Latest news with #KevinBarry
Irish Examiner
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Gigs, drama, art, dance... 10 highlights of Galway Arts Festival
1 Theatre Druid, Riders to the Sea & MacBeth: The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid Lane July 10 - 26 Druid theatre company presents a double bill of JM Synge's Riders to the Sea and William Shakespeare's MacBeth. Both are directed by Druid founder Garry Hynes, feature actress Marie Mullen, and are staged in the theatre named for the late Mick Lally. It is 50 years since the three established Druid as the first Irish professional theatre company outside Dublin, a landmark anniversary that is also celebrated in an exhibition of photographs by Joe O'Shaughnessy, at the Kenny Gallery on Tuam Road, covering the broad sweep of the ensemble's achievements. 2 Kevin Barry, The Cave: Town Hall Theatre, Courthouse Square July 22 - 26 Kevin Barry is best known as the author of a series of inventive novels, including the International Dublin Literary Award-winning City of Bohane. Barry's adaptation of his short story collection, There Are Little Kingdoms, was produced to great acclaim by Meridian in Cork in 2008, and it seems extraordinary that it has taken so long to present his work on the stage once more. The Cave stars Aaron Monaghan and Tommy Tiernan as Bopper and Archie McRae, a pair of petty criminal brothers holed up in the mountains in Co Sligo, with Judith Roddy as their garda sister Helen. 3 Oh…: Galway Atlantaquaria, Salthill July 8 – 26 Mikel Murfi Mikel Murfi's unforgettable one-man theatre productions have included I Hear You and Rejoice and The Man in the Woman's Shoes. Murfi trained at L'École Internationale de Théatre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, where the emphasis is on physical performance. Never one to shirk a challenge, he presents his new show - a reflection on new journeys, partings and the possibility of moving on - in the main tank of Galway Atlantaquaria. 4 Mogwai: Heineken Big Top July 24 Mogwai's eleventh album in 30 years, The Bad Fire, landed in January. The Scottish noise merchants' song titles are even better than Morrissey's – Fanzine Made of Flesh, Pale Vegan Hip Pain and If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others are just some of the beauties on The Bad Fire – and their politics are far more palatable. Most of their oeuvre is instrumental, but possessed of a grandeur that belies their origins in the indie scene in 1990s Glasgow. 5 Mary Coughlan: Heineken Big Top July 23 Since her first album, Tired and Emotional, in 1985, the Galway-born chanteuse Mary Coughlan has interpreted everything from smoky blues to jazz and trad, Jacques Brel and Leonard Cohen to Jimmy McCarthy and Johnny Mulhern. Her sometimes tumultuous life has been grist to the mill for the tabloids, but at 69, she remains a formidable and much-loved talent. Coughlan's 40th Anniversary Greatest Hits Show features her full band, along with a string and brass section. 6 David Mach, Burning Down the House: Festival Gallery, William St July 14 – 27 David Mach's Cheetah 1 The Scottish sculptor and installation artist David Mach presents his fourth major project at Galway Arts Festival, after Precious Light in 2012, Rock'n'Roll in 2018 and The Oligarch's Nightmare in 2023. Mach, a Turner Prize nominee in 1988, is known for his large-scale public art projects, such as Brick Train, assembled from 185,000 bricks, at Darlington, Co Durham. Burning Down the House is one of several exhibitions at GIAF that address climate change. Mach will give a talk at the gallery at 11am Tuesday July 15. 7 Eman Mohammed, What Lies Beneath the Rubble: Studio 2, O'Donoghue Centre July 14 – 27 Eman Mohammed Eman Mohammed was born in Tabouk, a small village in Saudi Arabia, in 1983 and educated in Gaza City, Palestine. She began her career in photojournalism at 19, and quickly cemented her reputation as the first woman war photojournalist in Gaza. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and her memoir The Cracks in My Lens was published in 2022. Her photo essay, Layan's Steps, published in the Atavist Magazine in July 2024, helped reveal that Gaza is home to the world's largest concentration of child amputees, victims of Israeli attacks on the territory. 8 Aoife Dunne, Good Grief: Róisín Dubh, Dominick St July 24 & 25 Language teacher Aoife Dunne had amassed more than 100,000 followers for her humorous videos on Instagram before it ever occurred to her that she might be a comedian. And even then, it was only because she was invited to perform at the legendary Dead Rabbit club in New York. The Galway native is not shy about tackling contemporary issues such as toxic masculinity, and posted a memorable rebuke to Conor McGregor on social media after his appearance at the White House on Patrick's Day. Good Grief is billed as 'a unique blend of stand-up, storytelling and spoken word,' and deals with the death of Dunne's mother, the loss of her job and relationship during the Covid pandemic, and her efforts to rebuild her life thereafter. 