Reviews

Candy Flipping Butterflies by Karl Argue

Reviewed by Jesse Weaver on 21 April 2010 19 - 24 April in The New Theatre

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...

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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, adapted by Alice Coughlan

Reviewed by Sara Keating on 15 April 2010 15 April - 1 May, 2010; and on tour. in James Joyce Tea Rooms, Bewleys Café

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 "unclean," "effeminate,"...

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What’s Left of the Flag by Jimmy Murphy

Reviewed by Jesse Weaver on 14 April 2010 12 - 24 April, 2010 in Theatre Upstairs @ the Plough

“To be a good Jew, you have to have a good conscience; to be a good Israeli, you have to have a good memory.” So says Jacob, one of two Mossad agents holed up in the top floor of an abandoned building on Abbey Street in Jimmy Murphy’s new play. The fragmentation of identity into ultimately...

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The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde

Reviewed by Derek West on 13 April 2010 8 April – 8 May, 2010 in Bewley’s Café Theatre

Let’s say it clearly: Bewley’s Café Theatre is an undervalued cultural resource in the heart of our capital city; we neglect it at our peril. When it’s good, which is the case with Bairbre Ní Chaoimh’s adaptation of the Wilde story, it’s very, very good. With a cast of three...

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Andersen’s English by Sebastian Barry

Reviewed by Karen Fricker on 12 April 2010 7 April – 8 May 2010 (on tour from 11 Feb 2010) in Hampstead Theatre, London (on tour)

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’ home in rural Kent, just as Dickens’ marriage to the mother of his ten children was...

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The End & The Calmative by Samuel Beckett

Reviewed by Fintan Walsh on 12 April 2010 12 - 17 April, 2010 and on tour in Project Arts Centre

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’s earlier short writings in English, and the more substantial Molloy...

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The West Awakes by Keiron Magee, Jimmy McAleavey, Laurence McKeown and Rosaleen Walsh

Reviewed by Pádraic Whyte on 10 April 2010 7 April - 11 April, 2010 in Belfast (various locations)

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’s not an actor in a role, but a former member of the IRA...

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Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Reviewed by Harvey O'Brien on 08 April 2010 7 April - 15 May, 2010 in Abbey Theatre

“Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter,” is probably not the most memorable line in Shakespeare’s tale of havoc wrought by blind ambition and naked greed, but in director Jimmy Fay’s despairing new production at the Abbey, it has particular significance. The line is spoken...

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The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

Reviewed by Fintan Walsh on 06 April 2010 24 March - 10 April, 2010 in Smock Alley Theatre

When Harold Pinter’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’s refusal to clarify motivation and action. What Pinter reveals without ambiguity is that the play is set...

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Over the Bridge by Sam Thompson

Reviewed by Pádraic Whyte on 02 April 2010 17 March- 3 April 2010 in Waterfront Hall Studio, Belfast

First performed in January 1960, Sam Thompson’s Over the Bridge is one of the most controversial plays in Northern Ireland’s theatre history. Fifty years ago, the Ulster Group Theatre’s board of directors refused to produce the play because of its content. However, Thompson and his...

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