Reviews

Last Train from Holyhead by Bernard Field

Reviewed by Breda Shannon on 21 September 2009 21 September - 3 October, 2009 in Town Hall Studio Theatre, Galway

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...

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The Yalta Game and Afterplay by Brian Friel

Reviewed by Fintan Walsh on 19 September 2009 10 - 09 September 2009 in Gate Theatre

In Gate | Friel, a selection of Brian Friel’s plays are restaged to mark the writer’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...

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The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh

Reviewed by Matthew Harrison on 18 September 2009 11 - 19 Sept (Galway) and on tour in Town Hall Theatre, Galway

At the outset of his punchy play, London Irishman, Broadway darling and black-humour’s lodestar Martin McDonagh might have some of theatre’s denizens believing that Irish country life is cruel, heartless, and still entirely peopled by hessian-suited farmers, frustrated priests and lusty colleens....

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Little Gem by Elaine Murphy

Reviewed by Patrick Brennan on 03 September 2009 3 - 12 Sept 2009; 20 Jan- 27 Feb 2010 in Civic Theatre, Tallaght; The Peacock, Dublin

[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...

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I Am Of Ireland by Edward Callan

Reviewed by Derek West on 29 August 2009 17 - 29 August (Dublin), then on tour in James Joyce Centre, Dublin

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’s a comforting and plausible impersonation, providing an opportunity to revisit, through Hogan’s confident interpretation, so many of the poems...

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New Writing: by Jane McCarthy (Epilogue) and Arnold Thomas Fanning (Shafted)

Reviewed by Fintan Walsh on 29 August 2009 25 - 29 August, 2009 in The New Theatre

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’s Epilogue, Henry (Harrington) wakes in the...

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The Seagull by Anton Chekov, in a version by Martin Crimp

Reviewed by Susan Conley on 26 August 2009 26 - 29 August, 2009 in Peacock Theatre

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’s concertinaed version of Chekov’s very long and often turgid text, this rock ‘n’ roll notion is foregrounded and indeed illuminated by director...

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Breathing Corpses by Laura Wade

Reviewed by Patrick Brennan on 20 August 2009 17 - 29 August, 2009 in Project Arts Centre

There is a brilliant structure to Breathing Corpses. Young English playwright Laura Wade’s 2006 play presents us with what at first seem like disparate and unconnected tales that all feature, at some point, a corpse – but as the drama unfolds we realise that we are watching events that are...

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Faithful by Chaz Palminteri

Reviewed by Patrick Brennan on 13 August 2009 10 - 22 August, 2009 in The Mill Theatre, Dundrum

Faithful is a comic three-hander – 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’ Meara) who hires a hit man, Tony (Don Wycherley) to knock off his wife, Margaret (Carrie Crowley). Ostensibly,...

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The Cat and the Moon by WB Yeats

Reviewed by Fintan Walsh on 06 August 2009 4 – 15 August, 2009 in The Factory Performance Space, Sligo

The Cat and the Moon is Blue Raincoat’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...

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