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Sean Fox, Brendan Coyle and Jolly Abraham in Conor McPherson’s The Weir. Photo by Ros Kavanagh

The Weir at the Abbey Theatre: perennial loneliness alleviated by haunting stories in the pub

The Weir was a breakthrough play for Conor McPherson; produced by the Royal Court in 1997, it established him as a major new voice in London when he was still in his mid-20s, and it has been revived countless times. It is written in a low key; there is little conflict and the interpersonal dynamics are subtle. No murders, no seductions, no betrayals: the drama lies in personal revelation.

Saorla Wright and Evanne Kilgallon in Ar Lár

An Lár at Glass Mask Theatre: Celtic revival show with a Generation Z kick

Writer Evanne Kilgallon is certainly doing her own thing. This is a completely original quest play set in the underworld, where Dorchas, dead for a millennium, takes Solas, who died last night, on a boat voyage to meet their rulers.

Veronica Bolay's 'Late Autumn Stillness', oil on canvas

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Veronica Bolay and the awesome power of nature’s elemental forces

In July 1943, when Veronica Bolay was not yet two years old, her hometown of Hamburg was targeted by the combined Allied air forces – and, as she later recalled: “Our house was bombed into complete rubble.”

Karen Ardiff as Sonya and Barry Barnes as Andrey in 'Afterplay'

Brian Friel’s masterful Afterplay becomes an elegy for post-Covid life

Brian Friel’s stiflingly despairing Afterplay might seem a gloomy choice as a Christmas production. But the management at Bewley’s Café Theatre seem to have known exactly what they were doing: their new production is almost quiveringly apt for the world we find ourselves in.

Afterplay at Bewley’s Café Theatre: Chekhov’s unhappy lost souls get another chance at life and love

This short and sweet work by Brian Friel is set in a Moscow café. It’s an excellent fit for the Bewley’s Café Theatre lunchtime slot; play happily meets time and space.

Aidan Moriarty and Luke Griffin in The First Irish Coffee at the Laughter Lounge in Dublin. Photo by Marc O'Sullivan

The First Irish Coffee at the Laughter Lounge: Drink’s origin story served with verve

The Laughter Lounge, the comedy venue on Eden Quay, is flexing its menu to explore an audience for comic plays — and they might be on to something. Lee Coffey’s new script is written with this type of crowd in mind: comedy-literate folks keen to listen and there for laughs.

Catherine Mahon Buckley, pantomine director. Photo: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

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‘I’ve been doing the panto for 28 years and you never get too old for it’

‘Theatre and the arts was very much part and parcel of our lives growing up. I was lucky that my parents worked in the creative industries. My father was a bank manager and also a musician and my mum was a designer. Creativity was encouraged in our house and I was about four years of age when I saw my first panto.

Panti Bliss in 'If These Wigs Could Talk'. Photo by Ruth Medjber

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Panti Bliss and Tara Flynn take on modern Ireland

The Abbey has chosen two pieces from very different liberal activists in juxtaposition on the Peacock stage: Haunted with Tara Flynn at 7pm and If These Wigs Could Talk with Panti Bliss at 9.15pm.

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Luke Davis sinks his teeth into the meditative process

Luke Davis Man of Honour

Tara Flynn in Haunted. Photo by Ruth Medjber

Haunted and If These Wigs Could Talk at the Abbey Theatre review: Tara Flynn and Panti Bliss give a lucid picture of contemporary campaigning

Tara Flynn used to be best known as an actor and comedian. She had done a stint with the comedy group The Nualas and while not quite a household name, she was, in her own words, “fame-adjacent”.

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‘I know a lot about addiction and I know everyone is affected by it’ – Nancy Harris on creating her RTÉ drama

Nancy Harris is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, and the recipient of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2012. Born in Dublin, she lives in London with her scientist husband, Kwasi Agyei-Owusu.

In 'East Wall Market, night', artist Maeve McCarthy was drawn to the shop’s colour and the light sources at night.

