanctuary]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sanctuary]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is rare for the stage to take on a romantic comedy with leading and supporting roles for and about people with intellectual disabilities (ID). Blue Teapot Theatre Company are of course in an ideal position to take this on, employing as they have done since 1996 a cast of people with ID who have performed in many productions including Cinders and A Midsummer&rsquo;s Night Dream.
Sanctuary, however, is Blue Teapot&rsquo;s first play to tackle romantic love and sexual desire for people like the actors themselves. Director Petal Pilley asked Christian O&rsquo;Reilly to write this play for her cast....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 13 Oct 2012 21:08:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Sanctuary]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cove]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Cove]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dance has always had a love-hate relationship with gravity. Ethnochoreologists will point to ritual dances that sought, not only to connect individuals with each other, but to connect with Mother Earth. Unison movement submitted to the pull of the earth with figures squatting or bent over, a deportment that changed through the centuries, particularly after the Enlightenment as courtly dances became codified and developed into ballet. By the nineteenth century ballerinas were portrayed as a weightless sylphs, immune to earthiness &ndash; metaphoric and real - and whenever &ldquo;primitivism&rdquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cove]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Scarlet-WWWeb]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Scarlet WWWeb ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Why aren't more double-headers written? It seems a sensible response theatrically to the allegedly rapid shrinkage in our attention span as a species, in an era dominated by soundbite, tweet and gnomic social media postings. The one-act has its difficulties, however. How do you distil a satisfyingly paced, substantial drama into an hour or so? How do you make three-dimensional, convincingly motivated characters in approximately half the time a full-length piece of writing gives you?
These problems aren't fully overcome in Mary Kelly&rsquo;s Nora's Story, the first of two plays yoked together under...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:48:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Scarlet-WWWeb]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Siege]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Siege]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In May 2011 the newly renovated Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick presented two &lsquo;Scratch&rsquo; theatre nights. Funded by the Arts Council, the aim of the project was to provide five theatre companies with a site where they could perform embryonic work and receive audience feedback. Siege is one of the productions to emerge from the &lsquo;Scratch&rsquo; incubator.
Ciarda Tobin&rsquo;s play is set in a Limerick city housing estate devastated by violent crime. The plot hinges on an unconventional scheme &ndash; invoking the Trojan Horse &ndash; devised by local godfather Mark &lsquo;Mouse&rsquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Oct 2012 15:32:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Siege]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Huzzies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Huzzies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Huzzies is simultaneously a relative rarity for theatre-making in Northern Ireland and a revisiting of some well-worn formulae. Its novelty is in the creation of a performance style in which live rock music is both a key focus of the action and a delightful experience in itself. The cast are talented musicians and they give a strong set of performances as the members of Huzzies, a four-piece band trying to break into the music scene. The music for the production has been specially composed by Katie Richardson of cabaret folk rock group Katie and the Carnival. As well as keyboards, drums and guitar,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:56:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Huzzies]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Chimaera-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Chimaera]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Kinect for X-Box 360 has changed gaming by replacing dexterous  thumbs with all-body movement. Its motion-sensing technology can also be  increasingly found in theatres. And for good reason: for little more  than &euro;100, it can do a job that used to cost thousands. Dancer Angie  Smalis and composer Enda Grennan are the latest Irish-based artists to  harness its capabilities in Chimæra, a duet for Smalis and the  Kinect. Under the hood, Grennan programmed a virtual environment in  which the dancer controlled her surroundings and, paradoxically, the  surroundings controlled her.

Chimæra...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Chimaera-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Death-(on-a-shoestring)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Death (on a shoestring) ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Heaven, pace Talking Heads&rsquo; songwriter David Byrne, is far from being a place where nothing ever happens. In Death (on a shoestring), staged by the Accidental Theatre company for this year&rsquo;s Belfast Festival at Queen&rsquo;s, it&rsquo;s a veritable hot-bed of activity, mostly of a politically incorrect nature.
That, at least, is the premise of Dave Kinghan&rsquo;s new play. In his version of paradise, chief angel Diligence is essentially a paper-pusher (God has &ldquo;retired&rdquo;, apparently), officiously administering the operations of Death, a portly factotum who ushers new-dead...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Oct 2012 21:48:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Death-(on-a-shoestring)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(4)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macbeth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Macbeth is one of the most commonly staged Shakespeare plays on this island: over the past five years there have been at least five significant productions, including one this spring by Second Age Theatre, the Abbey Theatre production in 2010, a production by Selina Cartmell in 2008, and Replay&rsquo;s performance of the play at the Crumlin Road Gaol in 2007, not to mention two visits of the Polish Teatr Biuro Podrozy'spalimpsest What Bloodied Man is That and Opera Ireland&rsquo;s rendering of Verdi&rsquo;s opera in 2009. Each of these offers a new perspective on the play, and Lynne Parker&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:44:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(4)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ghosts-of-Drumglass]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Ghosts of Drumglass]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It's ten o'clock on a cold, dark Saturday night in Belfast. It's raining lightly, and I'm standing outside the public conveniences in Drumglass Park, which normally shut at 5.30pm. I am not alone: huddled around me is a doughty coterie of individuals, pulling mackintoshes tighter against the elements, or slipping into complimentary 'Titanoraks', yellow cagoule-lites left over from the Land of Giants extravaganza on Queen's Island a few months ago.
They're going to need them, because most of the next forty-five minutes is spent trudging round the park precincts, to a variety of locations featured...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 27 Oct 2012 22:06:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ghosts-of-Drumglass]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Paisley-and-Me]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Paisley & Me]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The second play in the Ulster Trilogy, Green Shoot&rsquo;s audit of the current state of play in Northern Ireland, heads deep into the heart of the Protestant community &ndash; or, at least, into the heart of one of its constituencies, for the very name of Ian Paisley is as divisive a force within that community as it is on the other side of the once-unbridgeable cultural divide. Yet, against all odds, it was the same Paisley who took a giant step for mankind when he joinied hands with his former nemesis Martin McGuinness to form one of the most unlikely power-sharing partnerships in modern day...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 30 Oct 2012 18:42:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Paisley-and-Me]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Romeo and Juliet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Love &ndash; passionate, intense, aching and pulsating &ndash; sits at the heart of director Pat Kiernan&rsquo;s interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, staged as a co-production with Cork Opera House. Within a stripped, pared-back, post-modern set, Kiernan leaves space for the central preoccupation of the play &ndash; the uncomplicated love of two young people whose relationship is destroyed by the rigid inflexibility of their parents and by society itself.
It&rsquo;s a universal tale, recognisable to many who have ever been in love: if it&rsquo;s not family pressure complicating a situation, it...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 20 Oct 2012 21:33:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Stoker]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Stoker]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As Bram Stoker declares in Stoker, &quot;people yearn to glimpse the dark side&quot;. This play by Paul Walker responds to that yearning, not only to show the dark side, but also the private side of one of Ireland&rsquo;s most famous writers. And what this production, under Karl Shiels&rsquo; direction, amply illustrates is how Stoker&rsquo;s native city has effectively forgotten the man behind the masterwork. In fact I was so ignorant of the details of Stoker&rsquo;s life, despite Dracula being one of my favourite novels, that, embarrassingly, the programme note by Sherra Murphy and Elaine Sisson...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 31 Oct 2012 20:49:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Stoker]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Port-Authority]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Port Authority]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;The past is over,&rdquo; Dermot (Phelim Drew) informs the audience towards the end of his monologue in Decadent&rsquo;s new production of Conor McPherson&rsquo;s Port Authority. It&rsquo;s a bold and seemingly foolhardy riposte to that old William Faulkner chestnut &ndash; &ldquo;the past is never dead, it&rsquo;s not even past&rdquo;. Yet for Dermot, Kevin and Joe, the three broken men who populate McPherson&rsquo;s play, it is a statement with a literal ring of truth. Delivering their individual narratives from a sort of purgatorial memory chamber, these men are far beyond redemption,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:12:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Port-Authority]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ulysses]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Ulysses]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How do you solve a problem like Ulysses? Dermot Bolger must have asked himself the question a thousand times in the two decades which have elapsed since he made his first tilt at producing a stage version of Joyce&rsquo;s great novel, to the Tron Theatre production of his revised adaptation which had its Irish premiere at this year&rsquo;s Belfast Festival at Queen&rsquo;s.
Bolger&rsquo;s 1994 Ulysses had just a single staged reading in Philadelphia, before revisions to EU copyright law effectively de-barred further presentations of the work in Europe. Bolger&rsquo;s script, though published,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Nov 2012 21:56:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ulysses]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Spraoi]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Spraoi]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A clash of personalities has been at the centre of the work of a number of playwrights - but rarely has it been as much fun as Branar'sSpraoi. Billed as being for children aged 3-6, it will thrill audiences several decades older with its outstanding performances and sense of play. Laugh out loud funny but also genuinely affecting, it captures the comic confusion that abounds as children try to communicate, free from the interference of their elders, when the unifying bond of language is removed.
Two boys meet. One is Irish. One is from Catalunya. One speaks Gaeilge. The other Catalan. One is forward,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:32:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Spraoi]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Manhattan-Whispers--and--Mission-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA['Manhattan Whispers' and 'Mission']]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Shibari, Garry Duggan's debut play for Ireland's National Theatre, explored, amongst many other things, the experience of the non-national living in Ireland today. This double bill of his earlier work, which ran concurrently at Theatre Upstairs, 2001's Manhattan Whispers and 2008's Mission, explores dislocation in the city of New York, be it the Irish experience  as seen through the eyes of three unnamed characters in Manhattan Whispers or, as in Mission, that of a first-generation native New Yorker. Pride, ignorance and a troubled search for one's self are core themes to the plays showing on and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:01:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Manhattan-Whispers--and--Mission-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ride-On!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Ride On!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Thanks God for local radio,&rdquo; says Marie with pointed irony, as the weekly death notices are read out over the airwaves. &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll give us all our moment of fame.&rdquo; The same might be said of Seamus O&rsquo;Rourke&rsquo;s play Ride On!, which brings life to a particular Irish small-town world and a variety of characters who will be familiar to the rural demographic that Livin&rsquo; Dred target in their touring productions.
The play is set in a ramshackle shed just hours before a motorcycle run which has been organised by the Honda 50 Club to raise funds for a variety...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 08 Nov 2012 21:48:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ride-On!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lady-Windermere-s-Fan-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Lady Windermere’s Fan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This wasn&rsquo;t exactly Lady Windermere: The Musical, but as, for the umpteenth time, the cast of Bruiser Theatre Company launched into yet another a cappella barber&rsquo;s shop concoction linking one scene to another, it began to feel like one. The idea, presumably, was to pep up those staid vestiges of Victorian melodrama which cling obdurately to Wilde&rsquo;s first successful play, and inject an element of knowing post-modernity for MAC audiences to smile at.
For me, it backfired: Lady Windermere&rsquo;s Fan, for all its profusion of Wildean bons mots and casual witticisms, is at heart...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:36:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lady-Windermere-s-Fan-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/That-Night-Follows-Day]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[That Night Follows Day]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;That night follows day&rdquo; is just one of the many truths we might tell our children. We might tell them that the sound they are frightened of is only the wind in the trees, and that everything&rsquo;s going to be okay; to count to ten. We might teach them that certain words must not be said at all; that certain words can be said at home, in private, but not in front of other people. They, in return, promise not to say &ldquo;asshole&rdquo; or &ldquo;motherfucker&rdquo;.  They promise to stick to the rules.
Our parents teach us almost everything we know, but our children teach us more....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Nov 2012 06:42:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/That-Night-Follows-Day]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Quietly]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Quietly]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Quietly is a well-written, powerfully performed, close-to-the-bone play about violence and forgiveness. The seventy-minute performance is compelling, from the moment that Jimmy (Patrick O&rsquo;Kane) says to Robert (Robert Zawadzki), the Polish barman of his local pub, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a man coming in later to see me. There might be trouble&rdquo; and you know, right there, that there is trouble on its way for sure.
This trouble takes several forms, from the violent headbutt that Jimmy greets Ian (Declan Conlan) with, to the outpouring of bitterness from both men. This is no innocent meeting...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 23 Nov 2012 20:05:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Quietly]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Bucket-Full-of-Fire]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Bucket Full of Fire]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;Day comes on a little more; night holds out a little less, a little more, a little less, a little more, a little less...&quot; says Hag (Sinead O&rsquo;Brien), a withered old crone standing sentinel at a decaying old well. So Darren Donohue&rsquo;s fever dream of a play begins, itself careening a little more and a little less between seeming states of frenzy and contemplative consciousness.The action, such as it is, unfolds in a theatrical nowhere and no-when, shared by Hag&rsquo;s mysterious well and a double bed stuffed with two grime-encrusted men: the tightly-wound Maude (Simon Toal)...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 23 Nov 2012 22:50:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Bucket-Full-of-Fire]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bodach-an-Chota-Lachna]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bodach an Chóta Lachna]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In a piece I wrote for The Irish Times about the health of Irish language theatre in this country, the artists I spoke to proposed that one of the biggest concerns held by 'would be' audience members was a fear of not understanding the story they've paid to see. Companies working through the language and, more often than not, with children, tend to keep their audiences engaged by putting an emphasis on the physical &ndash; using mask, puppetry and exaggerated physicality to knuckle sense out of what those without a fluency in the language might fear. Recent excellent productions from Branar (Spraoi)...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Oct 2012 22:35:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bodach-an-Chota-Lachna]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Delta-Phase]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Delta Phase]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The title Delta Phase could be drawn from the three-phase electric power system used by electric grids to transfer power, or the river delta landforms which connect to oceans and seas. Both sources are apt. It is this fusion of the three young male protagonists that creates and sustains the powerful dynamic in this popular Polish play, translated into English by Anna Wolf and John Currivan for Polish Theatre Ireland. Of course, it may just refer to their acid trip. These three lads, Misiek (Lloyd Cooney), Liszaj (Finbarr Doyle), and Mastodont (Jason Duff) may have Polish names and support Polish...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 23 Nov 2012 19:38:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Delta-Phase]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Incredible-Book-Eating-Boy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Incredible Book Eating Boy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The cover illustration of Oliver Jeffers&rsquo; best-selling storybook shows a stick-like child with an anxious face and a huge gaping mouth into which he is tossing a hefty hard-back book.  He is Henry, a troubled boy with low self-esteem and an apparently low intellect.  He is bullied to distraction by his sneering, smart-assed classmates, who take gleeful delight at his pathetic attempts at arithmetic and spelling.  At home, he is dominated by his kindly but overbearing father (Alan Mehdizadeh), while at school his only supporter is Yvonne (Mary Frances Loughran), a timid, sweet-natured teacher,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:40:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Incredible-Book-Eating-Boy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ailliliu-Fionnuala]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Ailliliú Fionnuala ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[We Irish have a great knack of assigning and avoiding blame. We huff and puff about what state the country is in while sidestepping our role in it. We harangue across social and traditional media platforms about the games our politicians play, but rarely change our own tactics.  And while our faces flush with fury when faced with follies of old, we usually avoid eye contact with the injustices of the present day.
There's no avoiding the dung that's hit the fan in Erris, North Mayo where Shell are constructing a natural gas pipeline through the village. It&rsquo;s the only place in the world that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 08 Nov 2012 23:24:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ailliliu-Fionnuala]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Juggler]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Juggler]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bernard Field&rsquo;s new play has a very interesting proposition: suicide with witness, accomplice and voyeur on the viral internet level. The Juggler is set in the flat of a middle-aged academic teacher (played by Field). He is kidnapped by a woman who terrifies and enchants him as he bears witness, at gun point, to the depravities of her suicidal personality. Anne, young and attractive, is stunningly portrayed by Suzanne Harbison, who gives conviction to the ravages of her character&rsquo;s mental health in a superb performance. Harbison&rsquo;s raw portrayal captures the excremental ugliness...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:46:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Juggler]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Freud-s-Last-Session]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Freud's Last Session]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis were alone in a room for a few hours, what would they talk about? What would the father of psychoanalysis who thought religion &ldquo;an illusion&rdquo; say to the author and scholar who had turned his back on atheism?

This is the premise behind the play, Freud&rsquo;s Last Session, which is made more intriguing because it cannot be confirmed if this tantalising exchange took place. Freud met a young Oxford professor in his final days but was it Lewis? It begs the question of &lsquo;Does it matter?&rsquo; because the script by Mark St Germain depicts the incident...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Nov 2012 10:37:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Freud-s-Last-Session]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Triail]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[An Triail]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;An léigh tú an bleedin' dráma?&rdquo;

Máiréad Ní Ghráda's 1964 drama has been on the Leaving Certificate Irish curriculum for the last sixteen years, but Fíbín Teo's production brings the seemingly outdated plot into the context of  modern society, using puppets, masks, and music to appeal particularly to a younger audience, making it current and more accessible. An Triail tells the story of Máire Ní Chathasaigh, a young woman who falls for the charms of married schoolteacher Pádraig Mac Cárthaigh, eventually finding herself pregnant with his child. The play centres around the theme of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:24:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Triail]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tender-Napalm]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tender Napalm]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For Philip Ridley couples are not so much at sea when they are apart as they are stranded on a desert island unable to ever escape one another. Such is the driving metaphor in Tender Napalm, Ridley&rsquo;s imaginative exploration of love, where we are presented with a nameless man and woman who are bent on destroying each other and yet cannot conceive of life without each other.
The piece delights in its play with theatrical form: instead of the classic rise and fall of character or the resolution of a well-made plot, we are instead offered a collection of marvellous stories, fragmentary sensations,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:19:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tender-Napalm]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012---Souvenir]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Absolut Fringe 2012: Souvenir]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s difficult not to watch Bush Moukarzel madcap homage to Proust&rsquo;s A la recherché du temps perdu without wondering what the writer and hypochondriac would have made of it all if he could watch it from his bedside, nibbling his madeleine cakes. One assumes it would have triggered some sort of mirthful childhood memory. In Souvenir, Moukarzel transposes Proust&rsquo;s preoccupations &ndash; the elusive power of memory, the strange sway of time, the vagaries of desire - onto himself in a cluttered, freewheeling din that&rsquo;s held together mostly by his magnetic presence.

