Hitman: Agent 47

The ill-advised Rupert Friend takes up Timothy Olyphant’s cross in a reboot that makes 2007’s Hitman look like John Wick.

Litvenko (Ciaran Hinds) designed them to be the perfect soldier, a human weapon. But then he escaped… Now, haunted by her past, his daughter Katia Van Dees (Hannah Ware) seeks him in Berlin. But, meeting her father’s creations; the genetically engineered killing machines Agent 47 (Friend) and Syndicate operative John Smith (Zachary Quinto); she realises she cannot run, she must fight, to discover her destiny… For, despite being bred for superior intelligence, Katia had never realised her name sounded uncannily like the French ‘quatre-vingt-dix’ and that her Spidey-sense screamed ‘Agent!’, while all the lethally skilled operatives of the Syndicate and their rival rogue Agents at large were incapable of refining their search parameters based on their intel on Litvenko to locate him in Singapore; Syndicate HQ. Yet Syndicate chairman Le Clerq (Thomas Kretschmann) hunts Litvenko to restart the Agent programme.

Hitman: Agent 47 is beset by three distinct layers of unreality. What the characters do is bafflingly unlike reasonable cinematic behaviour; John Smith and Katia flee from the pursuing 47, and all concerned conduct themselves at a walking pace as if this was an It Follows parody. Action sequences are chopped to bits by Nicolas De Toth’s editing, which you suspect is hiding poorly directed footage, or rendered with so much crummy CGI that you are watching a computer game; a particular offender being the Singapore street assault where 47 guns down zip-cording assassins like the embarrassingly fake Smiths in Matrix Reloaded. The third layer of unreality is the astonishingly derivative script, which makes The Blacklist, a show which recently had James Spader reference a particular Marathon Man scene as they were ripping it off, look as original as Primer.

The basic set-up recalls Dark Angel: Katia is Max, Litvenko is Sandeman, the Agent program is Manticore, there’re even barcodes on people’s necks. Occasional muttering about how emotionless automaton 47 is learning empathy should make Terminator 2 fans mutter ‘If a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, then maybe we can too’. Katia’s DNA was coded for heightened survival skills, indistinguishable from Raimi’s cinematic Spidey-sense. John Smith is unkillable because of his sub-dermal titanium-alloy body-armour, so all he needs are Wolverine’s claws. And then there’s The Matrix… There’s a fight on an underground railway line with trains roaring past, there’s acrobatic use of guns and kung-fu showdowns, there’s even a scene where 47 walks thru a security check packing weapons while his bulky bag is X-rayed. Le Clerq is impossible to kill, 14 Agents have died trying, notes 47, in tones that make you think Friend is repressing lines like ‘Everyone who has stood their ground against an Agent has died’. John Smith injects Litvenko with horrible chemicals to make him spill, then Le Clerq shocks his subordinates by interrogating Litvenko alone, using some of Agent Smith’s body-language and actual lines from the equivalent scene with Morpheus; and then Neo 47 appears outside with a helicopter gunship… Tuned out by such nonsense one scans for absurdities. 47’s inexplicable hacking makes one muse that to a primitive screenwriter any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Smith’s ‘For f***’s sake Doctor, just tell me what I want to know’ sounds so genuinely annoyed, it’s like Quinto just wanted to wrap already. Marco Beltrami’s score ditching his decent 47 theme for random inappropriate surf guitar seems equally fed-up.

If ever wee small hours find drunken friends split between The Matrix, Terminator 2, and Dark Angel, they can compromise by watching all three at once in the shape of this profoundly stupid movie.

0.5/5

By the Bog of Cats

Selina Cartmell directs Marina Carr’s relocation of Medea to the Midlands for its first revival since its 1998 Abbey premiere.

