The Irish language is noteworthy in using religious terms for greetings: Dia duit ‘God with you’ is responded to by Dia is Muire Duit ‘God and Mary with you.’ The latter response is not as prevalent nowadays)….It is not clear what playboy means in the drama and it is not clear that playboy was used regularly in the English of the west of Ireland at that time. Why then did Synge use this word for his protagonist? Continue reading
Joyce, Groucho Marx and the fraught sexual politics of women in the cut-throat Joyce industry. Continue reading
Rosán Sensory Adventures, founded by Phillida Eves, is taking its immersive sensory performance “Antarctica!” to the Lincoln Centre in New York and later to Sydney. Inspired by Ernest Shackleton’s expedition, the production incorporates sensory elements for neurodiverse audiences, emphasizing interaction and storytelling through visual imagery, music, and real ice. Continue reading
Her final words are to the homeless and to those who become so because home is not safe: ‘To anyone trapped in a place that does not feel like home, and anyone who has ever been asked the question ‘why don’t you just leave?’ This book is for you. Continue reading
I have a wee reservation about the title. Neither the play nor the pub are a bit of a lark, in the sense of harmless fun. In my experience, pubs from the time depicted in the play were the pits. Continue reading
The wicked history of ‘Monto’ spreads itself accommodatingly from the 1860s up to the 1950s. ‘Monto’ was, at one time, so it is claimed, to be the largest redlight district in Europe. It is estimated that there were at times up to 1,600 prostitutes working there. Continue reading
Two Dublin men, Eric Moran and Ryan Haran, are, for the first time in its 32 year history, in leading roles in ‘Circe’s Carnival of Vice’. Continue reading
Tarrac, a heart-warming Irish language comedy drama set on the Kerry coast in Dingle… Joyce feels like someone we can know, though probably not like very much….The scaffolding and the bedrock of this visually sumptuous film is what it does with landscapes and cloudscapes and the imposition of the human impress on them. Continue reading
Two books of history, one recent, and one book that is actually a novel. Continue reading
I read The Banshees of Inisherin as an allegory of this vicious civil conflict, told in a loose but recognisable metaphor of the breakdown of a once close friendship. Continue reading
Tinteán 