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  <title>Irish Theatre Magazine reviews RSS</title>
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  <description>Irish Theatre Magazine RSS Feed</description>  
    
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/All-Over-Town]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[All Over Town]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Seán (Dylan Kennedy) is young, gay, and eager to free himself of the baggage of his life in Ireland. A prosaic family goodbye at the airport and he&rsquo;s on his way to Australia by way of Bangkok: forced to wear the Dublin jersey his mother has given him as a going away present because its made of a breathable fabric.
Seán&rsquo;s story is related to us through a monologue by Phillip McMahon, darling of the Fringe since winning the Spirit of the Fringe award in 2006, and All Over Town has that small intimacy and energy you might associate with a small, sweaty venue where it might come as an...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:17:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/All-Over-Town]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Red-Lola]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Red Lola]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the more charming productions at the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival was a non-verbal piece of work that explored theatre as joyous fantasy and magical possibility. Devised by Asylum Productions, Cleaner, which offered us a glimpse into the life of a bored housemaid, made use of mime, puppetry and movement over half an hour of playful fun within the intimate setting of the Unitarian Church in the city centre.

It is an interrogatory process that Asylum has clearly set about pursuing, and this year the company expands upon its initial inquiries with a darker, more surreal piece of work that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:21:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Red-Lola]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Hollander]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hollander]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As was the case with Hammergrin Theatre&rsquo;s 2008 production for the Cork Midsummer Festival, one suspects there is a coherent narrative underlying this year&rsquo;s tale of the strange and wondrous Hollander House on Cork&rsquo;s North Mall. However, this is a play with so many interludes, diversions and meanderings from the central storyline that, to be frank, it is not always easy to keep up.

While those of us who have been here before - at K: The Iowa Project last year, or at one or other of Hammergrin&rsquo;s projects - will know what to expect, and know also that any confusion we feel...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:28:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Hollander]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Krapp's Last Tape]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Revolutionary? Obtuse? Bleak? There are several tattered tags attached to Samuel Beckett. For Irish audiences, the name reverberates in a manner similar to the Bard&rsquo;s across the water: a nationally celebrated and iconic playwright but one who is a tad intimidating. There must also be a couple of uninitiated in an audience who watch heads emerge from amphorae in the dark or an actress buried up to her neck in sand, and, despite genuflecting to Beckett&rsquo;s celebrity, wonder guiltily whether the whole thing is an elaborate, inaccessible jape. Fergus Cronin and Moving Still Theatre Company...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:41:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/DNA-(Deoxyribonucleic-acid)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid)]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Given the increase in violent behaviour within and between teenage gangs, group dynamics and the processes of adolescent cruelty is an especially topical concern. It&rsquo;s also a contentious, sensitive issue. Thoughtful analysis in the media is often eclipsed by emotive campaigns, characterised by a sensationalist blame-game and the search for a scape-goat. These issues, and the concomitant agendas they throw up, are ripe for theatrical exploration. Dennis Kelly&rsquo;s DNA is an examination of a group of teenagers who hang out together in a wood. The play begins after a catastrophe: the group&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:45:32 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/DNA-(Deoxyribonucleic-acid)]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Gigli-Concert]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Gigli Concert]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the clichés of Irish theatre historiography is that drama in this country is excessively verbal &ndash; that our dramatists write for the voice, but not for the body. But if you actually go to the theatre here, it soon becomes obvious that the distinction between text and movement is a false one. Many of our great actors are great precisely because of their ability to embody the text: their movement is always based on their breathing as they deliver lines, and their decisions about where, when and how to move always seem to begin with their lungs. I'd think in this context of how Owen Roe...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:49:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Gigli-Concert]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Lipstick-and-Spitting-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Lipstick and Spitting Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Two plays focusing on the problematic nature of love within male/female relationships make up the first outing from new Cork-based theatre company Roundhouse. The company&rsquo;s premise is that artistic directors Jennifer Rogers and Rachel Yoder will operate together as writers, and the playwriting in both instances is notable for its fluidity and accomplishment &ndash; particularly so in Rogers&rsquo; case. An organised bravery also fuels both productions, suggesting Rogers and Yoder have both guts and directorial ability. Despite the fact that each writer directs her own play, neither text is...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Lipstick-and-Spitting-Love]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Present-Laughter]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Present Laughter]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Written in 1939, Noël Coward&rsquo;s drawing-room farce focuses on the life of aging matinée idol Garry Essendine (Brennan). Just weeks before he is due to tour in Africa, Essendine becomes a victim of his own vanity and posturing, as women and men throw themselves at his feet, marvelling at his good looks and talent, and insisting on tagging along. Flattered, but exhausted, the caddish actor increasingly despairs of public life, seeking refuge among his more pragmatic inner circle of friends that includes his erstwhile wife (Jefferson) and loyal secretary (Bell).

Brennan is suitably sly and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:00:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Present-Laughter]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Cat-and-the-Moon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Cat and the Moon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Cat and the Moon is Blue Raincoat&rsquo;s fourth production this year, conveniently taking place alongside the 50th Yeats International Summer School. Sure enough, the crowd that fills the foyer of the Factory space for this 30-minute lunchtime show seems to fit this studious demographic, and the clutched books and overheard conversations confirm as much. The British man behind me had recently seen a version in New York, and was looking forward to a local take, while the American with whom he chatted had seen Blue Raincoat&rsquo;s version the day before, and fancied a second analysis. Such...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:04:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Cat-and-the-Moon]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Hostage]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Hostage]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brendan Behan&rsquo;s The Hostage is rarely performed, and Wonderland&rsquo;s recovery reminds us why. The play that began as An Giall, and premiered at the Damer theatre, Dublin in 1957, was subsequently translated into English by Behan, and later developed further by Joan Littleword for her Theatre Workshop in 1958. A hybrid beast since birth, The Hostage contains an unruly mix of characters, ideas, politics, and styles that would scare off most companies.

Set in a Dublin guesthouse-cum-brothel in the 1950s, Behan&rsquo;s drama portrays the detention of a young British soldier by the IRA in...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:09:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Hostage]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/New-Writing--Epilogue-and-Shafted]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[New Writing:]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[New Writing at The New Theatre is a week long initiative of new plays by emerging writers. In what promises to mark an on-going commitment to staging new work, the programme features short plays by Jane McCarthy and Arnold Thomas Fanning.

In McCarthy&rsquo;s Epilogue, Henry (Harrington) wakes in the waiting room between life and death, where a presiding lawyer (McDonough) introduces him to significant people in his life, presumably for one last time. With more than a nod to A Christmas Carol, Henry is forced to reckon with his dark deeds, repressed memories, and personal disappointments. He...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:14:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/New-Writing--Epilogue-and-Shafted]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Blackbird]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Blackbird]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is a misfortune that Decadent Theatre should choose to produce David Harrower&rsquo;s play Blackbird so soon after its Irish premiere in 2007: a memorable production by Landmark Theatre Company, which made national headlines because of its controversial subject matter. Comparisons between the productions are unfair, but are nonetheless unavoidable. Blackbird is a stunning play, dense with philosophical and ethical issues about human sexuality that have not been explored with such visceral honesty since Nabakov&rsquo;s novel Lolita, and Galway audiences deserve an opportunity to see such a quality...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:18:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Blackbird]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Faithful]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faithful]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Faithful is a comic three-hander &ndash; or more correctly, a two-hander in the first act that becomes a three-hander in the second half. It tells the tale of a husband, Jack (David O&rsquo; Meara) who hires a hit man, Tony (Don Wycherley) to knock off his wife, Margaret (Carrie Crowley). Ostensibly, the murder is set up by Jack because his wife is cheating on him. At least, this is what Jack has lead Tony to believe. However, as the drama unfolds other motives emerge with each passing scene. There are even quite a few points where we&rsquo;re not quite sure who has paid who to do what to whom....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:22:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Faithful]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Seagull]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Seagull]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Love stinks. As far as premises go, this covers a fair few texts, if not entire theatrical oeuvres. In NYT's production of Martin Crimp&rsquo;s concertinaed version of Chekov&rsquo;s very long and often turgid text, this rock &lsquo;n&rsquo; roll notion is foregrounded and indeed illuminated by director Wayne Jordan and his youthful cast. Within moments, one thinks: Ah! That&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s always been so irritating about this play! The characters, almost without exception, are spoiled, petulant adolescents! 

Happily, they are somewhat easier to take when played by actual teenagers.

It...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:27:25 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Seagull]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/I-Am-Of-Ireland]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[I Am Of Ireland]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Bosco Hogan, resplendent with flowing gray locks and stern spectacles, wears the character of W.B. Yeats like a comfortable pair of old slippers. It&rsquo;s a comforting and plausible impersonation, providing an opportunity to revisit, through Hogan&rsquo;s confident interpretation, so many of the poems that are ingrained in heart and mind, from schooldays.

Hogan speaks with an authoritative voice that carries the narrative text and the verse with easy conviction. He is every inch the educated and articulate Anglo-Irishman &ndash; only occasionally moving accents into the West of Ireland (Red...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:32:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/I-Am-Of-Ireland]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Rivals]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Rivals]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When The Rivals premiered in London on the 17th of January 1775, author Richard Brinsley Sheridan&rsquo;s prologue to this tale of misconstrued love took the form of a conversation between a Sergeant-at-Law and an Attorney, appealing to the audience as &lsquo;jury&rsquo; to give the play a fair trial. The audience was unimpressed and the production received a critical drubbing. Chastened, Sheridan whipped the play offstage for a hasty rewrite. He acknowledged the work&rsquo;s lacklustre beginnings in a new prologue, and the re-jigged Rivals re-opened on the 28th of January 1775 with the character...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:44:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Rivals]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Corpses-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Breathing Corpses]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a brilliant structure to Breathing Corpses. Young English playwright Laura Wade&rsquo;s 2006 play presents us with what at first seem like disparate and unconnected tales that all feature, at some point, a corpse &ndash; but as the drama unfolds we realise that we are watching events that are deeply and tragically connected. Each dramatic vignette is delivered achronologically in terms of the play&rsquo;s timeline. Thus, every scene makes us reflect back, as an epiphany, on what we&rsquo;ve already seen, whilst simultaneously allowing us to bring to bear what has gone before on what we...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Breathing-Corpses-(1)]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Friel-Festival]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Yalta Game and Afterplay]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Gate | Friel, a selection of Brian Friel&rsquo;s plays are restaged to mark the writer&rsquo;s 80th year and his relationship with the Gate theatre.  Following a successful tour of the Sydney Festival and the Edinburgh International Festival with the help of Culture Ireland, Faith Healer (1979), The Yalta Game (2001) and Afterplay (2002) are back on home ground.

Under Patrick Mason&rsquo;s direction, the action of The Yalta Game takes place around ten loosely grouped chairs. Designed by Liz Ascroft, the set anchors the otherwise uncertain geography that shifts between a bedroom, a café, and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:47:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Friel-Festival]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Little-Gem]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Little Gem]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[[This is a review of the September 2009 run of this production.]
Little Gem has already garnered a number of awards including the Stewart Parker for playwright Elaine Murphy. The most recent laurel was the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Fringe accolade which sees this three-hander of grandmother, mother and daughter head for a run at the renowned Flea Theatre in TriBeCa off Broadway in New York in January. Wherever it has been so far, actress and debutante author Murphy&rsquo;s play blazesa trail of humanity, humour and, on this showing, truly memorable performances from the all-female cast.

The...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:04:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Little-Gem]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Lonesome-West]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Lonesome West]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[At the outset of his punchy play, London Irishman, Broadway darling and black-humour&rsquo;s lodestar Martin McDonagh might have some of theatre&rsquo;s denizens believing that Irish country life is cruel, heartless, and still entirely peopled by hessian-suited farmers, frustrated priests and lusty colleens. Further into this exuberant co-production of The Lonesome West however, it becomes clear through McDonagh&rsquo;s linguistic japes rollicking around the script that the entire work is not much more than a mischievously satirical cartoon with very few sacred kows to tow to. 

On their family...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:15:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Lonesome-West]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Last-Train-from-Holyhead]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Last Train from Holyhead]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Digging up the past is textural to Irish Theatre. Put two disaffected Irish men with a twenty-year generational gap on a long train journey late at night, post Christmas. Give them two glasses and a bottle of whiskey and one of them is sure to shovel up a tortured history. 

As its title screams, Last Train From Holyhead, the debut outing of Haw Theatre from Galway, delves into the pickings of the Irish Diaspora, disinterring a human tale around the themes of identity, belonging and displacement. 

