The Arts Review​

Lloyd Hutchinson in A Christmas Carol. Image, Ros Kavanagh **** T’is the season. The season for Charles Dickens iconic A Christmas Carol , guaranteed to be playing at a venue near you. And why wouldn’t it? It remains the most captivating Christmas tale of all time even though it’s been endlessly reimagined. Throwing yet another reimagining into the ring, the Gate Theatre presents Neil Bartlett's clunky interpretation from 2002. One that leans into Alistair Sim’s 1951 clas

Luke Griffin in The Kiss. Image, Amelia Stewart Keating ***** There’s something in the water at Bewley's Café Theatre. That, or their ascendant star sign is in lunar retrograde signalling a particularly propitious moment. How else can you explain lightning striking the same place and in the same manner twice? The little theatre that could delivering back to back, five star productions. Stuart Roche’s tautly scripted, exquisitely performed and superbly directed one hander, Sh

Marion O'Dwyer and Mark Lambert in Ferocity. Image, Ciar á n Bagnall **** The 1980s cemented the shift from who we were as a nation towards who we might become. A decade in which Catholic conservatism gave way to social unrest. Christian O’Reilly’s family drama, Ferocity , set in a Big House in North Kerry over the Christmas season tapping into the tensions of the time. Between old traditions and the emerging young. Between keeping secrets and being freed by the truth. O’Rei