The Mac, BelfastA Northern Irish teenager escaping to Wales for an abortion is played with huge empathy, lifting a script that is thin on drama A young woman lies across a row of hard plasti…
Gate, DublinThree nuclear physicists are reunited in this drama about ageing, marriage and sexual rivalry, directed by Oonagh Murphy With its slow release of a series of moral questions, Luc…
Two frank solo shows, East Belfast Boy and Every Day I Wake Up Hopeful, depict male crises with heart, humour and hip-hopSaggy and shuffling, his dressing gown flapping over a middle-aged sp…
Dublin theatre festivalA forgotten play by Seán O'Casey inspires Anu Productions' immersive journey through a dilapidated block of flatsTwo or three return visits would be required to pie…
Peacock, DublinStem cells, DNA and subtle psychology give an edge to Michael West's deft contemporary reboot of FrankensteinPlaywright Michael West fuses old and new ideas in his gripping ad…
Town Hall theatre, GalwayStanley Townsend brings the poet's searing love poetry to life in a visually stunning show boasting some Beckettian touchesFor the bereaved it can often feel as if n…
Gate, DublinThe author's adaptation of his comic novel about an unplanned pregnancy is filled with nostalgic touches and noisy energyRoddy Doyle's recent books have delved into such difficul…
Lyric, BelfastMillions of children around the world love Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's story of a quest for companionship and understanding. The best-selling French novella from 1943 has succe…
Abbey theatre, DublinA sensitive revival of Brian Friel's play about a Catholic family in Donegal offers no easy answers to the problems of class and kinThe title of Brian Friel's play from …
Black Box, GalwayIn Enda Walsh's adaptation of the Max Porter novel, Murphy is riveting as a bereaved husband " and an imaginary crowEnda Walsh's plays are populated with characters coping, …
At Dublin's Abbey and Gate theatres and beyond, a grassroots movement has put the spotlight on a new wave of female playwrights, directors and other creatives In The Red Shoes at Dublin's Ga…
At the Dublin theatre festival, Shakespeare is reunited with his son, Sebastian Barry's prisoners look back, Ibsen's Nora lands in a dystopian future and Anu Productions deliver an urgent ta…
Black Box, GalwayPlaywright Walsh and composer Donnacha Dennehy's exhilarating blend of opera, theatre and film is a study in heartbreak with a hint of Bluebeard's CastlePlaywright Enda Wals…
Lyric, BelfastCasting women as the criminal gang heightens the artifice and adds a poignant twist to Graham Linehan's adaptation of the classic film comedyCasting women in the roles of the f…
Lyric, BelfastPatrick O'Kane embraces both the humour and humanity of the troubled abstract expressionist in John Logan's award-winning playHumour is not readily associated with the abstract…
Old Cork prison, CorkTwo women meet in a psychiatric institution and realise they are the same person in a riveting, superbly realised productionFor the 25th anniversary of Corcadorca theatr…
Project Arts Centre, DublinThis tale of a daughter and her dead father, a former Maze prison hunger striker, is strong on symbolism and has an incantatory performance by Olwen FouéréA daug…
Abbey theatre, Dublin Marina Carr and Wayne Jordan's distillation of the 800-page behemoth conjures impressive set-pieces but wobbles on individual characterisationsIt is not hard to see why…
Abbey theatre, DublinAnnabelle Comyn's staging of this drama of marital suffocation is so cool and controlled that it becomes almost inertIn Mark O'Rowe's new version of Ibsen's 1890 drama, …
Lyric theatre, Belfast Lucy Caldwell freights her well-observed Chekhov adaptation with the tensions of 1990s Belfast, adding to the siblings' sense of stifled isolation "We can't stand it …
Her plays have explored porn, technology and life in her childhood home of Belfast. Stacey Gregg talks about tackling 'gender fraud' with the award-winning Scorch and interweaving tales of I…
Lyric theatre, BelfastLisa Dwyer Hogg's crop-haired Joan is an unshakeable believer raging within a corporate world in this updated version of George Bernard Shaw's playGeorge Bernard Shaw h…
Abbey theatre, DublinAmong three sharp leads, Aisling O'Sullivan is riveting as an Irishwoman learning disturbing truths about her home town in this revival of Tom Murphy's 1998 playFrom hig…
Abbey, DublinPhillip McMahon and Raymond Scannell's 'play within music' is a sometimes awkward yet always impassioned story about a working-class woman's strugglesPlaywright Phillip McMahon …
Samuel Beckett theatre, DublinEimear McBride's award-winning novel transitions perfectly to the stage in Corn Exchange's startling and upsetting Dublin theatre festival show about the impact…