Jack (Mick Lally) and Pat (Tony Dowling) are the odd couple trapped together in a railway carriage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:52:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Last-Train-from-Holyhead]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Johnny-Patterson-the-Singing-Irish-Clown]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Johnny Patterson the Singing Irish Clown]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mesmerising. Enchanting. Magical. Touching. Ingenious. Innovative. Quirky. Endearing. Experimental. Different and highly imaginative. All words that appropriately describe Barabbas&rsquo; latest theatrical offering. This time it&rsquo;s a collaboration with Little John Nee, an inimitable and very Irish troubadour, storyteller, writer, actor and (even if he might baulk at the description) avant-garde clown, in the broadest meaning of our hitherto historically circus-confined red nosed buffoon. Actually, in the case of Little John Nee and this production, Shakespearean Fool and Patrick Kavanagh-esque...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:40:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Johnny-Patterson-the-Singing-Irish-Clown]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Government-Inspector]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Government Inspector]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Greystones Theatre is an unlikely venue, tucked in almost obscurely behind Church Road, between the car park and Super-Valu, with a very low ceiling, a lot of wood panelling and a serviceable stage better suited to gigging or stand-up comedy than to a play &ndash; not a very promising start.
Yet the effect of the cast of six erupting onto the stage is electrifying and transformative. Corruption and chicanery in the face of public apathy (even if it&rsquo;s only an insignificant town called Baccabiondi) has a contemporary resonance. Here the pigs at the trough are portrayed in bizarre caricature...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:50:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Government-Inspector]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Transparency]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Transparency]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Australian playwright Suzie Miller&rsquo;s new play Transparency, developed by the National Theatre in London and premiering with Ransom Productions, explores the troubling issue of violent crimes perpetrated by children. The questions that these cases pose about the nature of evil, the limits of responsibility, and the balance between rehabilitation and punishment are explored through the relationship of Simon (played by Richard Dormer) and his wife Jess (Dorothea Myer-Bennett). As the play begins, the marriage is reaching a crisis because of Simon&rsquo;s reluctance to start a family. His sudden...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:13:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Transparency]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Dead-School]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Dead School]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Almost every second person educated in an Irish primary school up to the 1970&rsquo;s has woeful stories of brutality featuring a cane, a hard duster or the twisting of an ear. It&rsquo;s a far cry from whiteboards, &lsquo;Well Done Stars&rsquo; and &lsquo;Good Effort Robert,&rsquo; irrespective of the achievement.
Pat McCabe&rsquo;s The Dead School is set at that time in the 1970&rsquo;s when the wheel began to turn; where the salvation of the person came through membership of a community of the faithful and through loyal service to the Holy Father and his bishops but where individualism and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:18:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Dead-School]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/When-the-Hunter-Returns]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[When the Hunter Returns]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Is there a problem when one wants to rave about the venue &ndash; the extraordinary, atmospheric Boys&rsquo; School at Smock Alley &ndash; rather than the play, the production or the acting? It&rsquo;s a breathtaking, gaunt three-storey cuboid, stripped of flooring and ceiling, to make one dark, cavernous space, with three church-like openings and some granite projections. The audience was dispersed on three levels &ndash; standing mostly, the action was intimately close. Marcus Costello (Set) and Sophie Bradshaw-Power (Lighting) wisely applied their skills sparingly and allowed the stones to dictate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:09:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/When-the-Hunter-Returns]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Shadowmen]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Shadowmen]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Poet Debbie Caulfield works with composer and musician Réa Curran on this carefully researched fable of climate change and sustainable development. The text originated as a long poem, but the underlying science is accurate and is the fruit of the writer&rsquo;s collaboration with the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, the University of Ulster, and Queen&rsquo;s University. Though primarily aimed at schoolchildren aged 12 and upwards, evening performances were open to the general public and each show was followed by a panel discussion with representatives of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:40:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Shadowmen]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There exists in Waterford a practice by professional and non-professional arts practitioners to work together without being fixated on who is the professional and who is the volunteer. Red Kettle maximised on this collaborative tendency and responded to the current financial climate (being felt particularly keenly in the city with the closure of Waterford Crystal) with their production of A Midsummer Night&rsquo;s Dream.
The show was advertised as an &ldquo;epic production&rdquo;, enlisted a cast of forty seven cast members (and a dog) and was performed in a circus tent adjacent to the People&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:03:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Setanta-Murphy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Setanta Murphy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[They do not address death directly, yet in Setanta Murphy it is there, floating over this heartwarming dialectic between youth and old age. Cream dust covers hang predatorily above a simple room of a bare wooden table and chair, telegraphing what is to come. In this two-hander, one man shuffles towards a certain death and the other shuffles uncertainly through life. The question the play raises - how to confront death &ndash; shines light on another: how to live a life.
Paddy McDonnell (Garrett Keogh) is 90 and despite a life of vigour, lumping slabs of beef around Dublin markets from dawn 'til...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:43:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Setanta-Murphy]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Alcina]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Alcina]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Creating a satisfying production of a Handel opera is always a difficult nut to crack for directors. For a start, there's the 'star turn' of aria after aria beloved of eighteenth-century audiences which goes against the natural arc of a modern narrative. Add to this, the economic necessity of eliminating choruses and ballets and it&rsquo;s a real challenge. Yes, the music is fantastic with virtuoso singing and baroque ornamentation &ndash; but to assemble all of this into a plausible dramatic whole for contemporary audiences takes a lot of thought. Opera Theatre Company's latest production of Alcina...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:23:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Alcina]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Cracked-Eggs]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Cracked Eggs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Scarlet Exchange is a newly established collective of playwrights who graduated from the Fishamble playwriting course last year. Cracked Eggs is a showcase of six short plays that emerged in the intervening period. Under Tracy Ryan&rsquo;s direction, the 15 minute long pieces are simply staged in rapid, and often dizzying, succession.
First up, Helen Ryan&rsquo;s Project Dating takes as its subject the phenomenon of Internet dating. Kelly (Christine O&rsquo;Donovan) snuggles up on a couch with her Mac as she talks us through some of her adventures, checking messages as she goes. As she recalls...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:21:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Cracked-Eggs]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Black-Milk]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Black Milk]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Frankie McCafferty's narrator opens Black Milk with a rich description of the non-place in which the action is to be set, his arms outstretched at shoulder height, basking in the reflected twirling lights of a glitter ball, there was the promise that this production would glory in its own theatricality. However, almost as quickly as McCafferty is reduced to the role of a drunkard sleeping on a bench, the play's sense of adventure evaporates. It is not that there are not possibilities in the story of how two young Muscovite scammers, the heavily pregnant Poppet (Amy Molloy) and Lyovchick (Packy...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:33:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Black-Milk]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Jack]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jack]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Mike Kenny&rsquo;s version of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' moves the familiar storyline to some thoughtful questioning of the roles of mothers and wives. The target audience (4-7 year-olds) was absent at the TYA &lsquo;Gathering&rsquo; event, but one can be fairly well assured that they would have enjoyed the broad strokes of the piece and found some food for reflection in the more nuanced sections, as would their elders.
The production owes much to Andrew Clancy&rsquo;s set design: he achieves clarity and simplicity with a humble cottage - a careful line drawing on foldaway flats - that doubles as...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:16:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Jack]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Permutations-and-Palpitations]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Permutations and Palpitations]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Playwright Ray Scannell and director Emelie Fitzgibbon have come together once more, this timeon a piece that articulates and amplifies the experience of young adults in a world of impromptu actions and decisions. It takes the haphazard lives of the young, anxious for highs, in revolt against the cosseting of parents and the tedium of school. They engage in subterfuge to evade the adult eyes, yearning to be older than they are. Twin girls and two brothers play hooky to get to a rock festival. The boys want to lose themselves in a blur of intoxication, and the girls want to offer up their virginities:...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:08:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Permutations-and-Palpitations]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/An-Seanfhear-Beag]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[An Seanfhear Beag]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Theatre for children and young people occupies a spectrum that ranges from the didactic (more frequently the domain of the adolescent productions) to the magical, aimed at a younger age-group. An Seanfhear Beagis unequivocally on the side of the magical and it ticks almost all the boxes for children&rsquo;s theatre of the highest order, drawing on both local and national influences: it is Irish, in that the few words employed in the course of the action are Gaelic; it is European in that the company took a child&rsquo;s story from Sweden (by Barbro Lindgren) and transposed it to an Irish village....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:38:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/An-Seanfhear-Beag]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS-Showcase-2009]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Rough Magic SEEDS Showcase 2009]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The directors&rsquo; projects at this year's SEEDS Showcase are a study in contrasts. Where Dying City is a restrained and intimate study of grief for two actors, Serious Money is a complex, multi-stranded, postmodern performance piece for an ensemble of fifteen. However, both of the plays present problems for the young directors. Dying City is so structurally and theatrically understated that it allows for little directorial flourish, while Serious Money &shy;&ndash; as with most of Caryl Churchill&rsquo;s work &ndash; is deeply embedded in the social context of Thatcherite Britain and in the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:34:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Rough-Magic-SEEDS-Showcase-2009]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Doll-s-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Doll's House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Henrik Ibsen&rsquo;s deployment of economics as a root for dramatic tension makes his work entirely apropos in the age of recession. Without even needing to push the text into the realm of allegory, any story of fiduciary mismanagement and the confrontation of ethical responsibility for moral evasion has to belong on the Irish stage.
Second Age Theatre Company&rsquo;s presentation of A Doll&rsquo;s House certainly brims with a sense of the importance of money troubles not as a loose symbol of social class but a real, living force at the core of the moral conundrums its characters face, but its...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:18:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Doll-s-House]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Musician]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Musician]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Was the Pied Piper evil from birth or did his villainy and bitterness result from traumatic childhood experiences? In a vibrant and engaging production, The Musician attempts to explore this question through a whirlwind of music and melodrama. Written and composed by Conor Mitchell, Cahoots NI&rsquo;s exciting and original new opera for children draws upon the child spectator&rsquo;s own cultural knowledge by constructing a prequel to a familiar childhood story. It documents the Piper&rsquo;s boyhood up to the point where he leaves his own village and sets off for Hamelin. For those familiar with...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:10:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Musician]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Observe-the-Sons-of-Ulster-Marching-Towards-the-So]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[NOMAD and Livin&rsquo; Dred, fresh from their successful run of The Dead School at The Dublin Theatre Festival, present their interpretation of Frank McGuinness&rsquo;s iconic play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme throughout their midland home base. It is a glorious fluorescent production that encapsulates the yearning, the haunting, the dreams and the nightmares of each of its eight protagonists with fervour and vigour; the power and poetry of McGuiness&rsquo; language as it see-saws between love and hate, tunnelling through hope (little hope) and anguish with laughter and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:47:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Observe-the-Sons-of-Ulster-Marching-Towards-the-So]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/This-is-What-We-Sang]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[This is What We Sang]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, this new production from Kabosh is a thought-provoking piece of theatre that uncovers a much neglected history of the Jewish Community in Belfast. Performed in the Belfast Synagogue, the play follows the story of several Jewish characters, all from the same extended family, and their varying relationships with Belfast, from a Latvian immigrant in the nineteenth century to a recently unemployed New York businessman returning to settle family accounts. Written as a series of monologues, Gavin Kostick&rsquo;s new play is a predominantly humorous exploration...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:34:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/This-is-What-We-Sang]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/One-is-Not-a-Number]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[One is Not a Number]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Last year, Meridian Theatre Company staged an adaptation of Kevin Barry&rsquo;s award-winning short story collection There are Little Kingdoms. The result, although on many levels engaging, was more akin to a staged reading of the stories than successful drama, lacking focus, narrative arc and dramatic tension.
Despite the production&rsquo;s shortcomings, the difficulties of putting the printed word on the stage are normally not lost on Meridian artistic director Johnny Hanrahan, who has made something of a virtue out of adapting books and short-stories for theatre. In 2002, he took Gaye Shortland&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:49:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/One-is-Not-a-Number]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Dispersia]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Dispersia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Where have all the flowers gone? In Fregoli Theatre Company&rsquo;s offering to the 2009 Galway Theatre Festival, they&rsquo;ll be sandwiched between the toasters and vinyl records and piles of lost or unwanted detritus fromthe throw-away-world of writer Shane McDermott&rsquo;s purgatorial play, Dispersia. They may be catalogued by a tormented St. Christopher and his confessor: a single, down-at-heel pink sock called Claude. Not a puppet, one should note, or a metaphorical sock, but a frail sounding actress wrapped up in a long knitted blanket. She speaks with a Franglais accent. Zany? Profound?...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:09:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Dispersia]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Jane-s-Hero]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jane's Hero]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Peadar de Burca is well known in his native Galway as an actor, director and writer ofplays such as What Men Want and Why Men Marry. His latest offering with MorWax productions is Jane&rsquo;s Hero, a one man show about an Irish army officer and his time with the UN peace keeping forces. De Burca&rsquo;s script is based on a series of interviews carried out with Lt. Eamon Colclough who has seen service in many of the world&rsquo;s troubled spots over the last three decades.

Colclough began his career in the 1970&rsquo;s at the height of IRA activity. It is upon this tapestry that the central...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:10:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Jane-s-Hero]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Rite-of-Spring]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Rite of Spring]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For choreographers, The Rite of Spring has become a rite of passage. Since the first, fabled, production of the ballet by Diaghilev&rsquo;s Ballets Russes in 1913, Stravinsky&rsquo;s radical score has posed a challenge to generations of dance artists. It invites them to pitch themselves into its ferocious, propulsive rhythms and attempt to hold their own. If successive re-stagings of the work can sometimes seem to be a contest for dominance between dancers and the composer, in the case of Fabulous Beast&rsquo;s new version, Stravinsky&rsquo;s position as supreme innovator remains unthreatened.
Leaving...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:28:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Rite-of-Spring]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Knives-in-Hens-by-David-Harrower]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Knives in Hens]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is so much talk of God in David Harrower&rsquo;s 1993 play, it stirs up one&rsquo;s internal catechism. The following sprang from the recesses of memory: &ldquo;In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God&hellip; Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.&rdquo; (John 1.1)

