Electric Picnic: The Stranglers - What happened to the heroes?Baz Warne and the black-clad new-wavers put their formidable back catalogue to the service of an early afternoon with some snarling good humourSat Aug 30 2014 - 19:26
Making a show of yourselfThe success of autobiographical performances on the Tiger Dublin Fringe has placed a new emphasis on intimacy and honesty. But as more artists mine their family history for material, are they in danger of becoming overexposed?Sat Aug 30 2014 - 01:00
Review: TracerThe competing elements of this corporate conspiracy thriller and satire may lose you as it goes all the way to the topThu Aug 28 2014 - 17:20
An hour of rancour with Steven BerkoffThat’s what his new play, The Actor’s Lament, comprises. Surely he can’t be as difficult as his reputation suggests?Tue Aug 26 2014 - 01:00
Review: Here & NowBetrayed by the promise of property, Veronica Dyas walked away from it all, and documents her journey in this installation and performanceSun Aug 24 2014 - 22:43
Ostermeier’s ‘Hamlet’: what did you expect?A thrillingly raw production of ‘Hamlet’ from Berlin’s Schaubühne theatre gives Shakespeare’s famously unstable character a licence to improvise. Is its famously iconoclastic director in complete control?Sat Aug 23 2014 - 01:00
Review: Heartbreak HouseWritten fitfully during the first World War and finally presented to an utterly changed world, Shaw’s experimental play remains tangled and complex. Can the Abbey make sense of it?Fri Aug 22 2014 - 13:25
Review: The Importance of Being HonestSet 20 years after Earnest, Billie Traynor’s imagined meeting of Wilde’s sisterly characters finds a world in flux and lives in stasisFri Aug 22 2014 - 13:20
Irish shows conquer Edinburgh’s hilly terrainIn the largest international festival on earth, artists from Ireland have proven themselves disproportionately successfulFri Aug 22 2014 - 01:00
Culture Shock: Anything’s better than doing nothing about GazaIn times of conflict, culture also becomes a battlegroundSat Aug 09 2014 - 01:00
Stage Struck: Are we, the audience, drowning in immersive theatre?Attacked by zombies, snogged by actors – audiences are no longer expected to just sit and watch the playFri Aug 08 2014 - 01:00
Passing the time at Enniskillen’s Happy Days festivalConversations turn Beckettian when this festival of all things tragicomic doesn’t turn out as planned. Could it be any other way?Mon Aug 04 2014 - 16:00
When giants walk the earthRoyal de Luxe’s planned Limerick show has not been without controversy. But to see it in action in Liverpool makes you appreciate that this is not a diversion – it’s an investment in the citySat Aug 02 2014 - 01:00
Review: Crude MechanicalsA play within a play is without its cast. Can a stage manager save the day?Tue Jul 29 2014 - 10:30
Review: NirbhayaYaël Farber’s play, prompted by a brutal gang rape in Delhi and its ensuing outcry, transforms victimhood into bravery through fearless testimonyWed Jul 23 2014 - 16:05
‘Theatre is a horrible business’: the wisdom of Beckett’s chosen oneThe genial German director Walter Asmus was initially scared of Samuel Beckett before gradually becoming the playwright’s personally anointed representative on EarthWed Jul 23 2014 - 01:00
Dublin Theatre Festival to stage work stretching from the epic to the intimateProgramme divides evenly between Irish and international workTue Jul 22 2014 - 01:00
Do you know the way to Galway International?The rebranded Galway International Arts Festival is pointedly here, there and everywhereMon Jul 21 2014 - 01:00
Review: IDThe latest show from Galway’s Blue Teapot, which plays with the acronym ID, doesn’t make intellectual disability its only form of identificationFri Jul 18 2014 - 17:05
Save the last dirty dance for meTo lure in summer punters, theatres have learned to give ’em what they wantFri Jul 18 2014 - 00:00
Review: ChapattiAn American-Irish co-production of Christian O’Reilly’s Dublin-set play brings unfamiliar accents and suprisingly sour notes to a familiar genreThu Jul 17 2014 - 16:33
Review: Be Infants in EvilThe characters in playwright Brian Martin’s controversial debut play are each experiencing a crisis in faith. But is it believable?Wed Jul 16 2014 - 16:52
Review: BallyturkEnda Walsh’s new play ruptures the routine of two friends who prop up their reality on a daily basis. It’s also a matter of life and deathWed Jul 16 2014 - 14:53