9 Resistance to Trump: Bailey Allen Hall, University of Galway July 26 Journalist Fintan O'Toole interviews Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the Democratic Party politician who has represented Washington's 7th Congressional District, encompassing most of Seattle, since 2017. Born in Chennai, India, Jayapal emigrated to the US in 1982, aged 16, to attend college at Georgetown University. She is the first Indian-American woman to serve in the US House of Representatives. A vocal critic of Donald Trump's presidency, she has condemned his budget reconciliation bill of July 2025 as 'one big, beautiful betrayal.' 10 Planete Vapeur, Microcosmos: Les Insectes Fantasiques: Eyre Square 9.30pm Friday July 18 / 6pm and 9.30pm Saturday July 19 Planète Vapeur's Microcosmos French street theatre specialists Planete Vapeur present Microcosmos, featuring a twelve-metre grasshopper, a spinning spider and a swarm of mysterious stilt-walkers, musicians and acrobats. The hour-long spectacle begins at Eyre Square before proceeding to Lower Fairhill Road via Shop Street and Bridge Street. What could be more magical on a summer's evening in the City of the Tribes?
Irish Independent
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Emer O'Kelly on The Cave: Superficial caricatures fail to gather either sympathy or curiosity as to their fate
Theatre review Today at 00:30 Kevin Barry is loaded with awards. Anyone who has read or heard his prolific output can understand why. The man has a unique voice, bringing fantasy into real life in a manner that transcends the mundane and makes his surrealistic approach a mockery of what we accept as normality. So what has happened with The Cave?
Irish Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Róisín Ingle: The c-word played a starring role in my Scrabble club's theatre outing
The Scrabble crew went on an outing to the Abbey Theatre the other night. This might be the most middle-class thing I've ever written except for the fact that later in this column I will be discussing how to boil quail eggs, and that obviously takes the ultimate prize. It's far from quail eggs I was reared but it's been a lifelong struggle to prove my working-class credentials having grown up in Sandymount, in the heart of the D-Fourtress as my Northsider children often remind me in mocking tones. Anyway, it was off to the Abbey in a limo for the Scrabble crew. (Only joking I cycled there on my new bike. I'm middle-class now.) We were all there for the opening night of the best play I have seen on an Irish stage in a very long time. The Cave by Kevin Barry is the bleakest of black comedies starring Aaron Monaghan , Judith Roddy and Tommy Tiernan . I say 'best play' but I see the Guardian only gave it three stars (the feckin' eejits) and Donald Clarke (who I usually trust) only gave it four . I am no critic, only a mere punter, but it's a full five stars from me and if I could give it a few extra I would. The Cave, directed superbly by Caitríona McLaughlin , is about the McRae brothers Archie and Bopper. They are two depressed, homeless, middle-aged, loquacious lads who are living in a cave on Zion Hill in Co Sligo . They are obsessed with an international soap star and her Irish boyfriend. Rural broadband being what it is, and Zion Hill being a dead zone, they don't have much by way of wifi coverage and they mainly live on stuff they've stolen from the nearest Lidl. Also, a 'ban garda' called Helen is on their case in a serious way. I want to be entertained in the theatre. Properly entertained. I want to be moved. To tears. To laughter. And it doesn't happen very often except when I am in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre , where it's mostly musicals, which have a higher hit rate for all round entertainment in my experience. But this play? Boys oh boys, this play is the thing. Barry's way with words is a source of national pride and to hear his words thrown around the stage of our national theatre, from the mouths of such extraordinary performers, is exhilarating. READ MORE The c-word is used a lot in The Cave. More times, perhaps, than it has ever been uttered on that storied Abbey stage. No need for calls to Liveline - because the oldest word for female genitals in the English language, though long mired in misogyny, has been somewhat reclaimed in recent years. For a start it's no longer just a noun but an adjective, with The Oxford English Dictionary adding c**ty and c**tish to its pages in 2014. In some quarters, especially on the drag scene, it's now the highest of compliments. Playwright Barry's use of the word is not always complimentary but is always rich in language terms. I managed to get a copy of the script and there are nine mentions of the c-word or c-word-based derivatives. Helen the garda says it first referring to the 'c**ten Butlins sign'. Later she refers to 'the c**tology' that