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‘More interesting than the more salubrious parts of town’ – Maeve McCarthy’s light touch makes East Wall shine

Maeve McCarthy ’East Wall Market, night’ Oil on linen

Irene Kelleher in her one-woman piece, ‘Wake’

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David Bolger’s ‘Ulysses’ take is a transcendent journey

Can a single sentence on a page, unrelated to one’s own experience, trigger a weird and wonderful work of art? That single trigger seems to have been the inspiration for choreographer and director David Bolger’s Go to Blazes, for his own dance company CoisCéim.

Irene Kelleher in Wake at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf, until Saturday November 19

Wake at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf: portrait of grief and denial at a mother’s wake too lightly sketched

Lily is preparing to host her mother’s wake alongside her father, and she is dreading it. In a complicated state of denial about her mother’s death from cancer, she refuses to go into the “good room” where the corpse has been installed. Instead, she tucks into a bottle of red, puts on a “slut top”, gets sloshed and makes a pass at someone.

Funnyman Karl Spain: ‘I’ve seen people meet very famous comedians and just be incredibly rude’

Limerick-born Karl Spain studied communications and TV production. He is a regular on the Irish and international comedy circuit and writes for other comedians. He lives in Limerick with his girlfriend, Rachel, who he met 17 years ago on the TV show Karl Spain Wants A Woman.

Brett Polegato as Guillaume Tell and Amy Ní Fhearraigh as Jemmy in INO's William Tell. Photo by Pat Redmond

William Tell at the Gaiety: Bucolic tale fails to hit moving target of imperial aggression

Italian composer Gioachino Rossini’s final opera Guillaume Tell is a morally fierce engagement with Swiss patriotism. It was first performed in Paris in 1829 and is based on a Friedrich Schiller play from 1804.

Annabelle Gormley (4) pictured with the giant version of Patrick O’Reilly’s Wolfhound, which will be unveiled as part of a unique sculpture garden at Art Source in Dublin’s RDS running from November 11-13. Photo: Holly Carr

Giant bronze Wolfhound worth €110,000 to stand sentry at RDS art fair’s sculpture garden

A giant version of one of Ireland’s most famous sculptures, Patrick O’Reilly’s Irish Wolfhound, is to make its first public appearance at an art fair.

Michael D Higgins and Martin O’Malley, right, with John Drever and Rosie McGurran yesterday. Picture by Andrew Downes

Ashes of cherished artistic couple Tim and Mairéad Robinson are scattered in the sea

The late writer, cartographer and artist Tim Robinson once described the Aran islands, the Burren and Connemara as “the ABC of earth’s wonders”.

A house full of paintings can lead to an explosion in art

Though Olivia O’Dwyer’s father – an artist and signwriter in Limerick – died when she was 10, she vividly remembers his work and his studio.

Hila Baggio as Miranda and Giorgi Manoshvili as Calibano in 'La Tempesta' at the Wexford Festival Opera. Picture by Clive Barda

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Voices rise above the many gimmicks in La Tempesta

Director Roberto Catalano describes his concept for Halévy’s opera La Tempesta (O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House) as a “construction site of nostalgia” wherein the painful past is ultimately healed. This will allow the wizard Prospero to bury his dark powers forever, and consign the future to the love between his daughter Miranda and Fernando, the noble son of Prospero’s old enemy.

Paul Mescal will star in 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in London. Photo: Matt Alexander

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Paul Mescal prepares to tread the boards on the West End and in the footsteps of many a screen star

Well over a month before curtain up, and the new production of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams at the Almeida Theatre on London’s West End has already sold out.

From left, Blair Gibson, Dalton Wood, Ryan Heenan and Christopher Short in Jersey Boys. Photo by Birgit and Ralf Brinkhoff

Jersey Boys: Oh, what a night — catchy songs and a story of fame and friction

Returning to Dublin on the latest leg of its tour, this jukebox musical is brimful of retro charm.

Andrew McCracken as Michael Dunlop in The Safety Catch. Photo by Al Craig

The Safety Catch at The New Theatre: Racing along the road to glory and the grave

Playwright Nick Snow takes the story of the Dunlop family as the basis for this illuminating look into the world of motorcycle racing. Racing legend Joey Dunlop died in a crash aged 48. His brother Robert was similarly killed aged 47. Robert’s son William died aged 32. Here, Liam Beckett, lifelong friend of Robert, tries to persuade Robert’s other son Michael to give up racing and retire: “No more laurels and no more wreaths,” Liam pleads. “The road always wins in the end.”

