A View from the Bridge review: A moderate rendering of MillerA dutiful, illustrative staging of Arthur Miller’s 1956 drama rather than a freshly invigorating oneTue Sept 15 2015 - 16:17
Review Beckett in the City: The Women Speak: Product recognises playwright’s sense of empathy | Tiger Dublin FringeBeckett may be no liberator, but he best understood our cagesMon Sept 14 2015 - 15:17
Harder Faster More review: Sex sells at a knock-down price | Tiger Dublin FringeA series of sketches that lurches between grim comedy and extended hand-wringingFri Sept 11 2015 - 15:11
The Auld Fella review: A performance about performance | Tiger Dublin FringeMicheal Glenn Murphy’s nostalgic, cluttered play comes at the expense of living relationshipsThu Sept 10 2015 - 14:24
Grounded review: A morality play about drone warfare | Tiger Dublin FringeWhen a female fighter pilot is moved to the Chair Force, the morality of remote warfare comes crashing downThu Sept 10 2015 - 14:11
Sure Thing review: Not even the house always wins | Tiger Dublin FringeA fleet piece about gambling in Dublin that is determined to break evenThu Sept 10 2015 - 13:56
Kim Noble: ‘I don’t have a proper job. I don’t have a proper life’All the Lonely People: The satirist’s new show, where nothing seems to be off limits, is riveting but so unethical you may have to watch it through splayed fingersWed Sept 09 2015 - 06:00
Electric Picnic | FKA Twigs: harsh and bruised, rushing and distendedLike an apparition in club gear, she emerges from the smokeMon Sept 07 2015 - 16:31
Yasiin Bey : the artist formely known as Mos Def | Electric PicnicWhat’s in a name change?Sun Sept 06 2015 - 19:13
Shamir: a gig too far? | Electric PicnicWhile Shamir Bailey’s first outing is ebullient, on the Body & Soul stage he’s let down by muddy sound and over-crowdingSun Sept 06 2015 - 17:59
Róisín Murphy: surging, sensuous and inspired by gynaecology | Electric PicnicMurphy is revealed finally as an unapologetic hedonist. She wears it divinely.Sun Sept 06 2015 - 17:44
Future Islands: the fascinating shapes of Samuel Herring | Electric PicnicYou’d need a DNA test to decide where one song ends and another beginsSat Sept 05 2015 - 20:28
Underworld : dark and long | Electric PicnicArms out and chest up, frontman Karl Hyde still comes across as a muttering prophet, making mantras out of twisted materialSat Sept 05 2015 - 17:27
Ho99o9: Strafing Stradbally with sound and fury | Electric PicnicYou would like these New Jersey guys when they’re angrySat Sept 05 2015 - 15:25
Culture Shock: The trouble with memoriesSimon McBurney, Robert Lepage and Brian Friel all know that, whether they escape us, prove false or exert a destructive hold, memories always keep us in their gripSat Sept 05 2015 - 01:00
The Coronas: complexity can wait | Electric PicnicThe Coronas follow a tried-and-tested formula for bright, sharp rock: stolid rhythms, lyrics lacquered in obvious emotion, guitars that crunch politely and jab when required.Fri Sept 04 2015 - 21:24
The chair force: an uneasy play about drone warfare‘Grounded’, George Brant’s well-travelled play about a female drone pilot, puts words on a growing sense of moral anxietyThu Sept 03 2015 - 06:00
Dancing at Lughnasa review: A thoughtful, adept 25th-anniversary revivalAnnabelle Comyn’s respectful and inquisitive revival is engaged with nostalgia, particularly the pain at the root of that wordFri Aug 28 2015 - 16:39
Salt Mountain review: A timely tale of displacementCarmel Winters’ new play might make us look differently at the 50 million people now forcibly displaced by conflict or disasterThu Aug 27 2015 - 17:08
Waiting for Godot review: A peculiarly bombastic takeSmock Alley’s production treats the play as a performance vehicle and loses the nuanceWed Aug 26 2015 - 14:45
The Quiet Land review: lament for a disappearing IrelandMalachy McKenna’s new play is alert to a powerful impotency as two men go gently into that good nightFri Aug 21 2015 - 10:39
By the Bog of Cats review: a warped family dramaMarina Carr’s bitter stretch of the Irish midlands is a sunken place full of ghosts and vengeance – will anyone make it out alive?Thu Aug 20 2015 - 17:11
10 things we learned from this year’s Edinburgh extravaganzaAs always, the shows being staged encompass the weird, the wonderful and the wackySat Aug 15 2015 - 05:50
The Last Hotel review: An opera about rehearsing for deathDeath is an assisted act in Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s new opera at the Edinburgh International FestivalMon Aug 10 2015 - 18:30
Culture Shock: And so to bed . . . the nightmare of sleepless nightsThe way we sleep, and when we sleep, has been altered by human invention – from pills to alarm clocks – but most profoundly by artificial lightSun Aug 09 2015 - 01:00
DeGeneration: an unfettered dance into darkness | GIAF reviewThe style of choreographer Hofesh Shechter remains mercifully untamedThu Jul 23 2015 - 16:28
