Review: ‘Translations’

Published in the Sunday Tribune, August 10, 2008

It’s not difficult to imagine Brian Friel and his Field Day buddies sketching out the framework for ‘Translations’, in Derry in 1980. They start with the premise of setting it during the 1830s Ordnance Survey, an exercise that involved “standardising” Irish place names in brutish English: a scenario that provides for an encounter between coloniser and colonised but that doesn’t carry the baggage of nationalist mythologising. Brilliant.

Free theatre, from Belarus

Published in the Irish Independent, Saturday August 9, 2008

If you want to attend a show at the Belarus Free Theatre, first of all you have to find the mobile phone number of their manager. It’s not on the web. It’s not in the phone book. Just ask around until you get it.

Fear and loathing at the Edinburgh Fringe

A long time ago (the days before cheap flights), in a city far, far away (by road, at least), a young, earnest Irishman found a job paying £2.50 an hour, for a ten-to-twelve hour day, in a theatre. Actually, it wasn’t a theatre, but was an old, rambling building, that was pretending to be a theatre “complex”.

Anyway, he was happy. He swept the floors, and tore tickets, and helped clean up the bar when the last punters had gone home at four am. Sometimes, he got to slip into the theatres and see shows for free! He was very happy. Even though most of them were awful.

Review: Kicking a Dead Horse

Published in the Irish Independent, March 2007

The US is kicking a dead horse in Iraq, the outcome of a misconceived adventure that was supposed to be about taming the wild. Their only hope for retaining some dignity is to bury the bodies and get out as quickly as possible. This could be what the renowned American playwright, Sam Shepard, is talking about in his enigmatic new play, written for the Abbey, ‘Kicking A Dead Horse’.

Review: Project Brand New

Published in the Sunday Tribune, July 27, 2008

Megan O'Riordan, pro gambler

Earlier this week, I got an email from a writer friend, Simon Doyle. He was writing a new play, he said. It was about the kidnapping of a South Korean film director and his ex-wife actress by North Korean spies in 1978, and their being “forced by dictator Kim Jong-il to make a socialist interpretation of ‘Godzilla’”. It was called ‘¡ZAP!’ He invited me to a staging of some scenes on Saturday, as part of something called Project Brand New.

Review: ‘Phaedra’s Love’ by Sarah Kane

Published in the Sunday Tribune, July 13, 2008

Jason Byrne’s production of the late Sarah Kane’s play, ‘Phaedra’s Love’, is a brazen success. From the opening scene of the young prince Hippolytus slumped in an armchair in front of the tv, masturbating into a sock, to Phaedra’s hips and heels, to ‘Tainted Love’ on the soundtrack, to the ritualised violence of the extraordinary closing scenes, it lurches between louche cool and a deeply moral sense of horror with relentless economy.

Review: ‘Rita Dunne’ by Pat Talbot

Published in the Sunday Tribune, July 13, 2008

In the drawing room of a house on Dublin’s Northside, Rita Dunne sits, remembering. How her father mentored her young husband, Willie, early in his political career. How Willie rose fast through the ranks, with her at his side, to become Taoiseach. How their marriage couldn’t weather the strain of political life. And how Willie Dunne, after winning three elections, became embroiled in a financial scandal, unearthed by a tribunal he himself set up…

Review of 2007: The days before the Africans

Originally published in Village, Sunday, 30 December 2007

“In dem days was before the Africans came to Parnell Street.” Them days was before the Africans came to our stages, too.

This was the year when immigrants got themselves a mayor, a minister, and a voice on the Irish stage. As in politics, so too in the theatre: most of the talking for immigrants is being done by the Irish – but not all.