We enter...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Absolut-Fringe-2012---Souvenir]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cosi-fan-tutte]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Così fan tutte]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mozart&rsquo;s Così fan tutte (&ldquo;All women are like that&rdquo;) has been denounced and praised by critics in equal measure. The Romantics condemned the amoral tale of two officers consciously leading their respective beloveds astray by seducing the other&rsquo;s fiancée (not to mention the implausibility of the two sisters not recognising each other&rsquo;s partner, heavily disguised as they might be), while more recently Peter Kivy recommended treating the opera as a &ldquo;sinfonia concertante&rdquo;, an orchestral piece in which different soloists temporarily come to the fore individually...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 24 Nov 2012 21:20:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Cosi-fan-tutte]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jezebel]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jezebel]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Developed under Rough Magic&rsquo;s SEEDS programme, Jezebel is a first professional production for writer Mark Cantan, under the direction of fellow SEEDS alum José Miguel Jiménez. It features Peter Daly and Niamh McCann as a couple that after six months of hot and heavy sexual energy find themselves looking for something to spice up their relationship. After exploring the options provided by sex shops and hardware depots, they hit upon the notion of a threesome. This brings them into contact with Valerie O&rsquo;Connor, playing a goofy artist with few enough romantic options of her own. The resultant...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:01:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Jezebel]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Farewell---Half-a-Glass-of-Water]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Farewell / Half a Glass of Water]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How thrilling is it, fourteen years after Field Day&rsquo;s last theatre production, to be handed a programme illustrated by the distinguished painter Basil Blackshaw, image-maker to the company since its inception in 1980; to look inside and spy among the creative team the names of such internationally acknowledged artists as designer Bob Crowley, photographer John Haynes, pianist Barry Douglas, composer Neil Martin, actor/director Stephen Rea, academic and writer Seamus Deane  - the latter two now the remaining directors of the company.
On a bleak December night, a steady stream of people are...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:09:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Farewell---Half-a-Glass-of-Water]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Curious-Tales-for-Christmas]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Curious Tales for Christmas]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[These tales, adapted from short works by Ambrose Bierce, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, are offered as antidotes to Christmas excess, and wouldn&rsquo;t be out of place on a Hallowe&rsquo;en programme. Martin Cahill&rsquo;s set design, festooned with skulls, shards of broken mirror, a noose and ghostly white sheets, could even pass muster for the festivities on the Mexican Day of the Dead.
The first of these Victorian stories, by the gloomy Texan Bierce, is the revealingly titled The Middle Toe of the Right Foot, which announces in its title the inherent difficulty for Stewart Roche in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:46:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Curious-Tales-for-Christmas]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dead-Woman-s-Son]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Dead Woman’s Son]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Smock Alley Boys School is, perhaps, the most atmospheric theatre in the city. With its exposed brick, declining gangway and multi-storey viewpoints it brings to mind one of those Victorian Asylums where the public used to come to observe the mentally ill. Hence, it lends itself to plays that delve into the mind, that excavate fractured psyches and mount them as art. But the building often bears the burden when companies become overwhelmed by the possibilities the space provides and forget that the play is the thing. This is the case for Maylin Productions and The Dead Woman's Son.
Boy (Rua O'Donnachu,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2012 22:41:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dead-Woman-s-Son]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Outsider]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Outsider]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Kyle Abraham has ridden into Dublin on a huge wave of anticipation. The rising star, originally from Pittsburgh, is the talk of the New York dance scene at present, having received a prestigious Bessie award for his piece The Radio Show and been recently commissioned to create work for the well-known Alvin Ailey company. The performer has come to Ireland, under the aegis of John Scott Dance (formerly Irish Modern Dance Theatre), to develop and present a piece with four of the company&rsquo;s performers (Philip Connaughton, Liv O&rsquo;Donoghue, Ryan O&rsquo;Neill, and Rebecca Reilly). 

Abraham...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Outsider]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dead]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Dead]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Frank McGuinness&rsquo; dramatisation of James Joyce&rsquo;s short story presents the one thing Joyce could not: music. The presence of so many musical people in the story The Dead, and the vital role of the haunting but unheard (by the reader) 'The Lass of Aughrim' attest to the importance of evoking the sense of what Joyce called &ldquo;Distant Music&rdquo;: distant, but not absent, and yet not heard. In his writing he would find a literary analogue for the rhythms, harmonies, and tonalities of music across his poems, stories, and novels, and in The Dead in particular he wrote of its power. He...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 13 Dec 2012 12:38:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Dead]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orphans-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Orphans]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dennis Kelly's play Orphans is many things. It's a look at the magnetic pull of family ties on one's moral compass. It's an examination of the class and race war raging within Britain today. It questions what dark lengths we are all capable of going to and what would push us to them. And it&rsquo;s an example of a woman's right to choose taken to nightmarish extremes. Picking away at what a man's role in society is &ndash; as lover, father, protector &ndash; it explores fear, shame and perception in relation to gender and the colour of one's skin. But it is not a comical farce, which is how, due...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:27:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Orphans-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Christmas-Carol-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Christmas Carol]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[And so we arrive at yet another Christmas, another retelling of the much loved festive favourite, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Aaron Monaghan and Bryan Burroughs' production celebrates Dickens' 200th birthday by adapting the classic tale for younger audience, playfully retelling the story with only two actors playing multiple roles, relying on physical theatre, a variety of hats and scarves, and a coat stand to create a truly magical experience for young and old alike. There is no need for a &lsquo;dumbing down&rsquo; of the language of the story in this adaptation, as Monaghan and Burroughs...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 Dec 2012 12:44:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Christmas-Carol-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Over-the-Wire]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Over the Wire]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sabine Dargent&rsquo;s design for Over the Wire has the audience seated in a single row pressed against the four sides of a wire cage. Inside the cage, which is topped with barbed wire, we can see a small yard with rubble, some metal barrels, and a rough shelter of concrete blocks and plastic sheeting; from under the sheeting booted feet protrude from a jumble of human bodies. There is another cage behind this, also full of rubble. For the spectator, the dust and cramped seating give some physical sense of the discomfort of these men, living and sleeping outside in a prison compound.
Seamas Keenan&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:02:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Over-the-Wire]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Couch-Rebellion]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Great Couch Rebellion]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Part of the splendour of theatre is the healthy distance a performance provides an audience from their own lives and the world outside the theatre&rsquo;s door. Playwright Philip Doherty has no interest in that distance. His new play, The Great Couch Rebellion, which he also directs, is a call to arms, as he attempts to startle both his characters, and his audience, from an apathetic fugue over the terms of Ireland&rsquo;s indebtedness.
Despite the &lsquo;Welcome Home, Jailbird&rsquo; sign that hangs from the wall in Adam and Eve&rsquo;s sitting room &ndash; designed as portrait of suburban banality...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:35:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Great-Couch-Rebellion]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Poor-Mouth]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Poor Mouth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The hilarious biting satire on Irish revivalists and romantics, The Poor Mouth, is given full vein in this highly attuned adaptation and performance by Blue Raincoat Theatre company. In his role as adaptor and co-conspirator with the ghost of Brian O'Nolan/Myles na gCopaleen/Flann O'Brien, Jocelyn Clarke has judiciously and deliciously mined the text for the most theatrical and visual episodes of the novel and woven them into a highly stageable narrative. Keenly directed by Niall Henry, this Blue Raincoat production of the final piece in their Flann O&rsquo;Brien Trilogy (with 2007's The Third...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 24 Nov 2012 21:59:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Poor-Mouth]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bedroom-Farce]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bedroom Farce]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Alan Ayckbourn&rsquo;s Bedroom Farce has acquired the patina of more than 35 years, although this and others of the prolific playwright&rsquo;s comedies (like Absurd Personal Singular and The Norman Conquests) became canonical on first outing. Bedroom Farce, succinctly described in promotional material thus - &ldquo;three bedrooms, four couples&rdquo; - gets away with having a generic as its title, and delivers what one might expect. Except it isn&rsquo;t really a bedroom farce.  There are no lecherous old men, no disguises or mistaken identities, and, although there is a wardrobe onstage, no one...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:48:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bedroom-Farce]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Measure-for-Measure]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Measure for Measure]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Shakespeare&rsquo;s Measure for Measure is set in Catholic Vienna and peopled by devout believers, nuns, friars, sinners, religious hypocrites and brothel-keepers. While it is a challenging work, considered one of Shakespeare&rsquo;s &lsquo;problem&rsquo; plays, many of its issues are pertinent to today&rsquo;s Ireland: conflicting constructions of morality, the extent to which public laws can control private acts and bodies, and the influence of religious doctrine on the state. Theatrecorp&rsquo;s timely production turned many of Measure for Measure&rsquo;s &lsquo;problems&rsquo; into creative...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:02:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Measure-for-Measure]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On--Vol--3]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Theatre Machine Turns You On: Vol. 3]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[THEATREclub&rsquo;s The Theatre Machine Turns You On: Vol. 3 returned to the Project Cube for a ballsy run comprising a chart-topping 24 new plays spread over just two weeks.  The pieces, which were selected by curators Grace Dyas, Doireann Coady and Shane Byrne of THEATREclub, fell under four main strands (reminiscent of the 1968 LP &lsquo;The Rock Machine Turns You On&rsquo; from which the festival&rsquo;s name is derived) namely&lsquo;Demotape: Lo fi works in progress,&rsquo; &lsquo;New Releases: new artists with new work,&rsquo; &lsquo;LPs: Long play(ing) records,&rsquo; and &lsquo;EPs: Late...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:04:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On--Vol--3]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mixed-Marriage]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mixed Marriage]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Fenian&rdquo;. &ldquo;Taig&rdquo;. &ldquo;Papish&rdquo;. They&rsquo;re terms spat indiscriminately across the footlights by John Rainey, Protestant paterfamilias and central character of St. John Ervine&rsquo;s Mixed Marriage, and they elicit sporadic bursts of laughter from the Lyric Theatre audience. The laughter is probably nervous as much as anything, for this is Belfast 2013, and the recent waves of flag-fuelled ugliness and violence in the city make Ervine&rsquo;s examination of sectarian conflict from a century earlier (the play premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 1911) seem painfully...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 02 Feb 2013 21:14:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mixed-Marriage]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love--Peace-and-Robbery-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love, Peace and Robbery]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Liam Heylin&rsquo;s play has weathered well in the five years since it was first produced in this country, its timeless tale of small-time criminals struggling to make good easily straddling the distance between boom and bust Ireland, indicating how little some people&rsquo;s lives were actually changed during the supposed good times.
Heylin, who works as a court reporter for his day job, knows his subject matter intimately. This play is born specifically from interviews conducted with former inmates of Cork prison, but no doubt the writer has also mined his years watching in court the results...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 26 Jan 2013 21:50:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love--Peace-and-Robbery-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Romeo and Juliet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Second Age made something of a splash last year with their production of Macbeth that toured the country. It imagined the Scottish bloodbath as a sort of an on-stage action movie that included strobe lights, Radiohead and some excellent battle choreography. The final product was, as its typical teenage audience member might say, OTT, but it nonetheless provided a bold new route into the tragedy.
They return to Shakespeare this winter with a production of Romeo and Juliet, a play lacking in neither spilled blood nor emotional fireworks. So it&rsquo;s notable to see Second Age taking an almost opposite...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2013 09:04:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Clear-the-Air]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Clear_the_Air]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The skies were closed. They were stuck in Dublin watching the skies.  An ash cloud hung over the island, and like generations of their forefathers, no one was getting off the island. Containment inevitably leads to plans for escape. Standing still for one more moment will result in implosion. Thus, a ferry here, a rented car there, travel through lands near and distant and sessions in foreign pubs. Of course, the ash cloud in Hugh Travers' Clear_the_Air at Theatre Upstairs refers to a variety of personal and national plagues: frustration, redundancy, stagnating relationships and the danger of dreams...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:15:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Clear-the-Air]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Manifesto]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Manifesto]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Boys dance, more often than not, when nobody is looking or when they have a few drinks inside them. Through its new triple-bill, Manifesto, Maiden Voyage Dance has declared its mission, to break down barriers of self-consciousness, embarrassment or alcohol-induced kicks and encourage more young men to embark on dance as a creative pursuit.
These three pieces premiered at The MAC on an evening when live performance was vying for attention with the crowds gathered for the launch of the venue&rsquo;s ground-breaking Andy Warhol exhibition. The full house in the foyer was matched by a capacity audience...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:53:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Manifesto]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Skull-in-Connemara]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Skull in Connemara]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s A Skull in Connemara is the forgotten sister in The Leenane Trilogy. Premiered by Druid in 1997, A Skull chronicles the dismal trade of Mick Dowd, a gravedigger charged each autumn with disinterring bones from his local cemetery to make space for new tenants. When Mick has to dig up the grave of his dead wife, Oona, it unearths muffled rumours about Mick&rsquo;s role in her sudden death.
While the play&rsquo;s older and younger siblings, The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West, respectively, bloom in the sun of directors&rsquo; attentions, the rarely-staged A...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2013 12:17:30 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Skull-in-Connemara]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(5)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macbeth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How mad are the Macbeths? One of the defining characteristics of this text is its relative brevity, in terms of the Shakespearean oeuvre. It makes it an appealing choice for Leaving Certificate essay fodder, but presents something of a challenge to the practitioners who are undertaking to present it. Because it hits the ground running, the audience needs to know fairly sharpish that the Lord and Lady have the potential to lose their grip on reality entirely.

Given that there are seemingly endless narratives that involve remorseless killers &mdash; go and switch on the telly, now &mdash; to be...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:17:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(5)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Herons]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Herons]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[PintSized Productions has set itself the aim to showcase emerging professional talent in Northern Ireland. In electing to stage Simon Stephens&rsquo;s Herons, the company has chosen material that serves this purpose fantastically. Stephens is one of the leading voices in contemporary playwriting not just in the United Kingdom but across Europe. As an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith and in his relationship with German director, Sebastian Nübling, moreover, he has developed significant works for younger performers, including Punk Rock and Morning. What is perhaps surprising is the quality...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:22:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Herons]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/King-Lear]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[King Lear]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Despite its relentless descent into madness and misery, King Lear is one of Shakespeare&rsquo;s most accessible tragedies. Its hero is a remote and regal old man, a fearsome flawed fool but one made fond to us by his vulnerability. More importantly, the true conflict of the play is domestic. In its perfectly mirroring subplots, King Lear is really the story of a man outfoxed by his daughters, a brother betrayed, and the natural accession of one generation as another dies off.
Selina Cartmell&rsquo;s production for the Abbey Theatre certainly maintains this accessible thrust, though less in its...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:50:30 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/King-Lear]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Focal-Point]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Focal Point]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Tuigeann sibh go léir, yeah? You all speak Irish? Oh, some of you don't.&rdquo;
TEAM Educational Theatre Company presents a bilingual play for older teenagers in which the Irish language   is on life support. So, too, is its greatest scholar. His son, Anraí, is thus left with the task of presenting his father's lecture, but Anraí, a native Irish speaker, gives this lecture in Irish to an audience who barely understands. The dichotomy lies between Anraí's growing hatred of the language, which he regards as futile and ultimately dead in modern society, and cailín nua-Ghaeilgeoir's newfound...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:15:30 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Focal-Point]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Let-Me-Be]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Let Me Be]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A one-act play exploring the deprivations of an unhappy childhood might well be spartan. On a bare Town Hall Studio floor, Fregoli&rsquo;s latest offering and writer Maria Tivnan&rsquo;s second play Let Me Be, is a 45-minute journey through the minds of two damaged children.  Almost a form of psychodrama, it teases out a few truisms from its protagonists concerning the effects of child neglect: children are vulnerable, have differing ways of dealing with problems, retire into imaginary worlds and may not wholly trust adults. Such unsurprising maxims form rather shaky foundations for the work.
Two...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 06 Feb 2013 22:53:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Let-Me-Be]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Once-in-a-While-the-Odd-Thing-Happens]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Once in a While the Odd Thing Happens]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Director David Scott&rsquo;s interpretation of Paul Godfrey&rsquo;s Once in a While the Odd Thing Happens, is worthy of two superlatives attributed by Godfrey to W.H. Auden&rsquo;s description of Benjamin Britten&rsquo;s music: &quot;Mercurial and eloquent.&quot;
Godfrey's narrative is not as gleaned from interviews and witnesses as may be imagined - he wrote the skeleton of the play out of an interview with Britten&rsquo;s sister, but imagined the machinations of the characters&rsquo; relationships for his dialogue. But his exploration of talent and ambition, friendship and love, among talented...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:02:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Once-in-a-While-the-Odd-Thing-Happens]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/American-Buffalo]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[American Buffalo]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The components of what makes us civilised rather than savages &ldquo;sitting around some vicious campfire&rdquo; are under debate in this play by David Mamet, the self-proclaimed &lsquo;profane poet&rsquo;of the theatre world.
The dreary setting for this exposition of morality is Don&rsquo;s Resale Shop in Chicago, where the owner&rsquo;s trade in junk is supplemented by petty crime. Don (Stefan Barry) is seething over the fact that a man found a rare coin in his shop and he sold it to him for $90. He thinks his scant knowledge of coins gave the customer an advantage, so he is planning to burgle...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:07:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/American-Buffalo]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Morning-and-Afternoon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Morning and Afternoon ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Morning and Afternoon consists of two interconnected monologues written and performed by Andy Hinds. Both pieces involve men at a moment of personal crisis where they begin to reflect on their lives and to meditate on existence. In its form and subject matter the piece thus invites comparison with the wealth of Irish monologue plays that premiered on stages in the 1990s.  Unfortunately, in such comparisons Hinds work falls far short of the immediacy, inventiveness, and poignancy of the work of playwright&rsquo;s such as McPherson and O&rsquo;Rowe.
The first monologue introduces us to the character...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:58:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Morning-and-Afternoon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Performances]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Performances]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Performances is a brief, haunting exploration of Leoš Janáček's love for a young married woman, Kamila Stösslová, told through excerpts from his letters to her and the performance of his String Quartet no 2, &lsquo;Intimate Letters&rsquo;. The conceit is that young doctoral student Anezka Ungrova (Masha Dakič) is researching the influence of Stösslová on the music, and her work is dramatized as a series of conversations with the composer and with musicians performing the piece.

