Steve Fickinger was sitting in his office on 42nd Street when he got a call from someone at the Disney Channel “We’ve got a new film coming up,” said the colleague. “We thought you might like to do a stage version of it.” “Send it over,” said Steve Fickinger. Fickinger works for Disney’s theatrical group…. read more +

Is the work of Ireland’s greatest dramatist being ossified by reverence? Colin Murphy watches three productions on tour and asks Beckett’s first British publisher what the future holds, in the current issue of Prospect. See also ‘Back on the road in rural Ireland’ in the March issue of Le Monde Diplo: an interview with Henry… read more +

In 2005, Wales beat Ireland on the final weekend of the Six Nations to win the Grand Slam for the first time in 27 years. Had Ireland won, they would have taken the Triple Crown. Colin Murphy was there, just about. Coming off the train at Cardiff, a crumpled looking fellow in a Welsh jersey… read more +

Review by Colin, Aifric & Maeve About 2,500 years ago, in Ancient Greece, a lone actor stepped out of the chorus and spoke back to them, and invented modern theatre. After about 2,400 years, people were getting bored of that, and one day an actor found himself humming on stage. The chorus hummed back, and… read more +

The official in Westmeath County Council was bemused by the name on the voter registration application. Something had to be wrong. She picked up the phone. In Athlone, Beetriz Bailundo answered. “You’ve ticked the box that says you’re Irish,” said the official. “I am Irish,” said Beetriz. The official paused. “I’m an Irish citizen,” said… read more +

Henry Woolf is the 79-year-old playing Clov in the Godot Company’s ‘Endgame’. I spoke to him about his life in theatre, which started with a tour in 1957 with Anew McMaster’s legendary travelling theatre company. henry-woolf Interview broadcast as a podcast on Le Monde Diplo to accompany the print article.

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 +

The first thing that you notice when you step into a feeding centre in Africa is the stench. It is the smell of the effort to clutch onto life, fetid, desperate. It is difficult to conceive of anyone being able to put up with it for long. But, when you work in such a centre,… 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 +