Okay, so that verbatim delivery of biblical text required some googling, but the first bit, &ldquo;The Word was God&rdquo;,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:29:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Knives-in-Hens-by-David-Harrower]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Clean-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Clean House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Matilde (Villegas) is a cleaner who would rather be a comedian. Her mother died while laughing with her father, and he subsequently shot himself. So she leaves Brazil in search of the perfect joke, even though she fears that when she finds it, it will kill her.
Although the premise is a bit whimsical, it is also rather intriguing. Matilde believes deeply in the power of laughter to disrupt the banalities of life. When she finds herself working for the ambitious doctor Lane (Leahy), and in cahoots with her equally neurotic sister Virginia (Clancy), she has her work cut out.
When Lane&rsquo;s husband...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:55:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Clean-House]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Helter-Skelter---Union-Square]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Helter Skelter / Union Square]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Neil LaBute&rsquo;s theatre usually involves presenting us with seemingly ordinary situations that swiftly enough end up having a very dark underbelly. His dramas invariably confront audiences with deeply disturbing and complex moral dilemmas; ostensibly quotidian situations become examples of extreme behaviour. The two short plays here by LaBute &ndash; Union Square and Helter Skelter &ndash; invigoratingly remain true to type as far as the Michigan-born playwright&rsquo;s obsessions are concerned.
Union Square pops up first. Dermot Magennis excellently distils the quiet desperation of a blue-collar...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:01:24 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Helter-Skelter---Union-Square]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Macbeth]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macbeth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Is Macbeth a prisoner of fate or in charge of his own destiny? Will the prophecies be fulfilled regardless of what he does, or could he resist the witches&rsquo; tempting words and his ambitious wife&rsquo;s pressure? In Opera Ireland&rsquo;s new production of Verdi&rsquo;s first adaptation of a Shakespearian play, Macbeth does not have much of a choice: after his first encounter with the witches, three of them morph into domestic servants and join him at Dunsinane, observing and manipulating proceedings there. Not only do they operate the two mobile wall elements that create the interiors and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:14:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Macbeth]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Revenger-s-Tragedy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Revenger’s Tragedy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As you take your seat at the Belltable&rsquo;s off-site space on Cecil Street, the ugliness of the scaffolding cyclorama that reaches all the way up to the flies, surveying a bleak detritus of discarded rubbish - mattress springs, a cement mixer, graffiti walls and a grotto of religious iconography -a picture of the impending depravity is well conjured before a single character utters a swear. Emma Fisher&rsquo;s set depicts an aptly crude setting for Mike Finn's retelling of a Jacobean black comedy.
Finn takes Thomas Middleton&rsquo;s script and grafts it on to an up-to-date carnival of black...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:51:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Revenger-s-Tragedy]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Wallace--Balfe-and-Mr--Bunn]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Wallace, Balfe and Mr. Bunn]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brendan Farrell&rsquo;s new musical play is set in the Theatre Royal in the present day and is presented as the posthumous production of Mr Alfred Bunn, the original producer of composers William Vincent Wallace, Michael Balfe and Sir Julius Benedict, contemporaries working in musical theatre in London the 1800s. The play features a cast of four actors supported by a musical chorus, soloists and an orchestra and is a light-hearted look at the respective careers of the eponymous characters, interspersed with musical interludes featuring some of their popular compositions such as Balfe&rsquo;s 'The...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:58:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Wallace--Balfe-and-Mr--Bunn]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Strandline]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Strandline]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Jim Culleton&rsquo;s production of Abbie Spallen&rsquo;s newest play Strandline has all the outward shows of a murder mystery in full tilt. Taking place, for the most part, in a modern gothic mansion during a dark and stormy night, unlikely suspects are expertly grilled by a self-appointed inspector who quickly discovers no one is who they seem. That the players in this arch tale of intrigue are four disaffected women living in an insular village in Northern Ireland offers us the promise of a thriller turned on its head. This disparate gathering of women following the death of a town favourite...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:21:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Strandline]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Seafarer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Reviewed during the original run, 14th May 2008.
Following on from a hugely successful National Theatre London premiere production that recently garnered four Tony nominations for its Broadway transfer, the Abbey production had a serious benchmark to match. A last-minute cast change had forced the opening night to be postponed by a week further raising the bar of expectation. Having seen the London production, I was convinced that this was McPherson&rsquo;s best play to date but I always knew that its rightful home was in Dublin.
Jimmy Fay&rsquo;s production does not disappoint; he knows the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 May 2008 21:39:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Seafarer]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Terminus]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Terminus]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Reviewed during the original run, 4th July 2007.
Mark O&rsquo;Rowe&rsquo;s re-adoption of the monologue was not without risks, given his previous mixed fortunes with the form. His first monologue play Howie the Rookie, featuring back-to-back monologues by two surburban Dublin thugs, has enjoyed enormous success since its premiere in 1999 and was revived last year in the Peacock&rsquo;s &lsquo;4 x 4&rsquo; season. His monologue play for women (Crestfall), however, produced by the Gate Theatre and directed by Garry Hynes in 2003 played to poor houses and critical ire. In it, three rural Irish women...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:52:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Terminus]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Santaland-Diaries]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Santaland Diaries]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Reviewed during its original run, 8th December 2008.
A 33-year old aspiring actor looking for his break in New York ends up spending the festive season working as a Santa elf in a New York Department store. A fate worse than death one might have imagined or, as it turns out, rich territory to mine for the actor/essayist /humourist David Sedaris whose semi-autobiographical tale this is. The highs and lows of this Santaland prison are the elements which Sedaris first broadcast as an audio essay in the early 90's on National Public Radio in the US.
Adapted for the stage, one suspects it has lost...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:10:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Santaland-Diaries]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Weein]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Weein]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Weein will be the last production staged at the Old Museum Arts Centre, which will reopen in its new purpose built space, the MAC, in 2011. Though many of Northern Ireland&rsquo;s theatre companies could stake their claim on the OMAC&rsquo;s studio, The Weein seems like a fitting finale since, with its inventive approach to both dramaturgy and performance, it typifies the work that the OMAC has presented and supported over the past twenty years.
Opening with the performers entering through the auditorium, dressed in bloodstained white clothes with whitened faces, cackling and heckling at the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:30:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Weein]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Theatre Machine Turns You On]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What are the chances that two out of three plays should include choreographed umbrella sequences, quasi-Dionysian alcohol spewing, and the comparison of a little heartache to the bombing of Hiroshima? Maybe it&rsquo;s just a coincidence, or maybe the cast of Bang Shoot Blast and In Touch were sharing a rehearsal space. Whatever the reason, it seems as if a new generation of Irish theatre-makers is competing for the right images and metaphors to make sense of more familiar problems like broken hearts and poor finance. On the opening night of a mini-festival spread across five days, the line-up revealed...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:22:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Theatre-Machine-Turns-You-On]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Skin-and-Blisters]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Skin and Blisters]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It is the special remit of theatre-in-education to explore an educational topic through the lens of drama. Working as a live-simulation of an unfolding challenge or context, theatre stimulates active participation rather than passive absorption, and complementary drama workshops allow students to work out alternative outcomes within the safety of a classroom setting. TEAM Theatre have been leaders in the field of Educational Theatrein Ireland since 1975, applying these lessons in a primary and post-primary setting. Skin and Blisters, a play about body image, identity and individuality, is a welcome...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:25:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Skin-and-Blisters]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sleep-Eat-Party]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sleep Eat Party]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[What does it mean to be a young man in contemporary Northern Ireland? Or more to the point, what does &lsquo;being a man&rsquo; actually mean? In this new piece of verbatim theatre, Tinderbox presents a range of masculinities and diverse experiences of manhood in an attempt to answer such complex questions. Based on forty hours of interviews with young men and women, Sleep Eat Party is made up of dialogues and monologues and focuses on the stories of five young adults, four men and one woman, as they battle to cope with the trials of young adulthood. Gorman&rsquo;s script raises many issues that...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:25:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sleep-Eat-Party]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Moment]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Moment]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[How would you react if your teenage son killed your daughter&rsquo;s best friend? How would you react if your brother served his time for murder and went on to have a successful career and a relationship? These are the core questions facing a mother and her two daughters in Kinahan&rsquo;s excoriating examination of a family on the verge of perpetual breakdown years after the murderous episode tore them all apart. The unexpected return to the family home in Dublin of son and brother Nial with his new wife provides the cue for the family to attempt to exorcise the demons that have been haunting...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:22:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Moment]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Motions-of-the-Heart]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Motions of the Heart]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[To the accompaniment of a slow sixteenth-century piece for viols and continuo ('Sit Fast' by Christopher Tye), a young female corpse in white is slowly wheeled on to the main performance area of the chandeliered and elegant Shaw Room of the National Gallery. Ina pool of warm amber, three masked and gowned surgeons with terpsichorean languish remove her heart and ceremoniously offer it to a renowned surgeon (Sir William Harvey) who is of the same vintage as the music. Holding the heart aloft, Sir William disappears as the lugubrious music concludes.
This opening kaleidoscope of imagery and music...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:40:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Motions-of-the-Heart]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Human-Voice]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Human Voice]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Written in 1932 The Human Voice is a monologue play which consists entirely of a woman speaking with her former lover on the telephone. He has left her for another woman and is calling to request that his belongings be returned. The ex is not seen or heard and so, in his absence, the telephone as an object gradually exerts a somewhat insidious presence; however perfunctory the objective behind his call may be, it operates as a lifeline to the distraught, abandoned woman. &ldquo;I knew you would give me a ring&rdquo; she says, with deliberate irony.
To illustrate the telephone&rsquo;s sustaining...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:02:46 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Human-Voice]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/At-Swim-Two-Birds]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[At Swim Two Birds]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The decision to produce a stage adaptation of Flann O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s 1939 At Swim-Two-Birds will strike many as an enormous gamble. Yes, Blue Raincoat did a great job with their version of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s The Third Policeman back in 2007. And, yes, the novel has been adapted a few times before, most recently by Alex Johnston at the Peacock in 1998. And of course, we know that Brendan Gleeson has managed to assemble an amazing cast for his forthcoming screen adaptation of the book. But it still seems a monstrously difficult task.
One reason for that difficulty is that the book&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:54:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/At-Swim-Two-Birds]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Christmas-Carol]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Christmas Carol]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If you&rsquo;re not close to bursting into tears every time Tiny Tim says &ldquo;God bless us every one&rdquo;, you might not be a fit reviewer of an adaptation of A Christmas Carol.  But Dickens is my favourite novelist, Christmas, my favourite time of the year, and I can be relied on to bawl for Tiny Tim every time.

That&rsquo;s why this Gate production disappointed me so much. Because I wasn&rsquo;t convinced that the cast or the director would ever bawl for Tiny Tim. Certainly not at a matinée performance a week before Christmas, anyway.

A novella does not become, to repeat the cliché,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:29:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Christmas-Carol]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/City-of-Mirrors]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[City of Mirrors]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[City of Mirrors by Real Illusions deserves our admiration in the first instance because it attempts quite a difficult theatrical feat, namely, the staging of a production without words that is neither mime nor modern dance. The company describe it as a visual performance, which of course it is, but it&rsquo;s the fabulous, predominantly jazz based musical soundtrack which as much as anything provides the emotional and dramatic webbing to this homage to film noir and in particular, American gangster movies of the 1940s and 1950s.
One of the difficulties of a performance without words that is also...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:19:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/City-of-Mirrors]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Turning-Turtles]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Turning Turtles]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Beyond the Bark&rsquo;s Christmas offering transports its young audience into a world of nautical nature adventure that is neither twee nor old fashioned but rather mesmerising and enlightening.
Turning Turtles is the story of the altruistic Trevor who sets out on his boat every day to Turtle Island where he helps the erudite 100-year old turtle, Gertrude, turn the young turtles when they are endangered by falling on their backs. Also living on the island is the comical and apparently menacing bird, Reginald (portrayed by a skeletal marionette), who is scathing of and indifferent to the turtles&rsquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:25:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Turning-Turtles]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Bacchae]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Bacchae]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Flipping through the programme for The Bacchae, you get the sense that Classic Stage Ireland is desperate to be taken seriously. Endorsements from Sir Michael Gambon and Seamus Heaney; extracts from ecstatic reviews of previous productions; a full and detailed outline of the company&rsquo;s ethos; and two fine essays contextualising the play are presented as a kind of stern clearing of the throat that says, &quot;You WILL pay attention.&rdquo; Granted, a straight but comparatively no-frills presentation of classic Greek drama without a Seamus Heaney or a Michael Gambon attached might well find...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:28:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Bacchae]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Faun---As-You-Are]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faun / As You Are]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It's a long shadow. Almost a century after his choreography redefined dance and its relationship to the other arts, Vaslav Nijinsky still holds a fascination for choreographers. The attraction isn't just his mould-breaking movement vocabulary, but also the personal tragedy of his descent into madness &ndash; vividly captured in the unexpurgated edition of his diary &ndash; and the raw deal of history: the choreography for Le Sacre du Printemps was every bit as innovative as Stravinsky's score, but while the boos and hisses at the Paris premiere killed the ballet, they bestowed a mythical status...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:38:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Faun---As-You-Are]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/We-Carried-Your-Secrets]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[We Carried Your Secrets]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Northern Ireland &lsquo;Troubles&rsquo; have prompted countless theatrical responses over the decades, from community-based performances to full-scale conventional plays, but We Carried Your Secrets, which is currently being performed in a variety of venues across the region, is unlike any other I have seen. What sets it apart is the direct agency of its protagonists. Many theatre-makers in the past have sought to access the authentic experience of those involved, but this has usually been mediated by others &ndash; writers, directors and actors. The &lsquo;performers&rsquo; in a Theatre of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:58:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/We-Carried-Your-Secrets]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Decked]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Decked]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There&rsquo;s something both mind-boggling and encouraging about the idea of opening a new theatre in the middle of the country&rsquo;s worst economic crisis on record, not to mention in light of already effected and anticipated funding cutbacks within the arts. Located just above Lanigan&rsquo;s Plough Bar on Middle Abbey Street, directly opposite the Abbey, Theatre Upstairs @ the Plough is a new non-funded, profit-share venue which promises to stage lunchtime and evening shows. Although the intimate, terracotta-daubed space had to close following its initial opening on the 18th &ndash; its Facebook...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:45:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Decked]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Greta-Garbo-Came-to-Donegal]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Greta Garbo Came to Donegal]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In his latest play, Frank McGuinness brings together many of his favoured techniques, themes, and dramatic influences. As in Mary and Lizzie, Mutabilitie, and Gates of Gold, he fictionalises around real-life figures, here the eponymous film star, who in the 1970s really did visit a wealthy English artist in Ireland&rsquo;s North-West. McGuinness pushes the time of Garbo&rsquo;s visit back to 1967, in order to create a temporal and cultural setting of maximum socio-political tension and imminent change, the type of environment familiar from Carthaginians, Dolly West&rsquo;s Kitchen, and Someone...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:02:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Greta-Garbo-Came-to-Donegal]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/10-Dates-with-Mad-Mary]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[10 Dates with Mad Mary]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This play is a result of Calipo's 'page2stage' programme for emerging young writers who are given workshops and dramaturgical support from this well established company based in Drogheda. Yasmine Akram, writer and performer, has a created a monologue piece about a foul mouthed and aggressive girl who has just emerged from a spell in prison and is trying to find her feet in the face of a dysfunctional mother and a bride-to-be sister, Charlene, who looks down on her misfortunate sibling. The ten dates of the title is the play's coat-hanger, as Mary desperately tries to find a boy to bring to her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:08:27 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/10-Dates-with-Mad-Mary]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/House-of-Crossed-Destinies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[House of Crossed Destinies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Take five dancers, one choreographer, five solos, one director, no soundscape, and make of it an evening of engaging dance theatre. This unusual show was a masterclass in how intense, focused work, driven from within the artist, can enhance in every way the concept of performance &ndash; especially, if you are lucky, as here, to be in the company of choreographer Deborah Hay and the distilled refinement of these young dancers. 

