 |
 |
 |
To Visit our Companion Page "TheaTalk," click on the masks above!
TheaTours Visits The Dublin Theatre Festival 
by Laura Hitchcock
Now in its fifth decade and five years after I visited it first, the Dublin Theatre Festival is both smoother and more exuberant than ever, as our TheaTour, led by Michael Hoffer and myself, discovered last October.
Street performers and free "Conversations" with Festival artists at the Gaiety Theatre's Dress Circle Bar make the Festival accessible to all.
The "seat" of Irish theatre is The Abbey, now under the astute
artistic direction of Patrick Mason, who won a Best Director Tony for "Dancing
at Lughnasa."
His Festival choice was "By the Bog of Cats" by Marina Carr, based on the Medea legend; however, the Gaelic ambiance, totally Irish characters and Carr's pungent point of view make it very much her own.
Every Festival has its Fringe and this one, which has proliferated madly since my visit five years ago, is a must. We saw a one-man play "Aceldama" written by Jimmy Murphy, a searing scan of war through the eyes of a guerilla in the hills who is both killer and victim of a murderous assault on his family.
The Dublin Theatre Festival is an international one and we took advantage of that. We were thrilled by Ronnie Burkett's Theatre of Marionettes from Canada whose production of "Tinka's New Dress", based on the underground anti-Nazi plays of World War II, was brilliant.
The Festival's musical extravaganza was the intensely theatrical Andalusian flamenco version of "Carmen."
Off stage highlights of our week in Dublin were a welcome party with
Tony O'Dalaigh, Festival Director; evensong at St. Patrick's Cathedral;
a gala 
dinner at Leixlip House; the Literary Pub Crawl, where
actor Philip James immeresed us in Dublin's history through song, story
and brews along the way.
Our week-end was spent at Renvyle House Hotel on Ireland's starkly beautiful west coast at a fascinating seminar honoring the house's former owner, senator and writer Oliver St. John Gogarty. Chaired by Gogarty's grandson Guy St. John Williams and his warm exuberant wife Anne, the Gogarty week-end introduced us to the literature, people and places of Connemara.
For theatre buffs, there was a performance at the Gothic Chapel of
Kylemore Abbey depicting the route "From Castle to Abbey."
By the year 2000, Dublin will have three more state-of-the-art theatres in Tallaght, Blanchardstown and Dun Laoghaire. And maybe we'll be there.
Last summer I spent a week in New York planning our spring TheaTour to the Big Apple. Mike and I are finalizing
those arrangements now. More on that later!
Click here to e-mail us!