The hero is a man who spits on Jews in the street. One of the romantic leads wins praise for winning, and converting, a young Jewish woman. The rousing climax involves the entire cast exulting in the humiliation of a Jew being forced to convert to Christianity. And this is the story of one of… read more +

‘Macbeth’ is the everyman’s tragedy. He lacks the nobility of Othello, the intellect of Hamlet, the authority of Lear. He is Shakespeare’s premonition of Tony Soprano – always in slightly above his head, struggling to catch up, resorting to horrific violence in a bid to assert himself over a fate he can’t quite master. For… read more +

Aged 16, I got my break in the theatre. Playing a broom carrier in the school production of Macbeth, I arrived for the performance to find myself promoted. A classmate had fallen ill. My new role was that of the Captain in the second scene: gravely wounded from battle, he reports to King Duncan how… read more +

Ten years ago, the British theatre impresario Michael Kustow issued an impassioned plea for the theatre, in a book with the now quaint title, ‘Theatre@Risk’. Faced with the overwhelming forces of both the internet and global capital, Kustow wondered, would theatre survive? It seemed for a while during this decade that Irish theatre makers were… read more +

Earlier this summer I received an invite from the Israeli Embassy to spend a week in Israel viewing the best of its theatre. It didn’t suit; but in any case, I decided that I wouldn’t have gone, and wrote to explain why. I’ve never been to the Middle East and have no first-hand experience of… read more +

At the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Published in Irish Theatre Magazine. At the core of Jason Byrne’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a scene that is, more typically, neglected: Juliet’s feigned suicide. It comes after a first half that bustles and bristles, theatre of swaying hips and preying hipsters. Then, after the interval, this early exuberance is… read more +