Lessness: Solace in Beckett’s world without end | GIAF reviewSamuel Beckett’s late prose piece, written in fragments and pieced together at random, becomes oddly lullingThu Jul 23 2015 - 15:57
The Match Box review: A bereaved woman plays with fireA Liverpudlian mother is pushed to the edge of the world by a tragedyWed Jul 22 2015 - 12:49
Abbey’s new co-directors say theatre should have reach outside DublinScottish directors Murray and McLaren will replace Fiach MacConghail next yearWed Jul 22 2015 - 01:00
How Olwen Fouéré conquered Beckett’s memory challengeThe actor continues her performances of notoriously tricky Irish prose works with Beckett’s Lessness, which comprises 60 sentences apparently chosen at randomMon Jul 20 2015 - 04:35
Luck Just Kissed You Hello goes beyond gender politics | GIAF reviewAmy Conroy’s new play is a mysterious family drama about a hard-won reconciliation and the making of a manWed Jul 15 2015 - 17:17
Exhibit B: An unnerving exploration of racism and brutality | GIAF reviewBlack actors hold our gaze as their fixed poses recall colonial brutality and the marginalisation of refugeesWed Jul 15 2015 - 16:48
Maum: A miscarriage of tension | GIAF reviewAn historical grievance about a murder trial is at the heart of Maum, but this is less a play than a pageantWed Jul 15 2015 - 16:38
The trials of Brett Bailey: ‘I was seen as a racist South African. That typecast me’‘Exhibit B’, at Galway arts festival, re-creates 19th-century ‘human zoos’. Are its critics right to say it replicates the wrongs its creator set out to damn?Sat Jul 11 2015 - 10:00
Break a leg, Macbeth: why are actors so superstitious?From never saying ‘Macbeth’ to never whistling backstage, the theatre world is full of odd beliefs. What’s even odder is that they seem to workSat Jul 11 2015 - 06:00
A Month in the Country review: Getting a grip on some love anglesTurgenev’s play gets a stately pace as Brian Friel smuggles the radical energy of passion into a distinctly Irish word playThu Jul 09 2015 - 09:52
The Producers review: still the show where anything goesMel Brooks’s legendary ’68 comedy and ’01 musical remains an unapologetically hilarious paen to bad taste – after all, ‘Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer’Thu Jul 09 2015 - 09:51
An American take on Friel’s Irish Russia‘Itinerant director’ Ethan McSweeny is bringing his outsider’s eye to Brian Friel’s translation of A Month in the Country at the GateThu Jul 09 2015 - 01:00
‘It’s a love song to Dublin’: Anne Clarke brings Once homeAnne Clarke of Landmark Productions moves comfortably between ‘art-led’ productions and explicitly commercial undertakings. But then she is ‘a little bit like a shark’ – in a good wayTue Jul 07 2015 - 06:00
Irish festival fixer Fergus Linehan’s first crack at EdinburghLinehan has built an unusual career as a festival director, but he had to be persuaded to take on the Edinburgh International Festival – the ‘grandaddy of them all’ – so soonWed Jun 24 2015 - 06:00
Kilkenny Arts Festival goes back to Bach and the shock of the oldShakespeare, Dante and Bach feature in a programme that’s strong on the classicsMon Jun 15 2015 - 18:34
Life after the Troubles in Monsters, Dinosaurs, Ghosts | Theatre ReviewWhat happens to the foot soldiers in the half-life of the peace process?Mon Jun 15 2015 - 14:25
Teenage poses exposed in A Boy Called Nedd | Theatre reviewA clear-eyed and compassionate look at five Dublin teenagers in a permanent rushTue Jun 09 2015 - 12:57
Culture Shock: Does making art have to be such hard work?The crucial thing about art is not how long it takes to create, but that it is created allSun Jun 07 2015 - 13:57
Mary Murray lights up No Smoke Without Fire | Theatre reviewOnly Murray’s assured presence mounts a challenge in a comedy that isn’t keen to provokeFri Jun 05 2015 - 18:06
Dublin violence in Shakespearean iambic pentameterHow will Paddy Cunneen’s play Deadly fare in front of the tough critics of a Garda youth diversion project?Mon Jun 01 2015 - 01:00
The Gigli Concert: Tom Murphy’s music is expertly played | Theatre reviewThis considered production proves that almost anything is possibleWed May 27 2015 - 20:21
The Gigli Concert: ‘What’s an Englishman doing directing a revered Irish classic?Tom Murphy’s great play, currently at the Gate, subverts Irish and English stereotypes. How did director David Grindley rise to the challenge?Wed May 27 2015 - 06:00
Theatre review | Being Norwegian skirts cliche to achieve poignancyWomen are from Norway, men are from Scotland in David Greig’s charming comedy with hints of something darkerTue May 26 2015 - 17:49
IFTA: Frank, Patrick’s Day and Love/Hate the big winnersTomm Moore’s animation called ‘Song of the Sea’ is the surprise Best Film winnerMon May 25 2015 - 10:24
