RIP Tom Murphy

I attended Dancing at Lughnasa at the 2015 Dublin Theatre Festival mere days after the death of Brian Friel. That production served almost as a wake, and Graham Price and I mused then that Tom Murphy was now Ireland’s greatest living playwright. Alas, now he is taken from us too.

I studied The Gigli Concert for my MA in Anglo-Irish Literature & Drama. I didn’t really get it, nor did I think that, despite patches of undoubted brilliance, it really worked overall. Only for Frank McGuinness to pronounce that often Murphy’s work didn’t read very well, it had to be performed to really come alive. I remember scratching my head at the time about that. My unspoken objection was: how would you ever know something was worth performing if you had to perform it first to see its quality? Frank McGuinness, of course, knew best. 2012 saw a feast of Murphy on the Dublin stage and I reviewed three of those productions here. First out of the blocks was Annabelle Comyn’s revival of The House, which dripped Chekhov, and a savagery in characterisation and theme when tackling emigration. But savagery in Murphy hit its high water-mark at the very beginning with A Whistle in the Dark, which formed part of DruidMurphy’s repertory at the Dublin Theatre Festival. The primal violence of A Whistle in the Dark brutalised the Gaiety’s substantial capacity into a stunned silence. It still remains one of my most vivid theatrical memories. And then, in a marvel of repertory, the same cast turned their hands to the serious comedy Conversations on a Homecoming; with Rory Nolan and Garrett Lombard morphing from the two scariest brothers in Whistle to an amiable duffer and the village intellectual scrapper respectively.

Druid returned to the Murphy well for a striking production of Bailegangaire a couple of years later. President Michael D Higgins was in attendance when I saw it with Graham Price and Tom Walker who summed it up perfectly as ‘Happy Days as Irish kitchen sink drama’. It is startling to think in retrospect that Murphy’s classic was packing out the Gaiety, when it represented such a collision of the avant-garde with the popular mainstream. When the Gate finally broke its duck and presented The Gigli Concert as its first foray into Murphy’s oeuvre the same thing happened: packed audiences, to the extent that the play was brought back for a second run. Graham Price reviewed it on the second run, to add a corrective to what he felt was my insufficiently admiring review from the first time round. I realised that it did work better in performance than it read, but still didn’t think it was the ne plus ultra of Irish drama. And then I ended my belated exploration of Murphy’s work where I began, with Annabelle Comyn directing on the Abbey stage in the summer. But The Wake was a very different proposition than The House.  Comyn threw practically every Bat-tool in the director’s utility belt at it but Murphy’s rambling script proved ungovernable. But for all that there was still much brilliance shining thru the wreckage. Not bad for a play written in his early sixties.

I have a personal hit-list of key Murphy plays left to see: A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant, The Morning after Optimism, and The Sanctuary Lamp. Now, whether anyone other than Druid will put them on in this current cultural climate is sadly quite another matter.

https://fergalcasey.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/the-house/

https://fergalcasey.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/a-whistle-in-the-dark/

https://fergalcasey.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/conversations-on-a-homecoming/

https://fergalcasey.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/bailegangaire/

https://fergalcasey.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/the-gigli-concert/

https://fergalcasey.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/the-gigli-concert-3/

https://fergalcasey.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/the-wake/

The Pillowman

Decadent Theatre Company again took over the Gaiety stage with Martin McDonagh’s trademark blend of macabre madness, but set in Mitteleurope rather than the Wesht.

 

Katurian (Diarmuid Noyes) is in deep trouble. Somebody in this unnamed (and semi-mythical) totalitarian state has been acting out particularly horrible short stories by a writer, and he’s the writer so he’s the prime suspect. Abrasive policeman Tupolski (Peter Gowen) and his thuggish underling Ariel (Gary Lydon) have Katurian prisoner in their Spartan barracks. And by Lenin if they have to beat the eyes out of his head and unsettle him with asinine nonsense they are going to make him confess. Unless of course he didn’t do it, but if not him then who; could his brain-damaged brother Michael (Owen Sharpe) really have done such horrible things? Would Tupolski really torture innocent Michael just to make Katurian confess? Why does Katurian write such horrible stories in the first place? And what does horrible parenting have to do with it all?