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How Peter Dreher raised repetition to an art form and meditation

When German artist Peter Dreher painted this work – dated, just above the rim of the glass, 22.9.82 – he had been painting the same thing, from the same distance, for eight years. Created between 1974 and 2013, in all there are 5,000 versions of an empty life-size cider glass on a blank surface against a plain, white wall.

Michael James Ford, Bairbre Ní Chaoimh and Kyle Hixon in 'Lost Hearts'

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Ghosts from Halloweens past haunt both Lost Hearts and Solar Bones

When author MR James wrote Lost Hearts in the 1890s, he set it in 1811. And as ghost stories went, it was both ghoulish and grisly, featuring as it did the ghosts of two children who died by having their hearts cut out… while still alive.

James Wafer as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr and Thomas Birch as Henry James in The Master. Photo by Pádraig Grant

The Master: Colm Tóibín’s story couched in moving music as Henry James confronts his unlived life

With a libretto by Wexford native Colm Tóibín, composer Alberto Caruso gives memory an operatic shape as writer Henry James looks back at the troubles of his life.

Giorgi Manoshvili as Calibano in La Tempesta. Photo by Clive Barda

La Tempesta at Wexford Festival Opera: Shakespeare’s enchanted island gets a youthful and slick spin

Wexford Festival Opera continues its tradition of producing the more neglected full-length operas, and this version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by French composer Fromental Halévy meets this criteria neatly. It premiered in London in 1850 to acclaim but is never revived. It is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

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Theatre & Arts

December 2022

The Weir at the Abbey Theatre: perennial loneliness alleviated by haunting stories in the pub

An Lár at Glass Mask Theatre: Celtic revival show with a Generation Z kick

November 2022

Veronica Bolay and the awesome power of nature’s elemental forces

Brian Friel’s masterful Afterplay becomes an elegy for post-Covid life

Afterplay at Bewley’s Café Theatre: Chekhov’s unhappy lost souls get another chance at life and love

The First Irish Coffee at the Laughter Lounge: Drink’s origin story served with verve

‘I’ve been doing the panto for 28 years and you never get too old for it’

Panti Bliss and Tara Flynn take on modern Ireland

Luke Davis sinks his teeth into the meditative process

Haunted and If These Wigs Could Talk at the Abbey Theatre review: Tara Flynn and Panti Bliss give a lucid picture of contemporary campaigning

‘I know a lot about addiction and I know everyone is affected by it’ – Nancy Harris on creating her RTÉ drama

‘More interesting than the more salubrious parts of town’ – Maeve McCarthy’s light touch makes East Wall shine

David Bolger’s ‘Ulysses’ take is a transcendent journey

Wake at the Viking Theatre, Clontarf: portrait of grief and denial at a mother’s wake too lightly sketched

Funnyman Karl Spain: ‘I’ve seen people meet very famous comedians and just be incredibly rude’

William Tell at the Gaiety: Bucolic tale fails to hit moving target of imperial aggression

Giant bronze Wolfhound worth €110,000 to stand sentry at RDS art fair’s sculpture garden

Ashes of cherished artistic couple Tim and Mairéad Robinson are scattered in the sea

A house full of paintings can lead to an explosion in art

Voices rise above the many gimmicks in La Tempesta

Paul Mescal prepares to tread the boards on the West End and in the footsteps of many a screen star

Jersey Boys: Oh, what a night — catchy songs and a story of fame and friction

The Safety Catch at The New Theatre: Racing along the road to glory and the grave

October 2022

How Peter Dreher raised repetition to an art form and meditation

Ghosts from Halloweens past haunt both Lost Hearts and Solar Bones

The Master: Colm Tóibín’s story couched in moving music as Henry James confronts his unlived life

La Tempesta at Wexford Festival Opera: Shakespeare’s enchanted island gets a youthful and slick spin

John Kindness serves up a fine feast with Potato Man

It’s a long way from Heaven in Eugene O’Brien’s predictable midlands affair

Venus Patel wins top prize at RDS Visual Art Awards for her experimental short film ‘Eggshells’

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