The Arts Review​

Kafka's Doll by Theatre Lovett. Image Alisa Iakimanskaia **** They say never let truth get in the way of a good story. The same might be said of theatre. The story in question claiming that in 1924, seeing a young girl crying in a park having lost her doll, Franz Kafka wrote her a series of letters purportedly from the missing doll. Letters recounting adventures from the doll who had decided to travel the world. Kafka, approaching death, presented the young girl with a new do

A Recurrence by Sophie O’Toole and Trudy Nolan. Image ucredited ***** In A Recurrence, D'Girlos Theatre Company returns to the Dublin Fringe Festival with a gripping new three-hander following three working-class Dublin women across a 1930s tenement, a 1990s flat, and a modern council house. Co-written by D’Girlos co-founders Trudy Nolan and Sophie O'Toole, this rich and tender play traces their lives through the sudden realisation and struggle of unplanned pregnancy to an ul

Gaja Masciale in Mirandolina by Marina Carr. Image: Serena Serrani. ** Like The Gate's seasonal Christmas Show, an annual Marina Carr production at The Abbey, directed by The Abbey's artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin, has become something of an unquestioned fixture over the past decade. Carr's work occasionally great, McLaughlin having her good days too. But it bears repeating that no playwright should enjoy that degree of favouritism no matter how good their work, espec