Owen MacCarthaigh’s deceptively simple set; almost a bare stage with desk, seats, cabinet, and furnace in a circle; spectacularly splits to reveal a house or woodland behind, dependent on which of Katurian’s tales is being silently played out (very broadly) by Jarlath Tivnan, Kate Murray, Peter Shine, Tara Finn, and Rose Makela. Ciaran Bagnall’s lights and Carl Kennedy’s sounds combine to create tableau during the most disturbing of these glimpses into Katurian’s dark imagination, the origin of his creativity. I saw The Pillowman in UCD Dramsoc in 2006 as a spare four-hander, so director Andrew Flynn’s visual extravagance here took me aback. It amuses and horrifies effectively, but also leaves the audience with less work to do. Sharpe’s sometimes camp mannerisms were also in stark contrast to Michael’s defeated stillness back in 2006, akin to Marty Rea’s recent Aston.

Pinter is a strong presence in this play. The first act is comedy of menace as Katurian is bewildered and intimidated by Tupolski’s odd interrogation. The second act is arguably McDonagh’s most soulful material ever, as the two brothers share a cell. The dark and comic invention of Katurian’s reimagining of fairy tales throughout remains astonishing, a highlight being the Pied Piper of Hamlein. And then there’s the third act where McDonagh seems to mash together Pinter and Orton; “I’m sick of everyone blaming their behaviour on someone else. My father was a violent alcoholic. Am I a violent alcoholic? Yes. … But that was entirely my choice”; but then deliver a tour-de-force entirely his own, Tupolski’s short story – which I still remembered chunks of 11 years later. It is outrageously offensive, and sadly it was clear the audience in the Gaiety was self-censoring itself, whereas in Dramsoc we had recognised it was of a part with Tupolski’s character and, having made that recognition, thereafter stopped tut-tutting and let out ears back to fully enjoy the verbal marvel McDonagh was constructing. Cruelty and callousness are part of comedy, perhaps inextricably so; it’s hard to imagine Swift or Waugh without them.

I still prefer some of the notes struck by Andrew Nolan’s Tupolski in 2006, but Noyes’ sincerity, Gowen’s swagger, and Lydon’s hidden decency make for an impressive central trio.

4.5/5

Kings of the Kilburn High Road

A revival of Jimmy Murphy’s 2000 play at the Gaiety proves its staying power as a potent mix of raucous comedy, physical menace, and despair.

4/5

The Seagull

Corn Exchange took over the Gaiety for a flagship show of the Dublin Theatre Festival; Anton Chekhov’s first masterpiece, The Seagull, in a new version.

The impecunious teacher Semyon (Stephen Mullan) loves the sullen housekeeper’s daughter Masha (Imogen Doel), who loves the temperamental young artist Constance (Jane McGrath), who loves the flighty girl next door Nina (Genevieve Hulme-Beaman), who loves the cynical famous writer Trigorin (Rory Keenan), who is the lover of the self-absorbed great actress Arkadina (Derbhle Crotty), who had an affair with the dashing doctor Dorn (Louis Lovett), who the downtrodden housekeeper Polina (Anna Healy) still loves after all these years by the lake. No wonder the master of this chaotic Russian household, Sorin (Stephen Brennan), feels that he has never truly lived in his 60 years because he never got married or became an artist but ground away in the government bureaucracy till he had ground himself down. But grinding people down is what life does, as Constance and Nina painfully discover…

Eto Ne Chekhov.

When a company tweaks the work of Joyce, O’Neill, and Chekhov in successive festivals, and in each instance produces a misfiring production, the fault must lie with the company.

1.5/5

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

Druid revisit Martin McDonagh’s startling debut 20 years after its debut and the result is spellbinding.

Maureen (Aisling O’Sullivan) lives a tormented life, continually at the beck and call of her dishevelled, demanding, hypochondriac mother Mag (Marie Mullen). There is little to look forward to this in emotionally barren Wesht. The visits of Aaron Monaghan’s easily bored neighbour are the only thing keeping the two women from each other’s throats. And then he arrives to invite Maureen to a do, at the behest of his brother Pato Dooley (Marty Rea). Pato and Maureen make a connection, much to the displeasure of Mag, and the stage is set for an attempt at escape and an attempt at confinement.

It’s been some years since I saw Nessa Matthews and Molly O’Mahony perform the script in UCD Dramsoc at a fast pace, so what was most noticeable about the playing here was the patience of Garry Hynes’ direction. Rea’s show-stopping monologue, writing the most rambling letter home from London imaginable, became a comic tour-de-force simply because he was allowed to pause so much effect. At the other end of the dramatic scale, the most disturbing scene in the entire play was allowed to build slowly, so that dread filled the Gaiety; the inimitable sound of 2,000 people holding their breath.

