Reviews

Our New Girl

Our New Girl by Nancy Harris

What do you give the woman who has it all – 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’re Hazel Robinson’s (Fleetwood) husband Mark (Bazeley), who sends Annie (Gough) from Sligo...

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The Kreutzer Sonata

The Kreutzer Sonata by Nancy Harris, adapted from the novella by Leo Tolstoy

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...

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Minute After Midday

Minute After Midday by Ross Dungan

It’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’s wicker basket into the back of his car and heads off to watch a GAA match in a local bar;...

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Those Sick and Indigent

Those Sick and Indigent by Alan O'Regan

We’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...

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Gibraltar: An adaptation after James Joyce's Ulysses

Gibraltar: An adaptation after James Joyce's Ulysses by Patrick Fitzgerald

‘The book called the most important of the preceding hundred years is also notorious for its inability to be read without special help’ – Julie Sloan Brannon, Who reads ‘Ulysses’? (Routledge, 2003) It's interesting to Google ‘readership Ulysses’ and find entries...

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The Rainbow's End

The Rainbow's End by Ofegus Theatre

When The Rainbow’s End acts up as a panto, it almost succeeds. That’s in the latter stages of the piece when the familiar elements – “He’s behind you!”, cross-dressing handsome hunk, swashbuckling Principal Boy, knockabout comic duo, appeals to the audience for assistance...

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Sétanta

Sétanta by Paul Mercier

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...

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The Making of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

The Making of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford

How many people walked into The Making of Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford expecting a behind-the-scenes dramatization of an obscure film by the director of The Quiet Man? I’ll sheepishly raise my own hand. The John Ford that has tantalised the imagination of Siren Productions artistic...

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The Seafarer

The Seafarer by Conor McPherson

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: “the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair". McPherson's...

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The Government Inspector

The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol, in a new version by Roddy Doyle

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’s already arrived incognito. Hearing a young man has been staying at the local inn and won’t...

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