Reviews

The Prophet of Monto

The Prophet of Monto by John Paul Murphy

The Dublin monologue play, thanks to the success of Conor McPherson and Mark O’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...

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1 in 5

1 in 5 by Marina Carr, Rosemary Jenkinson, Nicola McCartney and Morna Regan

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...

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The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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...

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Love, Peace and Robbery

Love, Peace and Robbery by Liam Heylin

That stalwart of many a crime caper, ‘the one last heist’, is used to hilarious effect in a new production of Liam Heylin’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...

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Big Maggie

Big Maggie by John B. Keane

Overheard while leaving the Gaiety theatre in November 2011: “It was a different time then than it is now.” 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’s virtually sociopathic...

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Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Fair Verona meets Dublin's Fair City in devise+conquer's energetic new production of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This tragedy of “starcross'd” lovers from warring families has been endlessly adapted in the four centuries since it was written, but this latest version manages to...

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Tyranny in Beckett: 4 plays

Tyranny in Beckett: 4 plays by Samuel Beckett

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’s Boys School, the make-shift wooden stage straddling the balcony arches provides the perfect unadorned focal...

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Little Women

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, adapted for stage by Anne-Marie Casey

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’s Little Women, adapted by Anne-Marie Casey and directed by Michael Barker-Caven,...

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Galway Theatre Festival

Galway Theatre Festival by Various

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...

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Orpheus in the Underworld

Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach, in a new translation by Rory Bremner

Most of the pre-publicity for Orpheus in the Underworld, the first production of Northern Ireland Opera’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’s 1858 operetta...

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