5/5

The Beauty Queen of Leenane continues its run at the Gaiety until the 29th of October before beginning a tour of North America.

Dublin Theatre Festival: 10 Plays

Tickets go on sale for the 2016 Dublin Theatre Festival at 10:00am on Tuesday August 16th. Here are 10 shows to keep an eye on.

Helen & I 27^th September – October 1^st Civic Theatre

The great Annabelle Comyn decamps to Druid to direct an original script by newcomer Meadhbh McHugh. Rebecca O’Mara is the ‘I’, returning home to fence with older sister Helen (Cathy Belton) as their father lies dying. It’s always great when Druid tour, and hopefully this will be a return to form for Comyn after the bafflingly praised debacle of The Wake.

 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream 28^th September – October 1^st Grand Canal

Sean Holmes, responsible for the recent, storming Plough & Stars in the Abbey, returns with co-director Stef O’Driscoll for a Shakespearean rampage. This looks to be very much a ‘This was not Chekhov’ production, but in the best sense, as the text is stripped down to 90 minutes, with live grunge band, nerf gun battle, and an epic food fight.

 

Don Giovanni 29^th September – October 2^nd Gaiety

Roddy Doyle has for some reason decided to update the libretto to Mozart’s opera about the womaniser par excellence. Eyebrows must be raised at the amount of ‘versions’ he’s doing versus original writing in recent years. Pan Pan’s Gavin Quinn will be directing, while Sinead McKenna follows up her acclaimed diabolist lighting design for The Gigli Concert’s finale with some bona fide operatics.

 

The Father 29^th September – October 15^th Gate

Just when Michael Colgan had lurched into self-parody by programming The Constant Wife he conjures an ace from nowhere: a piece of new writing from France that has swept all before it on Broadway and Piccadilly. Ethan McSweeney directs Owen Roe as a man suffering from Alzheimer’s, while the supporting cast includes Peter Gaynor and Charlotte McCurry, and Francis O’Connor is set designer.

 

Guerilla 30^th September – October 2^nd Project Arts Centre

It wouldn’t be a festival without some fellow PIIGS getting bolshy about neo-liberalism, the failure of Europe, and the age of austerity. This year it’s El Conde de Torrefiel company from Spain, presenting the confused inner universe of a group of people inhabiting the same city and collective consciousness, represented by projected text over an electronica concert, Tai Chi class, and conference.

 

Death at Intervals 4^th October – October 8^th Smock Alley

Trailing clouds of glory from its Galway premiere comes an adaptation of Jose Saramango’s novel directed by Kellie Hughes. Olwen Fouere is the grim reaper in retirement, accompanied by her faithful musician Raymond Scannell. Death likes to dance too. A mixture of music, theatre, and dance, with Scannell also co-composing with Alma Kelliher; but he did also compose Alice in Funderland…

 

Alien Documentary 4^th October – October 8^th Project Arts Centre

I’ve read this production’s pitch repeatedly and I’m damned if I can figure out what it is. Director Una McKevitt is apparently mixing transcriptions of real people’s conversations with invented dialogues of her own imagining, so that’s her writing credit sorted. But what exactly is this show? PJ Gallagher, James Scales, and Molly O’Mahony having unconnected deep/comic conversations for 90 minutes?

 

The Seagull 5^th October – 16^th October Gaiety

Writer Michael West and director Annie Ryan together fashion a modern version of Chekhov’s tale of unrequited loves starring the oft-Fassbendering Derbhle Crotty as well as Genevieve Hulme-Beaman who shone in support in the Abbey’s You Never Can Tell. But will this Corn Exchange production be as hit and miss as their version of Desire Under the Elms that severely downsized O’Neill’s ambition?

 

Donegal 6^th October – 15^th October Abbey

Frank McGuinness’s new musical/play with music/musical play sounds unfortunately like a pilot for the Irish version of Nashville, as a fading country music star is threatened by a new talent she must curry favour with for her own survival. Director Conall Morrison specialises in exuberance, and grand dames Deirdre Donnelly and Eleanor Methven appear beside Once’s Megan Riordan, but can McGuinness make a comeback?

 

First Love 12^th October – 16^th October O’Reilly Theatre

Reminding us why he was important before the age of austerity Michael Colgan directs Gate stalwart Barry McGovern in a solo Beckett outing. This time they head up the road to Belvedere College for a Beckett novella turned into a one-man show about a rather existentialist-sounding refusal of a man to fall in love with a woman who’s in love with him.

