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 ...

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Optimism about contemporary Irish drama seems to have diminished recently. At the 2001 Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards, a member of the judging panel lamented the scarcity of new Irish plays, stating that he wanted to ...

It took Samuel Beckett about three weeks to write Krapp’s Last Tape. During that time, the play went through seven distinct stages which, according to the scholarship, involved a gradual stripping away of sentimentality: ...

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