The Arts Review​

Eimear Barr and Clodagh Mooney-Duggan in In Vitro. Image, Al Craig *** Mark Twain claimed you should never let truth get in the way of a good story. When it comes to Aoife O'Connor's intriguing In Vitro , it's sound advice. Only the advice isn’t heeded. Its eagerness to share truths about the pressures of surrogacy undermining, and undermined by, O’Connor’s far more effecting story. That of a troubled couple, Sam and Lily, together two years, living together one, thinking of

Amber Norelai (Sharp Ears) in INO's The Cunning Little Vixen. Image, Ruth Medjber *** From Aesop’s Fables to Watership Down , anthropomorphic allegories continue to enjoy universal appeal. A big word to describe little stories in which animals display human characteristics. Usually with a moral, and frequently with a dark side. If Beatrix Potter, Wind in the Willows and Walt Disney sanitised nature’s blood torn bodies, Leoš Janáček ’s 1924 opera The Cunning Little Vixen r

Ross Gaynor and Ian Toner in Simon Stephens' A Slow Fire. Image, Irem Akay New Critical Voices: encouraging a diversity of critical viewpoints through real time opportunities for aspiring critics. **** We tell ourselves stories in order to live, Joan Didion declares in the famous opening line of The White Album. How do we make sense of tragedy and chaos? Storytelling, Didion answers. We look for the sermon in suicide. We impose narrative upon disorder and uncertainty. In his