In a reconfigured Project space, creating an oblong with the audience on three sides, we watched the five commissioned solos, performed within the strict and regulated...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:46:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/House-of-Crossed-Destinies]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Limerick-Unfringed-Performance-Festival]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Limerick Unfringed Performance Festival]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Memory Deleted presented by Anu Productions 
Directed by Louise Lowe
Designed by Sarah Jane Shiels
With: Deirdre Burke, Dave O&rsquo;Sullivan, Niamh Shaw, Brenda Meaney, Stephen Murray, Robbie O&rsquo;Connor, Zara Starr, Cathy Walsh, Annette Treacey and Roisin Connelly
Boutique Hotel, Denmark Street, Limerick
Reviewed 28thJanuary
Imagine any sojourn you&rsquo;ve had in a hotel and imagine if the lamps and walls could talk and tell you of the previous occupants&rsquo; stay. At this years&rsquo; Limerick Unfringed, the audience was offered a fly-on-the-wall opportunity to observe the weekend...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:35:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Limerick-Unfringed-Performance-Festival]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Girl-Who-Forgot-to-Sing-Badly]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Drizzle and an early-morning start did not dampen the exuberance of the youthful cohort of &lsquo;miniature humans&rsquo; gathered in the Ark. For clarification &ndash; and pleasure &ndash; I was accompanied by a critical friend, Lucy - at seven-and-a-quarter a fully eligible member of the Theatre Lovett target audience.
Before things really got underway, Louis Lovett, the sole performer, had to manage those children, bringing them from intrusive banter to respectful attention, and it was a solemn moment when they became dedicated to giving their concentration and respect to the piece. Lucy was...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:49:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Girl-Who-Forgot-to-Sing-Badly]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Party--after-Anton-Chekhov]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Party, after Anton Chekhov]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Anton Chekhov&rsquo;s short stories are miniatures of characterisation, and a variety of writers have made the connection between their taut narrative voices and the tone of his plays by adapting them for the stage, the most notable of adaptations being by Brian Friel. The frustrated young wife and mother to be Olga Mihalovna in The Party might have walked straight out of Three Sisters. Bound by bodily immobility and the limitations of her social role, she spends her husband&rsquo;s name day - a stifling summer&rsquo;s day - alternately bored and bemused by the revelry around her.
The narrative...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:20:17 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Party--after-Anton-Chekhov]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Jo-Bangles]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Jo Bangles]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[David Lordan has been garnering awards as a poet (The Boy in the Ring, 2007) and this is reflected in the language of his first play, Jo Bangles. Lordan is in love with words and the sounds of words, emerging from a fuzzy soundtrack at the start into a textured and variegated verbal tapestry &ndash; visually and emotionally vivid, forceful and playfully alliterative. He revels like Patrick Kavanagh in the&quot;ordinary plenty&quot;; he evokes the freshness of early morning awakening, as well as the fetor of humanity &ndash; in the pub, in the bed, in the butcher&rsquo;s and the baker&rsquo;s. Although...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:57:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Jo-Bangles]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bad-Faith]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bad Faith]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Not to be confused with the Sartrean notion of playing out a role of inauthentic being, the bad faith of the title of this production by a new Irish company has more to do with flawed religious belief and its psychological trappings, as well as the folly of trusting too much in personal figures of authority. In a monologue powerfully and impressively delivered by Ben Mulhern, Bad Faith takes us through a series of pivotal and retrospectively epiphanic snapshots of the life of a young man by the name of Gerard Boylan.
Gerard has returned home for his father&rsquo;s funeral. It&rsquo;s the night...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:12:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bad-Faith]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Faith-Healer]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Faith Healer]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[During the last decade, Owen Roe has emerged as one of Ireland&rsquo;s very best actors &ndash; yet, until now, he&rsquo;srarely filled a major leading role. His performance as the Irishman in Ben Barnes&rsquo;s 2001 Gigli Concert was astonishing precisely because it was so well matched by Mark Lambert in the role of JPW King. Likewise, his work as Petruchio in the 2006 Rough Magic Taming of the Shrew was memorable because it was so thoroughly complemented by Pauline McLynne&rsquo;s Katherina. Roe, in other words, is the kind of actor one could build a company around: he excels when he works with...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:34:57 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Faith-Healer]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Haunted]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Haunted]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Edna O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s new play, Haunted, displays a light, comic touch. The dialogue between husband and wife, Jack (Niall Buggy) and Gladys Berry (Brenda Blethyn) swings between taut repartee and tender ritual exchanges. The writing here is sharp and forceful and the actors relish the opportunity to deliver pitch-perfect barbed lines, as when Gladys tearfully appeals to Jack and he responds that &ldquo;crying was always one of your weapons.&rdquo; The audience greets such lines with equally sharp laughter, recognising, perhaps, elements of their own relationships. Middle-aged couples can...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:42:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Haunted]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Off-Plan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Off Plan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s often been noted that Irish dramatists seem to have an unusual affinity for Greek tragedy &ndash; but perhaps that reputation disguises the fact that the majority of Irish adaptations have been unsuccessful, both artistically and commercially. Marina Carr, for instance, re-imagined Medea as By the Bog of Cats in 1998, giving us one of the best productions of that decade &ndash; but her attempt to adapt The Oresteia as Ariel in 2002 was an enormous flop. Likewise, Conall Morrison followed up an amazing 2003 version of Antigone with The Bacchae of Baghdad, a sincere but confusing response...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:51:15 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Off-Plan]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Hamlet]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Hamlet]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The current Second Age production of Hamlet, with Marty Rea in the title role, interprets the Danish prince as less the hesitant decision maker or manic depressive, and more the savvy political inheritor of his royal blood. Although it is the annual offering from the Leaving Cert syllabus, this production is exquisitely realised for a wider audience.
Updated to a Brontë-era setting, with a gothic feel reminiscent of Wuthering Heights imagery, the impressive set design from Maree Kearns sees a simple array of grey panel doors on either side of the stage and an illuminated slanting platform, rear...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:29:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Hamlet]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Christ-Deliver-Us!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Christ Deliver Us!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There&rsquo;s a moment in Thomas Kilroy&rsquo;s new play when a group of clerics gather to discuss the fate of a boy who is suspected of drawing &lsquo;filthy pictures&rsquo; in his classmate&rsquo;s copy. As they huddle around a table it&rsquo;s hard not to be reminded of other images currently appearing in the media depicting the Irish bishops summoned to Rome. Fr Seamus (Hickey) grows increasingly agitated with the emerging consensus that Michael Grainger (Monaghan) must be punished. He rises to his feet, shaking, to condemn his Church in an impassioned stutter: &ldquo;Hypocrites! The lot of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:04:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Christ-Deliver-Us!]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sweeney-Todd]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sweeney Todd]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In celebrating the opening of their brand new theatre, Theatre at the Mill have taken on an ambitious production set in the dark and murky nineteenth-century streets of London. The tale of Sweeney Todd is known to many and the first song recaps on this urban legend. From the outset, the chorus and ensemble cast all work well together, delivering an opening number that both engages the audience and sets the scene for the horrific and bloody events that are to follow. Indeed, with their dark clothes, ghoulish make-up, and strong voices, the chorus deliver musical numbers of a consistently high standard...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:43:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sweeney-Todd]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Absence-of-Women]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Absence of Women]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Although set in a bleak London hostel, this is a play about Belfast: about the people who were forced to leave its geographic location but bound to carry with them memories of their home place. Owen McCafferty&rsquo;s thought-provoking new play brings us on a series of journeys with the protagonists, Ger (Karl Johnson) and Iggy (Ian McElhinney), from their public pasts and the contribution they made to the building of British transport systems, to their private memories of their youth and the burdens which they are now left with.
Stuart Marshall's simple set emphasises the bleakness of the two...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:23:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Absence-of-Women]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Stretching-Larry]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Stretching Larry]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stretching Larry takes its title from an old anonymously composed Irish traditional ballad from the early nineteenth century called 'The Night Before Larry Was Stretched'. The tune tells the tale of a good lad by the name of Larry who faces being hanged for probably resisting the imperial British forces though the song doesn&rsquo;t explicitly state this. One of the first utterances the play Stretching Larry greets us with is Anthony Morris as Larry screaming out a verse from the song.
Unlike the Larry of the song, however, the Larry of this short play by Bryan Delaney, is about to hang himself....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:31:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Stretching-Larry]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Resistible-Rise-of-Arturo-Ui]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In times of national economic crisis, sometimes it appears that the best option is to support powerful individuals in a blinkered fashion, placing our faith in them to get us out of this mess, despite our knowledge of their past corruptions and their tendencies to create &lsquo;jobs for the boys&rsquo;. Such is the theme of Bertolt Brecht&rsquo;s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a parody of Hitler&rsquo;s rise to power but set in a gangster-ridden Chicago rife with warring factions in the cauliflower trade and political corruption at the highest level. Its relevance to contemporary culture of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:47:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Resistible-Rise-of-Arturo-Ui]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Les-Liaisons-Dangereuses]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Les Liaisons Dangereuses]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a delicious text. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from Choderlos de Laclos&rsquo; 18th century epistolary novel charting the correspondence between several parties involved in a set of interconnect sexual conquests aimed at destroying virtuous reputations and enhancing wicked ones, it is alternately sharp, sweet, spicy, cool, and intoxicating - a luxurious meal of flavoursome self-indulgence.
Hampton&rsquo;s icy and ironic reframing of the original novel presents scenes of dialogue and confrontation described or implied in the letters. This produces genuine dramatic...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:43:06 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Les-Liaisons-Dangereuses]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Still--the-Blackbird-Sings--Incidents-at-Ebrington]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Still, the Blackbird Sings: Incidents at Ebrington Barracks]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Francis Ledwidge was a poet and a patriot, born in Meath in 1897. As the title of the play draws to our attention, Ledwidge was also known as &lsquo;poet of the blackbirds,&rsquo; on account of the subject matter of his verse. Duggan&rsquo;s commission for the Playhouse takes Ledwidge&rsquo;s time at Ebrington Barracks in 1916 as his starting point, and uses it as the basis to explore tensions arising from the man&rsquo;s nationalist background, his British alliance, and his artistic sensibility.
While these seem like viable pressures for dramatic treatment, they are also overly familiar. As we...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:09:20 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Still--the-Blackbird-Sings--Incidents-at-Ebrington]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sticks---Stones]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sticks & Stones]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In California in 1991, Rodney King&rsquo;s abuse at the hands of the LAPD was a shot of video heard round the world. The blatant use of force &ndash; in the form of repeated and relentless attack on the part of police with their batons, 56 blows all told &ndash; sparked a nationwide reaction; all the way over on the other side of the country, almost one year later, I remember being let go from work in the middle of the day due to threats of riots in reaction to acquittal of the police officers involved.
One expects that Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan&rsquo;s one act play, Sticks and Stones, would...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:31:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sticks---Stones]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Romeo-et-Juliette]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Roméo et Juliette]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As the Gaiety theatre curtain slowly rises during the overture, a chorus eyeballs us from the Stygian gloom and we know that we are going to witness a particularly dark version of this well-known story.
And no better way to achieve this than to give it the Victorian Gothic treatment, with the House of Capulet's massive wall of faded peeling wallpaper unable to cover the fault lines, about to erupt into a full blown tragedy of seismic proportions, which &ndash; as the chorus constantly reminded us - will rock the very foundations of society. Even the opening act birthday party for Juliette's coming...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:02:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Romeo-et-Juliette]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Una-Santa-Obscura]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Una Santa Oscura]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Just what kind of a person was Hildegard von Bingen? Was she, as history records, a devout 12th Century anchoress and mystic, cloistered not only in her abbey, but also in her devotional music compositions and frequent ethereal visions? Or can we make the case for a tortured shut-in, expressing herself in erratic fits and starts; somebody whom the neurologist Oliver Sacks would later diagnose as having one of history&rsquo;s most famous migraines? Ian Wilson&rsquo;s Una Santa Oscura, a fragmentary composition for violin embedded in an ambient burble of electronic soundscapes and realised for stage...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:44:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Una-Santa-Obscura]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Medea-Redux]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Medea Redux]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The choice of plays by young companies honing their skills usually speaks volumes for their judgement and calculated risk taking, and on this front Bluepatch score highly for their production of Neil LaBute&rsquo;s Medea Redux which was given a third airing on International Women&rsquo;s Day in Smock Alley as a fundraiser for Women&rsquo;s Aid.
The play does what it says on the tin, as it were: a familiar Greek tragedy given a contemporary twist and concise enactment (a mere forty minutes), and the inherent device of knowing the general outcome, if not the details, in advance is finely handled...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:34:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Medea-Redux]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sodome--My-Love]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Sodome, My Love]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The curtain rises like a heavy tombstone to reveal a women sitting on a bench, her feet turned inward, her head looking away, motionless. Gradually, an image of her face fades into focus on the back wall. Serene and ashen, she could be dead. But suddenly, water breaks from the skies, and the figure preserved in salt for thousands of years is slowly washed back to life. &ldquo;Sodome &ndash; city of joy and excess,&rdquo; she exclaims, before leading us through the story of how she came to appear before us.
Written by Laurent Gaudé, and translated and performed by Olwen Fouéré, Sodome, My Love...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:26:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Sodome--My-Love]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Haunting-of-Helena-Blunden]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Haunting of Helena Blunden]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In his recent review of Andrew Lloyd Webber&rsquo;s Love Never Dies, critic Ben Brantley compares the modern musical to something like a theatrical amusement park ride. No one goes to them looking for finely detailed acting or a subtle drawing of the complexity of human relationships; they go to them because the chandelier falls at the end of the first act to the titillating swell of a live orchestra. Musical theatre is now synonymous with repetitive melodies, synthesized emotion, and the implacable beat of drum machines. This tends to be what audiences can expect from their musicals and what they&rsquo;re...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:35:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Haunting-of-Helena-Blunden]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Love-Song]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Love Song]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If Gerry Springer and his human rarities or the Enron debacle can become operas, if a Swedish pop quintet can become a blockbuster film, if an Irish soccer squad captain can score in a musical, then one of poetry&rsquo;s most notable creations, T.S.Eliot&rsquo;s wonderfully befuddled J.Alfred Prufrock, should be able to tread the boards too. WATERDONKEY Theatre fiddle with this anti-hero&rsquo;s disjointed and de-humanised world for their latest production Love Song, but despite its worthily artistic intentions, it rather malingers, is a bit obtuse, &ldquo;and, at times, indeed, ridiculous.&rdquo;
Twenty...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:49:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Love-Song]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Tinker-s-Curse]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Tinker's Curse]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Michael Harding&rsquo;s adaptation of his widely-praised 2007 three-hander into a monologue may come with the qualifying approvals of being &ldquo;a result of ongoing collaboration with members of the Travelling community&rdquo;, as the flyer tells us, but is at its best as a core experience of supremely orchestrated theatrical storytelling. It is theatrical in the best sense of the word: structured and designed to aesthetic principles reflecting and representing personal, cultural, and social experience, but artificial (in the sense of being &lsquo;crafted&rsquo;), skillfully executed through...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:34:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Tinker-s-Curse]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Philadelphia--Here-I-Come!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Philadelphia, Here I Come!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brian Friel&rsquo;s Philadelphia, Here I Come! returns to the Gaiety where it was first performed in 1964 during the Dublin Theatre Festival. Director Dominic Dromgoole brings with him extensive experience working with classics from different periods. Proceeding with due respect for both playwright and play, he invests the production with the energy needed for a successful revival.
