On the eve of partition, Donal Davoren (Adam Petherbridge, the understudy, in the performance I attended) is just trying to write some verse. Living in a cramped Dublin tenement visited by a rotating cast of caricatures, Davoren is constantly interrupted by the havering of his neighbors, who are under the impression that he is an […]
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Bill Irwin—who reminds us several times throughout On Beckett that he is in his “dotage”—is a member of a fading profession. In the ‘seventies, he trained at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, a defunct school named after a company that closed after over a century just last year. The vaudeville tradition he adores […]
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One of Eugene O’Neill’s earliest successes, The Emperor Jones finds its title character ruling an unnamed island in the Caribbean. Having fled American justice, Brutus Jones (Obi Abili) exploits the superstitions of the local population to squeeze them dry, convincing them he can only be killed by a silver bullet. When the Cockney trader Henry Smithers (Andy Murray) […]
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In his lifetime, James Joyce considered the possibility of having Ulysses adapted into a movie—and even met once with Sergei Eisenstein about it. After his death, two attempts were made in English: Joseph Strick’s 1967 Ulysses and Sean Walsh’s 2003 Bloom, both of which—like Marleen Gorris’ 1997 Mrs. Dalloway—sacrifice the spirit of the great novel […]
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What better way to spend an evening than listening to stories about and poems by Harold Pinter?
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Brian Friel may be the most overrated living playwright, but the Irish Repertory Theatre is making a convincing if modest case for him with their revival of The Freedom of the City. Following the deaths of three Irish protestors, the city of Londonderry tries to make sense of what happened. They are lionized by a […]
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The Irish Repertory has not had a good year. First, there was Brian Friel’s stultifying, cringingly sentimental Dancing at Lughnasa, then Eugene O’Neill’s bloated, unbearable Beyond the Horizon. A Shavian comedy is just the kind of play that is needed to inject some life into this theater—and at first glance, Man and Superman seems to […]
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