The Arts Review​

How To Catch A Star. Image, Anita Murphy ***** Before CGI and digital animation there was puppetry. A staple on TV screens for adults and children alike. Thunderbirds, The Muppets, Bosco, Sesame Street, Spitting Image ; puppetry was everywhere. Nowadays it’s harder to find, like a shooting star. So when it crosses your sky you should do everything in your power to witness its wonder. Like Branar’s delightful forty-five minutes, How To Catch A Star. A puppet show, without w

Dublin Gothic by Barbara Bergin. Image, Ros Kavanagh *** Barbara Bergin’s debut play Dublin Gothic promises a performance of ‘the epic of the everyday.’ Straight out of a People in History schoolbook, it presents hidden heroes of Dublin who struggle to adjust and survive various changes from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Over one-hundred years characters face historical crises such as rent wars, the AIDs epidemic, the questionable powers of the Catholic church, e

Maria Oxley Boardman and Risteárd Cooper in Uncle Vanya. Image, Olga Kuzmenko **** Brian Friel had deep admiration for Anton Chekhov. His 1998 adaptation of Uncle Vanya , intriguingly directed by Cathal Cleary at Smock Alley Theatre, making it easy to understand why. Remove the Russian names and there’s something peculiarly Irish about Chekhov’s 1897 masterpiece, predictive of Eugene O’Neill and Tom Murphy. Wherein one family’s ties, lies and misdemeanours make up the meani