We meet Hester Swane (Susan Lynch) in what seems a disused quarry next the titular bog, dragging a dead black swan, a prophetic bird from which the blind Catwoman (Brid Ni Neachtain) divines Hester’s death by sundown. This emphasises the earlier omen of Hester meeting the Ghost Fancier (David Shannon) in the morning fog, who apologised for being early… Hester’s day was already set to be bad as Carthage Kilbride (Barry John O’Connor), the father of her child Josie (Eve Maher/Elodie Devins), is marrying the much younger Caroline Cassidy (Rachel O’Byrne), the daughter of big farmer Xavier Cassidy (Peter Gowen). The vinegary Mrs Kilbride (Marion O’Dwyer) is delighted at this advantageous match, that will ‘knock some semblance of legitimacy’ into her granddaughter. But Hester is determined not to go quietly, despite her neighbour Monica Murray (Jane Brennan) begging Hester to keep her signed promise to leave the bog for the new house in the town that Xavier has bought her…

Monica Frawley’s set is impressively stark, the craggy rocks being relieved only by a tent in the background for the raucous wedding sequence. This channels the intensity of Greek tragedy which Carr smashes into Irish archetypes. Catwoman the Tiresian blind seer mingles with an Irish mammy from Hell in Mrs Kilbride, Hester’s Tinker blood is the barbarian origins that Greeks despise, while Creon banishing Medea from Corinth is Xavier moving Hester off the bog; except that Xavier is also a monstrous patriarch out of John McGahern’s work. Irish country and western music floats over proceedings, even inflecting the cowboy-outfitted drawling Ghost Fancier, but Kilian Waters’ AV design is oddly under-used, indeed largely abandoned after a prologue in which Hester’s sunken caravan is investigated by a character who disappears out of sight but whose point-of-view is relayed on a big screen. This play is about passion, mostly the thirst for revenge, as conveyed by Lynch in a performance of snarling intensity.

But, as Euripides’ 1960s translator Philip Vellacott noted, Medea presents “an oppressed victim claiming sympathy” until “the punishment shows itself twice as wicked as the crime, sympathy changes sides; and we are left with only one comfort, that since the worst has been reached, there can be no worse thing to follow.” After the interval Carr unduly prolongs Hester’s embittered rampage, as we’ve lost sympathy by dint of her past before she proves childishly and murderously unwilling to distinguish between death and exile. Hester’s most affecting scenes come before the interval: lamenting her betrayal by Carthage, making fun of Mrs Kilbride with her daughter Josie. O’Dwyer is hilariously spiteful before the interval as Mrs Kilbride, but raises the roof as a Freudian nightmare against the double-act of Ni Neachtain’s Catwoman and Des Nealon’s Fr Willow at the memorable wedding bacchanalia. O’Byrne evinces a quiet sadness, while special mention must go to the young actress playing Josie with bright, phenomenal confidence.

By the Bog of Cats is a production of admirable commitment which loses its way latterly because of its repetitious focus on Hester but lingers long in the mind.

3.5/5

By the Bog of Cats continues its run at the Abbey until September 12^th.

Bob and Judy

Gerard Adlum and Nessa Matthews were strangers meeting on an apocalyptic night in Bob and Judy, the second instalment of Fast Intent’s Theatre Upstairs residency.

A chair, a tangled tree, and a temperamental radio form Katie Foley’s set for this tale of a simple package delivery that turns into an unlikely existential crisis, on personal and global levels. Bob (Gerard Adlum) is a delivery man for Science World who ambles into a back garden in his innocuous but dogged way to get Judy (Nessa Matthews) to sign for a package. But Judy is absolutely insistent that she does not want any package, and when she discovers to her horror that said package contains a telescope; a birthday present from her late mother, ordered months before; she tries to return it. But Bob isn’t about to let his professional reputation be impugned, and, as they bicker and bond, the tragic circumstances of both their lives emerge while the radio bears news of an unusual interstellar wonder.

Bob and Judy is scripted by Adlum from a story devised by the company (Adlum, Matthews, Sarah Finlay), and directed by Finlay. There’s a touch of John Wyndham’s off-kilter approach to sci-fi in how the heavenly aberrations impact tangentially on a more important earthly conflict between two people. Bob is played by Adlum as a study in defeat, hiding his disappointment with his life (and his guilt) behind a facade of mundane efficiency. Judy is more problematic. Her past, in one line of dialogue, seems akin to Jennifer Lawrence’s in Silver Linings Playbook, and her interactions with the harmless Bob seem at times excessively aggressive, almost shrill. Admittedly this is due to an effect of the cosmic phenomenon; heightening emotions; as the radio informs us. But does Bob & Judy’s story really need that entire strand of sci-fi at all?

