Irish Times Theatre Awards: The political avant-garde leads the pack, as the sector feels the cold

The Examination, a sly contemporary play exploring the Irish prison service, wins best production, in a year when the outwardly political shows are winners. Photo: Luca Truffarelli 

One billion years ago, when you could go to theatres, the nominees for the 2020 Irish Times Theatre Awards were announced in a bizarre shortlist. For the first time, none of the four best production nominees were represented in the major categories of best actress, best actor or best director. Those who enjoy the awards felt the unsatisfying evidence of how the best production nominees were chosen. Those who enjoy gambling had an impossible time predicting the winners.

Things grew stranger still, with the industry brought to a standstill and the ceremony cancelled. On Sunday the National Concert Hall will be in the dark. Instead, nominees found out the results in the Irish Times this morning.

As it falls, The Examination, Brokentalkers’ sly contemporary play exploring the Irish prison service, took the trophy for best production. A fruitful coproduction with UCD’s School of History, the play blends the testimony of a former prisoner with performer Gary Keegan’s experience of a criminal attack, bringing a society’s brutal ideas of punishment to the fore. The triumph marks Brokentalkers’ first best production win since the company formed 19 years ago.

The best production category tells the whole story. Also nominated here was The Big Chapel X, a large-scale dystopian play born out of a Thomas Kilroy novel, with a social conscience towards community struggle. But it was the swooning revival of Gioachino Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola / Cinderella and the jovial James Joyce-inspired play Epiphany that, while enjoyable, didn’t stand a chance. With The Examination, the morning was to belong to the political avant-garde.

Over in the best opera category, the trophy went to Abomination: A DUP Opera, Conor Mitchell’s extraordinary work for the Belfast Ensemble and the Outburst Queer Arts Festival. A lacerating satire of Iris Robinson, the Northern Irish MP who declared homosexuality “an abomination,” the opera is the most cutting portrayal of a real-life figure the island has seen in years. 

What’s that you say? An experimental play speculating on Irish-British relations on the eve of a major European referendum? The best director trophy went to Jim Culleton for The Alternative. 

As for best new play, the winner was Lisa Tierney-Keogh’s play for the Abbey Theatre, This Beautiful Village, a drama that lets middle-class privilege run rampant during a residents association meeting. (If you’re counting by company, the Abbey technically takes home the most trophies, its co-productions helping it reach a total of four).

A best soundscape win for Denis Clohessy, nominated for his work on multiple productions, let both The Examination and The Alternative take home the most trophies at two a piece. They were joined only by A Streetcar Named Desire, the Lyric Theatre’s fresh revival of Tennessee Williams’s play, which earned Aoibhéann McCann her first best actress trophy, and the long-labouring costume designer Enda Kenny a win for his colour-popping garbs. 

Best actor went to Brian Doherty for his complex portrayal of an ancient Greek king in Hecuba, but also for his performance as a man grieving his friend in The Red Lion, a play that put Waterford’s former Red Kettle Theatre Company back on the marquee. Nominated only once before, in 1999, Red Kettle now takes home a trophy. Alas, elsewhere in the category, Aaron Monaghan, nominated for the fourth time, is still without a win.

On Friday, one of the ceremony’s scheduled presenters, the actor Jonathan White, posted a humorous video on Twitter where he showed up to an empty National Concert Hall. He took a serious moment to give some perspective. “I’ve been freelancing in Irish theatre for more than forty years. I have seen it when things were tough, but never as tough as this,” he said.

White’s comments related to the unfolding outcry against the Minister for Culture, who announced a new fund for artists made unemployed by the pandemic, a fund that barely compares to investments made by other European countries to make financial aid available for artists.

Ordinarily, a nervous minister might hope that an industry get-together is exactly what is needed to warm spirits and ease tensions. Instead, Sunday’s Irish Times Theatre Awards ceremony is cancelled, artists are at home feeling the cold, and the razor edges of political satire seem to be in vogue.