The Arts Review​

Zinc, by Dead Centre & Théâtre De Liege. Image Alexandre Fytrakis ***** “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam/A country without a language is a country without a soul.”famous Irish revolutionary Pádraig Pearse once famously wrote. When we arrive in this world language becomes the architecture of our imagination and history; the bricks we use to build and the bricks we throw. But it’s world making and world breaking, since the imposition of new language to erase a former has long bee

Marty Rea and Eileen Walsh in A Moon for the Misbegotten. Image Ste Murray *** When first produced in 1947, Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten was greeted as an utter disaster. It wasn't till 1973, twenty-five years after its initial production, that director Jose Quintero's revival led to O'Neill's final play being reclaimed as an American classic. Then, as now, not everyone was convinced. Druid's current production, part of their Strange Country: Ireland in Americ

Mary Murray, Sabah Qalo, Hannah von Peinen, Holger-Kraft in Refuge. Image, Andreas-Etter **** There's something disturbingly thrilling about Deirdre Kinahan's politically fused tragedy Refuge. A joint production between Ireland's Fishamble: The New Play Company and Germany's Staatstheater Mainz exploring the bloody feud that arose when 18th-century German Protestant settlers, at the behest of English colonisers, were given land in rural Limerick. Known as The Palatines, they