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 +

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.

Published in the Sunday Tribune, July 13, 2008 In the drawing room of a house on Dublin’s Northside, Rita Dunne sits, remembering. How her father mentored her young husband, Willie, early in his political career. How Willie rose fast through the ranks, with her at his side, to become Taoiseach. How their marriage couldn’t weather… read more +

Published in the Sunday Tribune, July 6, 2008 In the Gents before opening night of ‘The Sanctuary Lamp’, two gentlemen were recalling the original production of the play, from 1975. This is a particular habit of Tom Murphy’s audiences, and it is difficult to leave a Tom Murphy play without overhearing at least one conversation… read more +

This was the year when immigrants got themselves a mayor, a minister, and a voice on the Irish stage. As in politics, so too in the theatre: most of the talking for immigrants is being done by the Irish – but not all.

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 +

At the Gate Theatre, February 2009. Published in the Sunday Tribune. This play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. Tennessee Williams’s analysis, not mine. He gives those lines, more or less, to his narrator, Tom, at the beginning of ‘The Glass Menagerie’, just opened… read more +

John Mortimer sits ensconced at his writing desk in his study, a folder of typed sheets lying open in front, the walls lined with books and pictures, a clutter of pens and dusty knick knacks on the desk. And some plastic figurines. “Oh that’s Shakespeare and Freud, and lots of Jesuses. I’ve got a bouncy… read more +