Epiphany, Brian Watkins's Joyce-inspired play for Druid, is one of the best production nominees not nominated for either best actress, best actor or best director. Photo: Robbie Jack
Something interesting started to happen to the Irish Times Theatre Awards in the past decade. For a ceremony that tends to hand a trophy to as many plays as possible, the gap began to narrow between best production and other major categories. DruidShakespeare cleared out the 2016 awards, Red did the same in 2018. Galvanic statements were made. We bowed before the unquestionable winners.
Those were glorious, victorious evenings in comparison to some of the more peculiar choices made. In 1999, Passion Machine’s excellent Dublin Trilogy won best production, but it was conspicuously absent from every other category. The same happened to Phaedra’s Love in 2009. The fault lies with the judges’ shortlist: without giving recognition for acting, direction, design, it leaves you with the unsatisfying question of what exactly made these productions the best?
We’ve fallen even deeper into this head-spinning conundrum yet again. This year’s nominations are an entirely new oddity. For the first time ever, none of the four best production nominees are represented in best actress, best actor or best director.
Among the nominees for best production is Druid’s production of Epiphany, Brian Watkins’s Joyce-inspired play following guests at an Epiphany party, and Irish National Opera’s production of La Cenerentola/Cinderella, an assumed Christmas spectacle that garnered five-star reviews. Speaking of critics, the Irish Times five-star review usually goes some distance in this category, but not so much this time. (Won’t somebody please think of The Children?).
The closest thing to a frontrunner seems to be The Big Chapel X, an impassioned dystopian adaptation of Thomas Kilroy’s novel, which also has a stake in the best ensemble race. Introduced only in 2018, that acting award might now become important to predicting best production.
If you’re an ITTA statistician crunching the numbers, you’ll scratch your head wondering why four productions - Much Ado About Nothing, The Alternative, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Travels of Jonathan Swift - have chalked up more nominations than most of the best production nominees.
It also looks like they'll need extra seats in the National Concert Hall. Without as many multiple nominations, the total number of productions represented across all competitive categories this year is 42, a significant rise from last year’s 22.
At least this allows us to appreciate many new faces. The political avant-garde company Brokentalkers, after 19 years of making plays, receive their first best production nomination for The Examination, a provocative exploration of the Irish Prison Service.
Among the first-time nominees for best actress is Aoibhéann McCann, whose Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire was more wittily self-possessed than neurotic. (Think more Katherine Hepburn, less Vivan Leigh). In the best actor race, James Riordan gets a nomination for his solo play Selvage, a stylishly dark fairy-tale about a teenage boy and his struggle with anxiety.
The energetic director Ronan Phelan finally gets a look in, for his wild production of Much Ado About Nothing, which moved Shakespeare’s comedy to a boozy trailer-park party. Dylan Coburn Gray receives a playwriting nomination for Citysong. And how nice that the best movement category finally acknowledges a dance production, in Rachel Ní Bhraonáin’s Losing Your Body, an absorbing solo about a career-driven dancer whose exhausted body begins to push back.
The wider picture also holds some intrigue. If Eileen Walsh wins her third best actress trophy - nominated here for her sublime performance in Beginning, a charming play about two party guests seeking connection - then she will break the record for most wins in that category. (Walsh is currently in a four-way tie with Derbhle Crotty, Catherine Walker and Lia Williams).
Aaron Monaghan, previously nominated three times for best actor, stands a chance of finally taking gold. Monaghan is acknowledged for the physical theatre play The Travels of Jonathan Swift, where he played the 18th century wit.
Those keeping track will observe that if Epiphany wins best production, Druid will finally close the gulf opened by Rough Magic, matching that company’s record of four wins.
Meanwhile, the indefatigable Paul Keogan picks up his 16th nomination, for his combined lighting work on The Big Chapel X, The Glass Menagerie and Blood in the Dirt.
In what is surely the most bizarre shortlist ever, it’s all to play for.
Who is going to win? Beats me.
The 23rd Irish Times Theatre Awards will be held at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on Apr 5th.
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