The set is constructed within Magee&rsquo;s Great Hall to represent an early twentieth-century drawing room with a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:17:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Performances]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Talk-Radio]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Talk Radio]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Eric Bogosian's 1987 text, Talk Radio, has much to say to an Irish audience. Its anti-hero, a late night radio talk show host called Barry Champlain, is a mixture of how RTÉ's Joe Duffy sees himself &ndash; a man of the people, and how comedian David McSavage sees him &ndash; a self-anointed demi god who gets his professional jollies from the misery of others. His late night call-in show, Nightline, is a base trough, where all sort of prejudices and peculiarities gather and dampen the airwaves through talk that is inane, inarticulate but also inexplicably compelling.
Bogosian' play wonders why...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:29:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Talk-Radio]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fred-and-Alice]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Fred and Alice]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Waiting for the latest lunchtime offering at Bewleys Café Theatre to begin I idly speculated about Fred and Alice. There was a small clue in the staging: there was a muddled heap of lamps and light fixtures resting on the stage, from the small tasselled lampshade models  to full beamers. Did someone in the forthcoming play collect them? Obsessively? Randomly?
Obsession and randomness do feature frequently in this new two hander work from John Sheehy, who also directs, for CallBack Theatre. He skillfully brings us inside the distinctive compulsive worlds of Fred and Alice. Fred is keen on music....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:01:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Fred-and-Alice]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Planet-Belfast]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Planet Belfast]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Rosemary Jenkinson's vision of her native city, Belfast is a place apart, poised between war and peace, struggling uncertainly to find its place in the wider world while remaining stranded in the wasteland of a long drawn-out conflict, whose victims have become pawns in a lucrative, internationally funded industry.
In 1997, another Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell wrote a play for the Abbey Theatre, centred around loyalist violence in the estate where he grew up and entitled In a Little World of Our Own. In the title of her latest play, Jenkinson identifies that same city as Planet Belfast....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:47:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Planet-Belfast]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/On-the-Subject-of-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[On the Subject of Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A rake, a dandy, a boulevardier, a bon viveur, a collector of expensive artworks, a womaniser. Oh, and a Church of Ireland prelate: that was Frederick Hervey, Fourth Earl of Bristol, and Bishop of Derry for the last three decades of the eighteenth century. Derry writer Ken McCormack has researched Hervey&rsquo;s life extensively, and distilled from it On the Subject of Love, an hour-long, one-act drama focusing on the colourful bishop&rsquo;s more libidinal activities.
Initial impressions are disorienting. Kate Moylan&rsquo;s set, dividing in two the intimate floor-space of Derry Playhouse, is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:32:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/On-the-Subject-of-Love]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Noteworthy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Noteworthy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Roísín Coyle&rsquo;s short play Noteworthy takes one of the oldest theatrical devices as its chief dramaturgical device: a letter. In the opening moments of Janet Moran&rsquo;s production at Theatre Upstairs, Louise (Janice Byrne) holds a lighter to a piece of paper, which smoulders uncertainly before being consumed by flames. There is a silent witness to her act; her brother Liam (Barry O&rsquo;Connor), who hovers at her shoulder. However, it isn&rsquo;t until her sister Nicola (Niamh McCann) arrives that we realise the significance of this minor act of epistolary arson. It is not a spoiler to...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 23 Feb 2013 22:12:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Noteworthy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sand-Park]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sand Park]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In 1995, John McGahern wrote of religion in his native Leitrim: &ldquo;The ordinary farming people had to conform to the strict observances and to pay their dues to the Church from small resources, but outside that they paid it little attention. They went about their sensible pagan lives as they had done for centuries, seeing it as just another of the fictions that they'd been forced to kowtow to, like all the others since the time of the Druids.&rdquo;
James Anthony Lowery, the only character on stage in Seamus O&rsquo;Rourke&rsquo;s new one-act monologue The Sand Park, would probably be too...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:29:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sand-Park]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet-(3)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Romeo and Juliet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Proceedings begin as expected: &quot;Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene ...&quot; and conclude with the familar lament: &quot;For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.&quot; Prologue and epilogue are delivered, as written, by the six-strong cast acting as a chorus. But in between, swathes of text have been removed from the tale of Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers in this pint-sized adaptation by Gary Wilson for c21 Theatre Company.
There must be something currently circulating in the Irish air, summoning small-scale revisions...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:39:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Romeo-and-Juliet-(3)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Seafarer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Why this is hell, nor am I out of it,&rdquo; reflects Faustus, as the darkness closes in during his final moments on this earth. So it is with the derelict assortment of friends at the core of Conor McPherson&rsquo;s Faustian-inspired tryst with the devil. The demon drink is the hell which engulfs them all as they gather on Christmas Eve to carouse and gamble their way into Christmas Day. But for James &lsquo;Sharky&rsquo; Harkin (Louis Dempsey) &ndash; the seafarer of the title &ndash; what is at stake is something infinitely more damaging than mere physical, psychological and domestic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:18:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-in-a-Glass-Jar---Ribbons]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love in a Glass Jar | Ribbons]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Plays in their short form can be tricky &mdash; tricky to write, and tricky for an audience to engage with. The key issue is time, and not as regards the length of the play: it&rsquo;s more to do with &lsquo;when&rsquo; we are brought into the story, than with &lsquo;how long&rsquo; is this play going to go on. Of course, if the &lsquo;when&rsquo; starts too late, then we are hampered by exposition; if it starts too soon, then there&rsquo;s a rush to the denouement. In the first case, it can feel like we&rsquo;re being assailed by bullet points; in the second, as though there aren&rsquo;t enough...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:10:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love-in-a-Glass-Jar---Ribbons]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Once--The-Musical]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Once: The Musical]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As we enter the Gaiety, we discover that Once has already begun: the cast are gathered in what looks like an ordinary pub where a session is underway. They play music for about twenty minutes while members of the audience wander onstage &ndash; ordering pints from the barman, listening to the music, waving to friends who have just arrived.
As we settle into our seats, we realise that Bob Crowley&rsquo;s set is not an exact replica of a traditional Irish pub: along the walls, he has positioned a series of mirrors, of varying shapes and sizes. Those mirrors allow us to see the actors from different...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:42:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Once--The-Musical]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Broken-Promise-Land]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Broken Promise Land]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As an exercise in storytelling, Broken Promise Land is a very pleasant experience. Performer and writer Mirjana Rendulic is alone on stage, playing a Croatian girl residing in Dublin on August 3rd, 2003 (according to the tear-away calendar situated by the bed). Her flat is predominantly blue in colour, matching her flower-patterned dress and mobile phone. Six pairs of shoes sit on the forestage, joined by a seventh as she enters, slips out of them, and conducts the basic routines of coming home for the evening in a contemplative mood. She looks at her phone and muses &ldquo;I can live in New York&rdquo;,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:36:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Broken-Promise-Land]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sylvia]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sylvia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A struggling artist&rsquo;s studio retreat is invaded by a high-powered couple intent on collecting what they view as artist&rsquo;s most achieved work to date: his young wife and recovering heroin addict, Sylvia (Anna Sheils McNamee).
Barry&rsquo;s (John Delaney) series of paintings capturing Sylvia&rsquo;s past life of prostitution and drug addiction had made him, however briefly, an art world sensation. But the effects of that success have long been winding down. Nick and Shelly (Matthew Ralli and Gillian McCarthy) have made Sylvia an object of their mutual sexual fantasies since obtaining...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:07:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sylvia]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pinter-x-4]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pinter x 4]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It seems almost credible that Number 27 Pearse Street was built to house this handful of Pinter&rsquo;s short political plays.  Needless to say, in a production as erudite and sophisticated as AC Productions' Pinter x 4, there wasn&rsquo;t a stage or a curtain in sight. When we were (for the evening&rsquo;s final play) escorted to the venue&rsquo;s tiny theatre out the back, the raised stage was a mere blackened backdrop for a much more intimate tableau. Once again, we were right there in the room with all that was happening, however more terrifying that made it.
The production opened with Pinter&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:44:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pinter-x-4]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Before-Vanishing]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Before Vanishing]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For Beckett the attraction of the theatre as a medium was that &ldquo;It deals with a fixed space and with people in that fixed space&rdquo;. He is not referring here to the fixed space of the naturalistic drawing room or the Irish peasant kitchen set, but the theatrical space itself. On stage the theatrical event is tied to the present although it may refer to the past, and theatrical characters only live on stage whilst the lights illuminate them. As such everything in the theatre is condemned to the now.
It is this sense of &lsquo;fixity&rsquo; that is explored in the plays selected by Mouth...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:21:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Before-Vanishing]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lifeboat]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Lifeboat]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It's a good third of the way through Lifeboat, Replay Theatre Company's contribution to this year's Belfast Children's Festival, before I notice that the bottom layer of Niall Rea's compact, triple-tiered set is actually a large tray of water. It splashes frantically to life as the two young actors, Ruby Campbell and Susan Davey, flail around in it, re-enacting the moment when their steamship sinks en route to Canada from Liverpool, in September 1940.
The ship was SS City of Benares, and ninety of its passengers were children fleeing wartime Britain. All but eleven of them died when their vessel...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:02:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Lifeboat]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tiny-Plays-for-Ireland-II]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tiny Plays for Ireland 2]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Good things come in small packages, or, in the case of Tiny Plays for Ireland II, playlets. This is the second instalment of Fishamble: The New Play Company&rsquo;s short-play venture, which invited established writers and members of the public to dramatise the state of the nation in theatrical form. Part II reminds us of this endeavour in its opening moments as Mark Cantan&rsquo;s Somewhere invokes the lives of ordinary citizens with its refrain &ldquo;somewhere in Ireland&hellip;..&rdquo; The experiences enumerated are more universal than particular &ndash; a baby is being born, someone is dying...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:01:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Tiny-Plays-for-Ireland-II]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Katie-Mag]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Katie Mag]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Katie Mag, a new play by Jennifer Rogers for Roundhouse Productions,is your age-old 'ugly, duckling' tale where a country girl, the titular Katie (Amy O'Dwyer), with her taste for books in bed and sugary tea, is transformed into a swanlike fashionista after meeting the capricious Mags (Kelly McAuley) in college. Before this, her female influences included a condescending schoolmate, a mother who - as played - seemed permanently pregnant (and stoned) and Auntie T, who speaks louche language with a cigarette and aerosol husk. What precisely Mags does for Katie is unknown. What she gets in return...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 02 Mar 2013 19:42:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Katie-Mag]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Zoe-s-Play]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Zoe's Play]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Originally commissioned by the Ark in 1999, Zoe's Play by John McArdle is here given a new production in celebration of the Ark's eighteenth birthday. Written as a prequel to the classic fairytale 'Little Red Riding Hood', Zoe's Play tells the story of twelve year-old Zoe, an imaginative, playful child who is beginning to find her own voice in an adult world - and her efforts to protect a family of wolves she has dreamt about from her farmer Dada's unrelenting destruction of the forest, despite his warnings that the wolves are dangerous. Zoe's transition from childhood to adulthood is marked by...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 16 Mar 2013 23:34:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Zoe-s-Play]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pageant]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pageant]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[All the world&rsquo;s a stage or so it seems in this new work from David Bolger and Muirne Bloomer for CoisCéim Dance Theatre exploring how we all put ourselves on show to celebrate, to remember, to honour or sometimes merely to observe the everyday and the ordinary. They do this with an effortless mix of panache, wit and fine movement from the ensemble of six dancers.
Bolger is Artistic Director of Coiscéim and, with Bloomer, he has been the subtle hand behind the creation of some spectacular community and public ceremonies including the Ryder Cup and the Special Olympics.  Here the dancers are...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 02 Mar 2013 21:12:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pageant]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Translations-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Translations]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brian Friel&rsquo;s Translations is set in nineteenth-century Ireland. The action takes place in an Irish speaking hedge-school in Ballybeg, Co. Donegal&ndash;where English speaking soldiers have arrived, tasked with rewriting the map of Ireland, Anglicising the place-names as they go. The play raises questions about language and national identity that were relevant during its first production by Field Day Theatre Company in Derry~Londonderry in 1980 and remain pertinent in 2013, as the unresolved themes of culture, language and place still shape our society. Alot has changed in Ireland since the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:39:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Translations-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Endgame]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Endgame]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Half-way through the run of this fine Blue Raincoat production of Endgame, it was announced that this year&rsquo;s Edinburgh International Festival would celebrate the works of Samuel Beckett &ndash; and that it would do so by including several productions by Dublin&rsquo;s Gate Theatre, among others.
That announcement was a reminder of the extent to which the Gate has, during the last twenty-two years, produced what many regard as definitive versions of Beckett, particularly his most accessible plays: Waiting forGodot, Endgame, and Krapp's Last Tape. All three productions have been recast by...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:29:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Endgame]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mangan-s-Last-Gasp]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mangan's Last Gasp]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Gerard Lee&rsquo;s Mangan&rsquo;s Last Gasp, set in the final days of poet James Clarence Mangan, offers a glancing retrospective of a troubled life by making heavy use of both the poetry and autobiographical works.  The play centres on the documented role that medic William Wilde played in this endgame. The man of science as prompt, foil and interlocutor works well as a device; what could have been yet another one-man narrative of a writer becomes something far more dynamic. The resultant counterpoint suggests that the sensibility gap between the arts and sciences may have been just as great in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:07:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mangan-s-Last-Gasp]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bear]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Bear]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Chekhov wrote his one-act farce The Bear in 1888, eight years before The Seagull initiated the run of mature masterpieces on which his reputation for greatness was subsequently founded. The Bear appears, in this context, to be something of a squib, lightly inconsequential and barely distinctive enough to warrant labelling Chekhovian.
Or is it? Add William Walton's music to the edited text he set in 1967, and a staging as probingly intelligent as that given to Walton's &quot;extravaganza&quot; by NI Opera, and you begin to wonder. Walton's score is stacked with different brands of operatic parody,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:12:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bear]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Woolgatherer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Woolgatherer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;You love something that ain't there and then you start hating what is there, and that&rsquo;s hell.&rdquo; So says the truck-driving Cliff, one of the irreparably broken characters of The Woolgatherer. While a good description of hell, Cliff&rsquo;s sentiments also describe a painful inevitability seeded into the sudden bloom of romance: seeing the target of your idealised affections revealed, by the slow creep of familiarity, to be as emotionally crippled and tormented as you are.
Both Cliff and Rose, the protagonists of William Mastrosimone&rsquo;s raw two-hander, start off the play effectively...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:40:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Woolgatherer]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Last-Crusader]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Last Crusader]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The programme for The Last Crusader, a play by Barry McKinley currently directed by Karl Shiels at Theatre Upstairs, contains a quote from the Gospel of Luke: &ldquo;Keep on seeking, and you will find, for everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.&rdquo; The door Christ speaks of is metaphorical; for McKinley, in this play, the door is very real. It is the thing that separates two priests in a Soviet prison cell from the world at large. Every time it opens, the characters become a step closer to finding out their fate.
Barry McKinley&rsquo;s plays have a habit...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:57:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Last-Crusader]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Small-Box-Psychosis]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Small Box Psychosis]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In an issue of the New Yorker from 2008, journalist Nick Paumgarten details one of the most horrific elevator stories I&rsquo;ve ever heard: that of Business Week journalist Nicholas White, whose lift stalled between floors in the 43-storey McGraw-Hill Building late one Friday evening in 1999 and did not become unstuck for another 41 hours. Of all modern transport, perhaps we take the miracle of elevator travel &ndash; a journey in a claustrophobic box suspended above a black void by a piece of cable &ndash; far too much for granted.
In Small Box Psychosis, which is currently running at lunchtime...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 06 Apr 2013 22:04:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Small-Box-Psychosis]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mrs-Warren-s-Profession]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mrs Warren's Profession]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Vivie Warren (Rebecca O&rsquo;Mara) is a person without sentiment or poetry, a woman with highly developed mathematical skills making her way in the world through hard mental labour. She feels independent of the expectations of her gender: a modern woman free even of the conventional ties of daughterhood. Her mother, Kitty (Sorcha Cusack), sends her a regular stipend but otherwise largely leaves her be. But Mrs. Warren is no longer a young woman. In prelude to a period of greater closeness with her daughter in her old age, she arrives with Sir George Crofts (David Yelland), a wealthy, crusty old...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:00:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mrs-Warren-s-Profession]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sweety-Bottle]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[ The Sweety Bottle]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Joe Brennan was a boy growing up in Belfast, his grandfather took over a confectionery store in the Lower Falls area, and installed an illegal drinking club in it. Things that happened in the so-called 'Sweety Bottle', and the characters who drank there, swiftly became the stuff of family legend, and were much debated and discussed over the Brennan family dinner table.Forty years later, in collaboration with his son Gerard, Joe has woven a selection of Sweety Bottle stories together in a two-act play, revisiting a place now gone (levelled in the interests of urban redevelopment), but certainly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:14:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Sweety-Bottle]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Drum-Belly]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Drum Belly]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;We created the 'new' English,&quot; boasts a character in Drum Belly, Richard Dormer&rsquo;s visceral new play about the Irish-American mob in 1960s New York. Example? Slán, we&rsquo;re told, evolved into the colloquial &lsquo;so long&rsquo; as the Irish worked to merge into, and then ultimately helped construct, American culture. Without even realising it, another character remarks, they&rsquo;ve been speaking Irish all their life.
The transmutation of Irish language words and phrases into the linguistic stew of American idiom serves as a distinctive metaphor for what happened as succeeding...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:57:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Drum-Belly]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Waiting-for-Elvis]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Waiting for Elvis]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Elvis Presley died on the 16th of August 1977... didn&rsquo;t he? Not according to countless tabloid tales, internet blogs and conspiracy theorists; and not according to true believer Lisa Marie (Anne Kent), who waits faithfully and doggedly for The King to show up and join her on a park bench in Dublin. That is until Elizabeth (Gillian McCarthy) shows up and asks if she can sit next to her. So begins writer Eileen Gibbons&rsquo; tale of a friendship that begins with tenuous fragility, yet develops into a bond that most of us would be envious of.
The sparsity of Marie Tierney&rsquo;s set, comprising...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:28:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Waiting-for-Elvis]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Man-Jesus]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Man Jesus]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[He changed history, but it&rsquo;s astonishing, when you stop to think about it, how little we actually know about Jesus. Virtually nothing about how he spent the first thirty years of his life, with details of his  ministry drawn mainly from four canonical gospels written a minimum of five decades after the events depicted: the established facts are not compendious, and even the &ldquo;known knowns&rdquo; are doubted by some scholars to be historically accurate.
That&rsquo;s the background against which Matthew Hurt&rsquo;s new play The Man Jesus was written. As Hurt himself puts it, &ldquo;When...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:53:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Man-Jesus]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/For-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[For Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Val, Tina and Bee are three contemporary Dubliners, friends united by a common desperation: the men in their lives (where there are any) are generally fat, sweaty and feckless, they haven&rsquo;t &ldquo;had it&rdquo; for a year or more, and thrills and spills are hard to come by in the clubs and bar-rooms of Drumcondra, Finglas and Blanchardstown, where Laoisa Sexton sets For Love, her &ldquo;dark blue romantic comedy&rdquo; examining the women&rsquo;s predicament.
The actions starts, predictably, with a drunken fumble and an aborted coupling, as Val totters into her apartment trailing her hopelessly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:49:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/For-Love]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bockety-World-of-Henry-and-Bucket]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Bockety World of Henry and Bucket]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Do you know what 'bockety' means? It's something that's a little bit broken, a little bit wobbly, but it still kind of works.&rdquo;
Barnstorm Theatre Company presents a charming production for young audiences in which they explore the ups and downs of friendship, and what happens when something goes wrong. Written in Beckettian style sparse and absurdist language, best friends Henry and Bucket are reminiscent of Waiting for Godot's Vladimir and Estragon (as echoed in Carol Betera&rsquo;s costume choices), although Barnstorm's characters are a lot more relatable and are full of a childlike...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:30:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bockety-World-of-Henry-and-Bucket]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Edge-of-Our-Bodies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Edge of Our Bodies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bernadette believes she can make herself smaller. With her journal in hand she (Lauren Farrell) boards a train to New York in her school uniform and raincoat and ponders the possibility of invisibility.  We quickly learn from her journal recitation that there exists an adverse condition among the general American public known as &lsquo;middle aged ass-less-ness,&rsquo; that her mother is depressed, her father is having an affair, that she is sixteen, alone and pregnant.  Our sympathy for Bernie, however, grows slowly as her ostensibly conceited and privileged prep-school narcissism is gradually...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 22:01:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Edge-of-Our-Bodies]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-25th-Annual-Putnam-County-Spelling-Bee]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Nobody seems too sure of its provenance, but the word 'bee' is widely used these days to describe almost any kind of get-together for a specific action &ndash; a sewing bee, a quilting bee, a spelling bee... the list is endless and ripe with mischievous suggestion. One possible &ndash; though somewhat far-fetched &ndash; derivation is from the Old English word bēn, meaning prayer.
Whatever, there certainly are copious amounts of praying and soul searching emanating from the nerdy young competitors in this multi-award winning American musical comedy, conceived by Rebecca Feldman - artistic director...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:01:30 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-25th-Annual-Putnam-County-Spelling-Bee]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Click]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Click]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Whilst on a fishing trip to Croatia, that serves to distract from their problems at home in Dublin, Pauly (Ciarán Kenny) and Jacko (Aidan Crowe) are strolling through a field, when Pauly hears a click. Fearing he has just tread on a defective land-mine, left over from the Croatian-Bosnian war, Pauly refuses to move an inch and pleads with his &lsquo;side-kick&rsquo; Jacko for comfort and rescue. Waiting for help, the situation allows for the two men to reveal secrets about each other and to learn some truths about themselves. Much to the delight of the audience, it also provides these cheeky Dublin...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 13 Apr 2013 23:09:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Click]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Richard-II]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Richard II]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Shakespeare didn&rsquo;t really write about Ireland. It features in Richard II, yes, and there it serves a measure of narrative and contextual function. It&rsquo;s a kind of tipping point in the fate of the King (Patrick Moy). Having failed to successfully mediate in a domestic dispute between his cousin Bolingbroke (Frank McCusker) and Lord Mowbray (Jonathan White), who are accusing one another of treason, Richard alights to Ireland to fight an expensive war to show the local peasants who&rsquo;s boss, ignoring an obviously bigger problem. While he&rsquo;s away, his exiled cousin mounts an army...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:44:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Richard-II]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Digging-for-Fire]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Digging for Fire]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Declan Hughes was right. It may not be a playwright&rsquo;s duty to predict the course of a country via his own writing, but it doesn&rsquo;t hurt a play&rsquo;s vitality. When Rough Magic first produced Digging for Fire in the Project Arts Centre in 1991, audiences were given a glimpse of a convulsive new Ireland via seven restless thirtysomethings. In this new production, it is almost as if the text manages to physically bridge the time between a foggy past and our bleak present.
Digging For Fire takes its name from a Pixies song from their 1990 album &lsquo;Bossanova&rsquo;, which plays moments...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:30:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Digging-for-Fire]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bridge-Below-the-Town]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Bridge Below the Town ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What are the colours of dreams, or, nightmares? Does one remember a colour, or, only a feeling? Patrick McCabe&rsquo;s new play The Bridge Below the Town, directed by Padraic McIntyre for Livin' Dred, stages the disorientation and irrational fluidity that is most commonly associated with the narratives of the subconscious. The small-town Ireland of the 1950s in this play is not reflected through imagery of a pastoral idyll, nor the greys of a long rainy winter. Rather, the pressures of a judgmental society and an oppressive religion come to the fore through the unravelling of protagonist Golly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 20 Apr 2013 22:34:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Bridge-Below-the-Town]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Agony-and-the-Ecstasy-of-Steve-Jobs]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&lsquo;Documentary theatre&rsquo; can be a problematic term for describing a problematic mode of performance. The &lsquo;documentary&rsquo; part of this term suggests fact-checked reportage that holds up to scrutiny when its veracity is questioned, while the &lsquo;theatre&rsquo; part suggests the realm of dramatic imagination, where truth may not be necessarily fact-based reportage, but is instead presented as a general human truth generated out of the machinery of narrative fiction.  Mike Daisey&rsquo;s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs has the look and feel of a confessional documentary,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:38:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Agony-and-the-Ecstasy-of-Steve-Jobs]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Factory-Girls]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Factory Girls]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Factory Girls, written by Frank McGuinness and directed by Catriona McLaughlin, tells the story of five women who, faced with the threat of redundancy, stage a lock-in, hoping to reclaim power from the men &ldquo;upstairs&rdquo;. As the audience is ushered into a disused factory in Derry/Londonderry City Centre, place becomes an appropriate frame for Frank McGuinness&rsquo;s writing.  Although set against the backdrop of the socio-economic conditions of the 1960&rsquo;s The Factory Girls takes on a new contemporary relevance in this site-specific production by Millennium Forum.
Frank McGuiness&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:33:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Factory-Girls]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Croi-a-Mhuscailt---Awakening-a-Heart]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Croí á Mhúscailt | Awakening a Heart]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Lá amháin, Daideo wasn't in his chair anymore.&rdquo;
Branar presents a deeply moving and artistic portrayal of loss and childhood in their latest production, Croí á Mhúscailt | Awakening a Heart. Inspired by an image from Oliver Jeffers' picturebook, The Heart and the Bottle, Croí á Mhúscailt tells the story of a little girl who has recently lost her grandfather and explores the relationship between the girl and her grandmother, and their contrasting experiences of grief. Set in the living room of the grandparents' house, and told entirely through masterful puppetry, the focus is on an...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:25:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Croi-a-Mhuscailt---Awakening-a-Heart]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love--Billy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love, Billy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Time heals, they say. Not in the Martin family, it doesn&rsquo;t: twenty-five years after leaving Belfast inexplicably, the errant Billy returns, unleashing in his father and three sisters the emotions, fears and frustrations coiled to snapping point in the quarter-century of his absence. A can of worms being opened? More a nest of poisoned vipers suddenly released from captivity, stinging and maiming any unfortunate victim in their pathway.
The Martin family in question is, of course, that of Graham Reid&rsquo;s so-called 'Billy trilogy', a series of plays written for BBC television in the 1980s....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 22:42:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Love--Billy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bug]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bug]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[BrokenCrow theatre company are making their mark with a decent new production that gets right under the skin of an interesting American play. It is probably a compliment to say that the experience of watching Bug gets itchier as it goes on.
Tracy Letts&rsquo;s play offers its own perspective on a territory heavily mined by Sam Shepard where that ubiquitous American space &ndash; a motel room &ndash; expands as old American Western tropes like the cowboy drifter do battle with some contemporary ills. In Bug the pervasive sense of surveillance looms against a background of some sinister incarcerations.
As...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 20:10:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bug]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Man-in-the-Woman-s-Shoes]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Man in the Woman’s Shoes]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mikel Murfi&rsquo;s one-man show, The Man in the Woman&rsquo;s Shoes, is the imaginative product of his interviewing older people in the area of which he is a native. Murfi&rsquo;s script gives voice to cobbler Pat Farnon, whom the town considers mute. A childhood trauma is hinted at, but Pat prefers to believe the received version of the onset of his affliction &ndash; that he is a changeling.  Here is a man who lives alone and is self-sufficient, as he casts a philosopher&rsquo;s eye over local society, wondering why it is that we say that &ldquo;night falls&rdquo; but &ldquo;day breaks&rdquo;....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 11:42:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Man-in-the-Woman-s-Shoes]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bankers]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bankers]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s pompous v. pedantic inBankers, Brian McAvera&rsquo;s polemic about the general state of the financial system in recent times. The Focus Theatre production can&rsquo;t be faulted for contemporary aptness, but several elements inherent in the presentation of the conflict interfered with the delivery, to such a degree that, from the start, it was difficult to engage with it in full.

