Review of My Best Friend By Tamsin Oglesby

photo credit: mohammadali My Best Friend recently returned to a 2 week stint in the New Theatre, having completed a very successful run there in 2010. It’s about 3 school friends, in their early 30s, who are re-united in a French farmhouse. The play starts off by drawing you into a friendly, convivial atmosphere, as 2 friends put their lives in perspective, in the way any 2 holidaying friends might.  The tension begins innocuously, as Bee and... Read More

Review: Twelve Days In May

photo credit: snailo86 It is hard to imagine a bad drama about the last days of James Connolly’s life, but Frank Allens “Twelve Days in May” comes as close to fitting that description as could be conceived. For the most part, the characters display 2 emotions. Connolly himself, propped up awkwardly on a thin hospital bed at the corner of the stage from start to finish, rarely manages more than a sort of bored irritation as his impending death... Read More

Film Review: Kings.

photo credit: Nicobobinus Surely, you know what to expect from an Irish drama about Irish labourers lost to bad fortune in contemporary London? That’s right, more out pouring of scorned passions and buried secrets, all hidden behind the ruddy whiskey faces of middle aged drunks. ‘Kings’, was adapted from an award winning Gaelgoir play by Jimmy Murphy and it’s set among modern London. Essentially it’s a moral... Read More

Theatre Review: The New Electric Ballroom

“Branded, marked and scarred by talk. Boxed by words.” This is the fate of the characters of Enda Walsh’s drama. Three sisters live isolated within their house, the elder two telling and retelling the story of their humiliation at The New Electric Ballroom, many years ago. In this way, it seems much like Endgame, as the lonely monotonous existence of the characters is punctuated and enlivened by their recital of past pleasures and regrets.... Read More

Class Fictions: What 30 Years of Pesto Stains Will Do To You.

Toronto loves it’s rubbish. It loves it so much it’s hesitant to send any of it to the waste tip. Whereas we in Ireland throw consumer durables into the nearest skip or try hide them buried under food packaging for garbage day collection, Toronto breeds an informal economy of weekend garage sales. What doesn’t sell, finds its way into crumpling cardboard boxes with the label “free” attached. Overflowing mainly with... Read More

Fringefest Pt 3: Rock Candy Carnival

The Fringefest came to an end today, but it concluded good and proper for us last night with the Rockcandy Carnival event in the Speigaltent attempting to draw in some dosh for the Dublin Simon Community. The tent was certainly less crowded than on other nights, with the wooden ballroom style dancefloor never reaching more than half of its capacity. If the night was dominated by anything it was by that backward glance to eighties sequined chic that... Read More

Fringefest PT2: The Anarchic Antigone Interactive

Lightswitch is a Dublin based production company promising to bring theatre goers the ‘ridiculously serious and the seriously ridiculous.’ If its a chaotic humour and theatre of the absurd they aspire to then through a healthy mangling of a Greek classic, Antigone Interactive proves to hit the nail partially on the head but falters at the point of audience interaction and political depth. The Antigone lead comes across oozing sassy stylistic... Read More

Theatre Review: ‘Stuck Here Like That Little Bitch In Oz’.

The poster of a Munchkin clutching an over sized bottle of whiskey while peering up Dorothy’s skirt summarizes the irreverent attitude of Babylon Heights. If the land of Oz lies over the rainbow, the spotlight here is on its far from pretty underbelly of lurid sexual violence, personal betrayal and drug dependency. Describing the Wizard of Oz as an ‘indispensable part of our cultural heritage in the west,’ Welsh’s production... Read More