The exclamatory response to emigration in its title belies the play&rsquo;s genesis in the wake of the dire 1950s. Friel&rsquo;s Gar O&rsquo;Donnell is, importantly, a voluntary émigré in waiting, not one compelled...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:29:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Philadelphia--Here-I-Come!]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Behanding-in-Spokane]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Behanding in Spokane]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Premiered in New York, Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s American play, A Behanding in Spokane, gives us a tall man in a tall tale. The tall man in question is the actor Christopher Walken whose stage presence is pivotal to this production&rsquo;s success. The tall tale is the story of Carmichael (Walken), a self-styled white supremacist, who, when a child, had his hand held down by some &ldquo;motherfucking hillbillies&rdquo; until it was severed by a train, and who has been searching for the lost hand for forty-seven years. Two hapless pot-dealers, Toby (energetically played by Anthony Mackie) and Marilyn...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:59:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Behanding-in-Spokane]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Broken-Croi-Heart-Briste]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Broken Croí/Heart Briste]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Broken Croí/Heart Briste is a dramatic and linguistic experiment. Written and performed by Manchán Magan, it seeks to investigate the limitations of language as a means of communication and the limitations of the Irish language in contemporary theatrical culture. As the spliced title suggests, the play is written in Irish and English, though a stream of invective neologisms in both languages points towards the instability of language as a system of meaning. As René Magritte scrawled across the bottom of his eponymous landmark postmodern painting 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (This is not a pipe); language...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:07:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Broken-Croi-Heart-Briste]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Coconut-Raft]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Coconut Raft]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Based on an idea by Alice Bourke, Coconut Raft precariously floats on two plot lines. The first relates to a jailbreak in 1930s Ireland by three convicts, and the second pertains to a regaling of that event, seemingly in 1950s America, through music by Gustavo des Balera and his troupe. Some of these finer details are not so easy to discern from the performance itself, but thankfully a programme note supplies some useful background information.
Over the course of fifty minutes, the two threads intermingle, although not without friction. Some of this has to do with the fact that we are presented...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:48:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Coconut-Raft]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Sign-of-the-Whale]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sign of the Whale]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&quot;In Gaelic mythology there are tales of monstrous fish being washed up on shore. These would often transform themselves into other creatures or indeed people with magical powers. The sighting of one of these sea monsters was considered a portent.&rdquo; (The Sign of the Whale, pg 28)
In 1977, a killer whale appears in Belfast Lough. Then it vanishes &ndash; but newspaper sub-editor Dermy believes it has found its way into the network of underground rivers beneath the city streets, and is swimming through the geography of war-torn Belfast. Recently blinded, and confined to a hospital room,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:33:19 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Sign-of-the-Whale]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/London-Assurance]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[London Assurance]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[For those who know Boucicault only for his exaggeratedly Irish plays, The Colleen Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue, and The Shaughraun, London Assurance may come as a bit of a shock, for there is nothing easily identifiable as Irish about it. It&rsquo;s a town and country comedy, set between the English capital and Gloucestershire, that lightly sends up the pretensions of the class system but has mainly served, from the time it was written (the early 1840s) forward, as a vehicle for star-turn performances.
These are delightfully provided here by Simon Russell Beale as the self-deluding, middle-aged fop Sir...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:08:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/London-Assurance]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Dove-and-the-Crow]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Dove and the Crow]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The combined silence and stillness of actors on stage can have a profound impact, especially when such moments of calm are as rare as they were in Artemis Flow&rsquo;s production of Philip Doherty's newplay,The Dove and the Crow.
Following the death of his mother, the play&rsquo;s protagonist, Cormac, has returned to Ireland from America. Re-immersed in his past, he is forced to face up to a secret that he has, until now, managed to evade. The plot hinges on the gradual, cathartic revelation of this secret. The poles of Cormac&rsquo;s conscience are embodied on stage as characters: Good (Eimear...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:31:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Dove-and-the-Crow]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Macbeth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter,&rdquo; is probably not the most memorable line in Shakespeare&rsquo;s tale of havoc wrought by blind ambition and naked greed, but in director Jimmy Fay&rsquo;s despairing new production at the Abbey, it has particular significance. The line is spoken by Rory Nolan, who emerges from a trapdoor with old-world Shakespearian aplomb in Act II, Scene III, coughing and spluttering, then emoting to the audience in a style most unlike anything else on the stage throughout the show. Most of the performances in this production are low key to the point almost...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:50:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Macbeth-(1)]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-Party]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Birthday Party]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[When Harold Pinter&rsquo;s The Birthday Party received its London premier at the Lyric Hammersmith on 19 May 1958, by and large, critics were not impressed. Many took issue with the writer&rsquo;s refusal to clarify motivation and action. What Pinter reveals without ambiguity is that the play is set in a boarding house owned by Meg and Petey, somewhere in coastal Britain. Former pianist Stanley lodges with the couple, and not long into the first of three acts, Meg decides to throw him a birthday party, despite his insistence that her dates are off. They are joined by McCann and Goldberg, mysterious...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:43:56 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-Party]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Weaving-the-Cry--based-on-Riders-to-the-Sea]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Weaving the Cry, based on Riders to the Sea]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Nervousystem make all the right noises. They talk a lot about the need to experiment. They refreshingly extrapolate on the laboratorial constituents of drama and the need for performance research as well as the desire to explore their own ongoing interrogation of the theatre space alongside and connected to sometimes traditional texts and forms. Hence, Weaving the Cry, a re-enactment of J.M. Synge&rsquo;s short dramatic piece Riders to the Sea. Synge&rsquo;s tale tells the story of a mother and her two daughters on an island off the West of Ireland, and how they cope with the imminent and inevitable...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:56:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Weaving-the-Cry--based-on-Riders-to-the-Sea]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Over-the-Bridge]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Over the Bridge]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[First performed in January 1960, Sam Thompson&rsquo;s Over the Bridge is one of the most controversial plays in Northern Ireland&rsquo;s theatre history. Fifty years ago, the Ulster Group Theatre&rsquo;s board of directors refused to produce the play because of its content. However, Thompson and his colleagues successfully mounted a production independently and it was seen by more than 46,000 audience members in its first six weeks. This anniversary production from Green Shoot Productions is a new adaptation of the play by Martin Lynch and reminds audiences of the significance of the play in the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:07:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Over-the-Bridge]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-End---The-Calmative]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The End & The Calmative]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In this double-bill, Gare St Lazare Players Ireland bringtheir tenth piece of Beckett prose to the stage. Written shortly after WWII, and first published in French in 1954, The End and The Calmative can be seen to bridge Beckett&rsquo;s earlier short writings in English, and the more substantial Molloy trilogy, also staged by the company in the past.
In these novellas, each narrative is relayed by a male voice in various stages of isolation and decrepitude. The End begins as the figure recounts dressing in the clothes of someone recently deceased, and concludes with the consumption of a sedative;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:13:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-End---The-Calmative]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Andersen-s-English]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Andersen’s English]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sebastian Barry extends his fascination with storytellers and storytelling in this new bio-play, which springs from the fact that in 1857, Hans Christian Andersen paid an extended visit to Charles Dickens&rsquo; home in rural Kent, just as Dickens&rsquo; marriage to the mother of his ten children was crumbling. This is an interesting literary-historical nugget, to be sure, but finds Barry, a great novelist, again at sea in attempting to create a viable dramatic structure. The attempt here may be (in homage to Dickens, perhaps?) to simulate the multi-track narrative form of the novel onstage, but...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:30:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Andersen-s-English]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/What-s-Left-of-the-Flag]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[What’s Left of the Flag]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;To be a good Jew, you have to have a good conscience; to be a good Israeli, you have to have a good memory.&rdquo; So says Jacob, one of two Mossad agents holed up in the top floor of an abandoned building on Abbey Street in Jimmy Murphy&rsquo;s new play. The fragmentation of identity into ultimately self-destructive dualities provides us with the core conflict of What&rsquo;s Left of the Flag, and the choices of either/or, then/now, and us/them are thrown into sharp relief. This is paradoxically the play&rsquo;s strength and also the seed of its uneasy relationship with the political realities...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:08:29 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/What-s-Left-of-the-Flag]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Picture-of-Dorian-Gray]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Picture of Dorian Gray ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The problem with The Picture of Dorian Gray is that it is seriously over-written, even by Oscar Wilde's standards. However, the style of the book is a self-conscious gesture of verbosity. When the book was first published in 1890, it attracted notoriety for being &quot;unclean,&quot; &quot;effeminate,&quot; and &quot;contaminating.&quot; Republished in 1891, Wilde was at pains to disguise the homoerotic undertones of the story in as much social decorum as he could pile on, resulting in several extra unnecessary chapters. This is the form of the book that exists in print today, and while The Picture...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:22:26 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Picture-of-Dorian-Gray]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-of-the-Infanta]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Birthday of the Infanta]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Let&rsquo;s say it clearly: Bewley&rsquo;s Café Theatre is an undervalued cultural resource in the heart of our capital city; we neglect it at our peril. When it&rsquo;s good, which is the case with Bairbre Ní Chaoimh&rsquo;s adaptation of the Wilde story, it&rsquo;s very, very good. With a cast of three doubling and trebling up to fill the acting space, and with a form of enriched economy of presentation, The Birthday of the Infantafits the Grafton Street venue perfectly. This is the stuff of &lsquo;little gems&rsquo; &ndash; more&rsquo;s the pity that, on the day this reviewer was there, the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:41:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Birthday-of-the-Infanta]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Good-Thief]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Good Thief]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Conor McPherson&rsquo;s The Good Thief is a monologue that features your common-or-garden Dublin hoodlum who, paradoxically, has a heart of gold -that is, when he&rsquo;s not beating the crap out of all and sundry for a pittance on behalf of his criminal boss, Joe Murray. As recounted here, McPherson&rsquo;s nameless thug gets caught up in events not of his own making and which spiral out of control with both darkly humorous and tragic consequences.
The story, then, is that of how our errand-boy-cum-enforcer and all-round nasty threatener is sent on a mission to put some pressure on a business...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:16:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Good-Thief]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Candy-Flipping-Butterflies]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Candy Flipping Butterflies]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A kind of genre has been created in Irish theatre that couples elements of the monologue play with the plight of a generation that, swamped by the overwhelming tide of a consumerist culture, turns to drug use and/or clubbing as a means of release. The thematic centres mostly around disaffected youths who attempt to carve out their own private, fantastical culture as a rejection of a soulless, everyday existence. In this way Karl Argue&rsquo;s Candy Flipping Butterflies carries the genealogy of Enda Walsh&rsquo;s Disco Pigs and Sucking Dublin, Mark O&rsquo;Rowe&rsquo;s Howie the Rookie, or Gary...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:15:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Candy-Flipping-Butterflies]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Sanctuary-Lamp]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Sanctuary Lamp]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The furore around the first production of The Sanctuary Lamp at the Abbey Theatre in 1975 tells us more about the tyrannical and despotic hold the Catholic Church had over the minds and hearts of the nation than it does really about Tom Murphy&rsquo;s brilliant drama itself. Granted, there are some glorious tirades against, jibes at and critiques of the Catholic Church and its cruel dogma &ndash; and Murphy was unafraid to voice these critical incisions at a time when it wasn&rsquo;t popular to do so. However, a truly big play with large themes, there&rsquo;s so much else going on. At the very...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:15:45 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Sanctuary-Lamp]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-West-Awakes]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The West Awakes]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In his first utterances, the tour guide correctly indicated that it is a difficult task to sum up eight hundred years of Irish history. Nevertheless, over the course of three and a half long hours of walking, he does his best to do so. He&rsquo;s not an actor in a role, but a former member of the IRA and an ex-political prisoner who brings the tour group/audience to various sites of note along the Falls Road in West Belfast. As he speaks, it becomes evident that his version of history is a narrow one, and that his own personal experiences have shaped his view of the past. However, throughout the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:28:48 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-West-Awakes]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape-(1)]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Krapp's Last Tape]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It took Samuel Beckett about three weeks to write Krapp&rsquo;s Last Tape. During that time, the play went through seven distinct stages which, according to the scholarship, involved a gradual stripping away of sentimentality: the text retained some realistic qualities, but it also became more surreal and more comical. Perhaps as a result of that textual history, actors playing the role of Krapp often try to avoid evoking too strong an emotional reaction from audiences: we might sympathise with Krapp, but will usually find it difficult to relate to him &ndash; and we&rsquo;ll rarely feel inclined...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:16:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Krapp-s-Last-Tape-(1)]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Yellow-Moon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Yellow Moon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Rife with poignant, imagistic narration &ndash; akin to the work of our own Sebastian Barry &ndash; David Greig&rsquo;s Yellow Moon yields a poetic tale of teenage lovers on the run. Sparsely punctuated by dialogue, much of this work is a story told by its main characters: Lee, Leila, Frank, Billy and Lee&rsquo;s mother. While the work requires only four or five actors, director Andrew Flynn included thirteen of GYT&rsquo;s members by also introducing eight storyteller figures. This effectively maximised the drama&rsquo;s performance potential.
Stag Lee Mcalinden (Ó hAoláin) and Silent Leila (Ní...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:11:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Yellow-Moon]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Ones-Who-Kill-Shooting-Stars]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Ones Who Kill Shooting Stars]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Ones Who Kill Shooting Stars is set in the midst of The Emergency in Ireland during the Second World War. Since Drogheda-based Upstate Theatre&rsquo;s mission statement promises to draw upon the culture and history of the town and its county, this absurdist and strangely romantic drama particularly focuses on an area of the coast of County Louth &ndash; Clogherhead Beach to be precise. As the programme note by archaeologist Dr Geraldine Stout informs, Ireland&rsquo;s coast was littered with lookouts and watchmen on guard in case of invasion, though whether from the English or the Germans no...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 07 May 2010 21:42:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Ones-Who-Kill-Shooting-Stars]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Marriage-of-Figaro]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Marriage of Figaro]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Marriage of Figaro is possibly one of the most re-imagined operas of all time &ndash; having been done in every conceivable period, style, and setting. In this OTC production, we are in the swinging sixties. Designer Adrian Linford has been up and down Carnaby Street grabbing floral-patterned shirts, slim dresses in aquamarine blues and tangerines for the girls and boys of the Almaviva household and picking up some matching wallpaper for the bathroom and living room on the way. The 'swinging' bit of this nomenclature extends well beyond the décor of course, and is short-hand to describe the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 May 2010 21:58:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Marriage-of-Figaro]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Fragile]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Fragile]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[As the Gay Theatre Festival goes, we&rsquo;re in familiar territory with Fragile. Aaron Rogers&rsquo; play is essentially a tale of a young man coming out to his family and friends, and wrestling with the inevitable affairs of the heart.
The action takes place on a raised, slightly staggered stage in the Cobalt café. The three actors who form the cast dip between dialogue and direct address. While everyone has a part to play, the focus is on protagonist Nick (Grindel) while so-called &lsquo;Boy&rsquo; (McCarthy) and &lsquo;Girl&rsquo; (Kemperman) are there to primarily relate his story, occasionally...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 06 May 2010 22:30:22 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Fragile]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Billy-Redden]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Billy Redden]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Two minutes into this performance, as young Billy Redden (Kelly) talks to himself on stage, a man suddenly emerges from the toilet adjacent to the core action, strides across the space, and leaves through the door we just entered. For a few awkward moments, there&rsquo;s still a chance that this is part of the play, but when neither man nor boy interact, and the convulsive flush has settled, we realise that the strange loo-user was just that. Not so strange, unfortunately, that no less than four other people are allowed to walk in and out of the theatre during various stages of the performance...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 10 May 2010 22:40:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Billy-Redden]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Brighton]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Brighton]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brighton celebrates friendship, hope and the resilience of the human spirit and centres on the characters of Lily, an elderly Irish woman and Fulham supporter who has spent all her working life in England working in the Civil Service, and former actor Jack Dunhill, just turned sixty, who has recently suffered an accident paralysing him from the waist down. The pair meet in the Sisters of Calvary Nursing Home in which works Dave a young care assistant in his twenties. As the story unfolds we witness Lily&rsquo;s deteriorating health, Jack&rsquo;s mental recovery, the oscillations of Dave&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 03 May 2010 22:01:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Brighton]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Husbands---Hats--A-Revival-of-Two-Classic-Plays]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Husbands & Hats: A Revival of Two Classic Plays]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[After a long absence, lunchtime theatre makes a welcome return to Galway. Hosted by Kelly&rsquo;s Bar and featuring contributions from Galway&rsquo;s most dynamic theatre companies, the opening season proffered an exciting range of work. A combination of factors, including low overheads and cheap cover charges, mean that companies tend to make bold decisions in their choice of material for a lunchtime slot. New writing and obscure chamber plays are given a platform, reinforcing the idea that diversity and lunchtime theatre go hand-in-hand. Significantly, the opportunity to explore work which might...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:18:51 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Husbands---Hats--A-Revival-of-Two-Classic-Plays]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Scarborough]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Scarborough]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Scarborough by Fiona Evans is a two act play set in a hotel room, so Prime Cut have taken it out of the theatre and put it into real hotel rooms, in the latest of a number of performances by various theatre companies that experiment with staging outside of theatre spaces. The audience for this show gather in the new Ramada Encore in an area of Belfast that is being developed as a new arts quarter, a largely deserted area still behind scaffolding and hoarding. Perhaps coincidentally, this exterior landscape retrospectively adds to the sense of secrecy and hidden things which is at the core of the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 09 May 2010 22:20:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Scarborough]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Slaughterhouse-Swan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Slaughterhouse Swan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Transvestitism, lesbianism, veganism, sexual misconduct, fililal abscondment and marital breakdown: when it comes to broaching hot button issues, you can&rsquo;t accuse writer and director Elizabeth Moynihan of being shy. However, in her hour long piece for the Absolut Gay Theatre Festival Dublin, there&rsquo;s just so much going on in content, tone and style that it&rsquo;s hard to know what, if anything, should be taken seriously.
