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Dublin Theatre Festival

  • 11-10-2011 9:41am
    #1
    Boulevardier
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,375 ✭✭✭


    I am a but surprised to be unable to find any threads on this year's Dublin Theatre Festival, which has been going on now for almost a fortnight.

    Am I looking on the wrong forum or is no-one interested in discussing it?


Comments

  • #2
    pog it
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,912 ✭✭✭pog it


    Maybe those going to the events aren't on boards? :)

    Well I missed out on seeing Marina Carr's new play '16 Possible Glimpses' in the Abbey as I have been away but I saw that it just got 2 stars in the Irish Times. Hard to imagine a play from this playwright getting such a rough review. Have you been to see it?

    The other one I'd like to have seen is the adaptation of an unpublished Flann O'Brien work.


  • #3
    Boulevardier
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,375 ✭✭✭Boulevardier


    I went to 5 plays which I would rate as follows:

    Best visual/sensory experience was the Lulu House. Best dramatic writing was Testament, which would make a splendid radio play.

    I found Heroin tedious. The repetition and double-tracking of the words (soundtrack? dialogue?) left me pretty cold. The acting was technically fine, but the actors did not come across remotely like the sort of characters they presumably represented.

    The Speckled people was a lightweight memoir adaptation. It would be Ok on a provincial amateur drama circuit, but there is nothing more to it than that.

    Gardenia had a great sense of exuberance but suffered from overlong sequences (and overshort sequinses?).

    Overall an enjoyable but not a truly memorable festival this year.


  • #4
    spurious
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Education Moderators Posts: 27,252 CMod ✭✭✭✭spurious


    I went to see 'I heart Alice' in the Draíocht - I found it very enjoyable.
    I'm a big fan of those small local theatres - Helix, Civic, Draíocht.


  • #5
    hotspur
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,327 ✭✭✭hotspur


    Boulevardier wrote: »
    Best dramatic writing was Testament, which would make a splendid radio play.

    I thought Marie Mullen was wasted in it, and agree that it would make a better radio play. Frankly I was bored watching it.
    Boulevardier wrote: »
    I found Heroin tedious. The repetition and double-tracking of the words (soundtrack? dialogue?) left me pretty cold. The acting was technically fine, but the actors did not come across remotely like the sort of characters they presumably represented.

    I quite enjoyed Heroin, but I do have an interest in addiction. I can see how it may have been seen as tedious though. I definitely think the script could do with some editing.

    I went to Juno and the Paycock in the Abbey. I hadn't seen it since I was a teenager and had forgotten how farcical it was. Good acting, but I came away from it with an adult sense of contrived pathos sticking in a mother's loss of a child among scenes of repeated farce. Or maybe because it was the 3rd play in a row I had been to that dealt with a mother's loss of a child.

    My favourite show was the one man Fight Night. Incredibly energetic and moving - two descriptions I couldn't give to Tobin's Testament.


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