Tom Stoppard spent his twenties broke, smoking and trying to write. He had a series of lowly newspaper jobs, and then went freelance, or “self-unemployed.” He was a theatre critic and, briefly, “the only motoring correspondent in the country who couldn’t drive.” He sent scripts to the BBC, and they commissioned him to write a… read more +

The theatre director was a young idealist, and he wanted to change the world. He brought his theatre group to a rural village, where the people were mired in poverty. In the village square, they put on a play. It was a simple fable of how the rich oppressed the poor. The village audience was… read more +

“Inside the mind of a paedophile,” said the headline last Sunday (May 2). 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… read more +

There are two things that Irish actors can’t do: verse, and class. When Rough Magic tackled The Taming of the Shrew two years ago, director Lynne Parker found a solution, of sorts, in a very Irish rendition of the play, roughing it up and embracing regional accents. Parker has done something similar with Wilde’s great… read more +

Bernard Farrell launched his career over 30 years ago with a farce about six people at a group therapy session, I Do Not Like Thee Dr Fell. In Bookworms, literature has replaced therapy, but the form is the same, and so is the intent: to poke fun at the foibles of the age. The book… read more +

The 39 Steps is a classic adventure novel by John Buchan, and an early but influential thriller by Alfred Hitchcock, and now a witty stage play paying irreverent homage to both. Richard Hannay is the dashing, pencil-moustached hero, unwittingly caught up in an espionage adventure when he tries to protect a beautiful, mysterious foreign agent… read more +

Karl Shiels is a broken man. It wasn’t the six-month, unpaid labour of love installing Dublin’s newest fringe theatre, the Theatre Upstairs at the Plough pub on Abbey St, that broke him. The excitement in the theatre community and rave reviews had long since repaid that. It wasn’t the bleak midwinter, when burst pipes cut… read more +

“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 +

One day at the dawn of the 1960s, a remarkable script landed on the desk of the director of the Abbey Theatre, Ernest Blythe. Blythe was in his 70s. He had retired from politics almost 30 years earlier, and had been managing director of the Abbey for 20. His was a staid directorship, and the… 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 +