There’s odd cultural confusion at work from deliveries by Science World to Judy’s hostility to her mother’s mores to Morgan Jones’ American newscaster voice announcing doom; a sense in which this seems a mash-up of the details of small-town America and rural Ireland, as if the company doing a reading of Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries last year had unconsciously informed their devising. And while Eoghan Carrick’s lighting and Dylan Tonge Jones’ sound design are impressive in creating impending destruction from the stars it’s arguable whether that strand is necessary when the real crux of the play is Bob and Judy’s emotional journey. The sci-fi maguffin almost feels like JJ Abrams’ Super 8 gambit, a writing short-cut to catharsis. And the writing doesn’t need shortcuts, as, whether rendering childhood word-games or a spectacular argument about dinosaurs, it’s touching and hilarious.

Bob and Judy is an interesting play, filled with great dialogue, but invoking our insignificant place in the universe arguably uses a philosophical sledgehammer to crack a dramatic nut.

3/5

The Importance of Being Earnest

Smock Alley presents a spirited production of Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy in which the setting of Victorian drawing room and garden receives an unusual interpretation.

Algernon Moncrieff (Kevin Shackleton) is a confirmed Bunburyist; evading his formidable aunt Lady Bracknell (Valerie O’Leary) by dint of imaginary friend Bunbury, an invalid who lives in the country and is at death’s door whenever she issues invitations. Algernon is determined to unveil his friend Ernest Worthing (James Murphy) as a secret Bunburyist after finding a card revealing him to be Ernest in town and Jack in the country. Ernest, whose name is actually Jack, insists he is merely maintaining a high moral tone for the benefit of his ward Cecily (Aislinn O’Byrne) by the invention of disreputable brother Ernest, whose outrages necessitate frequent trips to London. But when Jack’s new fiancé, Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen (Clodagh Mooney Duggan), announces she could only love a man named Ernest, and her acidic mother declares that Jack’s unknown ancestry is an insurmountable obstacle to marriage, Jack’s engagement seems doomed. And that’s before Algernon decides to helpfully complicate matters with his most ridiculous Bunburying…

Marcus Costello’s startlingly green set serves as garden and drawing room with shrubbery in the shape of a piano revealing itself as a functional piano. There is also the added surreal touch of dresses hanging with lights inside them as eccentric garden decoration. Olga Criado Monleon’s costumes foppishly cast Jack in beige and Algy in blue, but excessively render unfashionable Cecily in a dress that’s almost a repurposed table-cloth. Initially you fear that director Kate Canning is attempting a Jordan-style queering of the text, but that approach quickly dissipates; though Charlie Hughes playing Lane, Merriman, and Canon Chasuble, leads to a major quibble. Lane is rendered with a jiving walk that’s as disconcerting for the character as Jeeves being played as Riff Raff, and Merriman becomes Worzel Gummidge, for the purpose of physically differentiating from Hughes’ main role as the entertainingly nervous Canon. O’Byrne also overplays vocally the girlishness and exaggerated innocence of young Cecily to contrast Duggan’s sultry Gwendolen.

And yet such complaints stand as naught against the whole production, as any gripes are swept away by the accelerating comedic momentum of Wilde’s script, and a deluge of delirious nonsense from the double act of Jack and Algy. Canning contrives some wonderful business. Jack and Algy engage in a tug of war for the silver tray bearing the coveted last muffin as Jack grunts his pained dialogue, while Katie McCann follows up one of her deliciously fake social laughs as Miss Prism with a death-stare at Jack and Algy for their effrontery. Shackleton and Murphy faced the challenge of playing roles that Rory Nolan and Marty Rea take on in a few months in the Gate’s production, and they can proudly boast that they equalled that proven double act in moments such as Jack first meeting Algy at his country estate. Duggan meanwhile adds knowing sauciness to Gwendolen’s dialogue that unnerves Jack terrifically, and seems to rediscover Wilde’s subversiveness.

Plays that are as quotable and almost over-familiar as Wilde’s offer their own hazards, and it is to this company’s credit that they sparkle.

4/5

The Importance of Being Earnest continues its run in Smock Alley until August 22^nd.

M Night Shyamalan, The Visit, and the Lighthouse

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan is coming to Dublin on Sunday 30th August for the Irish premiere of his new movie The Visit, followed by a Q&A at the Lighthouse. Tickets for the event are priced at just €12 and are available for purchase here.

