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 ...

Writer: Emily Gillmor Murphy Director: Karl Shiels Reviewer: David Keane In a world that seems full of endless choices, Nell is suddenly faced with the reality that hers have become very limited. After a drunken night with friend-turned-fling Adam, a seemingly sweet but naïve garda, Nell finds herself pregnant. “Up the duff”. “A bun in the oven”. However she describes ...

Writer: John Logan Director: Emma Jordan Reviewer: Colm G Doran ‘…Red’ It is the title that frames this co-production by Prime Cut Productions and The Lyric, uttered by a spluttering Ken played by Thomas Finnegan in answer to the indomitable artist Mark Rothko played by Patrick O’Kane.  Moments before, the scene opens on a pensive Rothko surveying the audience, he ...

Writer: Arthur Riordan Composer: Bill Whelan Director: Lynne Parker Reviewer: Saoirse Anton   “We’ll show the old farts who maintain their dominance Over our constituent parts The time is near, to kick against the pricks Sign up here, for gender politics.” Just minutes down the road from the Abbey Theatre, at Connolly Station on the 22nd May 1971, members of ...

Writer: Cathal Quinn Director: Cathal Quinn Reviewer: Laura Marriott “Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you.” William Butler Yeats is a man who in Ireland needs little introduction. Even decades after his death the slightest new titbit or revelation generates a buzz of media interest and his writing is taught to every Irish student. ...

Writer: Donagh Humphreys Director: Sarah Bradley Reviewer: Laura Marriott All That We Found Here opens in the living room of a mansion house. Everything in this room has been chosen for its style, for the image it projects to others, and for its price tag. Against the back wall are bookshelves full of hardback classic philosophy texts, an open fireplace, ...