Dancing at Lughnasa

Dancing at Lughnasa premiered at Dublin Theatre Festival 25 years ago, but this anniversary production doubles as a posthumous tribute to its author Brian Friel.

The adult Michael (Charlie Bonner) narrates the summer of 1936 when he was 7 years old. The illegitimate son of the youngest daughter Chrissie (Vanessa Emme), he was doted on by her four sisters: messer Maggie (Cara Kelly), simple Rose (Mary Murray), quiet Agnes (Catherine Cusack), and schoolteacher Kate (Catherine McCormack). But this golden summer is the beginning of the end for the Mundy sisters, even though the return of their beloved brother Jack (Declan Conlon) after 25 years in the Ugandan Missions seems an unlikely catalyst for catastrophe. While the visit of Michael’s ne’er-do-well Welsh father Gerry Evans (Matt Tait) seems pivotal to the emotional turmoil that besets the house, it almost takes a ha’penny place in hindsight to the arrival of malfunctioning wireless Marconi; the ambassador of the industrial revolution finally reaching Ballybeg that will sweep away all.

Director Annabelle Comyn strips away the misplaced nostalgia that has gathered around Friel’s Tony-winning script; there are no fields of wheat crying out for Sting’s ‘Fields of Gold’ to soundtrack memories of halcyon summer here. Instead Paul O’Mahony’s domestic table, chests and stove yield seamlessly to the outside of rocks, kites and leaves strewn on the ground while looming over all is a reflective triangle with a layer of gauzy fabric dulling its accuracy. Chahine Yavroyan’s lights frequently flash accompanied by a loud pop, as in her design for Comyn’s 2014 The Vortex, to jolt us back to fuller lighting after expressive dimming during monologues or sad moments. It also emphasises these are Michael’s memories, and he mayn’t be as scrupulously accurate as he believes. Indeed his penultimate narration of doom colours the final scenes as oblivious to coming tragedy.

As my academic cohort Graham Price noted this is not a production that masks the bleakness. The dance is not a joyous climax, a moment of healing. It is an abrupt explosion of energy, that can’t overwhelm the despair; even in their dancing the sisters are alone, their movements governed by the forces that entrap them. And no dance is as revealing as Kate’s energetic but strict Irish dance-steps. McCormack’s performance recalls Cathy Belton’s affecting Judith in Friel’s Aristocrats at the Abbey last year. Kate is intelligent, and loving towards Michael, but she is buckling under the strain of holding her family together by conforming to societal norms. And her priest sibling instead of a godsend proves an albatross, having gone wildly native. A stooped, bearded Conlon is magnificent. His English initially clipped, from long usage exclusively with British imperialists. His hair wet from malarial sweats, but then smarter as he regains his vocabulary. Jack’s enthusiasm for Riyangan rituals leaves you convinced he, not the fox, sacrificed Rose’s pet rooster.

It is odd that a production that began as a celebration of a living playwright become a eulogy, but a fitting one it is.

5/5

Dancing at Lughnasa continues its run at the Gaiety Theatre until the 11th of October.

The Night Alive

Playwright/director Conor McPherson finally shepherds his award-winning play back to the city in which it is set, as a flagship of Dublin Theatre Festival 2015.

The Night Alive opens with Tommy (Adrian Dunbar) being a good Samaritan, bringing Aimee (Kate Stanley Brennan) back to his flat after he sees her being assaulted. Well, flat… It’s the ground floor of a house, the upper floor being occupied by Tommy’s uncle Maurice (Frank Grimes). And the flat is in a shambolic state. When Aimee goes to the bathroom to wash the blood off her not-broken nose Tommy frantically tries to put manners on the place. So begins an interruption to his slovenly way of life, as Aimee stays on, causing Tommy to clash with Maurice as well as his literally slow-witted employee Doc (Laurence Kinlan); always 5 to 7 seconds behind everyone else on the uptake Tommy tells Aimee. But that’s as nothing to the hassle that Aimee’s boyfriend Kenneth (Ian-Lloyd Anderson) will cause for all concerned…

Alyson Cummins’ set is so festooned with layered rubbish that it’s as if Monty Python’s ‘Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things’ was charged by Tommy with the interior decoration. This is the state you get into when your wife throws you out, and it provides plenty of comedic material; “Which one’s the bin?” “Any of them”, “Come upstairs in ten minutes. I’ll boil you an egg that won’t give you botulism”, and Tommy offering Aimee a biscuit with her tea, which he happily tucks into, apparently oblivious to it being a dog biscuit. The pairing of Tommy and Doc are not unlike Martin McDonagh characters in their logical pursuit of utterly absurd questions, but there’s a serious vein too, as Tommy’s growing attachment to Aimee sees him attempt to renege on his responsibility for the unemployable Doc.

