The Arts Review​

Ryan Donaldson in Do You Come From Gomorrah? Image: Ros Kavanagh. **** The Peacock has a proud history as a development space for a new works by new writers. Something many would like to see reinstated on a year round basis. So why is a new play by one of Ireland’s pre-eminent playwrights, Frank McGuinness, premiering there and not in the Big House next door? Well, The Peacock is traditionally a space to experiment, and Do You Come From Gomorrah? finds McGuinness experimenti

Niall McNamee and Tabitha Smyth in The House Must Win.  Credit, Ruth Medjber ***** It might be set in the west of Ireland during the 1970s but make no mistake, Mick Flannery's musical, The House Must Win , is a Western. A six gun, poker playing, shot down in the prime of life Western. Where drunkards, gamblers and honourable men loiter in a smoky saloon as the last train whistles in the distant darkness. Men doing, or failing to do, what a man's gotta do. Independent women,

Eoin O'Sullivan and Paddy McEneaney in Ante Beckett. Image by Al Craig *** It's a brave soul who’d take on Samuel Beckett. The risk of appearing derivative, of excessive homage, of looking like a tribute act enough to dissuade the most ardent enthusiast. Ante Beckett by Joel Smith , a sincere love letter to all things Beckett, a little of all the above. A tale of two foetus in the womb pondering the Tao like mysteries of something and nothing, Smith’s cleverly quipped script