Ether Productions, 'Landfall': Moving Up to Higher Ground

Project Arts Centre

Aug 7-10

My review of Landfall by Niamh Creely coming up just as soon as I borrow a pair of pliers from my neighbour ...

Theatre Roundup at the Big House Festival

Castletown House, Kildare
Aug 3-5


Yesterday I teamed up with my mother for the Big House Festival - the cultural carnival of music, theatre and dance that is occupying the grounds of Castletown House this bank holiday weekend.

While consulting our festival programme and making our game plan for the day, an elderly man in sharp dress sat opposite us. He gently mentioned that he didn't mean to cause offense by sitting with his back facing us - he was hungry for a bite to eat and wished to study the menus of the nearby food venders.

My mother struck up conversation with the gentleman, remarking on the beautiful scenery. He seemed to know a lot about the property and its different stages of refurbishment. This made us both curious as to who he was, and it was my mother's investigative skills that called it: "You're a Guinness, aren't you?".

Mr. Desmond Guinness bought the Castletown House estate back in 1967. As an author and conservationist of Georgian art, he had bought the property to protect the house and preserve its majestic architecture. However, the costs of such were monumental, as he sadly recalls to us how the building had to remain empty for a few years. Today it is a heritage site maintained by the Office of Public Works.

Desmond's attention seemed to keep straying past our heads and towards the lively crowds of people entering the site. Director Jo Mangan of the Performance Corporation is reputed for animating public spaces, and her Big House Festival has converted the heritage site into the grounds for a fabulous pageant. It seems to make Mr. Guinness smile.

We say our goodbyes and head towards the meadow for Pillowtalk's Catch of the Day. Here we meet a story-telling sailor spinning tales from his canoe in a lake. The actor comes off as sharp and charming in what is a combination of rehearsed performance and improvisation. Director Rosemary McKenna hands you a net to fish out a message in a bottle that when read aloud prompts the actor to tell stories of the sea in tuneful rhyme and verse (from the pen of playwright James Hickson, I'm guessing, who we see scribbling into his notepad under a nearby tree).

It's a small and sweet number, which feels a little strange from a company who usually drive for more provocative material such as Philip Stokes's Heroin(e) for Breakfast and the devised Anna in Between. Like all the performances at the festival, they have to be kiddie-friendly, but this criteria seems to have muted their more dramatic devices.

A new dance performance choreographed by Emma Martin shows that you can stage a dance performance at a family festival while being unafraid to challenge minds. Come Dance With Me is performed by a cast of dancers with intellectual disabilities from Celbridge's St Raphael's centre.

We immediately question what to scrutinse in this work: the skill set of the performers? What Martin is seeking to project about intellectual disability? But over occasionally broken lines of choreography we are drawn into the faces of the performers, who are having a blast - a beautiful presence that is pure and un-rigid. In dazzling ballroom costumes they strut and waltz to sweet arrangements (gathered by competent composer Tom Lane, I suspect). A narrative begins to take shape with scenes humorous but also completely moving. A romantic waltz unveils an intimacy that has remained invisible to us all our lives.

The Big House also saw the relocation of WillFredd's fantastic FARM from its origins as a rural space disrupting the urban world to the environs of an actual farmyard.

As performer Emma O'Kane removes the harness from Ralph the Pony, I overhear a spectator asking a friend: "Is this a part of the play?". The segment has always been presented candidly, respecting the verbatim source of the scene. But when queen bee Marie Ruane and the boys perform their barbershop quartet, FARM dazzles both child and adult alike. And the line-dancing scene being performed at the front steps of Castletown House is a pretty cool sight.

I was wondering if director Sophie Motley would go for a more naturalist staging now that the show was being performed on a farm site but its gaps in its illusions are still here. Perhaps the biggest example of this is the scene with the allotments where the plots are empty despite being described as being full of carrots. But when a child says that he can't see any carrots, his mother tells him: "Use your imagination".