Eoin (Michael Bates) and wife Penelope (Tara Breathnach) and daughter Riann (Evelyn Lockley) have been kidnapped by the unnamed Kidnapper (Cathal Quinn). The cast were tied to office chairs, and were present...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2013 21:17:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bankers]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Chronicle-of-Oggle]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Chronicle of Oggle]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Peter Gowen&rsquo;s play began its touring run of County Cork in the town of Youghal. This is notable not just because it is Gowen&rsquo;s hometown, but also because Youghal, which has been hit hard by the recession, is just such a place that can reap benefits from Cork&rsquo;s Everyman Palace theatre&rsquo;s new touring initiative.  The initiative, a welcome development that will see three shows a year travel to small theatres in Cork county, kicked off last month with The Chronicles of Oggle, a work that has much to say about an Ireland past and in many ways still present. The play, which is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:18:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Chronicle-of-Oggle]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Re-Energize]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Re-Energize]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a delicious sense of Groundhog Day at the re-emergence on stage of Dave, Pete, Humper and Alison, the central characters of Gary Mitchell's pulsating 1999 play Energy.  But that sensation is far from delicious for the quartet themselves, for whom, to put it mildly, life has not been kind.
Mitchell's keenly anticipated sequel Re-Energize fast-forwards the action 30 years, building on the affection and nostalgia generated by its forerunner and catching up with the four members of a has-been band, now struggling to keep their heads above water in the changing times of the so-called 'new...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 18:22:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Re-Energize]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Carmen]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Carmen]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[I've seen a lot of things in thirty years of watching opera, but I'd never seen an opera conducted by somebody wearing a hoody. Now I have, in Opera Theatre Company&rsquo;s new staging of Bizet&rsquo;s masterpiece Carmen. Why was conductor Andrew Synnott wearing it? Possibly to take the dress-down Friday ethic to audiences around the country, showing that opera isn&rsquo;t exclusively intended for stuffed-shirt urbanites in monkey jackets. Here we had a cellist garbed in beach-bum surfer shorts, and a wind player in couch-potato track-suit trousers. Covent Garden it emphatically wasn&rsquo;t.

A...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 20:30:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Carmen]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hang-Up]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hang Up]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A man stands alone in an empty room. He climbs on a chair, fixes a noose to the ceiling, tugs it to make sure it will hold. As he hesitates, struggling to muster the courage, his mobile phone rings. He lets it ring out, but the caller is insistent, and the phone rings again and again until William (played by Tadgh Hickey) is forced to give in and answer it. So begins poet Adam Wyeth&rsquo;s first play, about communication, technology and the masks we wear or don&rsquo;t wear as we make connections with each other, twenty-first century style. The opening sequence of Hang Up does beg the obvious...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:10:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Hang-Up]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dradin--In-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dradin, In Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The labyrinthine world of fantasy writing is relatively under-represented in Irish theatre and Tribe Theatre have stepped up to the ivy-clad and cobwebbed plate to put matters right on that score.It could have been the cue for a lot of dry ice and the sound of rumbling storm clouds but in this new production, a strange netherworld is brought creepily to life through the strength of athletic and enterprising performances in a work that is astutely adapted and directed.
Jeff Vandermeer is a highly successful fantasy writer, and Bob Kelly &ndash; a Sligo actor who has had his own brushes with success,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 22:01:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dradin--In-Love]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/De-Profundis]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[De Profundis]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[De Profundis is the letter that Oscar Wilde wrote in Reading Gaol in 1897, addressed ostensibly to his former lover, Alfred &ldquo;Bosie&rdquo; Douglas. After Wilde had served two years penal servitude on a conviction of &ldquo;gross indecency&rdquo; his health had failed.  The compassionate transfer to Reading meant he finally had access to writing materials. De Profundis, published posthumously, is more than a letter, although the questions posed and charges made against Bosie are many and pointed. The document is also, importantly, Wilde&rsquo;s self-examination and apologia for his life choices.
Conor...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 22:02:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/De-Profundis]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lesson]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Lesson]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Theatre of the Absurd, is, well, absurd. If it&rsquo;s not to your taste, no amount of stylistic flair on the part of the production team is going to convince you that your time and money has been well spent. If you&rsquo;re keen to see what can be done with a text that has many tabula-rastic qualities, thenZoe Ní Riordáin and her team havedone an admirable job of taking an infrequently-performed text, staging it capably, and performing it with strong technique, for an audience that apparently knew its way around a post-dramatic kind of frame.

That&rsquo;s the impression this writer got, anyway,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 22:28:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Lesson]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Can-t-Forget-About-You]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Can't Forget About You]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For those familiar with his work, the title of David Ireland's new play, written during his tenure as writer-in-residence at the Lyric Theatre, is something of a double-edged sword, referencing not only its central theme of an irresistible - if unlikely - love affair but also the unforgettable content of what has gone before. Ireland, who trained as an actor - and notched up some impressive credits early in his stage career - has amassed a rapidly-growing canon of work since his first play What the Animals Say was produced just four years ago.
But for all his verbal fluency, his tangential imagination...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 22:57:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Can-t-Forget-About-You]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/hurry]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[hurry]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The reinvention of the body and its relationship to space and rhythm, to memory and technique is a risky and potent business for any choreographer. In the case of Jean Butler this is an experiment on her own body both as performer and dance maker, and one which emerges as a lyrical paean to the power of contemporary dance and to the remembrance of movement past. 