M. Night Shyamalan has not been having a good time of it since his glory days of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. His first feature since Will Smith’s blockbuster fiasco After Earth sees him team with the producer with the Midas touch Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Sinister, The Gift, Insidious) for Universal Pictures’ The Visit. Shyamalan returns to his roots with the terrifying story of a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a week-long trip. Once the children discover the elderly couple are involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home growing smaller every day… Shyamalan produces The Visit through Blinding Edge Pictures, Blum through Blumhouse Productions alongside Marc Bienstock (Quarantine 2: Terminal), and their cohorts Steven Schneider (Insidious) and Ashwin Rajan (Devil) executive produce.

In anticipation of the release of The Visit, the Lighthouse presents a weekend of Shyamalan’s celebrated triptych.

The Sixth Sense: 28th August, 8.15pm

Shyamalan’s breakthrough third feature as director was a ghost story with a twist, rather famously, and minted money for all concerned in the dying months of 1999. Bruce Willis is the child psychiatrist trying to help the literally haunted Haley Joel Osment, who sees dead people, while unable to salvage his own failing marriage to Olivia Williams.

Signs: 29th August, 4.00pm

The final appearance of Mel Gibson as major movie star was a low-key tale of alien invasion, with Gibson’s widowed preacher becoming convinced that his family were somehow ordained to fight this cosmic takeover in the oddest way. Indeed the peculiar oddness of their calling was the first sign people were tiring of Shyamalan’s twist tic.

Unbreakable: 29th August, 8.30pm

Bruce Willis re-united with Shyamalan for a comic-book movie with a difference, not least that it wasn’t based on a comics title. Shyamalan’s extremely measured pacing took imbuing seriousness into pulp even more seriously than Bryan Singer’s X-Men, also out in 2000, and the huge twist at the end was a satisfying pay-off.

Charlene Lydon, programmer at the Lighthouse, says “We are delighted to welcome M. Night Shyamalan as our guest here. I think it is an interesting time in his career as he appears to be in a state of transition, having moved from the mainstream to making a secret low-budget found-footage thriller. I very much look forward to hearing him in conversation and also enjoy the opportunity to revisit some of his earlier work on the big screen.”

Wayward Pines, the TV show Shyamalan produced and directed the first episode of, has received extremely wounding criticism. And that’s after the unmerciful beating After Earth took. Things started to go wrong with The Village, in retrospect, as it threw in a frankly unnecessary twist almost because Shyamalan felt he had to insert a twist. (Which made The IT Crowd scene in which Matt Berry throws out every possible twist he can think of while Chris O’Dowd tries to watch a film feel a very pointed jab.) But then came Lady in the Water… When I reviewed The Happening for Dublinks.com I couldn’t escape the feeling that Shyamalan had lost his nerve. Lady in the Water was drunk on confidence, stretching the thinnest of stories into a feature. The Happening, by contrast, made a mess of a proper feature. As visual stylist Shyamalan put together impressive sequences, but as a writer he seemed self-doubting and his actors’ performances suffered accordingly. Perhaps teaming up with Blum is just what Shyamalan needs: a return to pared-down horror, with grounded characterisation, and no grandiosity. We shall see…

Tickets for each screening are now on sale at http://www.lighthousecinema.ie. The Visit is in cinemas on 11th September 2015.

Ciaran Foy brings Blumhouse home

Ciarán Foy, director of Sinister 2, is re-uniting with Blumhouse Productions for a co-production with Roads Entertainment for a new Irish horror movie.

 

Foy’s debut feature Citadel, which he wrote and directed, premiered at South by Southwest in 2012 to rave reviews and won the festival’s coveted Midnighter’s Audience Award. It was a critical smash in Ireland and featured on a number of Irish critics’ best of 2014 lists and went on to bag a slew of awards around the globe. Foy’s new project The Shee, an atmospheric story set in early 1960s Ireland, is the story of a troubled young woman who must confront her violent and tragic past when she travels to a remote island.

