“Inside the mind of a paedophile,” said the headline last Sunday. The article, by the Sunday Tribune’s Ali Bracken, told the story of the serial abuse of children by the California-based Irish priest, Oliver O’Grady – in his own words. It was “the affection of the hugging,” that O’Grady particularly enjoyed; it “awakened within me… read more +

A great, but tragic, Irish leader struggles with his fate. He is the foremost Irishman of his day, though he divides the country. He is confronted by treachery, and distracted by beautiful women. And as chaos threatens to consume his world, he replies… with a song. Plays dealing with Irish politicians are rare, and Irish… read more +

It was any girl’s dream: young Molly Allgood, just 19 years old, an assistant at Switzer’s drapery, was about to make her debut on the Abbey stage. As she waited nervously in the wings, the stage manager called out, “beginners please”. And Molly dissolved in tears. It was the conventional call for the actors to… read more +

In Sam Shepard’s ‘Ages of the Moon’, not a lot happens. Two men drink, sitting on a porch. Nobody else comes along. One of them leaves, briefly. Most of what they talk about is objectively meaningless: rambling musings on life, alcohol, women; shared memories of past misadventures. A fan hums above them erratically, till one… read more +

It’s been described as anti-Semitic, as a “ten-minute blood-libel” and as a “hate-fuelled little chamber-piece”, and it may be coming to a theatre near you, next weekend. ‘Seven Jewish Children’ is a very short play by Caryl Churchill, a leading English playwright. She wrote it in a matter of days in response to the war… read more +

Marina Carr has moved to the city. The bogs are gone; it’s all shiny marble and new sofas. The couples have names like Ben and Catherine, not Portia and Raphael. Their clothes are bespoke, not threadbare, and they speak as if reared with marbles in their mouths, not briquettes. Welcome, Marina, the city needs you…. read more +

Published in the Irish Independent, March 2007 The US is kicking a dead horse in Iraq, the outcome of a misconceived adventure that was supposed to be about taming the wild. Their only hope for retaining some dignity is to bury the bodies and get out as quickly as possible. This could be what the… read more +

It is six hours before Mark O’Rowe’s play, ‘Terminus’, opens in New York. Eileen Walsh is standing in a dim crossbeam, shrouded in mist, talking out to the audience. Mark O’Rowe is coughing. A technician is talking loudly. A couple of others are looking at dimly-lit laptops, or moving quietly through the gloom, fixing things. “The drill for several years has been bed alone, then tears.” Eileen Walsh plays against the rhythm of O’Rowe’s verse. She lets the rhyme announce itself, as if her character were unaware that there were anything distinctive about her speech.

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 +