A live question because of some thoroughly nasty business with a hammer… There’s a sudden air of menace from the moment Ian-Lloyd Anderson appears in a spiffy cream suit. There’s a Pinter quality to his dialogue with Doc, but, as often with McPherson, also a whiff of sulphur; this inexplicable villain would give you an idle whack with a hammer, just to pass the time like. It’s almost as if he’s quite literally a necessary evil, to allow Tommy to be heroic in his own eyes – Finland! But true heroism, Aimee’s actions force him to realise, is accepting responsibility for your burdens; in his case Doc. But then McPherson inserts the idea that in heaven you don’t know you’ve died, it’s just like your life has finally clicked into its groove; which sounds regrettably like an ad for Molson Canadian.

The Night Alive recalls Our Few and Evil Days. A very funny play, with disturbing elements, that dazzles in performance; Kinlan is hilarious, and engaging in his vulnerability, Dunbar a tremendous well-meaning screw-up, Brennan nicely enigmatic, Grimes righteously cantankerous, and Anderson terrifying. It’s afterwards you feel there was something underdeveloped dramatically about it all.

4/5

A View from the Bridge

Joe Dowling returns to Dublin from Minneapolis to direct another of Arthur Miller’s signature tragedies, following his acclaimed 2003 Abbey version of All My Sons.

Our tragic hero Eddie Carbone (Scott Aiello) works on the docks in 1950s Brooklyn; still an Italian stronghold as our narrator, and local lawyer, Alfieri (Bosco Hogan) informs us. But more important it’s still a Sicilian stronghold, and, as Alfieri warns us, the descendants of the Greeks at Syracuse are about to enact another tragedy. Eddie’s long-suffering wife Beatrice (Niamh McCann) raises Eddie’s niece Catherine (Lauren Coe) almost as her own daughter, but everything is about to change for the Carbones as she prepares to shelter her cousins Marco (Peter Coonan) and Rodolpho (Joey Phillips), fresh off a boat from Sicily and very illegal in their immigration status. But Eddie is aggrieved when Rodolpho takes a liking to Catherine, and so picks fault with Rodolpho’s extroversion that Marco has to protectively step in. But Eddie’s true motivation is even darker…

Set designer Beowulf Boritt places dockyard gantries funnelling the audience’s gaze in an odd trick of perspective towards a huge backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge. These gantries then close in to create, with the addition of a dropped-down light-shade, the Carbones’ apartment. Dowling dispenses with the elaborately shifting sets of his 2011 version of The Field, instead seamlessly changing location for scenes via Malcolm Rippeth’s expressive lighting design. He also makes notable use of Denis Clohessy’s sound design to inject a literal note of menace at the curtain when Marco effortlessly lifts a chair by one leg to issue an unspoken threat to Eddie to leave Rodolpho alone. Coonan’s physicality is brilliantly used to make Marco a man of few words, gentle, unless you cross him, and then implacably set on hurting enemies in the approved pre-Socratic Greek moral code.

Aiello is fantastic as a decent man destroying himself, at times even echoing The Crucible’s John Proctor’s concern for his good name. Aiello keeps audience sympathy as Eddie’s mind unravels because of an incestuous desire he can’t even acknowledge to himself without tearing up (though he does this maybe once too often). His attempt to convince Alfieri (a very empathetic Hogan) that Rodolpho’s ‘not right’ is played for laughs as Alfieri simply does not get what Eddie is trying to nudge, nudge about. Rodolpho is clearly not ‘not right’, but Eddie does seem to have half a point, in that Rodolpho decided (rather too quickly) to marry literally the first eligible American citizen he set eyes on. But then Alfieri’s warning that God can give someone an excessive amount of love is evidenced in a shocking scene of aggressive sexuality.

Freud notwithstanding human incest in Greek tragedies was unwitting. Miller deliberately shocks with the intentionality here, even as the vice inexorably closes for Eddie in this riveting, disturbing production.

4/5

A View from the Bridge continues its run at the Gate Theatre until the 24^th of October.

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.