Producer: Fregoli Theatre Reviewer: Tricia O’Beirne The following five plays were produced by Fregoli Theatre and staged in quick succession over approximately 70 minutes. One of Fregoli’s criteria for selecting their new writers was that they “had the potential to create a world that an audience can become immediately immersed in”. They definitely succeeded in meeting this criterion with the ...

Choreography: Ludovic Ondivela Design: Maree Kearns Music: Adolphe Adam Reviewer: Clara Mallon With a successful history of traditional classics, Giselle is an unsurprising venture for Ballet Ireland. Regarded as one of the greatest romantic ballets, the story of love and betrayal has stood the test of time and remains popular among contemporary audiences. Ludovic Ondiviela’s promise of approaching this classic ...

Writer: Nadine Flynn Director: Lee Wilson Reviewer: David Keane Jay is a young Dubliner, living with his mother and siblings in an overcrowded flat in the city. Much to Jay’s objection his grandfather has recently been shipped off to a nursing home to give the family a bit more space, leaving Jay as the eldest man in the family home. ...

Writer: Leonor Bethencourt Reviewer: Tricia O’Beirne An exquisitely coiffured and be-gowned Marilyn Monroe lookalike, wearing a high-viz jacket over her pink flamingo dancer’s dress, greets audience members as they descend the stairs in Cava Bodega to take their seats on the flight with the eponymous airline. The chairs at the tables in the restaurant are all facing forward, and very ...

Writer: Timothy O’Mahoney Director: Eoin O’hAnnrachain Reviewer: John Singleton ‘Isn’t it awful to have done something wrong and be waiting to be found out?’ This is Dereenathirigy, small town nowhere. Home to the Dancing Dogs.  ‘A place of halves. A nice half, and a not nice half'. A world of delinquent distractions: suspicion’s and slanders, gossip and goading, mysteries and ...

Director: Amy Conroy Reviewer: Tricia O’Beirne Niamh McGrath and Keith Singleton play a plethora of characters in their small town send-up, Looking Deadly, and they do so with great skill, assurance and seamless segueing between the various personalities. The story of the rivalry between two funeral directing companies in Foystown, somewhere in rural Ireland, is slight enough but the telling ...

Writers: Emma O’Grady and Paddy O’Grady Directors: Jonathan Gunning, Catherine Ireton, Andy Smith, and Catherine Lynch Reviewer: Ciara L. Murphy   According to Emma O’Grady, people die twice. Once when you breathe your last breath, and again when someone says your name for the last time. In this touching and revealing performance, O’ Grady is ensuring that her grandfather’s name remains present for ...

ThereisBear! Theatre is bringing its new bilingual theatre offering to the Galway Theatre Festival. Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic horror Carmilla, and directed by Conor Kennedy Burke, the company describes this work as “one of their most unusual pieces thus far”. In the isolation of a post-famine manor, the daughter of a landlord is bed-bound by an unexplainable illness. Her ...