In hurry Butler is not on a nostalgia trip, her control and focus will not harbour sentiment; so no self-indulgent phrases of dance as a step-dancing princess. Instead there is a confidence and authority shining through the work as...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/hurry]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mojo-Mickybo]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mojo Mickybo]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[While Owen McCafferty is currently under commission to write the book and lyrics for a musical version of this play, first staged in 1998 by Kabosh, and a film version directed by Terry Loane was released in 2004, the joy of Mojo Mickybo  is in the virtuoso performances it inspires and requires from its actors on stage. This production has a pared down staging, with the two actors Chris Grant (Mojo) and Seamus O'Hara (Mickybo) dressed in identical white plimsolls, grey tracksuit bottoms and white t-shirts. The stage is bare except for two chairs with flip chart paper attached to the back, and a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2013 18:54:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mojo-Mickybo]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Enemy-of-the-People]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[An Enemy of the People]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ibsen&rsquo;s 1882 An Enemy of the People is sometimes described as a problem play, in that it dramatises a compelling debate between two brothers about the nature of morality and individual responsibility. But that term might obscure the fact that it&rsquo;s also quite a confused play: Ibsen himself was unsure whether to see it as a comedy or something more serious.
It has many of the ingredients of a Restoration-style romp (improbable entrances and exits, characters hiding behind screens to eavesdrop upon their enemies).  Yet it also has what Ibsen called a &ldquo;serious basic theme&rdquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2013 21:39:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Enemy-of-the-People]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/U-R-HAMLET-TOO]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[U-R-HAMLET-TOO]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[U-R-HAMLET TOO is actor Conor Madden&rsquo;s second attempt to pick apart the nature of art, spectatorship, and theatrical meaning using the indecisive Danish Prince as a point of departure. An earlier version of the show, U-R-HAMLET, was developed and performed last year as part of the 'Show in a Bag' initiative, produced by Fishamble and the Dublin Fringe Festival. In U-R-HAMLET-TOO, Madden and director Jason Byrne seem bent on boiling the Prince down to his essence by stripping away even more of the context that helped situate the original 'Show in a Bag' production.
The motives of Shakespeare&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 01 Jun 2013 22:47:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/U-R-HAMLET-TOO]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Kiss-Me-and-You-Will-See-How-Important-I-Am]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Kiss Me and You Will See How Important I Am]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mental illness is no laughing matter (although we laughed, in parts) but yes, it&rsquo;s fascinating to watch, when viewed from a safe distance.  Sprawled bare-footed on a grubby bedsit couch is Alex, our very own 'girl interrupted'. She swigs from a cheap-looking bottle of red wine and tells us she is better now, that she&rsquo;s ready to come clean.  She talks about the pills, how she screamed and spat and pulled her hair out, and she rattles off the formula they teach you for coping with depression: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t drink too much, don&rsquo;t think too much, and don&rsquo;t expect other people...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:25:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Kiss-Me-and-You-Will-See-How-Important-I-Am]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Under-Pressure]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Under Pressure]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The phenomenon that is 50 Shades of Grey has already made its presence felt on the Irish theatre world, what with 51 Shades of Maggie enjoying a month long run on the Tivoli stage. The book is also a key plot point in Rachel Fehily's anomalous legal drama Under Pressure, which ran recently at Bewley's Cafe Theatre. Leaving the witty back and forths, the shocking revelations and surprise witnesses to Agatha Christie, Under Pressure is a simple conversation between a Senior Counsel and her client as to how they should approach his trial.
David Gallagher (Geoff Minogue), a successful ear, nose and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2013 23:21:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Under-Pressure]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Closer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Closer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Watching Closer today, it is easy to see why Patrick Marber&rsquo;s 1997 play became a Broadway hit, later adapted to the synonymous movie featuring some of Hollywood&rsquo;s A-list. A dark, domestic comedy, it offers snippets from several years within the lives of two couples (Alice and Dan, Larry and Anna) who cheat, lie and switch partners. The play is made both entertaining and filmic through its plot twists and reversals, as well as split screen and merged scenes. It was, at the time of writing, a work of immediate relevance: set in London of the 90s, where it premiered; offering strikingly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:49:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Closer]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Conversation-with-a-Cupboard-Man]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Conversation with a Cupboard Man]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This monologue piece produced by Sickle Moon Productions is directly taken from Ian McEwan&rsquo;s short story of the same name.  The story has much to recommend it for dramatisation: it is told in a strong first person narrative and the monologue form seems apt for a story that concerns a man who struggles to be heard but is unable to relate or to converse with others after a disturbed childhood wherein his Mother kept him as a baby until the age of seventeen.
These aspects are picked up well in this staging by Jeda de Brí, who directs Finbarr Doyle to give an assured, sensitive and well paced...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:09:30 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Conversation-with-a-Cupboard-Man]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shush]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Shush]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Elaine Murphy's 2008 play Little Gem, the lives of contemporary Irish women were thrust centre-stage with vivid realisation. Presented in monologue form, Little Gem was a first-person treatise that spanned generations of women, giving a frank and unsensationalised representation of family relationships and female sexuality. Shush ploughs similar territory but in broader form, as Murphy develops the distinctive voice of her debut play through dialogue and a formal two-act structure.
Shush is set over a single night as a group of friends gather to celebrate the birthday of one of their core group,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:35:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Shush]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Howie-the-Rookie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Howie the Rookie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[An instant classic in 1999, Mark O&rsquo;Rowe&rsquo;s Howie the Rookie returns to Dublin almost a decade and a half on renewed and retooled as a solo performance directed by the playwright. It is, quite simply, an essential experience. Painful as such a cliché may sound to our jaundiced ears, how else could you describe the package Landmark Productions have presented us with? With recently much-befamed Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (from TV&rsquo;s Love/Hate) as star and the original writer as director, it feels like must-see theatre, and it is.
The play recounts the stories of two Dublin youths who share...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:02:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Howie-the-Rookie]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Scarlet-Letter]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Scarlet Letter]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Adaptation is a tricky thing. Going from page to stage means that an audience can arrive loaded with preconceived ideas of how the story should be told. Then there is the issue of presenting a familiar story in a fresh way to a knowing audience whilst simultaneously catering for an audience that is unfamiliar with the source material. Following 18 - 35, their devised piece for last year's Cork Midsummer Festival, Conflicted Theatre dip their toes into the often choppy waters of adaptation with their take on Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic nineteenth-century novel The Scarlet Letter. Presented as...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2013 21:42:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Scarlet-Letter]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Deep]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Deep ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The moment we set foot in the Half Moon Theatre, we are thrown back in time to the &lsquo;90s, to an era that is still just reachable in our memory bank, but falling out of our grasp with the passing of each day. Deep invites us back to a time in the city when lives were falling apart, but souls came together to sweat and dance and rave, in the heart of Cork City, in the home of house music: Sir Henry&rsquo;s night club.
Our guide down this nostalgic path is Larry Lehane, the boy who was born &ldquo;hearing the beats of the heart monitor and thinking of putting a house beat to it.&rdquo; Larry&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2013 22:10:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Deep]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Portrait-of-the-Artist-as-a-Young-Man]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In a New York Review of Books essay from last year entitled &lsquo;What To Make Of Finnegans Wake?&rsquo;, American writer Michael Chabon was surprisingly dismissive of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Describing it as &ldquo;unlovable&rdquo; and a &ldquo;stamp in the passport&rsquo;, Chabon claimed Portrait &ldquo;fouls its rotors in a dense kelpy snarl of cathected horniness, late-Victorian aesthetics, and the Jesuitical cleverness that, even in Ulysses, wearies the most true-hearted lover of Joyce.&rdquo; Whatever your feelings about Joyce&rsquo;s first novel &ndash; mine tend to be...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:44:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Portrait-of-the-Artist-as-a-Young-Man]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Snake-Oil]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Snake Oil]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What&rsquo;s at stake, and who&rsquo;s in charge? Alan O&rsquo;Regan&rsquo;s one act play is a good, formal exercise in dramatic basics. Who wants what? How are they going to get it? What is it worth to them? Is it really worth it in the long run? This last is the kicker, as the effort employed by Shell (O&rsquo;Callaghan) and Conor (Adlum) to get something for nothing out of Ed (Keane), in this mercenary reviewer&rsquo;s humble opinion, isn&rsquo;t worth the candle.Not that it&rsquo;s not entertaining getting there, and this is where the power plays come in.
Shell is reading an old-fashioned...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Jun 2013 20:55:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Snake-Oil]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Night-Alive]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Night Alive]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Conor McPherson&rsquo;s new play is set in the ground-floor bedsit of a Dublin house, owned by Maurice (Norton), who crankily polices it from upstairs. In the intimate Donmar space, where actors enter from all sides, it feels like we are in the house too. The high ceiling and stained-glass French doors of Soutra Gilmour's set hint towards something quite luxurious, but in Tommy&rsquo;s (Hinds) hands the flat has become a bit of a hoarder&rsquo;s lair, stocked up with dirty dishes, two beds &ndash; one for him and one for his mate Doc (McElhatton) &ndash; and the dog biscuits he eats. There is no...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 22:51:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Night-Alive]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Real-Man]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Real Man]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What with the Titanic centenary last year, and the 400th anniversary of Belfast's civic charter this year, there's been a veritable spate of plays about the city in recent times, of widely varying quality. It can begin to feel like navel-gazing, frankly, so it's good to see a new company turning decisively away from furrow-browed historical analysis, &lsquo;Troubles&rsquo; exegesis, or the complacent peddling of so-called &lsquo;local humour.&rsquo; There's been too much of all those things recently.
Enter Studio Theatre Company with The Real Man, a new play nominally set in the city, but whose...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 18:09:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Real-Man]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Exit-Strategy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Exit Strategy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Exit Strategy, Makeshift Ensemble&rsquo;s new theatre offering, though flawed, is a surprising and often compelling piece of new writing. At the heart of the piece are two semi-fictional characters Eszter and Leah, best friends, who are at a crucial point in their lives. Having both lived and worked in Cork for quite some time, we see them now weighing up their options, seeking advice, and planning for the correct moment to execute their own 'exit strategies'.
The play essentially exists on three separate platforms - the corporate world, the game show world and the emotional world of the characters'...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jun 2013 18:38:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Exit-Strategy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Guaranteed!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Guaranteed!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The timing of playwright and journalist Colin Murphy&rsquo;s piece of &lsquo;pop up&rsquo; political theatre, produced by Fishamble, is impeccable. Guaranteed!, Murphy&rsquo;s well-blended mix of documentary and dramatisation exploring the events leading up the Irish bank guarantee in 2008, is touring the Dublin suburbs just as the &lsquo;Anglo tapes&rsquo; have surfaced, recordings of telephone conversations that reveal the executives of Anglo Irish Bank to be no better than a bunch of privileged, arrogant American frat boys. Like the Anglo tapes, Murphy&rsquo;s deeply researched drama confirms...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 Jun 2013 22:08:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Guaranteed!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Tallest-Man-in-the-World]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Tallest Man in the World]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Although she is best known as an established classical composer, Cork native Ailís Ní Ríain is also a writer and a playwright who has been writing texts for performance for over a decade and who often works across disciplines: her latest work, a collaborative installation piece comprising music, poetry and sculpture is currently featuring as part of the Brass: Durham International Festival. Ní Ríain&rsquo;s stated artistic endeavour is to challenge, provoke and engage, and in her sound work she has worked across opera, music-theatre, electroacoustic and site-specific installation. Therefore, it...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jun 2013 22:55:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Tallest-Man-in-the-World]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/100--Cork]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[100% Cork]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The German theatre collective Rimini Protokoll defines the work it makes as &lsquo;reality theatre&rsquo;, dramatic work that finds a place in the interzone between reality and fiction. Rimini Protokoll has been to Cork before, with Best Before, a collaborative, staged, multi-player video game produced for Cork Midsummer 2010, while collective member Stefan Kaegi curated last year&rsquo;s Parallel Cities programme for the festival. This new work, produced as part of Cork Midsummer 2013, purports equally to be of and about the city of Cork; that it is, but the model &ndash; using 100 representatives...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jun 2013 22:30:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/100--Cork]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Human-Child]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Human Child]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;You need to be a big girl now, and don't be away with the fairies.&rdquo;
Collapsing Horse presents an enchanting, aesthetically beautiful and highly entertaining exploration of one child's determination to cling tight to her childlike sense of fun while everyone around her is playing &ldquo;taxes&rdquo; and becoming &ldquo;more grown up&rdquo;. Inspired by W.B. Yeats&rsquo;s &lsquo;The Stolen Child&rsquo;, Human Child, written and directed by Dan Colley, draws from Irish changeling mythology to tell the story of Lelia&rsquo;s struggle to remain true to herself in a world that wants her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Jul 2013 23:12:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Human-Child]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Best-Man]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Best Man]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is curiously compelling to watch the complete implosion of a family. Alan, the husband and father in the Carmel Winters' new play, Best Man, recounts that he turned on the spluttering coffee machine &quot;because the kettle seemed too meek.&quot; This passionate, punchy play steers clear of meekness and embraces the distasteful dysfunctions of its characters, male and female.
The play's action rips the plaster off a marriage in distress by turning a cliché on its head. It manages to do this with credibility and passion. Alan and Kay's marriage is invaded by sexy Nanny Marta's arrival - &quot;the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 24 Jun 2013 23:27:50 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Best-Man]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Molly-Bloom]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Molly Bloom]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[She struts out on stage as the lights come up, affecting a smooth, liquid gait while absently kicking aside a stray bit of clothing from her path. Leaning like a cabaret singer on an iron bedpost, a gold scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, she presents us with a warbling love song, accompanied by the ghostly strains of an accordion. Self-satisfied and seemingly more comfortable in her body than most, this is Eilín O&rsquo;Dea&rsquo;s embodiment of Molly Bloom, lifted from the pages of the &lsquo;Penelope&rsquo; episode of Joyce&rsquo;s Ulysses.
The episode depicts a sleepless Molly Bloom in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 13 Jul 2013 23:32:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Molly-Bloom]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Til-Death-We-Part]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Till Death We Part]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is something quite fascinating about death (once it&rsquo;s not happening to us, of course). It comes to us all (as the saying goes), it is the &ldquo;one and only certainty in life,&rdquo; as Amy de Bhrún reminds us, and we never really know when it will happen, what it will feel like, and what, if anything, happens afterwards. De Bhrún chooses to explore three different death scenarios through three different characters in her latest one woman show: Hannah, who knows her impending death is near; Marie, who chooses to die by euthanasia; and Joanie, who decides to end her life by suicide.
Yes,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:37:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Til-Death-We-Part]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Tiorganach-Drogallach-The-Last-Days-of-a-Reluct]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[An Tíorganách Drogallach/The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Tom Murphy&rsquo;s The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant premiered at the Abbey Theatre in June 2009, it was difficult to divorce the play from its immediate context. Exploring greed, corruption, and religious hypocrisy, the script seemed to offer devastating parallels with Ireland&rsquo;s sudden economic collapse and the chronicle of systematic child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church anatomised in the Ryan Commission report. The tenor of An Taibhdhearc&rsquo;s Irish language production (with English surtitles) of The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, staged as part of this year&rsquo;s Galway...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Jul 2013 19:08:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/An-Tiorganach-Drogallach-The-Last-Days-of-a-Reluct]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bonfire-Night-Arsehammers]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bonfire Night/Arsehammers]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Theatre practitioner Claire Dowie is a leading proponent (some would say creator) of a genre known as 'stand-up theatre.' Consisting of monologues that engender direct address storytelling, thus fostering the performer's engagement with the audience, Dowie's work proves a judicious choice for CallBack theatre's latest production. Bonfire Night and Arsehammers, a pair of tragi-comic monologues, showcase the talents of Cora Fenton, and prove a perfect marriage of performer and writer.
Book-ended by a maudlin country and western song, Arsehammers tells the story of a young boy, who, through overheard...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 19:42:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bonfire-Night-Arsehammers]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Adventures-of-Shay-Mouse]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Adventures of Shay Mouse]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A recent bit of sleuthing by a Sunday paper uncovers a &lsquo;first-time&rsquo; crime writer as billionaire children&rsquo;s writer J.K. Rowling. From initial sales of 1,500 to rocketing to the top of best-seller lists on this revelation, clearly one&rsquo;s name helps in shifting copies. On a Galway stage during the 2013 Arts Festival, the writer of a children&rsquo;s show is also a Booker Prize nominee and infamous progenitor of dark, murderously claustrophobic, adult worlds. A famous name must help in pushing this ambitious new musical for children - although it may, in this case, explain why...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 10:29:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Adventures-of-Shay-Mouse]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/All-Dolled-Up--Restitched]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[All Dolled Up: Restitched]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Somewhere in the middle of her latest theatrical outing All Dolled Up: Restitched, Panti casually refers to a memoir she intends to one day write: &quot;High Heels and Low Places&quot;. It was an easy joke in a night full of hilarity, but it was intriguing nonetheless. While the book would of course be welcomed, would we even need a Panti memoir given her body of work in the theatre over the past six years?
Despite her many familiar guises &ndash; dilettante, entrepreneur, publican, provocateur, national treasure &ndash; Panti has quietly established herself as one of Ireland&rsquo;s most prolific...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 20 Jul 2013 10:57:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/All-Dolled-Up--Restitched]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mary-Stuart--Queen-of-Scots]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[England, Fotheringhay Castle, 1587. Mary Stuart (Christiane O&rsquo;Mahony), deposed Catholic Queen of Scotland, has been in prison for 19 years under the rule of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England (Aenne Barr). A series of Catholic plots to release her and overthrow the Protestant regime has threatened the stability and authority of Elizabeth&rsquo;s realm, but her various advisors disagree on how to handle the situation. Lord Burleigh (Neill Fleming) urges execution. George Talbot (Pádraig Murray), Earl of Shrewsbury, urges moderation. Robert Dudley (Matthew Ralli), Earl of Leicester, sometime...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:54:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Mary-Stuart--Queen-of-Scots]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Foreign-Bodies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Foreign Bodies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Displacement is a primary theme of Polish Theatre Ireland&rsquo;s production of Julia Holewińska&rsquo;s Foreign Bodies, an unsettling contemplation of identity politics during and after the fall of communism in Poland. Time is the first victim of this displacement. Anthony Kinahan&rsquo;s overtly theatrical chorus tells us at the outset that the opening scene depicting a riotous New Year&rsquo;s Eve party is occurring in 1983 or 1984 or at some point in the 1980s. Here we&rsquo;re introduced to Adam (a solid Paul Travers) and his circle of anti-communist agitators secretly making and spreading...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Jul 2013 23:01:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Foreign-Bodies]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Streetcar-Named-Desire]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Streetcar Named Desire]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If your experience of Tennessee Williams&rsquo; 1947 play is the foregrounding of Stanley Kowalski&rsquo;s sweaty singlet, as per Elia Kazan's 1951 film, then you&rsquo;re in for an awakening. The fetishisation of the youthful Brando began on Broadway in the play's maiden run, and has become a defining characteristic not only of his own mythos, but arguably that of the entire text. In a way it seems appropriate, given that in Streetcar the illusions of the feminine are ground underfoot by the realistic masculine. It&rsquo;s easy to make the mistake that Blanche is nothing but a pathetic, man-eating,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 27 Jul 2013 23:30:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Streetcar-Named-Desire]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/riverrun]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[riverrun]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Since the expiry of copyright on James Joyce&rsquo;s works at the tail-end of 2011, adaptations of Dubliners, Ulysses, The Dead, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man have vied for the attention of Irish theatre audiences. Finnegans Wake, Joyce&rsquo;s notoriously impenetrable novel, has been conspicuously absent. Premiered at this year&rsquo;s Galway Arts Festival, Olwen Fouéré&rsquo;s riverrun is the first attempt to grapple with depicting Joyce&rsquo;s esoteric final work on an Irish stage. This innovative co-production is both infused with the anarchic spirit of its source and underscores...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 22 Jul 2013 16:15:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/riverrun]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Extinct]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Extinct]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This new play by Tiernan Kearns follows not the writing of the Irish canon but that of contemporary British playwrights like Martin Crimp and Philip Ridley in its indirect style of address and by its dissolution of character, dramatic structure and plot.  Its deliberate rough and garish aesthetic was also redolent of the work of the British company Forced Entertainment.
The piece consists of a collection of scenes narrated and at times acted by five performers dressed as a caveman (Kearns), a tree (Marnie Fay), a star (Fennelly), the moon (Braddell), and a mother (Ayres). The gaudy costumes by...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Aug 2013 23:10:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Extinct]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Chip-in-the-Sugar]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Chip in the Sugar]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Human frailty and the wildly differing effects of personal change are to the forefront in Alan Bennett&rsquo;s bittersweet monologue, A Chip in the Sugar.
Middle-aged narrator, Graham Whittaker (Myles Breen) lives with and cares for his elderly mother, Vera. This staid companionship is turned upside down when, after a chance encounter, Vera reunites with old flame, Frank Turnbull. His ever-increasing influence on Vera threatens the stability of Graham&rsquo;s life and mental state. Breen presents the three main characters through a combination of reportage and mimicry so all are perceived through...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 25 Jul 2013 22:09:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Chip-in-the-Sugar]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Fringe-Festival-2013]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Galway Fringe Festival 2013]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[ITM critics Siobhán O'Gorman and Brendan Daly attended Galway Fringe Festival 2013.
Ballykilldowna
ThereisBear!
The Townhouse Bar
Reviewed 20 July 
Bean Uí Hynes is a recognisable character from any Irish village. The lifeblood of the local GAA club, she is unfailingly at the side-line for every match and makes tea and her homemade brown bread for the team afterwards. Her sudden death coincides with Ballykilldowna&rsquo;s hurling final victory and devastates her beloved grandson, Des, leaving him bereft of any family. Des, who has cystic fibrosis, is in love with his best friend, Megan, but...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 31 Jul 2013 22:27:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Fringe-Festival-2013]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Major-Barbara]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Major Barbara]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[On the surface, Major Barbara does tick a lot of the &lsquo;summer show&rsquo; boxes.  The determined criteria meant to lure in the tourists are there. There are gorgeous period costumes (beautifully designed by Joan O&rsquo;Clery). The language is intelligent, &lsquo;posh&rsquo; and seemingly inoffensive (even the lower class slang is politely dated). The closest thing to an open expression of libido is a brief kiss or two with slightly parted lips. Sure, what harm could any of it do?
The answer is: plenty. The beauty of Shaw is his ability to upend a viewer&rsquo;s moral universe with an ease...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 13 Aug 2013 13:30:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Major-Barbara]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Embers]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Embers]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Beckett in a note on his radio play All That Fall warned against adapting it for the stage insisting that &quot;to act it is to kill it,&quot; ruining his desired effect that the piece would be &quot;coming out of the dark.&quot; No such note is attached to his 1959 BBC produced radio text Embers but as this piece is even more resistant to representation than All that Fall, Beckett&rsquo;s previous comments would seem even more apt. What is remarkable about Pan Pan&rsquo;s theatrical production of Embers is how well the company under the direction of Gavin Quinn manage to challenge but also adhere...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 12 Aug 2013 17:21:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Embers]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Twelfth-Night]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Twelfth Night]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Famed director and critic Harold Clurman once said that clarity of speech is not a matter of technical proficiency alone. It results from a definiteness of dramatic impulse. Neither are on display in AC Productions' reading of Twelfth Night, presented at Project Arts Centre in July.
While the company does not have access to the cast or the coffers that a Rough Magic or Druid production might have, this isn&rsquo;t their first time on the carousel. They have mounted and toured many productions of the Bard&rsquo;s work, both at home and abroad, and should be aware of the demands such a staging puts...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:17:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Twelfth-Night]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Petrushka]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Petrushka]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Fabulous Beast&rsquo;s dance double-bill for the Galway Arts Festival, Stravinsky&rsquo;s Petrushka is the follow-up to the more controversial The Rite of Spring: it&rsquo;s a sort of sensible sister smoothing the troubled waters stirred up by the nudity, humping, hares and hounds of Michael Keegan-Dolan&rsquo;s preceding Rite.
In a way, however, the pairing of these two particular productions is tricky: the disturbing, violently aggressive drama of The Rite of Spring haunts Petrushka&rsquo;s more lyrical and optimistic mood. Petrushka&rsquo;s pallid set and white-dressed dancers are rather...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 18 Jul 2013 16:21:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Petrushka]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Break]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Break]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The death of a popular secondary school student throws into sharp relief the disappointments and desires of an overworked team of teachers. When music teacher Jeff (Tom Lane) makes a hash of the memorial mass held for the dead student, vice principal John (Damian Devaney) brings in a workshop facilitator named Kelly (Elayne Harrington) to help the students express their grief through the medium of rap and the spoken word. Kelly&rsquo;s presence further disrupts the already chaotic atmosphere of the teachers&rsquo; break room, as she becomes a figure of desire and derision among the rest of the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Break]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Eclipsed]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Eclipsed]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Eve started it all,&rdquo; spits Mother Victoria (Caroline Lynch). No, she did not, and oh what a tiring tune that is. Eclipsed shows an audience, in a haunting way, the drastic consequences of blind faith in laws which discriminate and punish, and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Mephisto Theatre Company&rsquo;s production of Patricia Burke Brogan&rsquo;s play at the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, directed by Niall Cleary, is a beautifully paced and poignant event that tells of the histories and experiences of women (unmarried mothers, orphans, those &lsquo;mentally unfit&rsquo; but...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 23 Aug 2013 22:42:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Eclipsed]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Gulliver-s-Travels-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Gulliver's Travels]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A group of unruly teens are disrupting a performance before it has even had a chance to begin. They are laughing, talking loudly, checking their mobile phones, and teasing the be-wigged compère (Conor Lenihan) with sniggers and the breaking of wind. As he takes a seat at the piano stool for a recital of the work of George Fredric Handel, peer and sometime enemy of Jonathan Swift, the ghost of Swift himself appears, berating the teens as a bunch of Yahoos. And it is true, the behaviour of the teens does mimic that of Swift&rsquo;s most memorable creations, the deformed savages of the Houyhnhnms,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Aug 2013 22:57:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Gulliver-s-Travels-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Disco Pigs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Pig and Runt are born into mediocrity, moments apart in 'Pork' City. Cocooning themselves against the averageness of the everyday, their babified almost animalistic talk imbues them with a sense of being apart, of escaping the ordinary and humdrum, the threat that they are just more flies buzzing around the dung hole that is &ldquo;the real capital&rdquo;. But real life has begun to reveal itself, and as Runt starts to take those first tender steps towards spreading her wings, Pig desperately tries to clip them.
The ferocity of potential, the murder of feeling, the wild careening off track that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Jul 2013 21:43:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Birthday-Man-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: The Birthday Man]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In this preachy, elliptical comic drama that spans the life of our centenarian protagonist, ability spurns ambition as Gonzo Theatre juggle too many balls and they all come crashing down. From Oisín's (McGuinness) birth during the Lockout to his death during the recession, the action jumps back and forth through time. His parents struggle to keep him alive whilst starving on strike, his granddaughter wishes him dead whilst caring for him and his son&rsquo;s girlfriend reveals she has been 'pollinated' at the height of the troubles. 
There are disturbing confrontations with terrorists, run-ins...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Birthday-Man-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Way-Back-Home]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Way Back Home]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A small boy called Cuán White has lost his way, and his red boots. Against a backdrop of Henderson&rsquo;s subtly changing watercolour paintings of pastel blues and reds and creams, he begins his journey home with nothing but the trust, guidance and promises of strangers. &ldquo;Follow the markings and don&rsquo;t stray and don&rsquo;t take off your boots,&rdquo; he&rsquo;s told. If only it were as simple as that.

This mystifying piece merges visual and sound art, music, dance and theatre in a splendidly seamless fashion. At first it resembles something of a jigsaw of isolated parts&ndash;a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Way-Back-Home]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--You-Remember-the-Stories-Y]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: You Remember the Stories You Wish Were True]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[

Normal
0




false
false
false

EN-IE
X-NONE
X-NONE

















































































































































































































































































































































































































/*...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--You-Remember-the-Stories-Y]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--WAGE]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: WAGE]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&lsquo;Tickets are offered for female and female identified audience members at a discounted rate in respect of the 13.9% gender pay gap in Ireland.&rsquo; So says the blurb for WAGE, the latest offering from provocative choreographers Fitzgerald and Stapleton. The audience pile in to the theatre, wage-paid-for tickets in hand, filing past the two naked, female dancers who are already moving on stage. 
Fitzgerald and Stapleton perform naked for the duration, confronting the audience with the female form unadorned. It shouldn&rsquo;t be confrontational, and yet it is.

Their bodies are shown...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--WAGE]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Distance-From-the-Event]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Distance From the Event]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mysteries need to be sufficiently mysterious in order to be confounding, and a strange science fiction environment needs to be, paradoxically, familiar enough within our own ability to accept different forms and functions. In Collapsing Horse&rsquo;s latest venture, the mystery allows two wise-cracking detectives to provide our grounding, as they try to bust an unctuous gangster who seems to be using the arts to launder money.