Foreboding music kicks off the performance as estranged son Canais (Mackay) returns home to rural Ireland having spent the previous ten years in Australia. Although...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2010 22:58:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Slaughterhouse-Swan]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Manny-Quinn--The-Musical]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Manny Quinn: The Musical]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Stage a musical in a pub &ndash; Break for the Border, at that &ndash; and you immediately blur your audiences' expectations. It&rsquo;s easier to &lsquo;see things differently,&rsquo; as the Absolut slogan commands, with a drink at hand. Stage a musical about Irish Eurovision entries in the weeks leading up to the Oslo final, and a dedicated fan base will readily fill the seats. Happy just to hear their favourite numbers from yesteryear, a plot, a set and live performers are all a bonus.
In a charity shop, somewhere in Dublin, assistants Linda (Fitzpatrick) and Martin (O&rsquo;Sullivan) bemoan...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 23:04:58 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Manny-Quinn--The-Musical]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Henna-Night]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Henna Night]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The opening of Rawlife&rsquo;s new production of Amy Rosenthal&rsquo;s 1999 play Henna Night, immediately draws the audience&rsquo;s attention to the act of listening. The play begins in darkness, forcing the audience to listen rather than merely hear. As the heartbroken Judith (Rachel Logan) leaves a message on the answering-machine of her ex-boyfriend, Jack, her ambiguous cry for help is in fact answered by his new girlfriend Ros (Colette Lennon). When Ros turns up at Judith&rsquo;s flat each woman is forced to listen to the other&rsquo;s story, a process that provides both with a catharsis of...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 03 May 2010 23:15:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Henna-Night]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Night-With-George]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Night With George]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[From the opening of the production, there is a definite sense that this is a narrative in the form of Shirley Valentine, but from a West Belfast perspective. As the audience find their seats, they are greeted by tunes from Cyndi Lauper and Dolly Parton. It&rsquo;s evident that this play is either about a night on the tiles with the girls, or a girly night in with a vodka and coke. It turns out to be the latter. As Bridie Murphy (Donna O&rsquo;Connor) returns from a night out carrying a recently-stolen cardboard cut-out of George Clooney, it is clear that she has a story that she wants to tell George....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 08 May 2010 17:27:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Night-With-George]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Arcadia]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Arcadia]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Et in Arcadia Ego: Even in Arcadia, there I am. The philosophical and aesthetic mantra that gives Tom Stoppard&rsquo;s finest play its title is also its guiding principle. Even in this small stage paradise the author&rsquo;s own ghost is everywhere, as the diametrical arguments that his characters pose represent the variety of intellectual positions and literary conceits that Stoppard&rsquo;s earlier work has dealt with and its broad range of style and tone.
Set in the fictional Derbyshire country estate of Sidley Park, Arcadia presents itself as a literary mystery. Spanning two time periods &ndash;the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2010 22:35:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Arcadia]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Burn-The-Bad-Lamp]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Burn The Bad Lamp]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If banks need the descent of a billionaire Nama to rescue them from the doldrums, then theatre audiences need the occasional light whimsy to jollify the bits avant-garde art doesn&rsquo;t always tickle. Kevin Barry celebrates the &lsquo;deus-ex-machina&rsquo; most literarily with a genie from a lamp in Burn the Bad Lamp, his short story adapted for the stage by himself and Rod Goodall, produced for Cúirt 2010.  The resultant work, a quirky consort between puppetry and actor, is a thoroughly warming theatrical frivolity.
Ralph Coughlan is an antique antiques dealer, who, like his wares and his...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:22:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Burn-The-Bad-Lamp]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Marathon]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Marathon]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In darkened surroundings, the set for Marathon consists only of a large rectangle of loose road chippings where our two protagonists Mark (Brian Hutton) and Steve (Matthew Ralli) jog. True to the title of the play, they do actually run for the majority of the 55 minute performance. As real as their running is, we are also always aware that it&rsquo;s metaphorical through and through. The area of road and our two heroic joggers are well-lit in contrast to the darkness around them. It is, after all, night time as they conduct their ritualistic exercise. The ostensible goal of their punishing training...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 21:44:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Marathon]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Tea-Set-and-The-Candidate]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tea Set and The Candidate]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sidhe is Limerick&rsquo;s newest theatre company. It promises to produce new and emerging Irish writers and to focus particularly on women writers. For its debut outing it engaged Gina Moxley to direct two of her own plays, Tea Set and The Candidate.
In Tea Set, Maeve McGrath - co-founder of Sidhe, with Sinead Vaughan - plays a disaffected young woman with nowhere she wants to go on the eve of the Millennium, and so takes a job looking after an elderly lady as her daughter jets off to the Caribbean sun. The play opens with McGrath&rsquo;s mournful character fondling a broken tea set &ldquo;made...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 05 May 2010 22:00:03 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Tea-Set-and-The-Candidate]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bombshells]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bombshells]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith has built a successful career examining the nuances of contemporary life, particularly those surrounding relationships, love and the struggle to communicate. Her work, replete with big themes, transcends borders: it has made the leap from Australia to the British stage and now to these shores, with a comedy that shines the spotlight on modern womanhood, staged by new Irish company Jasango Theatre.
Despite her commercial and critical success, however, Murray-Smith&rsquo;s work has also come in for attack. Germaine Greer famously dismissed her satirical...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 15 May 2010 22:47:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bombshells]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bookworms]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bookworms]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s try to show everyone that, recession or no recession, we are contented and happy &ndash; and this evening is going to be fun!&rdquo; Spoken by deluded book club hostess Ann, this optimistic manifesto might well be the motto for Bernard Farrell&rsquo;s frothy comedy of manners, Bookworms, which turns a sentimental eye to post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and its bankrupt middle-classes, who are still clinging to the civility of social rituals like book clubs with their buffed and well-manicured nails. In true Farrell style, there is resentment and chaos simmering underneath the polished...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:50:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bookworms]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Miser]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Miser]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The phrase that comes irresistibly to mind when watching The Miser is &lsquo;rollicking romp&rsquo;. David Johnston&rsquo;s new translation-adaptation of L&rsquo;Avare is the Lyric&rsquo;s latest production of Molière, directed by Dan Gordon with Andy Gray in the title role. The production manages to include passing references to French neoclassicism in the set design, along with Commedia dell&rsquo;Arte, pantomime and music hall, and the various elements combine to create an energetic interpretation of the text that relies on physical comedy and audience interaction. There is a sense &ndash; both...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 May 2010 22:45:53 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Miser]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Language-UnBecoming-a-Woman]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Language UnBecoming a Lady]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[James Joyce maintained, through the voice of Stephen Dedalus in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, that theatre was the most public of art forms. It&rsquo;s only fitting then that the stage should air stories that have been of the most private nature mainly because they were a part of an oppressed minority. The history of a gay man or woman in Ireland was excluded from the public realm in Ireland by coercion, not by choice.Myles Breen&rsquo;s Language Unbecoming A Lady sets about redressing that injustice. As such, it is eminently worthy but worthiness alone does not make great art. It doesn&rsquo;t...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:20:42 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Language-UnBecoming-a-Woman]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Parting-Glass]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Parting Glass]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[With the play In High Germany, first staged in 1990, Dermot Bolger dramatised the decision of a group of three young Irish men to emigrate from Ireland. The three men &ndash; Eoin, Shane and Mick &ndash; went in different directions: Mick to America, Shane to Holland, while Eoin settled in Hamburg. Now, twenty years later, Bolger&rsquo;s new play The Parting Glass brings to life the counter decision, when Eoin gives in to his yearning to return to Ireland. The Parting Glass, a one-man show, is a record both of the need to come home, and the consequences of return and Ray Yeates gives a warm, funny...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:47:07 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Parting-Glass]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Strike!]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Strike!]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Strike! is an ambitious dramatic rendering of the anti-apartheid strike by eleven Dunnes Stores workers which began in July of 1984 and ended in victory over two and a half years later. The playwright, Tracy Ryan, and producer Helen Ryan last worked together on 'Cracked Eggs' in reverse capacities at the New Theatre and have credits between them which include acting and writing novels and screenplays. The production, in conjunction with the UCD School of English, Drama and Film, showcases recent or current students of both its BA and MA programmes.
The play faces the primary task of docu-drama...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 29 May 2010 22:24:55 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Strike!]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Not-I]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Not I]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Not I (1972) is typical of Beckett&rsquo;s late theatre in so far as it focuses on fragmented corporeality and affective force in a manner that tests theatre&rsquo;s representational limit. The piece is written as an aestheticized logorrhea delivered by a carefully illuminated mouth. Although only 14 minutes long, Beckett hoped that the play would have a powerful viceral effect on its audience in performance, telling Jessica Tandy, who premiered the role, that it should &ldquo;work on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect.&rdquo;
This production of the infrequently staged play opens an...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:43:38 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Not-I]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Importance of Being Earnest]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There are many ways of delivering the most famous exasperation from Wilde&rsquo;s last play, although most actors tend to go with robust indignation. Not so Stockard Channing who, as Lady Bracknell, responds to Jack Worthing&rsquo;s (Keenan) tale of abandonment on the Brighton line with a barely audible &ldquo;A handbag?&rdquo;, rapidly swallowed up with a sharp intake of breath. An understated take, to be sure, but with such a well-known play, packed full of witticisms and aphorisms with a life of their own, it&rsquo;s the little things that make a difference.
The importance of being Stockard...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:18:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/World-Apart--Same-Difference]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Worlds Apart, Same Difference]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Michael Collins sets out to articulate the experience of the Irish Traveller from the inside and it is appropriate that he has hit upon a dramatic framework that strongly echoes that of the fit-up show. While sitting in the Cube, I was transported to a field in Donegal, more than twenty years ago, when a touring company of three pitched a tent, with benches on the grass and an open-sided caravan for a stage. Apart from the raffle and the dance that formed pack of the total package, the audience was treated to an episodic melodrama that unfolded in a series of short scenes &ndash; scaled to the...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2010 00:03:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/World-Apart--Same-Difference]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Andy-Warhols-Nothing-Special]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Andy Warhol’s Nothing Special]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Brimming with aphoristically laden dialogue wrapped in a stylistically produced piece, Spilt Gin&rsquo;s Andy Warhol&rsquo;s Nothing Special is truly reminiscent of the infamous Factory era. Warhol is all over this tight production where set, acting, directing and musical arrangement coalesce to bring a strange and cool post-modern existential story of love and art, life and death to satisfying fruition. Elegantly clad in mostly shades of silver and announcing themselves on stage in identical white wigs, the quartet cast&rsquo;s uniformity and beauty mirror the iconic images of Warhol&rsquo;s tributes...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 00:22:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Andy-Warhols-Nothing-Special]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Plasticine]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Plasticine]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set in rural Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Vassily Sigarev&rsquo;s Plasticine presents an ever-sickening series of disturbing scenarios that, to its inhabitants, are seemingly experienced as banal slices of a doomed life. That&rsquo;s where the play&rsquo;s punches land most effectively. In spite of its gratuitous displays of rape and vulgarity, what the audience sees as desperate, horrifying, or pitiable is regarded by most of the characters as another day in a life that&rsquo;s expected to get steadily worse. While this summation doesn&rsquo;t exactly promise a cheering evening...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:05:34 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Plasticine]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Early-Bird]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Early Bird ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[It&rsquo;s a pleasant shock to walk into the Project Cube and find the actors already at work in Donnacadh O&rsquo;Briain&rsquo;s production of Leo Butler&rsquo;s two-hander. Encased as they are in a clear Perspex box, primarily lit from below, and wedded with the rank smell from the fertiliser strewn about the floor, it&rsquo;s impossible not to feel like a visitor at the zoo, come to observe a rare and dangerous species whose antics fascinate even as the stink they give off repels.
Debbie (Catherine Cusask) and Jack (Alex Palmer) are a couple whose daughter has&hellip; disappeared? Been abducted?...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:30:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Early-Bird]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Outsiders]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Outsiders]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Outsiders is a one-man-show by journalist and economics pundit David McWilliams, essentially a distillation of the views he has put forth in various forums including radio, television and print throughout the Recession. McWilliams stands alone on a set depicting the unfinished roof of a building under construction. The wall behind him is a screen onto which various slides are projected, a mixture of graphics and photographic images depicting miscellaneous charts and figures, the faces of well known politicians and developers, and also some &lsquo;colour&rsquo; shots that form a backdrop to McWilliams&rsquo;...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:44:39 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Outsiders]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Mickey-and-Lionel]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mickey and Lionel]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dealing with the trials of childhood, Mickey and Lionel is based on Aesop&rsquo;s fable 'The Mouse and the Lion', written down by Valerius Babrius in the second century A.D. This tale of the strength and importance of the small and the seemingly weak is simple: captured by the lion, the mouse is set free with the understanding that the mouse may one day be in a position to help the lion, and so he does. Taking the basic tale, Vicky Ireland transforms it into a somewhat complicated story of two young friends who grow to know and help each other.
Mickey (Michael Lavery), called Mickey Mouse, and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 22:08:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Mickey-and-Lionel]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/New-Writing-Week]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[New Writing Week]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Two new plays by two new playwrights &ndash; this is the double-bill running at The New Theatre this week (14th-19th June). In a theatre world which is feeling the pinch more than ever, with small companies and spaces particularly under pressure, it is particularly welcome to see a great space like the New Theatre promoting new talent. And, on the basis of these two short plays, there&rsquo;s a lot of talent to be put out there. 
The stage and production for both plays are spare &ndash; a minimal set of three black boxes, small lighting changes to highlight individual characters, and snatches...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:12:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/New-Writing-Week]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Letter-Project]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Letter Project]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Young theatre company Meantime follows its assured debut production of The Good Father last year with a show structured around the idea of the letter as theatrical text. The production, which is performed at this stage as a work-in-progress, uses a series of anonymous letters, sought by and posted to the company, as the basis for an exploration into the power, beauty and insight of the written word. The idea, of course, is that &ndash; in an era of text, email and tweets &ndash; very few of us take the time to put pen to paper in order to express our thoughts. The piece is a showcase for the articulate,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:30:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Letter-Project]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Trailer-of-Bridget-Dinnigan]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Trailer of Bridget Dinnigan]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Waiting for the show to begin, a man behind me quips back to his friends: &ldquo;No haggling in the back row.&rdquo; The joke ripples, before talk turns to who knows who in the production. The proud parents beside me are back for the second time, and their daughter has made it to the cover of the programme note. It&rsquo;s not very often that so many members of the Travelling community gather to see a play in the Project, but tonight, knowing many of those involved, there&rsquo;s a real air of enthusiasm and even ownership.