Alan Maher, CEO of Roads Entertainment, is producing alongside Jason Blum. Blum, a recent guest on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast, has become something of a phenomenon with his horror stable where directors have huge creative freedom so long as their films only cost $4 million dollars. Those films include Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Insidious, The Gift, and Sinister. And Blum has ploughed some of those profits into non-horror movies; producing Whiplash, and developing John Williams’ acclaimed novel Stoner for the big screen. Ciaran Foy thus joins the ranks of other repeat Blumhouse filmmakers like James Wan, James DeMonaco, and Scott Derrickson.

Alan Maher developed and co-produced Citadel, and produced Foy’s award-winning short film The Fearies of Blackheath Woods in 2006. Roads Entertainment is an Irish film production company established by Maher and entrepreneur Danielle Ryan. Being AP, a feature documentary produced by Moneyglass Films in partnership with Roads Entertainment, will premiere at TIFF in September 2015. Maher, Nick Ryle and John Woollcombe are producers, with Anthony Wonke directing. Prior to Roads, Maher was a Senior Executive at the Irish Film Board for six years; responsible for more than fifty feature films and documentaries including Good Vibrations, Grabbers, Knuckle, Mea Maxima Culpa, The Summit, Kelly + Victor, Dreams of a Life, His & Hers, and Wake Wood.

Maher says, “I am delighted to continue my successful working relationship with Ciarán, which began more than a decade ago, and to collaborate with Blumhouse, the best genre producers in the world.  The Shee will be a thrilling and unique experience that will further establish Ciarán as one of the brightest talents in the industry.” The Shee is being developed with the support of Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board, and Foy will also co-produce under his own label Shadow Aspect.

Meanwhile if you want to remind yourself of Foy’s skills Sinister 2 opens in Irish cinemas this Friday August 21st.

A Month in the Country on HeadStuff

A Month in the Country has had its run in the Gate extended to the 29th of August, so if you’re wondering whether to catch Ethan McSweeney’s production at the last moment here’s a teaser for my review for HeadStuff.

Natalya (Aislin McGuckin) dominates the life of an 1850s Russian country house. She is married to the older Arkady (Nick Dunning), who seems oblivious to the platonic love affair she’s conducting with his erstwhile friend Michel (Simon O’Gorman). Natalya herself has a blind spot though, she fails to spot that her teenage ward Vera (Caoimhe O’Malley) has fallen for new tutor Aleksey (Dominic Thorburn). When it’s pointed out to her, and ever-visiting doctor Shpigelsky (Mark O’Regan) approaches her with a proposal of marriage for Vera from the aged Bolshintsov (Pat McGrath), Natalya becomes consumed by jealousy and starts plotting to marry off Vera to leave herself without a romantic rival for the young tutor’s affections. Michel is unable to prevent these machinations, while Arkady’s mother Anna (Barbara Brennan), Herr Schaff (Peter Gaynor), and Lizaveta (Ingrid Craigie) have never stood up to Natalya.

Click here to read the full review on HeadStuff.org.

Dublin Theatre Festival: 12 Plays

Tickets go on sale for the 2015 Dublin Theatre Festival at 10:00am Wednesday August 12th. Here are 12 shows to keep an eye on.

The Night Alive 22^nd September – October 4^th Gaiety

Trailing clouds of glory from Broadway does Conor McPherson come. His new play, a co-production with Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, stars Adrian Dunbar and Kate Stanley Brennan as damaged souls beginning a tentative romance in the dodgy-geezer-land of Dublin that McPherson has made his own. Laurence Kinlan and Ian-Lloyd Anderson lead the supporting cast, and while tickets have been on sale for a while, some seats are still available.

Bailed Out! 23^rd September – 4^th October Pavilion

In case you’re not depressed enough by the ongoing farce in Leinster House you can soon head to Dun Laoghaire to see Colin Murphy’s follow-up to Guaranteed; an unlikely hit that ended up being filmed. Rough Magic regular Peter Daly and others bring to life, under Conall Morrison’s direction, official documents and unguarded interviews revealing how Ireland was troika’d. But, pace Fintan O’Toole, can documentation as agit-prop achieve anything?

At the Ford 23^rd September – 3^rd October New Theatre

Political ruminations of a fictional stripe will occupy the intimate surroundings of the New Theatre. Aonghus Og McAnally and rising star Ian Toner headline Gavin Kostick’s new play about a family coming apart at the seams as they struggle with the future of their business dynasty. Said dynasty imploding because of the sins of the father, so we’re promised critical analysis of Celtic Tiger via Celtic mythology.