The mystery aspect of the production is thwarted by the use of women&rsquo;s intuition, and a haunting dream, as the impetus for the investigation &mdash; and the lady...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Distance-From-the-Event]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Confusion-Boats]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Confusion Boats]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Gerard Kelly wanted to be a boxer. Knocked out in the first round of his first fight, he now plays guitar and makes theatre. He draws on all this in his exploration of masculinity and what it means today.
Revealing his inner-self through poetry and song, he chats amiably about his past experiences and how they shaped him. He reconstructs the narrative of his youth by repositioning himself as the wisecracking, impervious superheroes projected on him from TV and film. And as the conflicting demands of society intrude, he pummels his exasperation into the audience.
A long time collaborator of THEATREclub,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Confusion-Boats]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Of-Rogues-and-Knaves]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Of Rogues and Knaves]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The first, and arguably most relevant, takeaway from Of Rogues and Knaves is this: Paul Gleeson is an incredible magician. The Dubliner&rsquo;s one man show runs the entire gamut of illusion and trickery, from baffling sleight of hand card stunts to cracking the PIN codes of unwitting audience members to making their credit cards disappear.

Over theone-hour show, Gleeson establishes himself asa master in the dying, though fascinating craft of live deception, or as children call it magic, so it&rsquo;s a shame the production values of Of Rogues and Knaves do not rival his prowess with a deck...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Of-Rogues-and-Knaves]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Whelp]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Whelp]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&lsquo;When you&rsquo;re eighteen, you&rsquo;re out the door.&rsquo; Parents often make this threat, but a persistent economic downturn has rendered it an idle one. Empty nesters have found that their nests don&rsquo;t remain empty for long, and the front door of many twenty-something&rsquo;s childhood home has become a revolving one. 
In a series of comic vignettes, Red (Mary Conroy) and Yellow (Lola White) dissect with sharp irony the pitfalls of moving back in with your parents after trying to make it in the real world. We&rsquo;re first introduced to the two young women decked out in 1950s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Whelp]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bunk]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Bunk]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sleep. People never tire of discussing it, and individual experiences of it vary drastically, running the gamut from an eagerly-anticipated space of escape to a dreaded tussle with an intractable sandman.
Paperdolls newest work Bunk veers into the realm of the nightmarish with an aerial performance that takes phenomena such as sleep paralysis and sleepwalking as themes to work from.
Couched in an oversized four-poster bed that is a sinister conglomeration of tattered mattress innards, springs and foam spilling out, the company&rsquo;s three intrepid performers (Emily Aoibheann, Elaine McCague...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bunk]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Pondling]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Pondling]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The imagination of a lonely little girl is poignant thing &mdash; unless that lonely little girl is basically psychotic.

You laugh, but it is actually quite sad. Madeleine has many of the normal things that little girls have: a My Pretty Pony bicycle, baby fat, a hatred for working on her grandfather&rsquo;s farm, a debilitating crush on Johnno Boyle O&rsquo;Connor. She has light fingers when it comes to the second hand shop in town, and a heavy hand when it comes to decapitating chickens &mdash; and she has no mum.
Written and performed by Genevieve Hulme-Beaman, we know everything we know...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Pondling]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Decision-Problem--Good-Tim]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Decision Problem [Good Time for Questions]]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Is it unprofessional to tweet during a performance that you&rsquo;re reviewing? It&rsquo;s encouraged in the new production by John Rogers, who himself is using a voice-speaking Macbook to throw a flirt at the ladies in the second row. 

In this meditation on the rapid rise of computers the laptop takes centre stage, conjuring a theatricalised slideshow that layers up sound recordings and visuals. The atmosphere is relaxed, and as the performer glosses over social media profiles and phone messages we become curious about his personal life.
But Rogers gets resigned to the background and the computer...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Decision-Problem--Good-Tim]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Postscript]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Postscript]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[From a young age, Noelle Brown knew something was amiss. Her light skin and red hair stood out in a family with dark hair and sallow complexions. Told early on by loving parents that she was adopted, Brown decides as an adult to track down her birth mother and uncover the circumstances that prompted her being given up for adoption.
Co-written with Michéle Forbes, this two-woman show casts Brown as a sort of private detective hunting down clues and following up leads. The plot unfolds in a series of missives from Brown&rsquo;s adopted Aunt Patty (played with great vivacity by Bríd Ní Neachtain)...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Postscript]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--War-of-Attrition]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: War of Attrition]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One bad click deserves another, at least in this War of Attrition, an Easter Rising/Wikileaks mash up. Fought on the ground and in the ether, no one is safe, particularly in a city the size of Dublin, where you could quite plausibly do enough old fashioned stalking to supplement the cyber variety, to great success.

Made a mockery by a YouTube video that went viral, Daisy (Roseanna Purcell) loses her job as a chugger &mdash; soz, face-to-face fundraiser &mdash; and with the help of homeless puppeteer Chris (John Morton), tracks down the anonymous uploader, Alan (John Doran). What started as blowback...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--War-of-Attrition]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--MADONNA]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: MADONNA]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Modern society&rsquo;s unhealthy fixation with celebrity has not necessarily been a novel theme in Irish theatre over the last few years. While the world has become increasingly obsessed with the rich and famous, playwrights have been set on interrogating the reasons why. Meadhbh Haicéid takes to the stage in the International Bar to do just that in an autobiographical piece which unashamedly lays bare her own infatuation with Madonna. 

With deadpan delivery Haicéid opens the show by sharing her conviction that the Material Girl is not merely an idol, but rather her soul mate. As she backs up...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--MADONNA]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--FAIR-BALL-T-YIS--A-Footbal]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: FAIR BALL T'YIS: A Football Opera]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The timing couldn't be more fortuitous. The week before Dublin take on Mayo in the All Ireland Senior Football Final in Croke Park, real life GAA fans take the starring role in Campo/Het Kip's football 'opera', immersing us in the atmosphere and antics of Hill 16 on match day.
Placing the audience on the stage, 50+ fans of the boys in blue flood into the house seats, decked out in the capital's colours, making explicit the distinctly theatrical role of spectators in the sport. Uniformly attired, they express, as one, the thoughts of the everyday people of the city as their gladiators do battle...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--FAIR-BALL-T-YIS--A-Footbal]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--GRINDR-a-love-story]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: GRINDR/a love story]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[While waiting for the lights to rise on PETTYCASH&rsquo;s new production, I whip out my phone and tap on an app that conjures a list of nearby suitors. The magical locating device is GRINDR: a networking app for gay, bi-sexual and bi-curious men looking for chat, love and fun of the string-less variety. I spot many profiles in the auditorium, here to see spoken word artist Oisín McKenna riff on the idea: can we find love over the internet?

McKenna plays Johnny, a young introvert fluent in Facebook fact-finding and twitterature. He&rsquo;s pining over an ex-boyfriend and GRINDR keeps putting...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--GRINDR-a-love-story]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Beowulf-The-Blockbuster!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Beowulf The Blockbuster!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The title of Bryan Burroughs&rsquo; Beowulf: The Blockbuster! is slightly misleading; it is less a reworking of the Anglo-Saxon poem than a performance about how fantasy can help to absolve us from the hideousness of our present circumstances. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m about to be born,&rdquo; Burroughs&rsquo; character announces as the performance commences, a metaphor for the birth of the creative imagination as much as a rethinking of his positioning in the greater genealogy of his ancestry. This is not the speaker&rsquo;s story we are told, but his father&rsquo;s. His grandfather is dying from cancer...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Beowulf-The-Blockbuster!]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Lippy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: LIPPY]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In our search for meaning in the world, theatre can deliver truth divinely from the unknown. But when it approaches the boarded-up dwelling of four Kildare women who entered a suicide pact thirteen years ago, the art form becomes compromised. It can&rsquo;t find sense in the tragedy, and that releases something extraordinary.
The central conceit of Dead Centre&rsquo;s new production is lip-reading. &ldquo;Context is everything,&rdquo; says actor and interpreter Daniel Reardon. He&rsquo;s being interviewed by co-director, Bush Moukarzel, in a post-show discussion of a show we never see (a very...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Lippy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--In-Dog-Years-I-m-Dead]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: In Dog Years I'm Dead]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Turning thirty. For those about to, it can render them a quivering ball of existential neuroses. For those of us who have, we wonder what the hell everyone was on about. It would be easy to look at the indulgently nostalgic protagonists of Kate Heffernan&rsquo;s new play and dismiss them cynically as over-grown children who should just quietly turn thirty and get on with it. But if this production says anything, it&rsquo;s that people rarely feel like they&rsquo;ve completely assumed adulthood, and most of us navigate the adult world feeling like utter fakes. 

David (Robert Bannon) and Emily...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--In-Dog-Years-I-m-Dead]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Fit-Misfit]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Fit/Misfit]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[



Born of an exchange between Ireland-based Iseli-Chiodi dance company and Mexican company Lux Boreal, Fit/Misfit is a quietly witty study of individual identity and belonging. Housed in the expansive upstairs space of Smock Alley Theatre, the piece tears through a diverse range of tones and attitudes, always slightly arch, and underpinned throughout by choreographic motifs.


Normal
0




false
false
false

ES
X-NONE
X-NONE
















































































































































































































































































































































































































/*...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 13 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Fit-Misfit]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Curious-Case-of-the-St]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: The Curious Case of the Stoneybatter Strangler]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In the late 18th century, a killer haunted the area around Stoneybatter, his prey young women who worked long hours for the gentry up the Manor in Grangegorman. It was discovered that the culprit was a crippled beggar known as Billy in the Bowl: born without legs, he did his rounds by dragging himself about in, unsurprisingly, a bowl. The district was put under curfew, much to disgust of the folk in the locality, until he was caught.

These are not spoilers, because the production of this curious case tells us everything straight out, with no thought to narrative yarn spinning. It is performed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Curious-Case-of-the-St]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Games-People-Play]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: The Games People Play]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Meet Oisin and Niamh: married in their early thirties, parents of a young son and daughter, struggling to pay for groceries and knee deep in negative equity for their Drumcondra abode. Gavin Kostick&rsquo;s The Games People Play is both a timeless story about two people lost inside a marriage, and a very contemporary Irish horror story of debt, desire and emigration. The drama revolves around an overpriced games set from Argos &ndash; pool table, foosball, chess and about 40 other leisure activities &ndash; that Oisin is constructing in advance of his son Oscar&rsquo;s birthday party. As he puts...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Games-People-Play]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Fused]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Fused]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dan Bergin&rsquo;s Fused achieves that which seems almost impossible &ndash; a show that relies almost entirely on improvisation, audience participation and interactivity, but which is also completely non-intimidating to even the least initiated theatre goer. At the beginning of the performance we are introduced to Ste &ndash; a video game character who must complete a series of missions under instruction from a group of selected audience members who hold the &ldquo;controls&rdquo;.

The premise is clever, and although inspired by the now dated '90&rsquo;s &ldquo;Point and Click&rdquo; game,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Fused]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--How-to-be-a-Lad(y)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: How to be a Lad(y)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It's Raining Men or is it? Maybe we&rsquo;re looking at three boys and a girl or perhaps just four girls?. Ponybois, offshoot of the ever lively Ponydance company, play with genre and gender in this new show to create their own exuberant mix of cabaret and burlesque, night fever dance moves and roller disco heaven. How to be a Lady/laddie just about sums it up as they gallop along to a pulsating soundtrack, which will remind some of too many spinning glitterballs in their misspent youth

As quickchange artists, their silhouetted forms shimmer and groove in their on stage dressing booths emerging...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--How-to-be-a-Lad(y)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Last-Post]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: The Last Post]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Hardly anybody writes letters anymore. So what does this mean for the blue-shirted men and women whose job it is to stamp, sort and send?
Having assembled at The Mart in Rathmines, we are led by a bucko with a keen eye for fire exits (working in a building full of paper will do that to you) into a centre for sorting returned letters. Spirited young performers playing postal workers busy themselves around the space, turning work into music that underscores a sense of tradition: a past more personalised than punctual.
Sorted like the post, we are divided up and brought through the quaint building....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2013 18:41:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Last-Post]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Small-Plastic-Wars]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Small Plastic Wars]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It turns out that &lsquo;olive drab&rsquo; is the shade Joe should have selected to paint his prize model panzer tank to achieve full authenticity. But there is nothing drab and everything authentic about this diamond of a show and the cast of characters who inhabit it, terrifically realised by Pat McGrath as Joe, in an understated tour de force.
The stage is really Joe&rsquo;s man cave, his own private modeller's den, an escape from the contemporary world which has bruised him, and left him unemployed, but not defeated.  His table is cluttered with superglue and a battlefield of discarded bits...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2013 18:57:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Small-Plastic-Wars]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Swing-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Swing]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What happens when you keep repeating the same pattern, over and over? You either get stuck, or you dance.

It may be a truism that people tend to seek out new interests when they are faced with, or have experienced a change in life so monumental that they choose to do something outside of their own personal norm. This is certainly the case for Mae (Janet Moran) and Joe (Steve Blount). It&rsquo;s Mae&rsquo;s first go at swing dancing, and she&rsquo;s there filling the time while her boyfriend&rsquo;s away; Joe has been at it a while, having taken it up after the family printing business, and his...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Swing-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Dolls-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Dolls]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[





Normal
0




false
false
false

ES
X-NONE
X-NONE
















































































































































































































































































































































































































/*...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Dolls-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Figure-It-Out]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Figure It Out]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[D-Light Studios, situated on a small residential back street on the north side of the city, is one of the more far-flung Fringe venues. It&rsquo;s also one that always builds expectation through the feeling of secrecy surrounding its location and the raw edges of the warehouse space.

50% Male Experimental Theatre&rsquo;s latest offering Figure It Out seems set to live up to this auspicious setting at its beginning with a striking opening scene. The space is empty save for a rough-hewn log at the back of centre-stage and a clothing-draped bath stage-left. A lone female dancer cuts a Cinderella...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Figure-It-Out]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Counter-Culture]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Counter Culture]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Visualise. Organise. Potentialise. And remember: Always fluff and fold.&rdquo; This is just one of the &lsquo;Top Tips&rsquo; given to the employees of Macken&rsquo;s Department Store in Dublin by an overly articulate and sickeningly smiley woman (O&rsquo;Kelly) whose voice is accompanied by the cheesiest elevator music imaginable. Other unbecoming guidelines issued by this hilariously patronising tycoon include how to shower properly. It&rsquo;s funny, yes, but this one-woman show has an unsmiling message of sorts to deliver.
 
Katie O&rsquo;Kelly begins and ends her multi-character journey...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Counter-Culture]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Samuel-Beckett-s-Rough-for]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Samuel Beckett's Rough for Theatre One]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Rough for Theatre I depicts an unsighted man (Trevor Knight) and a wheelchair user (Raymond Keane), both seemingly homeless, locked in a struggle to fulfill their needs. Human touch is one, and other types of &lsquo;contact&rsquo; &ndash; visual, aural, contact with history via memory. Their relationship is sometimes combative, sometimes tender to the point of erotic, and Beckett gives us only a snippet of their story in this short drama that ends mid-action. 

The metatheatre in Company SJ and Barabbas&rsquo; site-specific staging almost derails the production. The programme invites patrons...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Samuel-Beckett-s-Rough-for]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Samuel-Beckett-s-Act-Witho]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words II]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Act Without Words II presents two individuals emerging in turn from sacks when a poking device goads them into action. They never meet, but are mutually engaged insofar as one&rsquo;s most important task is to move the other, cocooned inside sack, a little further away from the &lsquo;goad&rsquo; in one cycle in a longer struggle that we do not witness. Company SJ and Barabbas&rsquo;s self-consciously sociopolitical framing of this mime as a literal depiction of the homeless does make you think about people at the most raw level of existence, but its power still comes from its skillful presentation...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Samuel-Beckett-s-Act-Witho]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Secret-Art-of-Murder]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: The Secret Art of Murder]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What is the full truth behind Christopher Marlowe&rsquo;s death? The actor playing him, Rob McDermott, would like to know but it can&rsquo;t be easy when the director is slating him from the rafters. It&rsquo;s one of the instances in this production by Five Gallants where the self awareness of postdramatic theatre is getting in the way of conveying a greater struggle with truth.

The death of the playwright Marlowe has haunted the literary consciousness for centuries. The story has it that he was stabbed above the eye by businessman Ingrim Frizer in a tavern brawl (over the bill, reportedly)....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 16 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Secret-Art-of-Murder]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--LAMBO]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: LAMBO]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Long before Miley Cyrus twerked the lines between tween star and pop tart, and before Justin Timberlake flashed Ms Jackson's boob at the Super Bowl (then hanging her out to dry in the uproar after), Gerry Ryan leapt from late night DJ to infamous broadcast legend by harnessing his machismo, killing and skinning a lamb.
Or did he? What was supposed to be an innocuous slot on RTÉ radio&rsquo;s Gay Byrne Show, testing out the SAS Survival Handbook, became a national scandal twice over and acted as the harbinger of the proliferated rot of reality television. This barmy one-man show looks at the making...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--LAMBO]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Some-Baffling-Monster]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Some Baffling Monster]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[At the root of Some Baffling Monster is the story of a family feud, one so common it verges on cliché; the old man, the family farm and the offspring &ndash; one man worthy, the other to be viewed with suspicion. Writer Dick Walsh embraces the cliché and runs with it in an extremely stylised black comedy that relies heavily on its absurdity in its efforts to entertain.

The play opens with Jacob relaying the news of one of their cow&rsquo;s unfortunate and mysterious demise to his Grandpa. This story sets in motion a series of events which culminates in the final battle over the old man&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Some-Baffling-Monster]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Moving-City]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Moving City]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;I feel so sorry for stand-up comedians,&rdquo; the bare-footed stand up-comedian Maeve Higgins announces to us from a cluttered stage strewn with flags and clothes. It is extremely hard, however, to feel in any way sorry for this sharp and self-assured woman, despite the fact that her own personal imperfections (such as accidentally watching four hours of Mad Men while consuming a family-size pack of M&amp;Ms as a treat-slash-punishment) seem to be the object of most of her quips in her first play. 

Comedy is a risky and sophisticated profession, and Maeve is clearly both of these things....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Moving-City]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Finding-Sympathy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Finding Sympathy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Ella Daly&rsquo;s story is a fascinating one. &ldquo;Borrowed&rdquo; from her family at the age of three by her childless aunt Grace, Daly spent the next nine years of her life under her aunt&rsquo;s roof. Now, in her early thirties, Daly is trying to reconcile with the feelings of displacement and transience that her childhood experience provoked. This self-examination is prompted by Daly&rsquo;s discovery of a box of love letters in an antique shop in Cork, which chart the actual romance between Nell Sawyer and Henry Philips in Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. These letters seem...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Finding-Sympathy]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Churching-of-Happy-Cul]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: The Churching of Happy Cullen]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The term &ldquo;churching,&rdquo; the accompanying programme to The Churching of Happy Cullen informs us, &ldquo;refers to a blessing that mothers were given following recovery from childbirth&rdquo; since &ldquo;[m]any people considered that childbirth made a woman unholy or unclean because it resulted from sexual activity.&rdquo; This performance dramatises in fragmentary form the traumatised psyche of a young woman who has been betrayed by society; in particular, by the patriarchal tenets of governance against which she is powerless. Happy&rsquo;s world, in her own words, has ended&mdash;her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--The-Churching-of-Happy-Cul]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Boys-and-Girls]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Boys and Girls]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Boys and Girls, Dylan Coburn Gray introduces us to four young college kids &ndash; two of whom are struggling with the brave new world of sexuality and two of whom are grabbing it by the horns (no pun intended). We meet them on a night of drugs, clubs, bodies and booze, and are treated to a series of monologues which seem impossibly eloquent and beautifully composed for material so hilarious, contemporary, and at times, downright filthy. For these monologues to also be perfectly rhyming seems a tall order, and is one which is delivered with finesse. 

