Theatre | Business Post

Inside the music and acting colleges training the stars of tomorrow

The BIMM institute and the Lir Academy were set up just 12 years ago and are now playing a huge part in Ireland’s cultural output, with Oscar-nominated actor Paul Mescal and chart-topping bands such as Fontaines DC and the Murder Capital taking the world by storm

Sara Keating: A charming slice of history, and cake, at Bewley’s theatre

Sam Ford’s Emergency brings to life the lot of a refugee in Ireland during WWII and takes the audience through the labyrinthine backrooms of the famous Grafton Street café – and there’s coffee and cake at the end

Sara Keating: Theatre comes of age as children’s cultural rights take centre stage

It wasn’t so long ago that family shows were rarely seen outside of panto season, now there’s one a week in the capital and much of the credit for this must go to children’s art centre The Ark

Damien Dempsey puts his personal journey in the frame

The singer-songwriter’s haunting production Tales from the Holywell invites the audience to partake in an almost religious reflection on his childhood and life as an Irish musician

Sarah Keating: New poetry collection lifts the language of medicine and bodily fluids to art

Vital Signs, a collection on illness and healing from Poetry Ireland, connects clinical language with poetic description

Sara Keating: Brigid brings stories of the power of women into the light

Brigid’s name will now mark a new bank holiday and with that it’s worth reflecting on the legends of both the Christian and pagan goddess Brigid and their enduring relevance

Succession, Oppenheimer, and Barbie: Looking forward to the cultural highlights of 2023

The highlights of the year to come as chosen by writers Ben Haugh, John Walshe, Andrea Cleary, Tony Clayton-Lea, Sara Keating and Jordan Mooney

Piaf’s spellbinding voice soars, but much is lost without translation

Camille O’Sullivan as Piaf sings with raw, raspy mettle in the musical biodrama of the legendary French singer’s life in the Gate Theatre, but those who are unfamiliar with the story should consider investing in a programme for context

A walking shadow: Tracing Shakespeare in the Bard’s own country

The playwright may be long gone, but the Warwickshire market town of Stratford-upon-Avon keeps his spirit alive. Isabel Conway indulges in a little luxury and a lot of bardolatry in the 16th-century dramatist’s birthplace

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