February's Theatre

One of the most enticing prospects of the new  year opens the month of February at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. Michael Barker Caven, fresh from directing Shadowlands to acclaim on the West End, turns his attention to Strindberg's Miss Julie (a version by Frank McGuinness). Caven enjoys his sexual politics and power play on stage, so this should suit him.

There's plenty of those same ingredients on offer from 12 February, when the two big houses go head to head. Jason Byrne directs Romeo and Juliet at the Abbey, while the Gate opens The Glass Menagerie with telly star Francesca Annis in the lead role. That makes it of at least celeb watching interest, though the choice of play doesn't promise a break from the Gate's recent run of leaden classics. But if Byrne can combine his textual rigour with the edgy, urban approach promised in the advance publicity (and if, in doing so, he can avoid aping Baz Luhrmann), Romeo and Juliet (pictured below) could be, well, electric.

The Bard is out and about as well, with Second Age's Macbeth and Rough Magic's lively The Taming of the Shrew on national tour, while English drama of a very different vintage is on offer in London Classic Theatre's touring production of Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party.

The New Theatre in Dublin offers two intriguing prospects. A company called Serendipity opens a two week run of The Backside of the Bills, by Kerstin Specht, on 4 February. That's followed on 21 February by a new play from Daniel Reardon, Bleeding Poets, which imagines a visit to famine-struck Ireland by Edgar Allen Poe in 1847, and his meeting with two Irish poets, James Clarence Mangan and Francis Sylvester Mahony.

Back at Project, the kids are doing their own thing. The innovative Brokentalkers are offering an audio guided walking tour of Chinese Dublin in Track, at 1pm and 3pm daily from 1– 11 February. And up and coming director Tom Creed brings us an ensemble piece inspired by Wuthering Heights, The Heights, from 31 January.