Just The Lads, 'At Sea': The Ocean of Our Minds

An old man's youthful imagination runs riot as he sinks further into dementia.

The New Theatre

Sept 9-13

My review of At Sea coming up just as soon as my dulcet tones are popular with the ladies ...

Rough Magic, 'How To Keep An Alien': A Glance Across a Ballroom.

The intelligently wry Sonya Kelly plays a blinder in this memoir about love and separation. Photo: Anthony Woods. 

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 6-13


My review of How To Keep An Alien by Sonya Kelly coming up just as soon as a moist pearl of midlife crisis drips down my forehead ...

Talking Shop Ensemble, 'Advocacy': From a Distance

Telling their stories from a distance, can Talking Shop Ensemble bring us closer to the reality of disability services in Ireland? 

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 7-13

My review of Advocacy by Shaun Dunne coming up just as soon as I prevent the shady shopkeeper from selling me something I don't want ...

Dowager, 'Bernarda's House': Women in the Villages in Spain

Clown is a remove from reality. Where then does Veronica Coburn's red nose retelling of Lorca's tragedy bring us?

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival 
Sept 7-13

My review of Bernarda's House coming up just as soon as the future and the past photobomb the present ...

Ulysses Opera Theatre, 'HARP | A River Cantata': Bridging Centuries

Reclaiming the Harp of Daghda becomes a spectacular celebration in Ulysses' opera. 

Samuel Beckett Bridge, Dublin Fringe Festival

Sept 6

My review of HARP | A River Contata coming up after the jump ...

The Company, 'The Rest Is Action': Victory With a Twist

Getting inside the Oresteia is hard work. For The Company, the challenge is getting out.

Project Arts Centre 

Sept 6-13

My review of The Rest Is Action coming up just as soon as I have sacrificial victims on the altar bleeding all over my house ...

Ruairí Donovan, 'ZOMBIES': Night of the Living Dead

This all-nighter polemic seeks to open our eyes to the collapse of Capitalist culture. Keeping our eyes open is another story.

D-Light Studios, Dublin Fringe Festival
Sept 6-7, 13-14


My review of ZOMBIES; why death is dying or are you working hard enough? coming up just as soon as I distrust a poem that introduces itself as a poem ...

Painted Bird Productions, 'Between Trees and Water': Visions of the Past

How do you find the right way to tell a story that has gone untold for 75 years? With sensitivity and discretion.

Unitarian Church, Cork
Sept 1-6

My review of Between Trees and Water coming up just as soon as I give you 10 pounds to buy a cap and stockings ...

Stepping Out From Under Destiny

Promotional art for The Rest Is Action. How do you present the world without denying that it is completely manufactured? The Company talk about their reinvention of The Oresteia. 

"Maybe I'm older now and bitter" says Jose Miguel Jiminez, theatre director and co-founder of The Company, "but the idea I had when I was younger was that my theatre practice, to a certain extent, had to do with changing the world".

The Look of the Diamond

Promotional art for Vardo. Having 'the look of the Diamond' has given Louise Lowe a sense of permission to make the Monto Cycle this far. The ANU director talks about how the final chapter has led the company into a darker and more dangerous place than before.

We've visited brothels and laundries, been pulled into cars, given gifts of carbolic soap, recorded brutal beatings on the street, and been caught in the blast radius of a bomb. Now it's time for ANU Productions' accomplished Monto Cycle of plays about Dublin's hidden histories to come to an end.