Arts & Culture

The Beacon review: Where art and life converge

Nancy Harris’s new play delves into matters of interpretation, moral hypocrisies and defying dichotomies, writes Grace Farrell

Upon first look at Francis O’Connor’s set gracing the stage of the Gate Theatre, I immediately understood what I’d just read in the program seconds before: that this mise-en-scène is in its own right a “play”. The sitting room is

Arts & Culture

All hail the egg: DU Players’ Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche

Under Mae Leahy’s direction, Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche graces the DU Players theatre as the audience becomes part of the furniture for a deliciously chaotic breakfast.

It’s 1956 and I, along with the rest of the audience, am at the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein’s annual quiche breakfast. We are in a mysteriously bomb-proof society meeting hall, evidenced by the

Arts & Culture

Collapsible review: Breakdown in the modern age

Margaret Perry’s Collapsible presents a stunning portrayal of depersonalisation, destabilisation and the power of empathy

I am sitting in Smock Alley Theatre fifteen minutes early for Margaret Perry’s play, Collapsible. I am trying to read the Dublin Fringe Festival information booklet, but I cannot concentrate. I am distracted by Essie (Breffni Holahan), the subject of …

Arts & Culture

MÁM Review: It’s not a funeral, it’s a celebration of life

After a triumph with Swan Lake/Loch na hEala, Michael Keegan-Dolan and Teaċ Daṁsa return with a new modern myth

The star performer, Ellie Poirier-Dolan, deserves congratulation for her masterful opening of a Tayto packet at the beginning of the show. Using the air in the bag, she skillfully opens it with a resounding ‘pop’. A difficult task — especially

Arts & Culture

Afloat review: Drowning in denial

Amidst mass strikes against climate change, Lauren Boland reviews Afloat in Smock Alley Theatre

Hildegard Ryan and Eva O’Connor’s Afloat does not pull any punches. Instead, it pulls up a proverbial mirror which forces the audience to confront the most insidious barrier to action against climate change: denial.

Best friends Bláthnaid (Eva O’Connor) and

Arts & Culture

Birthright review: Dublin Fringe Festival’s most local masterpiece

Nadine Flynn’s play explores working-class tragedies exacerbated by the institutions around them, writes Henry Petrillo

Lir graduate Nadine Flynn’s Birthright began with the hushed sounds of a compact audience creaking on the wooden benches of Smock Alley Theatre, the small space and lowered stage facilitating an immediate sense of intimacy between the audience and the