Reviews

In the tradition of contemporary Irish theatre, Conor McPherson mixes humour and the macabre in this gritty black comedy. His characters are as graphically realistic as the cluttered, shabby room in which they meet – and under the direction of Maeliosa Stafford, they meet with the rhythm and cadence that make them uncompromisingly Irish in a play that moves frighteningly quickly at times – and just a bit slowly at others.

There are surely more plays and films set around dinner tables than we’ve all had hot dinners. Almost. Dinner parties of course are highly theatrical affairs and Moira Buffini really lets hers rip in her 2002 play, Dinner.

Set in an English country manor, bitch hostess Paige supervises a surreal menu to mark the publication of her husband’s hit philosophical opus.  A former stockbroker, Lars’ book is some Nietzschean ode to righteously selfish action, and the dinner guests match its values …. 

Jamaica Zuanetti’s play is inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s observation: “It is, again, one of the loving woman’s misfortunes to find that her very love disfigures her, destroys her, she is nothing more than this slave, this servant, this too ready mirror, this too faithful echo.”

A polished, funny show about sex.  But wittily risqué rather than ‘shocking’ – naughty but nice, surprising and funny all the way through.  Helen Cassidy comes on as the cliché librarian with the glasses and the under-control hair –except that the hair is red, the heels are a little too high and the skirt is a little too tight and too short.  Within minutes she’s perched on a mound of soft toys, reading us a story from a nice, illustrated picture book about her first sexual experiences with a fluffy koala… who then gets to te