Reviews

Though beautifully staged and performed, Saved at the Peacock is no easy ride. Review by Colin Murphy

Black Snake Moan, a tale of a God-fearing backwoodsman who tries to teach the village nymphomaniac the error of her ways, starts off well but descends into laughable farce, while My Best Friend is pleasantly predictable. By Declan Burke

The Abbey Theatre is, as ever, consistent in its unwavering approach to performance scheduling. It tends to dominate the early part of the calendar year with an assortment of adventurous playwriting and sumptuous visual productions. Come the summer months and it inevitably grows more conservative, regularly portraying works from the cavernous back catalogue of literary masters. The summer fades and autumn draws forth the interesting a new once again – culminating in the fringe and theatre festivals were their unorthodox variety of the fresh and the bold.

Thomas Brezing is one of those rare contemporary artists who forges an inner connection between art and life and “becomes answerable through and through”, as Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin once challenged artists to do. Brezing's sense of answerability extends beyond his individual actions to those of Germany, the country in which he was born. He lays bare his sense of complicity in the horrors of the Nazi era. Whether by default or blood lines, German history is under his skin.

Colin Murphy speaks to theatre director Bisi Adigun about ‘intercultural Ireland', making Christy Mahon Nigerian and the troubled end to his stint on RTÉ

There is old-time, small-town humour and song on stage at the Abbey. What happened to the Billy Roche play, wonders Colin Murphy

Naomi Watts's character is punished for her infidelities in a faithful adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil, while the director and writer of Fast Food Nation push their agenda down our throats. By Declan Burke

Tom Rowe recounts his 'journey' through Europe in the mobile cinematic experience of  Cargo Sofia which runs until Friday 4 May from St. Georges Dock in Dublin.

A relatively short three-act play, Dublin Carol by Conor McPherson explores family life through the prism of alcohol abuse. The current production by the Everyman Palace Theatre group is handled with adroit care. Staged in the very small ‘theatre' section of Andrew's Lane in Dublin, it consists of no more than a fourth-wall viewing of a tiny funeral home office where the action takes place on a single Christmas Eve.

An ill-fated love story from ancient Greece is the subject of Michael Kane's latest exhibition at the Rubicon Gallery. For much of the artist's career, spanning some 40 years, his work has been largely figurative, expressionistic in style and marked by a unique amalgam of influences from Greek and Roman mythology, an intimacy with the architecture and nature of Dublin city, and personal admissions regarding socio-political stance and religious dogma.