The four characters all offer very different...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Boys-and-Girls]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--SPEEDTRAP--Confessions-of-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: SPEEDTRAP- Confessions of a Speed Junkie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[At the age of nine Yvonne O&rsquo;Reilly became a local legend by winning three 100 metre races in one day. The young O&rsquo;Reilly triumphed over her competitors in the under ten, under twelve and under fourteen categories, securing three gold medals and a trophy. All this after merely stumbling upon the fete games by pure coincidence, it was the beginning of a bright and shining, if not short lived, athletic career. O&rsquo;Reilly&rsquo;s personable performance style is what makes Speedtrap a success, and one cannot help but be charmed as she tries to excavate a life which never slowed down...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--SPEEDTRAP--Confessions-of-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Dive-What-s-the-Matter-(Do]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Dive/What's the Matter (Double Bill)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Purely and gloriously abstract, Dive/What&rsquo;s The Matter? (a solo double bill) provides an interesting departure from the heavily-politicised work that has dominated much of the Fringe festival this year.
Choreographer Keren Rosenberg&rsquo;s Dive mixes elements of shame, exaltation, and revulsion. Performing the work, dancer Dor Mamalia creates the impression of an inhuman, amoeboid creature as he manipulates his body muscularly around the floor contorting and splaying limbs, garbed in a shiny blue morph suit and putrid brown socks. The movement is often overtly sexual, with periods of lasciviousness...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 19 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Dive-What-s-the-Matter-(Do]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Perfidia-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Perfidia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Perfidia dramatises how the reckless economic and social policies of recent decades in Ireland have equated to a treacherous betrayal of Irish citizens leaving them vulnerable and forsaken. In the play&rsquo;s title Jimmy Murphy has renamed Ireland and created a play that is bleak and uncompromising in its portrayal of modern Irish society.
Set in the shadow of the Camaralia Apartments the play dramatises an encounter between 38-year-old Niamh (Sharon Clancy) and 24-year-old Ciara (Jenny Clooney). Niamh, unable to meet her mortgage repayments, is leaving her flat before the bailiffs arrive to...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 13 Sep 2013 22:53:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Perfidia-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Meeting-at-Menin-Gate]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Meeting at Menin Gate]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When the killing's finally over, what do you write about? It's a question confronted by dramatists in any post-conflict society, but one that's particularly raw and relevant in Northern Ireland, where &lsquo;The Troubles&rsquo; continue to emit their potent aftershocks on a virtually daily basis.
Green Shoot Productions' &lsquo;Ulster Trilogy&rsquo; is intended to address this situation, providing &ldquo;an audit of where Northern Ireland is today, 18 years after the ceasefires&rdquo;. Following 2012&rsquo;s Brothers in Arms by Sam Millar and Paisley &amp; Me by Ron Hutchinson, Meeting at Menin...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Sep 2013 21:33:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Meeting-at-Menin-Gate]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bubble-Revolution]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bubble Revolution]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;I am thirty years old and I dream of going back to fairytales.&rdquo;
Polish Theatre Ireland presents a nostalgic portrayal of communist Poland in its one-woman show, Bubble Revolution. Written by Julia Holewińska  and translated into English by Artur Zapałowski, it explores the dramatic effects of the fall of communism on the life of the 1980s child, for whom the sudden exposure to the freedom and endless possibilities of Western capitalist society is at first exciting, but then becomes a dangerous and frightening thing. Told in monologue form, we see Wictoria (Kasia Lech) transition between...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2013 16:52:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bubble-Revolution]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Mice-Will-Play]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Fringe Festival: Mice Will Play]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Nic Gareiss want to talk to you about mice;big ones, little ones, black ones, hairless ones. We find out that mice are a huge part of a billion dollar scientific research industry, and that we share 95% similarity in our immune systems; some mice cost more than others, and almost everyone has a story about one. 

This playful and inventive show, directed by Sophie Motley, is both educational and entertaining, with the fizzing chemistry between fiddler Ó Raghallaigh and step dancer Gareiss acting as an alternative narrative to a piece of work that mingles music, dance,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Fringe-Festival--Mice-Will-Play]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Eden-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Eden]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As Eden approaches its denouement at a post-nightclub house party, Billy grabs the arm of his friend and lodestar, Tony. Billy chides Tony, better known as &lsquo;James Galway: The Man with the Golden Flute&rsquo; due to his sexual prowess, for wasting time at this party with his new girlfriend when he could be in Dublin with his other woman. &ldquo;Jaysus,&rdquo; Tony retorts as he pushes Billy&rsquo;s arm away, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t believe everything I tell you.&rdquo; The exchange provides the bass line for Andrew Flynn&rsquo;s absorbing new Decadent production which unflinchingly exposes the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 16 Sep 2013 21:29:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Eden-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Conquest-of-Happiness]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Conquest of Happiness]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Conquest of Happiness is an ambitious piece of theatre both in the scale of its collaboration and in the scope of its source material. Based upon the philosophical writings of Bertrand Russell, the work takes as its central argument Russell&rsquo;s &ldquo;three passions... the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.&rdquo; These three passions are then reflected in the thematic content of the performed scenes.
The choice of performance space potentially contributed to the meanings in operation in the work. Ebrington Barracks is a ten-acre...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 21 Sep 2013 21:21:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Conquest-of-Happiness]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Man-in-the-Moon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Man in the Moon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Half Moon Lake is a natural lagoon located in the unlikely setting of the Lenadoon housing estate in West Belfast. A favoured dumping ground for supermarket trolleys, it witnessed numerous knee-cappings and punishment beatings during the Troubles. By day it doubled as a place to fish, scramble, and climb trees for successive generations of Lenadoon youngsters.
Sean Doran, the sole character in Pearse Elliott's new play Man in the Moon, was one of them. On a twilit evening he returns to the Half Moon, tieless but smartly suited, with a large plastic bottle of cheap cider as company. Doran has recently...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 23 Sep 2013 22:03:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Man-in-the-Moon]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Tom-and-Vera]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Tom and Vera]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Tom (Howley) and Vera (Ní Mhurchú) are one man&rsquo;s everyman, another&rsquo;s Adam and Eve. In Desperate Optimists performance about the fallout of Ireland&rsquo;s financial crisis, the stage is set for them to hatch a plan to take back the money they think they deserve. As they state explicitly at the outset, they are here to rob a bank. This is their rehearsal.
In a clearing in the woods, the couple age themselves with clothes and make-up, and run through their lines and courses of action. They tell each other that they are justified in what they are about to do, that they are focused, determined,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Tom-and-Vera]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Germinal]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Germinal ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Light cuts through an otherwise blacked out set, fading in and out slowly. Given the deliberation, it&rsquo;s clear we&rsquo;re not just waiting for a show to start; we&rsquo;re being invited to reflect upon the technology of beginnings &ndash; of theatre productions, of worlds. 

When the lights finally come up fully, we see they&rsquo;re being controlled by the four affectless performers who amble across the stage; looking a lot like nerdy techies who&rsquo;ve taken a wrong turn. They communicate telepathically, and soon discover they can project their thoughts onto the back wall via keyboards,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Germinal]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Events]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: The Events]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&lsquo;What if bad things just happen?&rsquo; This is one resigning deliberation offered to Claire (McIntosh) by her partner Caitriona a year on from the massacre that saw a gunman claim the lives of members of her community choir. Claire hasn&rsquo;t slept; she&rsquo;s started collapsing during rehearsals (of no apparent surprise to the singers who take this as their cue to break for tea), and she&rsquo;s been found late at night treading dangerously close to the edge of a cliff. It is no surprise that Caitriona, in a bid to free her from the manacles of her unshakable memory, also suggests that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Events]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Dusk-Ahead]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Dusk Ahead]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Our eyes follow the three blindfolded figures tentatively moving onto the stage, seduced, as they are, into the foggy half-lit world of the approaching night which junk ensemble dance company  create in this new work. It is a meditative journey into the blurred terrain between the familiar and the strange, dream and reality, power and vulnerability, but deftly guided with clarity and a lightness of touch which makes it compelling.
Small handbells, carried by the other two dancers, ring out to orient the dancers before they remove the blindfolds and enter fully into this mysterious kingdom where...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:14:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Dusk-Ahead]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Critic]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: The Critic]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Rough Magic&rsquo;s interpretation of Richard Brinsley Sheridan&rsquo;s The Critic sets up a dialectical debate concerning the moral obligation of theatre versus its entertainment value. The first act of the performance suggests, albeit in a satirical manner, that theatre and politics have an antonymic relationship and are diametrically opposed. As the play opens, Mrs Dangle ridicules her husband for scouring the pages of the daily newspapers for theatrical gossip, branding him a &ldquo;theatrical quidnunc&rdquo; and his passion for the theatre &ldquo;ridiculous.&rdquo; Mr Dangle, on the other...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Critic]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Waiting-for-Godot]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Waiting for Godot]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a satisfying congruence that occurs with Gare St. Lazare&rsquo;s production of Waiting for Godot being staged at the Gaiety Theatre. The play&rsquo;s constant textual and performative quotations of the circus, music hall, pantomime and clowning find a useful resonance with a performance space that has, at one point or another, housed all of those popular forms of entertainment. These are forms that can help punters tune out, turn off, and distract us from the drudgery and, for some, the suffering incurred simply by having to live through Time. What the play seems to suggest then is that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Waiting-for-Godot]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Desire-Under-the-Elms]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: Desire Under the Elms]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As Greek as it is &mdash; what with its themes of incest and of infanticide &mdash; Eugene O&rsquo;Neill&rsquo;s 1924 play is pure Old Testament, at least in the hands of Corn Exchange. As brutal and vengeful as any Bible story in which the centrepoint is a vindictive God, these themes seem to present themselves as fresh and new, and one initially thinks that the lean, mean version, running at a little over ninety minutes, with a cast reduced from 20 to 5, has much to do with it. 

It has something to do with it, but not everything, as even the sparest approach to the text still must manage a...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--Desire-Under-the-Elms]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-Festival--Dorset-Street-Toys]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Galway Theatre Festival: Dorset Street Toys ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Fregoli Theatre&rsquo;s premiere of Rory O&rsquo;Sullivan&rsquo;s kinetic script is underwritten by counterpoint. As we take our seats, Joe (Aron Hegarty) lies flat on his back, his head cradled in the lap of a kneeling Anna (Kate Murray), her head bowed towards his. The meticulous stillness maintained by both actors during this extended tableau is relentlessly exploded by the blistering voltage that ensues. Behind them, a barbed-wire fence is embroidered with purple petals in an incongruous image that succinctly encapsulates this production&rsquo;s marriage of brutality and tenderness.
As a baby...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 03 Oct 2013 10:09:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-Festival--Dorset-Street-Toys]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-festival-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Galway Theatre Festival: Low Level Panic]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;If you're going to tell people the truth,&rdquo; George Bernard Shaw is alleged to have said, &ldquo;you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.&rdquo; These sentiments set the tone of Anam Theatre&rsquo;s intuitive production of Clare McIntyre&rsquo;s challenging and provocative Low Level Panic. The Galway-based theatre company anatomises this uncompromising text with a rattling urgency while celebrating the simmering comedy around which McIntyre wraps her feminist missile.
Low Level Panic charts the relationship between three female flatmates: Mary, Jo and Celia. In their...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2013 10:38:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-festival-]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ponies-Don-t-Play-Football]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Ponies Don’t Play Football]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The self-proclaimed champions of comedy dance theatre, Ponydance&rsquo;s latest offering Ponies Don&rsquo;t Play Football at the MAC, is not so much a tongue-in-cheek jest from beginning to end, as an ass-in-cheek one. A startling opener presents three knicker-clad bums aggressively twerking the audience with the support of a hybrid of Belfast bands &lsquo;Uncle Social&rsquo; and &lsquo;NI Soul Troop&rsquo;, before those shaking backsides transform into full-bodied semi-naked performers.
An ensemble of four main comedy dancers make up this troupe: Leonie McDonagh, Deirdre Griffin, Oona Doherty...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 02 Oct 2013 11:56:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ponies-Don-t-Play-Football]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Big-Yum-Yum]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Big Yum Yum]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Put any two people in a room and they have a story to tell,&rdquo; said writer Patrick McCabe in an interview given in advance of his most recent play, produced by Corcadorca theatre company and staged in the small, intimate space of the Half Moon Theatre in Cork. If this play is about anything, it is about the bounce and interplay, the shifts in pain and love and hate within the dynamics of personal relationships, particularly those of an intimate kind. Although audiences are likely more used to engaging with McCabe in cinema or in print, he has, in the past few years, moved towards theatre,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 09 Oct 2013 00:05:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Big-Yum-Yum]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Rape-of-Lucrece]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dublin Theatre Festival: The Rape of Lucrece]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The excavation of an epic narrative poem that is more than four centuries old is an exhilarating if dangerous prospect in the world of contemporary theatre, particularly when the poem is one written by Shakespeare (tread carefully now, I&rsquo;m thinking with nervous uncertainty as I scan the theatre for the perfect seat from which to feast my eyes, for some of us harbour quite pernickety preferences to how we like our Shakespeare served). Furthermore, to propose to set it to music and sing and act some thousand lines that were written to be read is, well, either pure foolish or sheer genius. &lsquo;And...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dublin-Theatre-Festival--The-Rape-of-Lucrece]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Commitments]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Commitments]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Soul may be &ldquo;the rhythm of riding,&rdquo; as Jimmy Rabbitte (Grindel) tells one of his new band&rsquo;s recruits, but this musical moves to a different time still, racing through an extensive repertoire of tunes. Adapted by Roddy Doyle from his 1987 novel of the same title, there is surprisingly little time given to the art of seduction here, or to the pleasures of a shift in gear, in a new West End musical that would have us on our feet before we&rsquo;ve even sat down.
Inside the gilded Palace Theatre, Soutra Gilmour&rsquo;s wonderfully detailed set is dominated by a hanging warren of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 21:09:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Commitments]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pits-and-Perverts]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pits and Perverts]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Lesbians, gay men and Welsh coal miners. They aren't, if you'll pardon the expression, the likeliest of bedfellows. And yet at one extraordinary moment of social and political history they came together, united by a common detestation of state authoritarianism in Thatcher's Britain, and a basic human decency.
That moment was the UK miners' strike of 1984, when a young gay activist named Mark Ashton (originally from Portrush, Northern Ireland) co-founded a group called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Ashton died of AIDS in 1987, and it's a measure of the extraordinary bonds that rapidly developed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 09 Oct 2013 22:16:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pits-and-Perverts]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/What-Happened-Bridgie-Cleary]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[What Happened Bridgie Cleary]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;I never knew anyone that wasn&rsquo;t someway prisoner,&rdquo; says Bridgie Cleary at the very outset of the play bearing her name&mdash;an omen that the ties that bind form the basis of this dramatic lament.
The story is based on the real-life tale of a seamstress burnt to death by her husband in rural Tipperary in 1895. Cleary claimed that his wife had been bewitched by fairies and replaced with a changeling. He was jailed for manslaughter. The unusual case was reported worldwide and inspired a rhyme, which is chanted by Bridgie in outbursts during the play&mdash;&ldquo;Are you a witch...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 10 Oct 2013 21:08:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/What-Happened-Bridgie-Cleary]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Hanging-Gardens]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Hanging Gardens]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The challenge taken up by longtime collaborators Frank McGuinness and director Patrick Mason in staging The Hanging Gardens is how to stage a coherent representation of a failing mind. This is not a necessarily new challenge (King Lear comes to mind), but it&rsquo;s certainly a worthy one. More and more of us are living longer and as such are increasingly susceptible to the extreme breakdown of both body and mind as we grow ever older. It&rsquo;s almost certain most of us will be confronted with the loss brought on by dementia, either firsthand or by witnessing a loved one succumb. In McGuinness&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 14 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Hanging-Gardens]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Belfast-by-Moonlight]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Belfast Festival at Queen's: Belfast by Moonlight]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the great joys of this performance is that it allows access to a building that would otherwise remain inaccessible to many of Belfast citizens. Saint George's is the oldest Anglican Church in use in the city. This production is one of a series of events celebrating its bicentenary in 2016. Situated at the foot of High Street near the Albert Clock, it is a building marking and marked by the history of its site. This is the spot from which the city sprang at the mouth of the Farset, one of the many rivers that flow largely unnoticed through its contemporary urban sprawl. The building itself...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 Oct 2013 23:29:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Belfast-by-Moonlight]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-Festival--Blackbird]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Galway Theatre Festival: Blackbird]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mephisto Theatre Company treads carefully the gangplank that is the fine line dividing the taboo from the disputable in their efficient production for Galway Theatre Festival of David Harrower&rsquo;s hypnotic and gothic little one-act horror, Blackbird.
Una is twenty-six years old and she has just tracked down an ex-lover, Ray, in his nondescript job for a nondescript company. Amongst the inauspicious detritus of the work&rsquo;s grimy cafeteria, Una confronts Ray with the unresolved aspects of the reason their love-affair collapsed: we learn that when they had apparently consummated their affair...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 05 Oct 2013 09:13:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Galway-Theatre-Festival--Blackbird]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/First-Cosmonaut]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[First Cosmonaut]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a great simplicity in the narrative of Blue Raincoat Theatre Company&rsquo;s latest play, First Cosmonaut by Jocelyn Clarke, staged this week in their resident space in the Factory in Sligo town. And this simplicity has allowed Blue Raincoat shape the story in a direction that draws on their strengths as an ensemble, resulting in a theatre of images. Directed by Niall Henry, this highly technical and rhythmical play tells the story of the life of Yuri Gagarin, which began as a small peasant farmer (he was literally five foot two in height) and who came to reach legendary heights by becoming...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 23 Oct 2013 10:57:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/First-Cosmonaut]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Duck--Death-and-the-Tulip]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Duck, Death and the Tulip]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sometimes, theatre is there to help us see things which are difficult to say to one another. That's especially true of children's theatre, where the inadvisability of overloading scripts semantically forces an inventive approach to alternative methods of communication.
That's precisely the area in which Cahoots NI's new staging of German author Wolf Erlbruch's illustrated children's story Duck, Death and the Tulip is particularly impressive. Its mix of song, dance, mime, spoken narrative, graphic projections, special effects and illusions is an entrancing amalgam of ingredients, seamlessly integrated...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Oct 2013 11:47:47 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Duck--Death-and-the-Tulip]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bunny-s-Vendetta]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bunny's Vendetta]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set in a recording studio in 1950s Soho, Bunny&rsquo;s Vendetta is a gorgeously noir-ish piece of black comedy written by Darren Murphy. Part of the George Farquhar Theatre Festival in Derry~Londonderry, this new play is inspired by Farquhar&rsquo;s own Adventures of Covent Garden, and transplants the bawdy world of Farquhar&rsquo;s story to an era that is iconic in contemporary pop culture.
On approach to the venue, the characteristically grungy (read: &lsquo;vintaged&rsquo;) former church and glassworks on Great James&rsquo; Street, the night air is filled with the sound of Elvis Presley mingling...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 08 Oct 2013 23:28:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Bunny-s-Vendetta]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Belfast-Festival-at-Queens--Sanctuary]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Belfast Festival at Queen's: Sanctuary]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Maybe tomorrow will be my day. Maybe tomorrow I will begin my new life,&rdquo; concludes Maryama Yuusuf, a Somalian mother of nine who fled her country following war, famine, slavery and rape. Assisted by an &lsquo;agent&rsquo; out of her native land, she had hoped to go to America to be reunited with her family. However, she was first taken to London, then Dublin, then Belfast. She has lived, or waited rather, in hospitals, hostels, detention centres &ndash; some of which were so dirty rats crawled out of the walls. She is not allowed to work or receive education. It is nine years since...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Belfast-Festival-at-Queens--Sanctuary]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wexford-Festival-Opera-2013--Cristina--Regina-di-S]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Wexford Festival Opera 2013: Cristina, Regina di Svezia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This year's major act of resurrection is Cristina, Regina di Svezia by Jacopo Foroni, an Italian-born composer who spent much of his adult life in Sweden. And while the music of the opera, premiered in 1849, undoubtedly has elements of Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi in it, Foroni apes none of them, fashioning instead a score of considerable distinctiveness, where mild Germanic influences (think Weber, early Wagner even) also feature.

