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 ...

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 ...

As we enter the Gaiety, we discover that Once has already begun: the cast are gathered in what looks like an ordinary pub where a session is underway. They play music for about twenty minutes while members of the audience ...

Minutes into Hurl, Charlie O’Neil’s play about a multi-ethnic hurling team, a ripple of discomfort sweeps through the audience. On stage, a man and woman have entered the house of an alcoholic ex-priest; understandably, ...

During the last decade, Owen Roe has emerged as one of Ireland’s very best actors – yet, until now, he’s rarely filled a major leading role. His performance as the Irishman in Ben Barnes’s 2001 Gigli Concert was astonishing ...

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 ...

The ramifications of the controversy over Sebastian Barry’s latest play echo well beyond the "Hinterland", argues Patrick Lonergan. What, exactly, is so bad about Hinterland? Using aspects of the career of Charles ...

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 ...

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 ...

Dancing at Lughnasa premiered at the Abbey in 1990, and was produced in Dublin during five of the ten subsequent years – using the same director and designer every time. Our understanding of the play has therefore been ...