The Arts Review​

Liam Wilson Smyth and Molly Downey in Synapses. Image uncredited. **** In Liam Wilson Smyth's disjointed Synapses, Emily and Mike negotiate a new normal now their strained marriage has ended. As Mike repairs a broken light socket, they talk to achieve a workable understanding for the sake of their unseen six-year-old son; less a child so much as a dramatic device to highlight the impact of separation on children. Emily, as insufferably dull as a legal document, controls the c

Geraldine Hughes, Matthew Broderick and Max Baker in Ulster American. Image by Carol Rosegg **** In David Ireland's perceptively brilliant Ulster American, Irish Americans enjoy nothing more than talking about themselves. Knowing absolutely nothing about their subject matter proving no drawback when it comes to self-praising monologues. Baldwins, Fenians, anti-Irish scripts, ignorance is bliss until faced with what they don't know about what they didn't know in the first plac

Chris O'Dowd, Peter Corboy and Brian Gleeson in The Brightening Air. Image Patricio Cassinoni **** Tolstoy famously claimed, “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. Clearly Tolstoy hadn't watched many 1980s family sitcoms. Before then The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, even The Addams Family were all lovely in a similar lovely way. Till The Simpsons, Married With Children, later followed by Malcolm in the Middle arrived portraying un