Dublin Theatre Festival 2026: Cyclone

Chris O'Rourke

7 hours ago

4 min read

Campbell Courage and Sheik Bah in Cyclone. Image, Patricio Cassinoni.

*****

Today, Railway Street and its environs offer a gentrified reimagining of Dublin's north inner city. A place old yet new, unchanged and yet transformed. Traces of buildings and people devastated by heroin in the 1980s sitting next to shiny, hipster-designed feats of architectural engineering. The streets and businesses a heady mix of locals and new immigrant communities. Fainter traces of an erased history are harder to find. The area known as The Monto, Europe's biggest tenement slum and red-light district at the beginning of the twentieth century, rendered practically invisible. The Monto's poverty and people, stories and characters, history and nostalgia now a memory of a memory. The perfect spot for Dublin's premier theatre company ANU to set up studio. The award-winning company renowned for reclaiming invisible and forgotten histories with immersive, visceral immediacy kicking off their long-term residency with Cyclone. A tale of cheats, liars and myth-makers. Of world-class boxers and secrets hidden in plain sight on the streets of Dublin. ANU's impeccable production landing a theatrical left hook, connecting with dramatic jabs, dazzling with gobsmacking, haymaker performances before flooring you with an emotional knockout punch. One that ensures you won't survive the count.

Jamie O'Neill and Michael Glenn Murphy in Cyclone. Image, Patricio Cassinoni.

In one respect, Cyclone proves a site-specific production. The large studio, still under construction, being where the tenement home of black boxer Billy "The Cyclone" Warren once stood. The sometimes bouncer a permanent fixture at the GPO where, donning a bowler hat, jaded crombie and Nugget boot-polish sandwich board, would shine shoes to make ends meet. A man who once sold medicinal snake oil, who travelled the world far and wide. A man once renowned as an undefeated, world-class boxer. Yet was Billy Warren his real name? Where did he come from? Who was the man with whom he travelled, who visited him during his time in hospital, and with whom he lived in a tenement in Railway Street? What was the nature of their relationship? Was Warren really undefeated? Did he, as rumour has it, defeat the legendary Jack Johnson only for it to be hushed up?

Sheik Bah and Michael Glenn Murphy in Cyclone. Image, Patricio Cassinoni.

Untangling truths in a tale told by liars, cheats, myth-makers and snake-oil salesmen is no easy feat. But in Louise Lowe's superlative script, the story is not the whole story, with lies, and the need for lies revealing the bigger truth. A simple device of Jamie O'Neill's superb invested journalist seeking the truth about Warren from the tight-lipped man himself, and his blind, alcoholic, lifelong partner, establishing a clever through line. Sheik Bah's proud Warren a man of commanding authority, suppressed rage and beguiling charm all beautifully conveyed. The inimitable Michael Glenn Murphy's blind, weak-willed, chess player crafted from heartbreak astonishing, clutching his shambles of a life in a tattered satchel. Both men revealing less their secrets so much as a world of strict observances, with deviance punishable in endless ways. Where masculine violence becomes currency. A way to hide your sexuality, or have the colour of your skin tolerated enough to gain income, opportunity and respect. For in the ring, all men are equal. Bodies beaten down by poverty take another beating in the hope of a better life. Like Campbell Courage's excellent Jack Johnson, a pimped Apollo Creed strutting his confidence. Subtext echoing Ta-Nehisi Coates' excellent Between The World And Me which describes how black bodies are uniquely hardened, punished and shaped by the streets. Bodies etched in sweating, scarred musculature. Matthew Williamson's divine choreography marrying a dancer's grace with the calculated violence of the boxing match; the ducks, dives, whirls and weaves as punches are traded with the violence of lions and the litheness of butterflies.

LA Feeney in Cyclone. Image, Patricio Cassinoni.

If narrative waters can become muddied with guesswork, themes emerge with clarity and potency. Throughout, a ferocious glint illuminates Lowe's taut script. They might be diamonds, or granite, or a blade of Toledo steel, but words shine and cut deeply. Revealing subtle dimensions in rhythm, shape, feeling and tone that articulate the story Lowe shapes and tells. Lowe's narrative never leading you by the hand, but trusting you to join the dots. Throwaway comments about foul air in the tenements echoed later by a man coughing his lungs up in hospital. Or the unspoken pursuit of the hardworking dream leading from the slums around Lennox Avenue, Harlem, to the slums around Tyrone Street, Dublin. Leaving behind Jim Crow for Defence of the Realm. The game the same, the match forever rigged.

Michael Glenn Murphy in Cyclone. Image, Patricio Cassinoni.

An ANU production is a symphony of words, silence, sounds, sights and movement. Lowe might score and conduct, and do so brilliantly, but it's the orchestra who infuse it with life. Owen Boss's scenic design, one part dilapidated gym, one part dilapidated hospital recreation room navigating the new build's current restrictions so convincingly you forget you're in a single room. Rob Moloney's compound score and Eoin Lennon's evocative lights reinforce a sense of a different time and place physically, socially and culturally. Saileóg O'Halloran's impeccably detailed costumes enhancing what is an insanely gifted ensemble, which includes LA Feeney as a wild eyed, Irish dreamer.

Sheik Bah in Cyclone. Image, Patricio Cassinoni.

With Cyclone, ANU confirm they are only getting better. A profound merging of history, memory, myth, nostalgia, truth, half-truths and falsehoods, Cyclone reclaims a remarkable time and a remarkable man. An immigrant of colour living in poverty on the mean streets of Dublin. Harrowing, heartfelt, timely and timeless, Cyclone is a tour de force.