Phil Kingston was in his first year at London’s prestigious Central drama school when a senior staff member gave him some sage advice. “You can be a musician and a smackhead, but you can’t be an actor and a smackhead.” Kingston was a heroin addict. He paid for his addiction with his commission from work… read more +

Deirdre Kinahan was walking in the bog near her home in Meath one morning when a flash of colour caught her eye. The bog is a vast expanse of dark browns and purples and blues, and the bright colours seemed incongruous. She approached, and saw that they were flowers. Attached to the flowers was a… read more +

Olwen Fouéré is even more beautiful in person. Sitting in tracksuit and cardigan in a light-filled dance studio in Dublin, hurriedly eating a packed lunch, the French-Irish actress exudes a warmth and charisma that belies the often aloof, statuesque roles she plays on stage.

Published in the Sunday Tribune, July 27, 2008 Earlier this week, I got an email from a writer friend, Simon Doyle. He was writing a new play, he said. It was about the kidnapping of a South Korean film director and his ex-wife actress by North Korean spies in 1978, and their being “forced by… read more +

From the opening scene of the young prince Hippolytus slumped in an armchair in front of the tv, masturbating into a sock, to Phaedra’s hips and heels, to ‘Tainted Love’ on the soundtrack, to the ritualised violence of the extraordinary closing scenes, it lurches between louche cool and a deeply moral sense of horror with relentless economy.