Author: The Reviews Hub - Ireland

Writer: Rachel Thornton Director: Rachel Thornton & Úna Nolan A genuinely delightful piece of theatre, The Last Wolf in Ireland tells the story of Noah, a werewolf, and his best friend Colm as they embark on a very chaotic sleepover. With humour and heart, this play is an exploration of friendship, the pressure on people to ‘be grand’ despite the difficulties in their lives and the visibility of women’s achievements. As the audience enters Noah, played by Will Farren, is already on stage, wearing a Hannibal Lecter style mask and with rope around his ankles. In an impressive display of…

Writer: Nancy Harris Director: Ellen Buckley Nancy Harris fans are in for a real treat with this production of No Romance: A Desperate Business currently running in Bewley’s Café Theatre. Most recently lauded for her screenwriting talents thanks to TV show The Dry, Harris’s work as a playwright has been just as successful. No Romance was her celebrated Abbey debut when it premiered on the Peacock stage in 2011 as a three-act play, but theatre goers may be more familiar with Somewhere Out There You, which had a successful run on the main stage in 2023. While this is the…

Writer: Mike Bartlett Director: Katie O’Halloran Performed in the stunning surrounds of the Boys’ School in Smock Alley theatre, Cock, Mike Bartlett’s 2009 play is an exploration of one man’s identity and the nature of relationships. Before the play begins, the atmosphere is expertly set with the choice of music that is played as the audience enters. The songs highlight the core of the play, that being the complicated nature of relationships. John, our main character, decides to break up with his long term boyfriend. A short time later he meets a woman who awakens an attraction he didn’t know…

In his soft Cavan brogue, storyteller, performer, playwright and memoirist, Michael Harding shares stories about his Father and reads passages from his new book, I Loved Him From the Day he Died: My Father, Forgiveness and a Final Pilgrimage. Fifty years after the passing of Michael senior and seven memoirs that don’t mention him, Harding decides it’s time to address that void and where better to invoke the ghost of his dad than on the Camino. Setting off in a woollen suit he found in a charity shop, unsuitable shoes and carrying a yellow backpack, “I will bring my Father…

Writer: John Millington Synge Director: Aaron Monaghan Almost 120 years after its first staging at the Abbey Theatre, J.M. Synge’s masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World is revived this evening by Cavan’s ‘Livin Dred Theatre Company’.     Known to many of us from our school days, this three act comedic play depicts the rise and fall of a stranger, Christy Mahon, whose fascinating tale of having murdered his violent father enthralls the community of a rural Mayo village, only for him to fall sharply from grace when his progenitor turns up alive.  The lights go up on Éilish McLaughlin as…

Writer & Director: Derek Murphy In the gorgeous setting of Bewley’s Café Theatre there was an excited audience, murmuring in anticipation. Notable hits played softly in the background of a busy theatre. The stage was modest, with a white bench centre stage.  We welcome our leading man (Brian Gallagher) from behind the audience where he is searching for his internet date, Wendy (Georgina McKevitt). Gallagher plays the role of a ‘desperate loner’ far too well, often setting the audience off into fits of giggles. Wendy appears from backstage, and we immediately become aware she has some sort of compulsive condition,…

Writer & Director: Úna Nolan Running for three nights in the Boy’s School, Úna Nolan’s Need Help (No Worries if Not) is an exploration of female friendship and coming of age as a woman in Ireland; though the play seems to highlight how much that period of early twenties seems to be an extension of adolescence more than a foray into adulthood nowadays. Naoise (Emily Healy), Amelia (Eri Farrell), and Sara (Olivia Walsh) navigate the aftermath of Naoise’s break-up and the realities of the fractured relationships in their own lives, both with each other and beyond, darting back and forth…

Writer: Kenneth Hudson  Director: Paul Meade  The 3:30 at Cheltenham is a short glimpse into the rollercoaster life of Andrew Williams and his gambling addiction. Being influenced by his Grandad at a young age Andrew (Kenneth Hudson) has been surrounded by gambling for the majority of his life, working in the pub that screens the races that’s just across the road from the bookies, Andrew is in deep with this dangerous game.  Even though it has caused him trouble in the past, Andrew can’t shake the feeling – despite desperate pleas from his family, it takes significantly extreme measures for…