Gonzo Theatre, 'Pilgrim': Irishman Abroad

Can Rex Ryan pull off playing a violent, drinking, pregnant woman-beating misogynist who the audience can laugh at?

Sept 11-14 and 16-18, Dublin Fringe Festival

Smock Alley Theatre

My review of Pilgrim by Philip Doherty coming up just as soon as I have an octuple whiskey ...

City Bridge Transforms Into Harp as Fringe Festival Invokes Classical Myths

Dublin Fringe opens with Ulysses Opera Company's HARP | A River Cantata - an outdoor performance about the Harp of Dagda.

Painted up in new stripes, Dublin Fringe Festival (running Sept 5-20) went into their programme launch this week with an image and line-up of events that felt refreshingly new. Ahead of his first festival as director, Kris Nelson - formerly a Montreal-based producer - secured the organisation with a new sponsor in Tiger Beer, instilling his confidence in the role. In terms of vision, you'd wonder if he'd continue in the same strain as previous director Roise Goan, who in the years of economic collapse shaped the festival into an important site of theatrical activism. With an emphasis on exploring the city, turning it into a backdrop for Irish and Canadian histories and revisiting ancient mythologies in hopes of claiming something new, it seems that Nelson's adventurous spirit as a recent-arrival in Dublin is set to be infectious.

Discrimination in Drama: Persevering Some Playwrights

Philip Doherty's The Circus of Perseverance for the Gonzo Theatre Company (Smock Alley Theatre until Nov 30) makes jokes of the disenfranchised. 

There is a scene in The Circus of Perseverance by Philip Doherty - a comedy that brings the misfits of Dublin's economic misfortune into the circus ring (Smock Alley Theatre until Nov 30) - where a taxi driver laments the loss of Ireland's great artists. "Even Brendan Behan", he says, "and he had the face of a melted arse".