Karl Broderick got into the pantomime game in 1997, and hasn’t looked back since. The trick, he says, is to have something for everybody in the audience, young and old

Books are the gifts that keep on giving. Here are some suggestions for your littler loved ones this year

Presented like an enthusiastically performed nativity play in a church hall, The Book of Mormon is a terrifically funny satire

Chris Kelly’s Twenty Minutes From Nowhere is a sparse but absorbing monologue performed impressively by Eoin O’Sullivan

Composer Michael Gallen’s new opera is an absorbing recreation of the establishment of the first Irish Soviet community in Monaghan more than a century ago

Emmett Kirwan’s new play links the social crisis unfolding in the suburb in the 1990s with the fortunes of a local video rental store

RTÉ Radio enters the Halloween spirit with scary stories for children, as well as some vintage Dracula coverage and a short story that’s definitely not for the faint-hearted

Works by three of Irish theatre’s leading lights were the star attractions at the recent Dublin Theatre Festival

ANU’s The Book of Names won’t be for everyone, but its mix of unpredictability and impressionism is a memorable one for audiences

Caitríona Daly’s new play forces us to confront our own prejudices and the charged language that surrounds the issue of sexual assault

There are 29 new original works in this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival programme, and they are likely to benefit from having had an extra 12 months to be honed and improved

The strange – and, these days, strangely topical – tale of Typhoid Mary was retold in Sarah Blake’s Documentary On One

This year’s festival is another cracker, with emerging and established artists boldly embracing edgy themes and innovative form

The Dublin-based playwright and director’s latest work, Once Before I Go, is a deeply personal analysis of the Aids crisis in Ireland

Enda Walsh returns to live theatre with a powerful portrayal of a broken life that resonates with Irish scandals such as the Mother and Baby homes

Walls and Windows by Rosaleen McDonagh is the first portrayal of a Traveller in Irish theatre not as a comic foil or as the Other, but as an ordinary person

Dublin City Council was in the news for the wrong reasons again, when it announced that it was ending the pedestrianisation of some city centre streets – a decision it later reversed

A hospitality offering alongside live shows finds a clever way to bring theatre back within public health guidelines

Garry Hynes’s masterful revival of Thomas Kilroy’s take on a Chekhov classic benefits from a stunning setting in Coole Park in Co Galway