Unusually, Cristina starts with a protracted choral onslaught, as a bunch of Swedish courtiers celebrate the cessation of Thirty Years&rsquo; War hostilities. The...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 28 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wexford-Festival-Opera-2013--Cristina--Regina-di-S]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Frank-Pig-Says-Hello-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Frank Pig Says Hello]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Patrick McCabe&rsquo;s Frank Pig Says Hello is an explosively powerful, angry-poignant and ultimately heart-rending dramatisation of Frank Brady who, as a young boy and adolescent, is driven beyond the boundaries of his mental and emotional health by his inability to cope with growing up, the loss of his parents and the preservation of his damaged and fragile mental and emotional health. Emphasising the difficulties that Frank experiences, McCabe splits his eponymous character into two: an adult Frank, played, for Mill Productions, by Patrick O&rsquo;Donnell, and a juvenile Frank, known as Piglet,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Oct 2013 14:58:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Frank-Pig-Says-Hello-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wexford-Festival-Opera-2013--Il-Cappello-di-Paglia]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Wexford Festival Opera 2013: Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A hungry horse eats the straw hat of a woman, who's having an assignation behind a tree with her lover, who threatens the horse's owner, whose wedding is supposed to be happening, but who's forced to bunk off on a frantic goose chase, to find a replacement hat so that the errant woman's husband, who bought her the hat in the first place, won't suspect her of anything.

If that brief résumé alone makes you breathless, try sitting through a complete performance of Nino Rota's Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze (&quot;The Florentine Straw Hat&quot;), which adds further turns and twists to an already...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wexford-Festival-Opera-2013--Il-Cappello-di-Paglia]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wexford-Festival-Opera-2013-Therese-La-Navarraise]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Wexford Festival Opera 2013: Thérèse/La Navarraise]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Double-bills are rare in opera, logistically the most demanding of theatrical art-forms. Two casts to co-ordinate, twin sets of rehearsal schedules, major scene-shifts and multiple costume changes during performances &ndash; the practical difficulties can be insurmountable, the extra costs involved prohibitive.
All of which makes the Massenet double-header at this year's Wexford Festival something special. It brings together Thérèse and La Navarraise, two hour-long pieces the French composer wrote in his artistic maturity, but which are nothing like so well known as his full-length repertoire...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Wexford-Festival-Opera-2013-Therese-La-Navarraise]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Summertime-by-David-Ireland]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Summertime]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[With Northern Ireland's Health Minister, Edwin Poots, recently failing in his legal attempts to prevent the donation of blood by gay men and to ban adoption by civil partners, any play tackling the homophobia inspired by Christian fundamentalism is clearly addressing a vital topic in Northern Irish society. Yet while the issue is significant and contemporary, everything about Tinderbox&rsquo;s production of David Ireland&rsquo;s new play Summertime is old-fashioned. It's not just that it uses a wobbly box-set with scene changes in blackouts to indicate time passing. Nor is it even that the dramaturgy...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 08 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Summertime-by-David-Ireland]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Caucasian-Chalk-Circle-by-Bertolt-Brecht]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Caucasian Chalk Circle ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The influence of Bertolt Brecht's anti-realist, Epic Theatre movement upon Bruiser's performance style has been much in evidence since the Belfast-based company's earliest days. Indeed, this sprawling masterpiece, written towards the end of World War II, is such a heaven-sent vehicle that one wonders why it took the creative team so long to get round to producing it. 

The play's vast geographic, narrative and political sweep, with its large cast of overblown characters, offers rich pickings for director Lisa May's penchant for energetic physical theatre. On entering the auditorium, proceedings...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 08 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Caucasian-Chalk-Circle-by-Bertolt-Brecht]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest-(2)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Importance of Being Earnest]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Without a shadow of a doubt, in about twenty years&rsquo; time, opera audiences all over the world will be saying things like &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t beat a good Earnest to kick start the season&quot;. For this is what we have here &ndash; a recently composed contemporary opera which, in a few short months, has caught the imagination, attention and acclaim of audiences in Nancy, London and now Dublin. As each of the productions were markedly different in terms of staging and design, this success has got to be down to the work itself. Gerald Barry takes Wilde&rsquo;s play and turns it inside out,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 09 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest-(2)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Clearing]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Clearing]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Helen Edmundson is probably best known for her stage adaptations of classic novels, including Anna Karenina and The Mill on the Floss. The Clearing is one of her earliest professionally produced works; it premiered at the Bush Theatre in 1993, where it directed by Lynne Parker, and won a Time Out Award and the John Whiting Award for best new play. It has since been staged off Broadway (1999) and at the Oxford Playhouse (2002). This is its first Irish production, and it centres on a period of Irish history which is rarely dramatized though it has a powerful presence in popular history and the collective...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Clearing]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Beyond-the-Brooklyn-Sky-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Beyond the Brooklyn Sky]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stories that employ nostalgia as their central driving force have an enduring appeal; they hinge on the &lsquo;what if&rsquo; moments that define our lives. Beyond the Brooklyn Sky is this type of story. Jack (Jaimie Carswell), Josie (Una Kavanagh), Mags (Sorcha Fox), Brendy (Aidan Dooley) and Greg (Malachy McKenna) are reunited in their home village in Kerry, having gone their separate ways in New York twenty years earlier. Through the course of a day and night, the &lsquo;what if&rsquo; moments for each character become clear. Greg and Mags may have abandoned true love, Brendy and Jack may have...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 22 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Beyond-the-Brooklyn-Sky-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Marvel]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Marvel]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Marvel (Alma Emo) is a professional escort trafficked as a child from Liberia. She now works in Dublin under the management of the unseen but omnipresent Goran, a Croatian &lsquo;businessman&rsquo; who has entrusted &euro;230m to futures and hedge fund trader Dion (Liam Hourican). Part of their deal involves Dion enjoying the company of Marvel on a regular basis, a relationship based on financial transactions but seen to grow into a co-dependent romance as the action progresses.

As the play begins, however, a point of crisis has been reached. Specifically, it is September 28, 2008 and the markets...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Marvel]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Trouble-With-Harry]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Trouble With Harry]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Harry Crawford or Eugenia Falleni? Man or woman? Father or mother? These are the extreme polarities of identity which at one time or another sit on the shoulders of the central character in Australian writer Lachlan Philpott&rsquo;s new play The Trouble with Harry, presented by TheatreofplucK in the MAC, Belfast.

Eugenia-Harry was an actual historical figure, born in Italy in 1875, and raised in New Zealand. As a teenager Eugenia began dressing as a man to do manual labour, then left her uncomprehending family to become a cabin-boy, eventually fetching up in Australia. While at sea she was raped...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Trouble-With-Harry]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Danny-and-the-Deep-Blue-Sea]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Danny and the Deep Blue Sea]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[John Patrick Shanley&rsquo;s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, written in 1983, is a play about most of the ingredients that make us humans human: the need to be heard, understood, loved and accepted, and the fear of not being any of these things. It is a play that is perpetual in the emotional resonance it evokes, and timeless in the modern-day relevance of its various subject matters: violence, anti-social behaviour, psychiatric disorders and suicide, to name just a few.

When the lives of Danny (Edwin Mullane) and Roberta (Clodagh Downing) accidentally converge in a grubby little watering hole...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Danny-and-the-Deep-Blue-Sea]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Life-Behind-the-Venue]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Life Behind the Venue]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Clinic Media&rsquo;s latest production Life Behind the Venue promises viewers the opportunity to become participants in the interior life of the theatrical experience and (allegedly) to learn the basics of ushering. Their central idea is that, on the surface, a performance might appear polished and neatly constructed to outside observers sitting comfortably in their seats &ndash; but that all the dirty secrets spill out when those same spectators take part in the creative process.

Upon entry, the audience of trainee ushers, limited to 28, meets the Venue&rsquo;s stereotypical staff members &ndash;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Life-Behind-the-Venue]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Annabelle-s-Star]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Annabelle's Star ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Another Christmas, another wonderful production by the Ark. This year's Christmas production, Annabelle's Star, takes its audience on a magical wordless journey through loss and despair to hope and new beginnings. Set to beautiful original music by Conor Mitchell, Annabelle's Star tells the story of a lone little girl and her struggle to come to terms with the loss of her parents. Never one to shy away from complex and often adult emotional themes, director and co-writer Raymond Keane, and co-writer Mary McNally, explore the reality of loss and its impact on Annabelle's happiness and sense of self....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 05 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Annabelle-s-Star]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Three-Monologues--Twinkletoes;-Mustn-t-Forget-High]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Three Monologues: Twinkletoes; Mustn't Forget High Noon; Christine ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[During the years of the Troubles, the green and pleasant lands of County Fermanaghsuffered a high number of casualties. This beautiful, ostensibly peaceful rural landscapeconceals a multitude of tragedies, many of them inflicted upon good-living, Protestantfamilies, who have worked these fertile pastures for generations. In the 1980s, JenniferJohnston directed her compassionate dramatic vision onto these innocent victims ofparamilitary violence and wrote a pair of monologues about a middle-aged farming couple,Billy and Christine Maltseed. Several years later, she wrote a companion piece, Twinkletoes,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Three-Monologues--Twinkletoes;-Mustn-t-Forget-High]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Yule-Tide-Tales]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Yule Tide Tales]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It may very well be that many people&rsquo;s first experience of theatre comes at Christmas time, either from being shepherded to the panto or the National Concert Hall, or from featuring as a shepherd in the school nativity play. Something about this time of year requires dramatisation, it would seem. For grownups, though, offerings are thin on the ground; we can take our inner children &mdash; and outer ones &mdash; to the Gaiety or the Olympia, or perhaps dutifully Sing Along Messiah, but the lack of relatable narrative, from an adult perspective, is marked.

Theatre Upstairs&rsquo; The Yule...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Dec 2013 22:56:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Yule-Tide-Tales]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS--Assassins]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Rough Magic SEEDS: Assassins]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[An intelligent choice for the assassination anniversary that&rsquo;s in it, Assassins the musical is, itself, fairly bizarre. Its scattershot moments of brilliance, despite its impressive and energetic production at the hands of the cast and crew, are not sufficient to make its garbled concept hold together, in the main because its frame is not clear. Is it political? Is it a playful vaudevillian take on the shocking number of attacks on the American head of state? Is it a merry jaunt through a century of American musical styles? Is it a kind of skewed shadow of It&rsquo;s A Wonderful Life, in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Dec 2013 10:46:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS--Assassins]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS--Way-to-Heaven]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Rough Magic SEEDS: Way to Heaven]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is part of the intriguing project of this play &mdash; an imagining of the production of the illusion of peace and wellbeing created in Theresienstadt during World War II &mdash; to present the dramatisation of a lie in order to disseminate its truth: that a well thought-out, indeed, a well-produced piece of theatre fooled aid workers from around the world, and allowed the myth of the so-called Jewish resettlement go unchallenged. The play itself is entirely aware of this; the character of the Commandant (Karl Quinn) is fairly aware of this, just enough to be plausible, just enough to uncomfortable,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Dec 2013 11:16:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS--Way-to-Heaven]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cavalcaders]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Cavalcaders]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Billy Roche&rsquo;s The Cavalcaders was first staged in Dublin in 1993, and is a play conceived from the
playwright&rsquo;s boyhood memories of a local shoemaker&rsquo;s shop, a handful of songs he composed on a
piano that was saved from a fire, his brother&rsquo;s imagined showband, and the effect of three books he
was reading at the time, including T.S. Eliot&rsquo;s The Wasteland. With such an assortment of influences,
it is no surprise that The Cavalcaders is teeming with endless twists and turns, and characters
that harbour limitless levels of emotional turbulence beneath their seemingly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Cavalcaders]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Twas-the-Night-Before-Christmas-Oiche-Roimh-an-No]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA['Twas the Night Before Christmas/Oíche Roimh an Nollaig]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It was 1948, &ldquo;the year of the great excitement&rdquo;, the year electricity arrived in Ballybrack. Branar borrows from Clement Clarke Moore&rsquo;s classic poem to tell the story of one particular Christmas in the small rural town of Ballybrack. Unlike the poem, the town's excitement is not based upon the prospect of a visit from St. Nicholas, but is centred around the community of the town, its traditions, and its preparations for the coming of the electric Christmas lights &ldquo;all the way from Dublin&rdquo;. Mrs. Molloy has been giving Christmas candles to every household in the town...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 16 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/-Twas-the-Night-Before-Christmas-Oiche-Roimh-an-No]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pride-and-Prejudice-by-Jane-Austen]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Pride and Prejudice]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When it comes to one of the most popular love stories of the nineteenth century, the Gate&rsquo;s Christmas production of Pride and Prejudice is bound to induce a fair bit of hype among the predominantly female portion of theatre-goers. In wake of the 2005 cinematic revival of the Mr Darcy archetype by Matthew Macfadyen, or for those of us old enough to have appreciated the 1995 TV series starring Colin Firth (I was ten, and very much in love), it is safe to say that Sam O&rsquo;Mahony has an unenviable job in filling some rather large boots. O&rsquo;Mahony&rsquo;s Mr Darcy is, at first sight,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 02 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Pride-and-Prejudice-by-Jane-Austen]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Antimidas-or--Bankers-in-Hades]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Antimidas, or, Bankers in Hades]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Contemporary music theatre usually doesn&rsquo;t favour comedy; most modern operas tackle weighty political and social issues or personal dramas without too much humour. So it is all the more remarkable that two modern comic operas were staged in Dublin in close succession: Gerald Barry&rsquo;s The Importance of Being Earnest (after Oscar Wilde&rsquo;s play) was followed by Evangelia Rigaki&rsquo;s Antimidas (with a libretto by the Scottish poet W.N. Herbert), and both had their audiences in stitches.
Midas was the ancient, mythical Phrygian king who was granted his wish to be able to transform...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 12 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Antimidas-or--Bankers-in-Hades]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Colleen-Bawn-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Colleen Bawn]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In the year that commemorated the 1913 lockout, and in the same week that a financially bruised and battered Ireland doffed its cap to departing IMF/EMC task masters, Druid Theatre opened its production of Dion Boucicault&rsquo;s theatrical blockbuster of the 1860s -a Victorian melodrama in which a painfully stereotypical Irish peasantry seem to get thoroughly diddled by painfully stereotypical Anglo-Irish nobility. Produced here without explicit irony, thisColleen Bawn is a rather incongruous and escapist presentation.

Based on heartrending true events of 1819, the impecunious Anglo-Irish Cregans...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Colleen-Bawn-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Tender-Thing]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Tender Thing]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A Tender Thing is a profoundly moving and brilliant piece of theatre, re-presenting and re-visioning Shakespeare in respectful but revelatory ways. The Dublin premiere is engaging and absorbing, with impressive technical credentials, insightful direction by Selina Cartmell, and great performances from Olwen Fouéré and Owen Roe.
Romeo and Juliet was always an end-of-life tale. It resolves with the double suicide of the star-crossed lovers whose tragedy, it has always seemed, was that they had barely begun to live. There has always been something slightly unbearable in the dewy-eyed puppy-love dimension...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jan 2014 21:13:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/A-Tender-Thing]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Actions--An-Evening-of-Men-in-Motion]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Actions: An Evening of Men in Motion]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Action(s). It&rsquo;s a word that can be taken several ways. It can mean something positive, in the sense of being proactive &ndash; to take action. Looked at in another way, it can be simply what someone has done &ndash; their actions. It can also mean the physical gestures made to accompany a song, or used in a piece of acting &ndash; as in, do you know the actions?
Irish Modern Dance Theatre&rsquo;s four part show, Actions: An Evening of Men in Motion plays on this multi-faceted meaning with a series of performances that deconstruct sequential movement into isolated gestures. Totem, Ancestor,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jan 2014 20:53:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Actions--An-Evening-of-Men-in-Motion]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Philadelphia--Here-I-Come!-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Philadelphia, Here I Come! ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s fifty years since Philadelphia, Here I Come!  premièred at the Dublin Theatre Festival, establishing Brian Friel&rsquo;s international reputation. This new Lyric Theatre production is doubtless one of many that will be mounted globally to mark the play&rsquo;s first half-century of existence. It does a solid job of delineating the emotional and psychological conflicts endured by Gar, the would-be emigrant, and of emphasising Philadelphia&rsquo;s enduring relevance in an Ireland where thousands are once again sailing (or flying) far from native soil, seeking economic and material betterment...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 06 Feb 2014 20:32:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Philadelphia--Here-I-Come!-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Risen-People-by-James-Plunkett]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Risen People]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The anniversary of the 1913 Lockout is relevant, insofar as the conditions that were the byproduct of the strike &mdash; frustrated men, despairing women, impoverished children &mdash; feel hauntingly familiar, one hundred years on. It seems to take The Risen People an incredibly long time to find its resonance with this fact, which may in part be down to the plethora of theatrical ideas that are attempting to render the production as something wholly new. It&rsquo;s not so much that the themes are timeworn, but that the rhythms and characterisations are awfully familiar.

It can&rsquo;t help...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/The-Risen-People-by-James-Plunkett]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dreamland]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dreamland ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is June 1934 and Seafield, a fictitious coastal town near Waterford, which provides the setting for Jim Nolan&rsquo;s new play Dreamland. Atmospheric and sensory conditions are oppressive as a 70-tonne whale, washed up on the strand, stinks, rots and bakes in a heat wave. Johnny Kinanne, an Irish man referred to by some as &ldquo;the Yank&rdquo; because of his thirty years in New York, has bought the salvage rights to the whale whose skeleton he intends to display as the first of many attractions in his planned theme park, the eponymous Dreamland. 
Kinanne, played with wry charm by Brendan...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 04 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Dreamland]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ballyturk-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Ballyturk]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Playwright and director Enda Walsh must have staggering self-confidence: no topic is too chunky to chew over for the ninety minutes of what he defines as the &lsquo;kinetically crazy theatre&rsquo; of Ballyturk, his latest dramatic extravaganza. What is the meaning of time, mortality, innocence, death, reality, love, eternity and freedom?  Brave, existential questions cram Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival&rsquo;s sell-out dramatisation of Walsh&rsquo;s musings. The problem is, though the production values are stylish and convincing, and the acting persuasive, answers...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:06:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Ballyturk-(1)]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Be-Infants-in-Evil]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Be Infants in Evil]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For his professional debut, playwright Brian Martin chose a subject that wasn&rsquo;t easy. At its most provocative it might shed some light: what do we really know about paedophilia? While definitions vary between medical disorder, sociopathic condition and sexual orientation, debates over their applicability don&rsquo;t really get heard. Society&rsquo;s outcries at child abuse scandals have been piercing, the shock waves of such revelations resounding;  disturbing even the ground underneath any public conversation that might otherwise help to explain them. However, if we are to accept paedophilia...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Be-Infants-in-Evil]]></link>     
</item>
<item>
     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Our-Few-and-Evil-Days]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Our Few and Evil Days]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It sounds unlikely; more than unlikely, downright unbelievable. Margaret says it&rsquo;s &lsquo;crazy&rsquo;. Three men are invited into a family home, two are thrown out, one remains. All of the men are looking for love, and look to the women of the house to grant it to them, beginning with a request and ending with violence.
Mark O&rsquo;Rowe&rsquo;s new play Our Few and Evil Days weaves a complicated structure, patterned by recurring themes of love and loss, hope and its unsettling impossibility, and the rising of a great darkness. Though the play&rsquo;s framework is realist, from Paul Wills&rsquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:48:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[/Reviews/Current/Our-Few-and-Evil-Days]]></link>     
</item>   
 </channel>
</rss>