Developed in conjunction with Blanchardstown Traveller Development Group...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:41:49 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Trailer-of-Bridget-Dinnigan]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/See-No-Evil]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[See No Evil]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[See No Evil is Sole Purpose&rsquo;s most recent production, which has been touring periodically since last year. The company&rsquo;s work plays in small community venues as well as in professional theatres across Ireland and in the UK, and aims to raise debate and awareness around specific social and political issues. Some of their recent productions addressed domestic violence (Don&rsquo;t Say a Word), global warming (The Shadow Men), and the conflict in the Middle East (Clouds on a Mountaintop, a collaboration with Israeli playwright Orna Akad). See No Evil addresses the issue of &lsquo;elder...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:41:11 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/See-No-Evil]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Buddy-Buddy-and-Starman-Fisher]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Buddy Buddy / Starman Fisher]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Despite a somewhat chaotic start &ndash; a late change of venue and time, a further delay in advance of the performances &ndash; these two workshop productions offered interesting, if not always fully realised, interrogations of the theatrical process.
Of the two shows, Starman Fisher, which is a short, twenty minute or so inquiry into the subject of human cloning, is the more effective. Devised by Dee Roycroft and performed with the help of Jason Byrne, it is a mix of discussion, delivery of facts and fantastical - or maybe not so fantastical - visions of the future. Against a backdrop of moving...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:12:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Buddy-Buddy-and-Starman-Fisher]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/FML-F-uck-my-life]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[FML F*uck My Life]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In Fintan O&rsquo;Toole&rsquo;s perceptive article in last Saturday's Irish Times, he says of David McWilliam&rsquo;s Outsiders, currently showing at the Peacock, &ldquo;But it doesn&rsquo;t feel like a piece of theatre, and it forces you to ask why not.&quot; Likewise FML raised questions about its own value as theatre and, for this reviewer, was found lacking.
FML (Fuck My Life) is one of the headline events of this year's Cork Midsummer Festival and is the culmination of over a year of co-production involving the festival, CAMPO Gent, LIFT, Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen&rsquo;s and...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:45:08 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/FML-F-uck-my-life]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Monsters-and-Things]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Monsters and Things]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[You can&rsquo;t argue with a child&rsquo;s appreciation. A large group of school-going children aged between five and seven years old are PigNut Productions&rsquo; audience at the Belltable in Limerick for Monsters and Things. This bunch simply lap up the story of Jacko and his friend Podi who, in true contemporary style, are setting their sights on winning 'The X Factor'.
Jay Ryan, Artistic Director of PigNut and the puppeteer for Jacko, his hapless friend Podi, a wise old wizard and a host of small creatures from mice to snails, enthrals his young audience in fifty minutes of adventure and misadventure....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:51:21 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Monsters-and-Things]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Romek-and-Julie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Romek and Julie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Romeo has left fair Verona far behind to become Romek, a Polish cigarette smuggler smitten by a Cork beauty for whom he writes sensitive love songs. His would-be father in law is a Cork businessman now busily losing his mind as a financial house of cards tumbles down around himself and his family. Roundhouse Theatre Company, through the twin talents of Jennifer Rogers directing and Rachel Yoder writing, are very keen to engage with the changing face of contemporary Irish society. In order to do so they have chosen to change the face of Shakespeare&rsquo;s celebrated love story.
Their approach...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:18:00 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Romek-and-Julie]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bogboy]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bogboy]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[There is a literate, thoughtful script at the core of Tall Tales and Solstice Arts Centre&rsquo;s staged version of Bogboy, originally developed and produced for RTÉ Radio. Designed for voices communicating without eyelines or spatial blocking, delving into the sonic and emotional echoes of memory in careful, easy-to-connect blocks of dialogue linking scene to scene in the mind&rsquo;s eye, it would be easy to dismiss as being all about the script, and confine critical observation to its structural and literary qualities (which are considerable).
Initially, the play invites such consideration,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:30:44 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bogboy]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Be-My-Love-in-the-Rain]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Be My Love in the Rain ]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Be My Love in the Rain is a monologue very impressively presented by Linda Teehan, all the more so because she does so unaided by props, scenery, sound effects or the usual conventional stage settings. She&rsquo;s not entirely on her own, of course. Writer of the play Paul Kennedy also directs and under his guidance Teehan keeps a good reign on her pacing. She also never over-acts. Her tone is perfect throughout as she brings us through a romantic yet dark time in the life of a young Dublin working class woman.
The performance takes place in the Powerscourt Gallery, which has excellent acoustics...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:56:52 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Be-My-Love-in-the-Rain]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Penelope]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Penelope]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Four grotesquely inept cocktail-quaffing men are trapped in an empty swimming pool on a Greek Island. They tempt fate trying to escape a grisly end in Penelope, Enda Walsh&rsquo;s latest work to be premiered by Druid. This is Walsh&rsquo;s stab at sitcom, but in its uncompromising ambition, breadth and brushes with a darkly delightful lunacy, it is also his most daring drama.
What actually unfolds is a tragicomedy awash with ironies, classical allusions and flooded with a devoted reverence for theatre and theatrical device: Penelope overflows with generous offerings to groundlings and gods alike...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:13:37 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Penelope]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Fellow]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Quare Fellow]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In reviving Behan&rsquo;s 1954 play, Ronan Wilmot asserts his sense of theatrical history (identifying warmly with the work of Caroline Swift and Alan Simpson in the Pike Theatre on the original production), and &ndash; in some of the best moments - a sensitivity for Behan&rsquo;s capacity to write of the horrors of a hanging, both graphically and with a degree of lyricism.
But The Quare Fellow has not weathered well. Capital punishment has been erased from the statute books in Ireland and, for a long time, film has proved to be the medium most sympathetic to portraying grim prison life. Besides,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:07:41 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Fellow]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Grippe-Girls]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Grippe Girls]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Co-founded by Gibbons and Gregg in 2001, Electric Bridget has, since its inception, aimed to entertain through darkly comic means. Penned by Gibbons, The Grippe Girls signifies precisely the company&rsquo;s fundamental aspirations. This two-hander stitches together the bawdy and unsavoury stories of the ancient Grippe twins Hildegarde (Gregg) and Obstina (Gibbons), who embody the diminishing remnants of a once great Anglo-Irish family. The advent of a &ldquo;woman-journalist&rdquo;, who wishes to record an interview with the sisters, provides a realistic forum for the characters to communicate...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:34:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Grippe-Girls]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Tusk-Tusk]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tusk Tusk]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Since her 2007 debut, Polly Stenham has become one of the most talked-about young dramatists in Britain. But, as so often happens with female writers, much of that attention has focussed on her life rather than her work &ndash; so we know much more about her looks, her sexuality, and her relationship with her parents than we do about her writing. 
She is certainly an interesting personality, and her achievement in having her first play, That Face, staged when she was only 20 is impressive. But because of the excessive focus on who she is, she hasn&rsquo;t received the critical attention that her...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:49:10 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Tusk-Tusk]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Slattery-s-Sago-Saga]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Slattery's Sago Saga]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The formidable Crawford MacPherson (Clare Barrett) arrives at Póg mo Thóin Hall by car, greeted by nervous Tim Hartigan (Malcolm Adams), taking instruction from MacPherson&rsquo;s husband, absent estate-owner Ned Hoolihan (Louis Lovett), to accommodate her. MacPherson has a plan. She intends to rid Ireland of its indolence and licentiousness by banishing the potato. She intends to introduce a system of irrigation and share-cropping around the cultivation of sago, a tropical plant that produces edible gloopy starch. At the nearby Baggeley Hall, a dopey handyman (Lovett again) works against the decay...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:59:02 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Slattery-s-Sago-Saga]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Death-of-a-Salesman]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Death of a Salesman]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Designed by Michael Pavelka, the set of the Gate Theatre&rsquo;s production of Death of Salesman angles backwards giving the impression that the characters are trapped inside a giant &lsquo;V&rsquo;, the jaws of which could bite down at any moment. Upstage, a suggested strip of brownstones hovers overhead. The glassless façades are chased through by the mischievous branches of a large tree shooting from the left, as obstinate in its twilight as Willy Loman (Yulin) himself. Ostensibly growing through the Loman family&rsquo;s Brooklyn home, the tree is a constant reminder of the precarious nature...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:51:18 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Death-of-a-Salesman]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Oedipus-the-King]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Oedipus the King]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Classic Stage Ireland have been quietly carving a niche for themselves in the Irish theatrical landscape over the last seven years. Devoting themselves exclusively to producing &ldquo;the classics&rdquo;, they have concentrated for the most part on Shakespeare and the Greeks, and their annual repertoire alternates between an ancient tragedy or comedy and a Shakespearean drama. More commendable than the company&rsquo;s classic commitment, however, is their commitment to showcasing the less well-known plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus and their Elizabethan counterpart. In the last 12 months, for example,...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:25:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Oedipus-the-King]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Plough-and-the-Stars]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Plough and the Stars]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Sean O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s classic tragi-comedy has for long been strangled by  its  realist form. To glance through the text is to get side-tracked by detail. Every cup and saucer, every chair, every changed location (and there are four distinct spaces over four acts) is described as if the writer is creating an entirely new and unfamiliar universe. However,  Wayne Jordan&rsquo;s stylish, brave production at the Abbey Theatre sweeps away the representational rigour of O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s drama and brings an expressionistic epic quality to the work instead; a quality that O&rsquo;Casey himself...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:19:14 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Plough-and-the-Stars]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Colleen-Bawn]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Colleen Bawn]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Dion Boucicault&rsquo;s melodrama is enjoying a resurgence of popularity, but in truth it has rarely been out of fashion for long in more than a century. The convincing staging of such melodrama requires a consistently calibrated approach in which acting, costuming, staging and direction convey a single relation to melodrama as concept. A pick and mix relationship to this genre doesn&rsquo;t work. A full-scale commitment to the artistic requirements of another age is admittedly a tall order, especially when a postmodern sensibility is shared by those on stage, behind the scenes and in the audience....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:33:31 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Colleen-Bawn]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/At-the-Hawk-s-Well]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[At the Hawk's Well]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[&ldquo;Wisdom must have a bitter life,&rdquo; sing the Musicians near the end of Blue Raincoat&rsquo;s production of W.B. Yeats&rsquo;s At the Hawk&rsquo;s Well, a curious, if oddly satisfying lunchtime diversion now playing at Sligo&rsquo;s Factory Perfomance Space. There are bitter lessons for the characters and the playwright alike here.
In At the Hawk&rsquo;s Well, we find Yeats looking eastwards in pursuit of a more timeless theatre, particularly towards the Japanese Noh tradition. While one feels something would be lost in translation if the great practitioners of the classical Japanese...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:15:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/At-the-Hawk-s-Well]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Vincent-River]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Vincent River]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[First produced in 2000, Philip Ridley&rsquo;s Vincent River is a stark reminder of the continued occurrences of hate crime and homophobic attacks in society. Drawing upon events of his youth and the murder of a friend in the 1980s, Ridley creates two characters trying to come to terms with a death which has resulted from homophobic violence: Anita (Eleanor Methven) &ndash; the mother of Vincent &ndash; and Davey (Kerr Logan) &ndash; the young man who found Vincent&rsquo;s body &ndash; talk through and share their stories, each trying to piece together the narrative of Vincent&rsquo;s life and death....]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:51:36 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Vincent-River]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bondi-Beach-Boy-Blue]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Bondi Beach Boy Blue]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Set in Kilkenny and Sydney in the year 2000, Bondi Beach Boy Blue dramatises the story of Declan, a talented young hurler, whose dream of making the senior county panel is ended by a crippling knee injury.
Declan is 17 and about to leave school; his mother has died four years previously and his relationship with his father is strained. Following his injury and a break-up with his girlfriend Lisa, he and best friend Gary escape boredom and frustration by heading off to Australia. There they meet up with Emma who persuades them to take part in the 14km 'City to Surf' road race from Sydney to Bondi...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:38:28 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Bondi-Beach-Boy-Blue]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Baglady]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Baglady]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The most remarkable aspect of Frank McGuinness&rsquo;s monologue play is its ability to implicate an entire society while focusing on a lone soul torn asunder by an act of familial violation. While the centerpiece of Baglady&rsquo;s fragmented narrative is the eponymous character&rsquo;s rape at the hand of her father, the spectral figures of Catholic Ireland&rsquo;s clergy haunt the periphery, blaming the victim and burying any evidence of the crimes committed. The resonances with widespread allegations of systemic child abuse within Irish society as a whole are unmistakable here. Baglady&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:32:40 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Baglady]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Where-Did-It-All-Go-Right-]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Where Did It All Go Right?]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Where Did It All Go Right? is a highly engaging and charming adrenaline rush of a contemporary dance piece, where the emphasis is most definitely on contemporary. With no little skill, Ponydance manage to recreate an intense clubbing-cum-pop sensibility and style of dance that yet is underpinned and subtexted by the abstractions and vocabulary of the more familiar and traditionally abstract modern form of choreography most of us know, as they retell a familiar tale of four people out enjoying themselves, getting out of their heads and out of their bodies.
The setting for this production - upstairs...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:08:43 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Where-Did-It-All-Go-Right-]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Citizenship]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Citizenship]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Towards the end of Mark Ravenhill&rsquo;s Citizenship, a plastic doll hangs on the background wall of the stage. A childlike voiceover tells us that Mommy and Daddy slept together that night and that she is the result. She continues to tell us the end of the story we have just watched unfold. It is a beautiful and poignant summing up on the consequences of youth&rsquo;s natural folly. The happy little voice explains that they no longer speak to each other now.
Mommy is Amy and Daddy is Tom and theirs is the story of teenage love and angst in a 21st century MySpace, chatroom context where social...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:18:04 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Citizenship]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Land]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Quare Land]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[This new production from Decadent Theatre is described in the programme as the company&rsquo;s fourth &ldquo;world-premiere&rdquo;. That claim might seem extravagant for a group that isn&rsquo;t well known beyond Galway, but it captures well the ambition &ndash; and, more importantly, the achievements &ndash; of the company, which has been producing some excellent work recently. In 2008, for instance, they gave us an intriguing revival of Martin McDonagh&rsquo;s The Lonesome West, while last year they premiered Here We Are Again Still, which is probably Christian O&rsquo;Reilly&rsquo;s best play...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:59:13 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Quare-Land]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Tarry-Flynn]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Tarry Flynn]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Patrick Kavanagh&rsquo;s semi-autobiographical character Tarry Flynn reveres literature and, like a Romantic poet, fancies himself as a specially-inspired mediator between nature and man. He believes that all ordinary objects and acts can carry within them &ldquo;the energy of the imagination&rdquo;. As infuriatingly detached and egotistical as Tarry is, the character&rsquo;s poetic ideals provided Conall Morrison&rsquo;s muse when he adapted this work for the Abbey stage in 1996. The result: a work of vibrant theatricality that offers theatre practitioners vast artistic opportunities. Attracted...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:58:01 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Tarry-Flynn]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Disco Pigs]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Permeated by a sense of entrapment, the theatre of Enda Walsh is at its best when performed in intimate spaces. While real freedom seems just beyond the grasp of many of his characters, his romantic two-hander Disco Pigs is more hopeful than much of his later work. As the adventures of Pig and Runt descend into chaos, we anticipate that Runt, at least, will break out of the psychological box the two have built around themselves. In this context, the creative approach of Fregoli, under the skilled directorship of Rob McFeely, was fitting; throughout, there was a palpable sense that Galway&rsquo;s...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:23:12 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Disco-Pigs]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Dream-Play]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[A Dream Play]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[A few furry spectators mark their territory as the audience file in to watch the National Youth Theatre&rsquo;s production in the Peacock theatre. The humanoid bunnies that fill a few seats, and eventually kick off the performance by eyeballing us from the gallery, are an obvious nod to Wonderland, or even Donny Darko. Although quickly hidden from sight, for Caryl Churchill&rsquo;s version (2005) of August Strindberg&rsquo;s A Dream Play (1901) this quirky conceit nicely sets the tone for a drama that confounds the distinction between reality and fantasy. 