I think this is what this show is ultimately telling us to do. You have to fill in some of the realism for yourself, and that requires some internal questioning. As it is said in Paul Curley's powerful monologue at the end, "the land doesn't lie", and finding our way to our own relationship with the land may require some play in between the literal and the representational, the farm and the theatre stage (neither of which FARM can probably be performed), to somewhere deeply personal.

Dublin Tenement Experience, 'Living the Lockout': No. 14 Henrietta Street

Photo: Patrick Redmond

No. 14 Henrietta St, Dublin

Jul 4-Aug 31

My review of The Dublin Tenement Experience's Living the Lockout exhibition - devised by ANU Productions - coming up just as soon as I try to hide from you underneath my Sunday hat ...

Pageant Wagon, 'Mary Stuart': The Last Queen of Scotland

Photo: Futoshi Sakauchi

Freemasons Hall, Dublin

July 30-Aug 10

My review of Mary Stuart - Queen of Scots by Friedrich Schiller coming up just as soon as I place a weighty responsibility in fumbling hands ...

Don't Say the 'C' Word: Irish Theatre Outside the Capital

Macnas's This Thunderous Heart tears down a street in Galway.

Last night an article written by Una Mullally was published on the Irish Times website. Entitled 'The 60 Most Creative People In Ireland Right Now', it lists a range of talented people involved in the arts.

I enjoyed the article but one can't ignore that it's a very Dublin-centered list, and it doesn't represent the overall output of creativity in the country. Mullally gives a disclaimer acknowledging this, fluffing her authority on the subject with the simple truth: "That's where I live".

There is a lot happening in Dublin but we can't take it to represent the nation. I ran into this problem last year. I began writing this blog while living in Galway, and when I moved to Dublin I felt a certain authority with my knowledge of theatricals outside the mainstream theatre in the capital. But in the comments section of my write-up on Irish theatre in 2012 it was pointed out that, with the exception of one act, all the performances I had discussed were from Dublin-based companies. Hence the addition of the subtitle: A blog about theatre in Dublin and elsewhere.

(note: I've been working on reducing my own Dublin-centered habbits. You can read my Cork Midsummer Festival coverage here and my Galway Arts Festival coverage here.)

Mullally should have readjusted her headline to reflect her local scope on things. But it doesn't hurt to have a list of the creative and productive theatre companies that are based outside the capital.

No doubt I have left out somebody so please add them in the comments section.

TheEmergencyRoom, 'riverrun': A Way Through the Wake

Druid Lane Theatre, Galway Arts Festival
Jul 22-27

My review of Olwen Fouéré's riverrun coming up just as soon as I look astronomically fabula ...

Fabulous Beast, 'The Rite of Spring': Pictures of Pagan Russia

Photo: Johan Persson

Black Box Theatre, Galway Arts Festival
Jul 15-20

Next festival stop: Galway Arts Festival, where Fabulous Beast are headlining proceedings with their double bill of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Petrushka.

Unfortunately, I had to leave in the interval before Petrushka in order to catch a bus so I won't be able to comment on experiencing both in tandem (would greatly appreciate you guys filling me in in the comments section).

My review of The Rite of Spring coming up just as soon as I bum a cigarette ...

Project Arts Centre, 'Best Man': A Novel Nanny

Photo: Michael MacSweeney

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Jul 16-27

My review of Best Man by Carmel Winters coming up just as soon I show remarkable enthusiasm for the free whiskey ...

THISISPOPBABY, 'All Dolled Up Restitched': High Heels in Low Places

Abbey Theatre, Dublin
July 10-20

My review of All Dolled Up Restitched by Panti coming up just as soon as I'm surrounded by the debris of a destitute transvestite ...

Theatre Festival Reminds Us of Ireland's International Standing

Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky and the Boy are back.

The Dublin Theatre Festival (Sept 26-Oct 13) line-up was revealed yesterday.

