irish theatre

No 480 Portia Coughlan by Marina Carr Book 7 of #20booksofsummer20

I saw the original production of Portia Coughlan at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin in 1996 and was mesmerised. I had never seen anything like it. That production, starring Derbhle Crotty and Bronagh Gallagher, transferred to the Royal Court in London but the play wasn’t staged again for nearly 20 years, before a new production…

Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel #readingirelandmonth19

#WakingtheFeminists – Three plays by Irish Female Playwrights

On Wednesday 28th October 2015, the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre, launched its programme to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Waking the Nation featured ten plays, a mix of newly commissioned work and well-known theatre classics. However, they failed to notice that out of the ten plays programmed in the 2016 programme,…

Dancing at Lughnasa at The Lyric Theatre Belfast

For it’s so clear that in order to begin to live in the present we must first redeem the past, and that can only be done by suffering, by strenuous, uninterrupted labour. Chekhov In 1990, my parents took me to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin to see a new play by Brian…