Dublin Theatre Festival 2026: visions

Chris O'Rourke

15 minutes ago

3 min read

Derbhle Crotty in visions by Eoghan Quinn. Image Patricio Cassinoni

A hallmark of Dublin Theatre Festival 2026 has been round-the-table read-throughs lazily insinuating themselves into several productions. Radio Bette, Animals and now Eoghan Quinn’s everything and the kitchen sink, visions. A guided meditation on Dublin then and now not to be undertaken while driving. Quinn’s storytelling memory play in three theatrical acts divided into a rehearsal read-through, followed by a sequence of monologues, ending with a troubled attempt at a play. Parts one and two an hour-long radio play thinking it's a novel optioned as a screenplay. The final forty-five minutes livening up, only to become a pointless preamble going nowhere. The whole redeemed by some of the finest acting talents in the country, wasted in a production that asks too much, talks too much, tries too hard and delivers too little.

Narratively, there’s little to excite. In a former basement ballroom in a Georgian building near the Rotunda hospital, evocative of the Ierne or National Ballroom, the frazzled Denise (an incomparable Derbhle Crotty) avoids her phone whilst trying to complete the room’s restoration for an event to be held there that evening. Her principled project manager, Tadgh (a remarkable Mark Lambert), expresses concerns about an ancient chandelier. Enter lively academic, artist and activist Amy (a scene-stealing Lauren Larkin) from Dublin Council, who’s indifferent to the unlisted chandelier and more concerned with her pregnant sister’s ultrasound. Leaving Denise and her business partner Rob (a brilliant Oliver Flitcroft whose star, this year, is in its ascendancy) arguing with Tadgh about what best to do. Meanwhile, the clamouring, mean streets of Dublin facilitate matches, marches, riots and traffic jams all perilously imposing. The whole dissolving into a final voice-over expounding half baked notions nostalgic for a future.

Thematically, visions’ recycling of rare auld times is offset by its trivia of zeitgeist tropes: conservation, restoration, immigration, transportation, gentrification, accommodation, vertigo and MILFs. Indeed, a game to help you stay awake (in fairness, the unconscious gentleman three seats down might have fainted), would be to find a current hot topic visions doesn’t refer to. All skimmed over as soundbite stud marks. Or is that skid marks? Whichever one it is, dramaturgy should hang its head in shame. A proliferation of jargon trying to pass as ideas rapidly becoming the bane of theatre.

Following a tedious first act, in which a wasted Ghallia Conroy reads stage directions as the others sit and talk, director Claire O’Reilly and designer Katie Davenport show evangelical zeal as they attempt a visual miracle. Davenport’s wrecking-ball chandelier, most effective as a metaphor in the dream-sequence second act, aspiring to connect past and present. Davenport’s costumes further establishing links between building, objects and people as monologues lullaby bedtime stories about popcorn, dances, and teenage first kisses. Against which tribal rhythms enact a circular dance as mist pours in from everywhere. Yet the chandelier proves a one-trick pony, albeit a good one, that puts all its design eggs into one oversized basket. Enriched by John Gunning’s exuberant lighting that adds tone and texture. Anna Clock’s sound design disappointingly dulling out the sounds of the city whilst allowing The Tennessee Waltz double date the 1950s and the 1970s. In the end, especially in the final act, it is invested performances that ensure engagement. Yet just because Crotty, Lambert, Larkin and Flitcroft can invigorate a shopping list of tedious topics is no reason to make them do so.

Occasionally funny, sometimes insightful, most times neither, visions, spelt in lowercase like an embarrassed apology, tries to speak to our future. On the evidence of which both Dublin and theatre’s future looks uncertain. visions marks Quinn's debut at the Abbey, and while it’s great to see The Peacock housing and developing young, new voices, visions’ prolonged run promotes expectations it can never deliver on. Quinn, showing a sense of the theatrical and for snappy dialogue in the final act, a talent with serious promise. Yet serious problems dog visions, raising questions about the supports being offered to young Irish writers and to new work being put out there too early.