The action begins as Agnes, a daughter...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:04:59 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/A-Dream-Play]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Gingerbread-House]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Gingerbread House]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[If you&rsquo;ve ever wondered how the parents of Hansel and Gretel coped after abandoning their children in the woods, before the wicked step-mother died and the children returned for the happy-ever after, John Chambers&rsquo; The Gingerbread House, takes you into their den of domestic hell and tries to show you what lack of conscience and weakness of will can do to the soul.
His ambition is, I suppose, a fine one; to take a classic fairytale and deconstruct it to enlighten on parental responsibility, the consequences of neglecting this responsibility and the traumatic fatalistic horror of a bad...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:30:33 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Gingerbread-House]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Silver-Tassie]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Silver Tassie]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[One of the more memorable moments in Druid&rsquo;s epic production of Sean O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s first World War lament The Silver Tassie, has nothing to do with battle. In the beginning of the final act, Sylvester Heegan (Eamon Morrissey) and Simon Norton (John Olohan) are enjoying some banter at a dance in honour of Irish World War veterans when a phone rings. The duo is frightened at first, and then both thwarted in their attempts to communicate with the voice inside the machine. The caller and his message are never known and the drama quickly returns to O&rsquo;Casey&rsquo;s central task: relentlessly...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:41:09 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Silver-Tassie]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Happy-Days]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Happy Days]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[AC Productions brings commitment and dedication to Happy Days, even if it is a somewhat thankless task (there were eleven at the performance being reviewed). Happy Days can be a challenging work but, to echo Miller&rsquo;s line in Death of a Salesman at the Gate, &ldquo;attention must be paid.&rdquo; When we have the privilege of a fine production of a key text, we should show more willing to lend our support.
This Happy Days demonstrates a meticulous fidelity to Beckett, down to each single move. Director Peter Reid and actor Alex Cusack (Winnie) have carefully crafted every nuance of language...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:04:16 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Happy-Days]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Mouth-to-Mouth]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[Mouth to Mouth]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Crooked House Theatre Company are developing a reputation for staging difficult and narratively layered and complex modern drama. Following last year&rsquo;s very successful Breathing Corpses, they have now put their skilful hands to Kevin Elyot&rsquo;s funny and tragic drama Mouth to Mouth, a play about the absurd respectability of the middle classes in the light of personal despair and loneliness.
Although there is fine ensemble playing on show, Mouth to Mouth essentially focuses on the existential angst of a playwright called Frank, played here by Nick Devlin who beautifully understates Frank...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:49:35 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/Mouth-to-Mouth]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/TIC]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[TIC]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[The central motif in Elizabeth Moynihan&rsquo;s &ldquo;full length premiere&rdquo; at the Focus Theatre is a syndrome, named after the French neurologist, Georges Gilles de la Tourette who, in 1885, identified the combination of involuntary tics &ndash; both motor and vocal &ndash; which, in this play, afflicts a young Anglo-Irishwoman, who has been incarcerated in a folly in the grounds of the &lsquo;big house&rsquo;.
The nineteenth-century setting allows Moynihan to introduce Tourette&rsquo;s as something of a novelty and also to give some credence to the husband&rsquo;s decision to simply lock...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:54:54 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/TIC]]></link>     
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     <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Lily-Lally-Show]]></guid>
     <title><![CDATA[The Lily Lally Show]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[In the programme notes to the original production of Hugh Leonard&rsquo;s The Lily Lally Show at the Abbey Theatre in 1994, the author proposed that there had only ever been one great comedienne in Irish entertainment. Typically, Leonard didn&rsquo;t name her but it was understood that he was talking about the late, great Maureen Potter. Leonard went on to stress that Mary Moone was his attempt to create the second great Irish comedienne. Thus, with obvious and deliberate, even comical, disingenuousness, Leonard&rsquo;s statements were, like many of those uttered by the stars of that popular vaudeville...]]></description>
     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:40:05 GMT</pubDate>
     <link><![CDATA[http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Current/The-Lily-Lally-Show]]></link>     
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