Irish Times Theatre Awards predictions: Seeing all four Best Production nominees won’t make you any wiser

Best Production nominees: The Lost O'Casey, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, DruidShakespeare: Richard III and How It Is: Part One

Sure Look It, Fuck It review: The thick haze of a spoken word nirvana

Clare Dunne's debut play follows a returned emigrant through one day in Dublin, struggling with anxiety. Photo: Fiona Morgan 

In a freak occurrence, a new play has sold out the Gate Theatre. For once it might have been the reviews

Seán McGinley and Marie Mullen in The Children, the first recently-written play to fill the Gate in years. Photo: Ros Kavanagh 

Theatre Upstairs shuts doors at Lanigan’s: A look back on the past nine years

Theatre Upstairs announced their closure on Thursday night.

Peat review: A superb childhood adventure about coping and moving on

Two friends bury a dead cat in Kate Heffernan's comedy for young audiences, and unearth serious questions about the world they've inherited. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

The Children review: Intimate drama presented as environmental disaster in Lucy Kirkwood’s magnificent play

Two retired nuclear scientists are visited by an old colleague in this excellent drama. Photo: Ros Kavanagh 

The Country Girls review: Edna O'Brien's groundbreaking novel receives a strange otherworldly production

O'Brien adapts her novel for the Abbey Theatre, following two young women expelled from school and starting their next stages of life in Dublin. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

22 years at the Irish Times Theatre Awards: An inconsistent ceremony shows signs of growth

In 2016 DruidShakespeare was the first production to take the major awards of Best Production, Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Director. Photo: Matthew Thompson

Irish Times Theatre Awards: A complete list of every nomination ever

In other countries awards are presented by theatre organisations. Here the ceremony is organised by a national newspaper, and sometimes ignored by rival media outlets.

New plays on big stages: Could this be a game-changing year for Irish theatre?

Promotional art for The Children. The Gate Theatre hasn't opened a new production in five months, but the wait was necessary to shore up its new play.