goes on around the Sligo town below the hill. At another point Bopper is upset about a celebrity who he describes as only a 'c**t from the grass o' two cows outside Durrow in Co Offaly'. Helen then refers to the McRae brothers as 'c**tologists'. Bopper another time talks about his one-time love of yoga, revealing that he was at the cat-and-cow pose 'like a c**t on fire', by which he means he was passionate about the pose. In another scene, Helen bemoans the trajectory of her Garda career: 'The c**ts took one look at me and they said, away!' Bopper is writing a country song: 'Oh the Bopper he walked by night ... had his fill o' the Sligo c**ts'. Later he discusses his fears, one of them being that he might die inside the Roscommon border 'coz the c**ts wouldn't throw a shovel o'dirt over you'. Bopper at another point tries to quieten Archie by saying: 'Shut the f**k up you f**ken c**t ya!' And that's all nine uses of the word in the best play I've seen at the Abbey since The Train for you now. Rest assured, there is an awful lot more to it than that. It made me laugh. And think. And, when I read the script, I cried. I can't stop thinking about Archie and Bopper and Helen. [ Curse words around the world have something in common (we swear) Opens in new window ] A few days after the Abbey, the Scrabble crew cycled over to my house from the Southside, by Luke Kelly's head, along our lovely Royal Canal Greenway, for the latest session of our tournament. There's a lot of canape one-upmanship going on in these Scrabble evenings. A certain person has started serving quail eggs dipped in cumin salt so there was nothing for it but to have a go. A medium quail's egg, it turns out, only needs three minutes to boil. It turned out some other Scrabble club members, people with much stronger critic credentials, held different views on The Cave. They felt it trivialised mental health issues and lacked political edge. Someone said the audience laughed too much. At which point, as though Barry himself was giving his verdict on all that, one player revealed the C-bomb nestling innocently in his rack. It's a valid Scrabble word.
Irish Independent
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Katy Hayes: Tommy Tiernan is terrific but fine acting doesn't paper over uneasiness of play about rural eejits
Kevin Barry's new play is a study in washed-up rural Irish masculinity. Brothers Archie and Bopper McCrea feel familiar; they remind us of the no-hope wretches that inhabit the plays of Marina Carr or Martin McDonagh.
The Guardian
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Cave review – dark-humoured tale of brothers' emotional descent
The hapless McRae brothers, Archie (Tommy Tiernan) and Bopper (Aaron Monaghan), are the kind of comically shifty characters who might have made a four-line appearance in one of Kevin Barry's novels. In the acclaimed author's new play they have central roles, in a remote Sligo setting where they are sleeping rough in eerie caves on the outskirts of a town. Homeless and unwelcome in the area, these two have hit middle age and are lost, in ways they can't acknowledge. Frustrated with each other, yet unable to separate or to leave, even when threatened with arrest, the brothers' mutually dependent predicament has echoes of Beckett and Enda Walsh. Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West hovers in the background too – although Barry's take on rural dysfunction contains less violence and a lot more depression. Here the pair's escapism comes in online form, through the stolen smartphones and laptops that are scattered around designer Joanna Parker's imposingly abstract, almost lunar landscape setting. As they grapple with parts of a broken-down van, tyres, ladders and junk, they desperately attempt to get an internet connection to check the latest updates from a Mexican actress with whom Bopper is obsessed to the point of losing grip on reality. In Caitríona McLaughlin's production, the brothers' comic double-act is given full rein, with Monaghan bringing knockabout physical energy to the anguished Bopper, while Tiernan's background in standup comedy allows Archie to be a more deadpan foil. Stretched over 13 scenes, each announced with a surtitle – 'Scene 10, The Descent of Man' – the play at times seems like a series of gags, sketches and one-liners, treating the pair's physical and mental deterioration with a familiar black humour that lacks some emotional underpinning. The local garda sergeant, Helen, whose connection to the pair is not immediately revealed, is an underwritten role, with which Judith Roddy does her wry best. It takes an explanatory epilogue from Helen to fill in some of the gaps. Her police statement adds a layer of reflective poignancy that earlier came only in snatches, as when Archie wonders about their cave-dwelling ancestors and they briefly contemplate 'the purpose of the brothers McRae'. At Abbey theatre, Dublin, until 18 July; then at Town Hall theatre, Galway, 22-26 July
