Bleak tale blows in from Russia

Desire remains an eerie and intelligent piece of theatre that fully succeeds on its own modest terms

Paul Kealyn in Desire, Peter Reid’s stage adaptation of a Tolstoy novella Pic: Alan Craig

Desire

By Peter Reid

The New Theatre, Temple Bar, Dublin

Rating:***

Runs until March 10

‘I stare at the blackness and everything becomes clearer,” is the opening line of Desire, Peter Reid’s bleak but compelling one-man play loosely adapted from a novella by Leo Tolstoy. In fact, it soon becomes clear that our haunted narrator Eugene (Paul Kealyn) is still deeply confused about what has reduced him to such a pitiful state. He ...