The Arts Review​

Kathy McGarry and Emma Dargan-Reid in Love and Other Promises. Image by Al Craig. **** Already, up-and-coming playwright Colette Cullen appears to be building a brand. Bewley’s Café Theatre’s revival of Love and Other Promises, a sequel to the utterly charming When Rachel Met Fiona, looking like the next episode in an aspiring movie franchise. Or Netflix series. Cullen’s New York frame of mind, jazz-piano follow-up sees the troubled couple end their marriage, navigate a new

Aoise Meaney, Séamus McLean Ross in Disco Pigs,. Image, Marcin Lewandowski *** When it first premiered in 1996, Enda Walsh’s undisputed classic Disco Pigs was informed by the cultural zeitgeist of the time. Today, its dated references remind us of when Ireland began to find cultural confidence through a refusal of what was in favour of what we might become. Walsh’s coming-of-age tale of two darkly twisted seventeen-year-olds discovering desires beyond the friend zone drenched

Niamh O'Sullivan in Carmen. Image, Ros Kavanagh. ***** It feels like déjà vu. A faint foreboding that you've seen this before. You'd be partially right. Irish National Opera's latest version of Bizet’s Carmen (1875) repurposing much of their 2022 version, in which the impressive Paula Murrihy played the eponymous heroine. Director Paul Curran's Fifties-themed fantasy, framed by Gary McCann's distinctive set and costumes, retro-illuminated by Paul Hackenmueller's majestic ligh