Oedipus 24^th September – 31^st October Abbey

Sophocles’ resonant tragedy returns to the Abbey, but not in WB Yeats 1926 text or Robert Fagles’ spare translation. It’s a new version by director Wayne Jordan, who casts his Twelfth Night’s Barry John O’Connor as the Theban King. The great Fiona Bell plays Oedipus’ wife Jocasta, but after Spinning that doesn’t reassure, especially as Jordan’s directorial failings (especially leaden pacing and poor staging) have become embedded through critical praise.

A View from the Bridge 24^th September – 10^th October Gate

Joe Dowling returns from his long exile in Minneapolis to direct Arthur Miller’s 1955 classic. Chicago actor Scott Aiello plays Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman in Brooklyn who shelters illegals Marco (Peter Coonan) and Rodolpho (Joey Phillips), but when Eddie’s niece Catherine (Lauren Coe) falls for Rodolpho jealousy and betrayal loom. Dowling’s 2003 production of All My Sons was typically solid, and this should be equally polished.

Star of the Sea 24^th September – 26^th September Draiocht

Joseph O’Connor’s 2004 best-seller belatedly comes to town. This was a sell-out hit at last year’s Galway Arts Festival, and has just three performances at the theatre festival as part of a nationwide tour. This racy production is ‘freely adapted’ from O’Connor’s tale of lust and murder on a famine ship fleeing to America, in Moonfish’s Theatre trademark bilingual approach of performing in English and as Gaeilge.

Hooked! 25^th September – 10^th October Various

Director Don Wycherley’s apparently become the go-to guy for the festival for touring theatre productions about whimsical goings on in the Irish countryside. This is a three-hander about a Dublin woman (Seana Kerslake) who moves to the country and rubs her neighbours (Tina Kellegher, Steve Blount) up the wrong way. Hilarity ensues. Secrets and lies are laid bare. A bit of comedy, a bit of menace, in four different venues.

The Last Hotel 27^th September – 3^rd October O’Reilly Theatre

Enda Walsh has written an opera! Music by Donnacha Dennehy is performed by the Crash Ensemble and the singers are led by star soprano Claudia Boyle, who starred in Mahoganny last year. The production team is that which brought us the demented Ballyturk, and Mikel Murfi even appears in a plot revolving around a man cleaning a blood-soaked hotel room and a couple fighting in a car-park.

The Train 6^th October – 11^th October Project Arts Centre

Well, here’s a gamble and a half. Rough Magic premiere a musical: book by Arthur Riordan, direction by Lynne Parker, music by Bill (Riverdance) Whelan. Previous Rough Magic musical Improbable Frequency was a hoot, but DTF plays with music Phaedra and Peer Gynt were deeply unsatisfying. This could implode, especially as the subject; importing contraceptives on a 1971 train; seems tailor-made for ‘liberals backslapping each other’ smugness.

Dancing at Lughnasa 6^th October – 11^th October Gaiety

25 years ago Friel’s masterpiece premiered at the theatre festival, and director Annabelle Comyn brings her Lyric production to the Gaiety to mark the occasion. Comyn’s regular design team are on hand to revive the bittersweet story of the Mundy sisters (Catherine Cusack, Cara Kelly, Mary Murray, Catherine McCormack, Vanessa Emme) with Declan Conlon as their returned brother. Comyn excels at blocking large casts so the dance entices…

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 6^th October – 10^th October Grand Canal

Tickets are becoming scarce for this flagship import from London’s National Theatre. Mark Haddon’s book was a masterful exercise in disguising almost total lack of substance behind flashy style, and writer Simon Stephens and director Marianne Elliott deploy every theatrical bell and whistle going to recreate the sleuthing mind of an autistic teenager, but can they add substance to the source?

The Cherry Orchard 7^th October – October 10^th O’Reilly Theatre

You haven’t experienced Chekhov till you’ve heard him in the original French. Ahem. Belgian collective tg STAN take on Chekhov’s final elegiac play, an obvious influence on Tom Murphy’s The House; as a peasant’s cunning sees him rise up to supplant the decaying aristocracy, then lament over the genteel way of life he destroyed. Playing straight through for 2 hours without an interval we’re promised unfussy intensity.