Theatre | Business Post

Two trailblazers ask, What now? in the modern Ireland they helped create

The Peacock stage hosts a double bill of heartfelt, funny memoir-plays by Tara Flynn and Panti Bliss, who campaigned for Repeal and marriage equality respectively, about how it was for them and ‘what they are even for’ now that the campaigns are over

Immersive Joycean dance theatre production embodies scents and sensibility

Go to Blazes, part of the Ulysses 2.2 project, assaults the senses with an intimate close-up mixed-media offering that gets right up your nose

Bringing the magic ingredients to Beauty and the Beast

As the ever-popular musical comes to the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, director Matt West reveals how he has updated elements of the classic story for modern times, but has still kept it true to the original

‘I thought I’ll try writing a book. Everyone thinks they have a book in them, right?’ – Michael Ball

Musical theatre star Michael Ball had some time to spare during the pandemic and put his theatrical experience to good use when he wrote The Empire, which charts the fate of a grand theatre in post-World War One London

Sara Keating: Second Captains podcast proves sports and literature can be on the same team

There are lessons from both worlds that any discipline can share, as the current Dublin Book Festival programme acknowledges

Classical Notes

Dick O’Riordan: Magical moments abound as Irish stars shine bright at Wexford

Irish talent shone through at this year’s largely spell-binding Wexford Festival Opera, conjuring stellar performances in three major productions

Sara Keating: A deadly celebration of Bram Stoker’s lasting legacy

The Bram Stoker Festival, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, offers intimate glimpses of the inspiring moments that made Stoker a literary man

Sara Keating: Shaw’s feminist thinking shines through in My Fair Lady revival

The attitudes to women and the working classes that George Bernard Shaw exposed in his most famous play resonate over 100 years after its premiere

Classical Notes

Dick O’Riordan: INO works up a gallop to deliver William Tell opera

William Tell, Rossini’s final masterpiece and rarely seen on stage, opens for five performances by the Irish National Opera (INO) at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, on November 8

Sara Keating: Powerful drama seeks to change the narrative around disability

Galway theatre company Blue Teapot asked uncomfortable questions of its audience in No Magic Pill, a play that dramatised the struggles faced by disability activist Martin Naughton

Claudia Carroll: ‘Your character might be awful, but you have to find out what made them like that’

Fair City star and best-selling novelist Claudia Carroll has never lost her love of theatre, whether as a participant or in the audience, and she is thrilled to be appearing in a new play in Limerick with a strong rugby connection

Sara Keating: Stripped back productions affirm the vitality of live performance

Post-pandemic, it is proving challenging to attract former, or new, audiences to the theatre; these two offerings admirably remind us of the ephemeral staged reality of a live show

Sara Keating: O’Brien and McGuinness grapple with the idea of legacy

Edna O’Brien’s Joyce’s Women seeks to illuminate the writer’s life through the eyes of the females who loved him, while Frank McGuinness’s Dinner with Groucho whimsically dramatises a meeting between Groucho Marx and TS Eliot

Brian Gleeson: ‘I always wanted the learning experience of going back to theatre’

After working with some of the greatest film directors in cinematic history, the scion of Irish thespian royalty is now going back to his roots by appearing in Tom Murphy’s A Whistle in the Dark at the Abbey

Sara Keating: Dublin Theatre Festival 2022 pushes the boundaries once again

This year’s festival has a robust programme of shows from all over the world, designed to reflect global issues as well as theatrical trends

Sara Keating: A fresh, necessary take on the Mother and Baby Homes scandal

Dylan Coburn Gray's Absent the Wrong, running at the Abbey Theatre, is an often difficult watch but worth the effort

Sara Keating: Alternative voices and spaces still give the Fringe its edge

The Dublin Fringe Festival, which runs from September 10-24, continues to provide a platform for theatre’s new writers, with new work from Nigerian-Irish writer Samuel Yakura and Lianne O’Hara among others

Sara Keating: For Dublin thespians, money’s too tight to mention – or is it?

Stretched finances among the artistic community have long been a taboo subject in the theatre, but there are signs that this may slowly be changing

Sara Keating: A romantic drama with an edge shines at Bewleys

Aisling O’Mara’s Next Please is an appealing tale of two women scoping out the possibilities of a budding relationship

Emmet Kirwan: ‘It may be an Irish thing, but all the good plays are really about family’

As he adjusts to the demands of first-time fatherhood, the actor and writer’s new spoken-word verse play Accents premieres at the Dublin Fringe Festival