It's half-past three on a Sunday afternoon outside the Olympia Theatre in Dublin's Dame Street, and a scrum of bodies is masquerading as an orderly queue. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the rammy isn't a result of some reality TV teen sensation about to appear in concert on the Olympia stage. It is instead down to the Galway-based Druid theatre company's brand new productions of two very different plays by veteran Irish playwright and another kind of legend, Tom Murphy. Druid's revival of Bailegangaire, which they first presented in 1985, was a mighty enough proposition by itself for this year's Dublin Theatre Festival, which ended this weekend. A tale of a senile old woman telling a story she refuses to finish as her two-grand-daughters navigate their lives around her has become a modern classic. Paired with a new play, Brigit, a prequel of sorts featuring the characters from Bailegangaire thirty years earlier was an even more tantalising prospect.
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.