Review: Dirty DancingThe familiar story of one young woman’s path to maturity is an invitation for the audience to regress into childhoodFri Jul 11 2014 - 14:22
Druid school: the making of a modern playwrightBrian Martin’s first play is about a paedophile priest struggling to suppress his desires. It’s a bit like learning to open up a can of worms with a chainsawFri Jul 11 2014 - 01:00
Samuel Beckett’s old school tiesSean Doran wants to make Happy Days a ‘destination festival’, turning Enniskillen, where the playwright and novelist went to school, into a Mecca for his fansSat Jun 28 2014 - 01:00
Sadly, there’s no such thing as total recallMemory is unreliable, but the theatre relies on thatFri Jun 27 2014 - 00:00
Review: Dangerman/Some Baffling MonsterA curiously unsettling double bill from the deadpan Dick Walsh teases out the options within politics, stories and free will. Do we really have a choice?Wed Jun 25 2014 - 15:42
Body & Soul festival reviews: Day 3Rejuvenating power of Shabazz Palaces, East India Youth and Caribou felt by festival goersMon Jun 23 2014 - 21:50
Body & Soul reviews: Sun shines bright on stellar line-upJohn Grant, Gary Numan, Goldfrapp and Jon Hopkins delight festival crowdSun Jun 22 2014 - 15:00
Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk: dabbling with mortality in our own private universesThe playwright has created another peculiar world with its own logic in his new piece, in which two friends, played by Cillian Murphy and Mikel Murfi, are abruptly confronted with the concept of deathSat Jun 21 2014 - 01:00
Overnight success: a theatre becomes the city of Mahagonny in 12 hoursWitnessing the highly pressurised construction of the immersive city of Mahagonny for six performances of Brecht’s opera is impressive – it is amazing what you can achieve without planning permissionThu Jun 12 2014 - 01:00
Even Beckett’s playing the game of thronesHBO’s bloody, pervy fantasy series has begun tapping some unlikely literary sourcesFri Jun 06 2014 - 00:00
Review: The SeparationA debut play about a splitting couple on the cusp of the Irish divorce referendum finds its own divisionsThu Jun 05 2014 - 17:00
Review: After Sarah MilesBaptised on the set of ‘Ryan’s Daughter’, the hero of Michael Hilliard Mulcahy’s monologue is caught in a net of his own celluloid dreamsThu Jun 05 2014 - 01:00
Review: MollThis butter-wouldn’t-melt production is a place of hapless priests and pushy housekeepers in a changeless worldFri May 30 2014 - 16:34
Review: Villa/DiscursoPrime Cut’s new staging of a Chilean double-header finds one post-conflict society exploring the memories of another. Are they simpatico?Thu May 29 2014 - 17:52
Review: Singin’ in the RainTrading heavily on our memory of the greatest movie musical, can the stage version splash out on its own?Thu May 22 2014 - 14:53
Review: Here & NowBetrayed by the promise of property, Veronica Dyas walked away from it all, and documents her journey in this installation and performanceWed May 21 2014 - 18:31
Stage struck: Can theatre make happy clappers of us all?Going to two plays a year improves your well-being, according to researchers. Sounds like a facile way to measure the value of artFri May 16 2014 - 00:00
Moyross on stage: residents take back their storyResidents of the Limerick estate have grabbed a chance to give their perspective after years of negative coverageMon May 12 2014 - 01:00
Review: How Many Miles to Babylon?The Lyric’s handsome new prodution of Jennifer Johnston’s first World War drama moves from the war at home to the Western Front. Which conflict is worse?Tue May 06 2014 - 18:08
Casual sex changes in ‘Twelfth Night’Subversive gender play in Shakespeare’s comedy enabled it to explore prohibited desires, and the Abbey’s update keeps things ‘a bit dangerous’Tue May 06 2014 - 01:00
Review: Twelfth NightA daringly modern telling of Shakespeare’s comedy of desire, disguise and deception makes the play seem more true to itselfThu May 01 2014 - 17:03
Bringing Birdsong to the stageAdapting Sebastian Faulks’s novel for the stage proved a challenge but it is well-timed for the centenary of the first World WarSat Apr 26 2014 - 01:00
A stitch in timeStaging a costume drama? Take as many liberties as you like with the set, but keep those corsets and ruffles as isFri Apr 25 2014 - 00:00
‘The Westbury is more representative of my life than an alleyway strewn with needles’Mark Ravenhill says he has a ‘desperate need to be liked’, but when it comes to provocation the playwright can’t seem to help himselfSat Apr 12 2014 - 01:00
