International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival

Week Two Reviews – The Copla Cabaret

The Copla Cabaret, Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street at 7.30pm until Saturday May 18th with Saturday matinee at 2.30pm.  The Copla Cabaret is delicious. It is a feast of music, comedy and camp brought to us from Spain. Alejandra Postigo is an exile in the UK, from the values of Franco’s dictatorship and reminds us of that censored time, which embedded attitudes […]

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Week Two Reviews – Double Bill: The Caoining and Was I Not A Girl

Double Bill: ‘The Caoining’ and ‘Was I Not A Girl’, Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street, until Saturday May 18th at 9pm with Saturday matinee at 4pm.  ‘The Caoining’ is a panto like comic romp by Roman Vai and Catie Grainger. Set in Swords where there is a serial killer on the loose, we are in the rented shed at the end of a back

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Week Two Reviews – And They Were Roommates

Continuing a night of theatrical contrast, Yannis Didaskalou’s ‘And They Were Roommates’ is a wonderful fast-moving blend of mythology and contemporary lives in a clever treatment of lesbian love and the common gender experience of same sex devotion.  We meet female versions of ‘Achilles and ‘Patroclus’, with a plethora of Greek Gods and a backdrop of

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Week Two Reviews – The Pride

 ‘The Pride’ – actor-turned-playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell’s 2008 debut – explores two sets of triangular relationships, ebbing and flowing between 1958 and 2008. It shimmers with humour on the surface but its exploration of emotional isolation, closeted gay love and the implications of longed-for ‘liberation’ is what gives this work its potency. In the 1950s,

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Week Two Reviews – Remember That Time? – A Musical

‘Remember That Time? – A Musical’ Outhouse 9pm, Saturday matinee 2.30pm Written and composed by Anne Marie Cullen.  ‘Remember That Time?’ is a musical biopic of returned Irish rock star Cullen, which charts her music careers in the band Saucy Monkey and her life and loves. The multi-media presentation not only impresses for a Fringe

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Week Two Reviews – Sketches Invented and Drawn

Sketches Invented and Drawn Teater Dictat, Sweden Outhouse at 7.30pm, Saturday matinee 4pm  Johan Svensson has a lot of parts to play, a lots of countries to visit, lots of times to live in, and a lot of famous people to sleep with. He is telling (playwright) Matthew Short’s story. It is a play where he flips between playwright Short and

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Week Two Reviews – Darling Boy

Theatre@36, Teachers Club  Time: 7.30pm, Saturday matinee 2.30pm  Duration 60 minutes  Written and performed by Rupert Bevan  Directed by Lucy Rossen.   Rupert Bevan is energy and charm unleashed in his solo show from Melbourne ‘Darling Boy’. It’s a story that is hurled from the stage with so much power that it leaves the audience thrilled and exhausted. 

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Week Two Reviews – Baklâ

Baklâ Theatre@36, Teachers Club Time 7.30pm, Saturday matinee 4pm Duration: 60 minutes Written and Performed by Max Perry.  Baklâ is quite a story. We meet ‘Max’ son of a British father and a Filipina. He is definitely in this story, culturally the latter but for those rarer qualities on this Fringe circuit, his enunciation, diction and projection are flawless.  Max

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Week One Reviews – In Vitro and Babies and Bathwater

FESTIVAL REVIEW; ‘In Vitro’ and ‘’Babies and Bathwater, runs until Saturday May 11th at 9pm as a Double Bill (one ticket) in Theatre at 36, Teachers Club.  ‘In Vitro’ is a new Irish play by Aoife O’Connor dealing with a young lesbian couple considering starting a family via sperm donor. The information on the status of

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Week One Reviews – Pre-Ops

‘Pre-Ops’ at The Ireland Institute until Saturday May 11th at 9pm, and 4pm matinee on Saturday.  The Festival brochure states that ‘Pre-Ops’ was awarded an IDGTF Bursary for new irish LGBT writing. If this is the standard produced by these bursaries, then it was money well spent. Writer/Director Ezra Maloney creates a clever and engaging mechanism to tackle a controversial subject about women

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Week One Reviews – The Kinghtly Quest

The Kinghtly Quest, Outhouse, until May 11th. Gore Vidal once wrote that “The Knightly Quest” (1966) was one of the finest stories ever written by Tennessee Williams. The Kafkaesque tale showcases Williams’s awareness of the potency of the sexual Other as the symbol of political resistance in a world verging on totalitarianism. Fred Abrahamse and

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Week One Reviews – Christian Support Group

“Christian Support Group” is the latest offering from Derry playwright Rosalind Patton. There are no cast credits in the brochure. Patton takes on the thorny subject of “Christian” beliefs that condemn human love. Here Patton uses the contrast of the local LGBT centre where everyone is welcome and the Christian Support Group who will “help you find

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Week One Reviews -The Rotting Hart

Nomoreworkhorse Review reproduced here, ‘The Rotting Hart’ Produced by Crested Fools in collaboration with Fronteiras Theatre Lab Written and performed by Daniel Orejon Directed by Flavia D’Avila Outhouse, until Saturday May 11th Time: 9.00pm Duration: 60 minutes The Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh not only has enviable facilities but during the Fringe, it programmes diverse storytelling theatre.

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