Michel Tremblay’s play is a 90-minute walk along the Via Dolorosa. This is a play about the agonies of separation and betrayal, and Tremblay does not spare us in his depiction of that pain. The structure of the play is simple, but ingenious. Six separate stories are told by the residents of an apartment block,… 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 +

The infamous riots at ‘The Playboy of the Western World’ took place this week in 1907. Colin Murphy uncovered some old diaries with an account of the week by an ordinary theatregoer… Saturday January 26, 1907 Went to John Synge’s new play tonight, ‘The Playboy of the Western World’. Rehearsals had been held in secret,… read more +

Colin Murphy recalls interviewing John Mortimer in 2005 For Prospect Magazine, 19 January 2009 “I’ve got a bouncy Jesus somewhere,” said John Mortimer. He sat at a writing desk cluttered with little plastic figurines: Shakespeare, Freud, and numerous Jesuses. His eyes sparkled behind inch-thick glasses, and he slumped a little in his chair.

Published in the Sunday Tribune, August 31, 2008 There are two moments in ‘No Man’s Land’ that are great theatre. Late in the first act, Michael Gambon, playing Hirst, a writer of apparent high class and distinction, lapses into a drunken, maudlin reminiscence. He is haunted by the dream from which he has just woken,… read more +

Published in the Sunday Tribune, August 10, 2008 It’s not difficult to imagine Brian Friel and his Field Day buddies sketching out the framework for ‘Translations’, in Derry in 1980. They start with the premise of setting it during the 1830s Ordnance Survey, an exercise that involved “standardising” Irish place names in brutish English: a… read more +

Published in the Irish Independent, Saturday August 9, 2008 If you want to attend a show at the Belarus Free Theatre, first of all you have to find the mobile phone number of their manager. It’s not on the web. It’s not in the phone book. Just ask around until you get it.

A long time ago (the days before cheap flights), in a city far, far away (by road, at least), a young, earnest Irishman found a job paying £2.50 an hour, for a ten-to-twelve hour day, in a theatre. Actually, it wasn’t a theatre, but was an old, rambling building, that was pretending to be a… read more +