Reviews

At the Hawk's Well by W.B. Yeats

Reviewed by Donald Mahoney on 04 August 2010 27 July - 7 August, 2010 in Factory Performance Space, Sligo

“Wisdom must have a bitter life,” sing the Musicians near the end of Blue Raincoat’s production of W.B. Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well, a curious, if oddly satisfying lunchtime diversion now playing at Sligo’s Factory Perfomance Space. There are bitter lessons for the...

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Bondi Beach Boy Blue by Benny McDonnell

Reviewed by Úna Kealy on 03 August 2010 26 July - 7 August, 2010; and on tour. in Jerome Hynes Theatre, Wexford Opera House

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...

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Vincent River by Philip Ridley

Reviewed by Pádraic Whyte on 03 August 2010 2-7 August 2010; then on tour until 28 Aug. in Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast

First produced in 2000, Philip Ridley’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...

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The Plough and the Stars by Sean O'Casey

Reviewed by Sara Keating on 27 July 2010 27 July - 25 September, 2010 in The Abbey Theatre

Sean O’Casey’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...

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Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Reviewed by Fintan Walsh on 20 July 2010 20 July - 25 September, 2010 in the Gate Theatre

Designed by Michael Pavelka, the set of the Gate Theatre’s production of Death of Salesman angles backwards giving the impression that the characters are trapped inside a giant ‘V’, the jaws of which could bite down at any moment. Upstage, a suggested strip of brownstones hovers overhead....

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The Quare Land by John McManus

Reviewed by Patrick Lonergan on 19 July 2010 14 - 24 July, 2010 in Nun’s Island Theatre, Galway

This new production from Decadent Theatre is described in the programme as the company’s fourth “world-premiere”. That claim might seem extravagant for a group that isn’t well known beyond Galway, but it captures well the ambition – and, more importantly, the achievements...

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Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Reviewed by Sara Keating on 19 July 2010 19 - 31 July, 2010 in Project Arts Centre

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 “the classics”, they have concentrated for the most part on Shakespeare and the Greeks, and their annual repertoire...

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Slattery's Sago Saga by Arthur Riordan, adapted from the unfinished novel by Flann O’Brien

Reviewed by Harvey O'Brien on 17 July 2010 17 - 25 July, 2010 in Rathfarnham Castle

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’s husband, absent estate-owner Ned Hoolihan (Louis Lovett), to accommodate her. MacPherson has a plan. She intends to rid Ireland...

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The Quare Fellow by Brendan Behan

Reviewed by Derek West on 15 July 2010 13 July - 7 August, 2010 in The New Theatre

In reviving Behan’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 – in some of the best moments - a sensitivity for Behan’s capacity to write of...

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Tusk Tusk by Polly Stenham

Reviewed by Patrick Lonergan on 14 July 2010 12 - 24 July, 2010 in a city-centre apartment, Galway

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 – so we know much more about her looks, her sexuality, and her relationship...

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