Fintan Walsh’s new anthology begins with a line that seems in danger of subverting the rest of the book. “There is strength in numbers, so they say,” writes Frank McGuinness in his foreword – before adding “I’ve never ...

Critics have been declaring Irish playwrighting to be in a state of crisis for most of the last 100 years but, even so, it’s hard not to feel glum about the present state of our writing for the stage. The latest plays from ...

One of the clichés of Irish theatre historiography is that drama in this country is excessively verbal – that our dramatists write for the voice, but not for the body. But if you actually go to the theatre here, it soon ...

Almost every European country that gained independence after the First World War had one thing in common: with only one exception, they all tried to stimulate the growth of a national literature by commissioning translations ...

Arriving to watch Tara Maria Lovett’s The Call, we realise that we have entered a human body. The room pulses with red lighting as we take our seats around a ribcage, a pile of stones at its centre representing a heart. ...

Perhaps unfairly, Marie Jones remains more noted for commercial rather than critical success. The Blind Fiddler – an exciting fusion of melodrama, traditional music, and great storytelling – looks likely to be as successful ...

Irish attitudes towards John B. Keane have changed a lot during the last ten years – due largely to Garry Hynes’ production of four of his plays during that period. Keane has always been popular, but he was also seen by ...

As Michel Tremblay’s play begins, we are told that we are not about to see a Three Sisters or a Hamlet. Instead, we are asked to witness the writer’s remembrance of Nana, his mother, whom he is summoning to the stage "for ...

When Martin McDonagh’s Leenane plays first appeared in Ireland, they seemed exciting for many reasons: their delinquent humour, their rootedness in (but distance from) the Irish dramatic tradition, their wilfully ...

Shakespeare, wrote Ben Jonson, was both the “soul of the age” and “for all time”. His work, that is, encapsulated the life of his society – but it also transcended space and time, acquiring universal importance. That ...