"Come Out to Play" is the header of this year's programme, and from looking at it you'd think that it's a message meant especially for the international community, as if Festival Director Willie White is saying: "Dublin is ready to play"

Last year's programme was heavily dependent on home-grown artists - a circumstance possibly due to the lack of a replacement sponsor after Ulster Bank. Still, it was a strong festival that put the best of Irish theatre into action (it was great to see The Corn Exchange landing the Gaiety stage and The Company graduating onto a bigger platform) as well as hosting acclaimed international acts such as Elevator Repair Service, Forced Entertainment and the Wooster Group.

There are many more performances being flown in this time around. Richard Maxwell's New York City Players come from the height of NYC's experimental downtown scene with Neutral Hero. Listed as one of the top ten shows of 2012 in the New York Times, this tells the story of a man searching for his father in the wide open landscape of the American Midwest using the company's unique neutral style.

We also have the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of the narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece performed by the sensational Camille O'Sullivan. Pushing the boundaries of contemporary circus, Australian company Circa deliver their "exquisite cabaret of the senses": Wunderkammer. From Portugal comes Mundo Perfeito's Three fingers below the knee - a performance informed by the archives of the censorship commission established during Salazar's dictatorship which exposes the oppression of artistic and political freedom felt during that time. While The Events - the most recent play by Scotland's acclaimed dramatist David Greig - comes to the Abbey's Peacock Stage.

Speaking of which, the Abbey will be the site of the first original Frank McGuinness play there (or anywhere else?) in fourteen years. The Hanging Gardens promises to be a  familiar portrait of the Irish family, centering on a writer and the tensions in his family(*). The original play comes after a lengthy string of adaptations at the Abbey such as John Gabriel Borkman and The Dead, and is directed by Irish director supreme Patrick Mason. While over at the Gate, director Wayne Jordan tackle's Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera - the "epic masterpiece of 20th century musical theatre". Brecht never seems to be performed in Ireland, and it's nice to see the Gate re-introducing him to an Irish audience (considering its historic role as being the Irish hub for the hits of European modernism back in the day) injected with Jordan's fresh and chic vision (Alice in Funderland anyone?). You might also want to drool over the cast lists for both shows


(*) Calling it now: the son character described as "struggling for his father's acceptance" is homosexual. It seems to be McGuinness's go-to insecurity in a male character, as seen in 'The Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme' and 'Dolly West's Kitchen'.


Of course, in a time when Brecht was pushing the form and Ireland's dramatists seemed concerned only with insular matters and basic modes of realism, we could claim Samuel Beckett as our proud contribution to the world of European modernism. Waiting for Godot comes to the Gaiety Theatre from acclaimed Beckett interpreters: the Gare St Lazare Players. Continuing to represent Irish theatre's ability to innovate, with their own unique incorporation of international styles, The Corn Exchange turn to Eugene O'Neill's early American masterpiece Desire Under the Elms. Whenever I see that The Corn Exchange are doing an adaptation part of me hopes that they push their commedia dell'arte masks to the max, as they did in their adaptation of Chekov's The Seagull way back when. Commedia's stock characters are locked in specific and extreme emotional states, and so are antithetic to the dominant mode of psychological realism where characters undergo behavioral change. The clash between both performance traditions has wielded fantastic results in the past.

Both members of Operating Theatre (Ireland's seminal avant garde company) are also in here, with Olwen Fouéré's riverrun celebrating the elemental journey of Anna Livia Plurabelle in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and an in development showing of Roger Doyle's opera about the Renaissance genius Giordano Bruno.

Unfortunately, Irish Theatre Institute's ReViewed series seems to be missing. This initiative brought back strong productions which were felt deserving of a wider audience.

Also: the ghost of Maeve Brennan returns as Eamon Morrissey reveals how the Irish-born writer for the New Yorker caught up with him in his one-man show Maeve's House; Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 18th century satire The Critic receives a new production by Rough Magic; and Theatre Lovett take on the Brothers Grimm with A Feast of Bones.

Ultimately, this year's Dublin Theatre Festival aims to prove Ireland's abilities to host the cutting edge of international theatre, while simultaneously demonstrating that Irish theatre has a significant part to play.