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The play on the Abbey stage at the moment is not an Irish classic, it’s not Shakespeare, it’s not even a contemporary play by a well-known writer. It is however, a tremendous piece of theatre. It is a new Irish play but it’s set in the past, in the dark and desperate world of New York gangsters. It’s 1969, there’s about to be a man on the moon and there’s a truce unfolding between the Irish and the Italians.

The play starts with a wonderful monologue from Harvey Marr (Liam Carney) as he talks about his day. This Irish-American crook knows how to spin a yarn and this tale includes booze, women and violence. The story is directed at the silent Walter Sorrow who is only half-listening to Harvey’s ramblings as he goes about his work. This work is bloody and unpleasant, but as Harvey says it’s work and has to be done. This scene sets us up the rest of the play nicely – it neatly encapsulates the world we’ve entered; a world of brutal men who kill casually, often while telling a joke. Harvey isn’t a particularly likeable character, but you still feel for him.

Over the next 90 minutes, we meet gangsters who swagger and strut, a boss man who collects trees from all over Ireland and a silent teenager over from the old country, escaping the troubles in Belfast. Despite the grim and gritty world it is evoking, this is a very stylish production. The set is starkly beautiful and as the action moves rapidly from place to place, the scene changes have no problem keeping up. There’s a wonderful energy to the production which comes from the snappy dialogue and the talented cast. Despite this energy, despite the new world that is opening up to them, these guys are still stuck in the past. There are many references to Ireland and to Irish heritage and culture. They are a backwards looking community and they’re going nowhere fast. Like the versatile set that is used for many different locations, the characters expend a whole lot of energy but aren’t getting anywhere.

The play has a cinematic quality to it that works well most of the time. However this can be jarring when things happen that aren’t as realistic as it would be on screen. This means the violence and blood-shed often feels fake. The more theatrical moments work better because the audience are happy to go with them. It’s also a very male play which might put some people off just as much as the violence. There seems to be no place for women in this world and they are seldom mentioned by our all male cast.

Despite this, Drum Belly is a very enjoyable show. The script is sharp and has some great lines. The cast are very strong and the whole show looks fantastic. If you want to see for yourself, the Abbey are doing a deal at the moment where you can get €10 “Test Drive” tickets, Monday – Wednesday, subject to availability. It will be €10 well spent!

Drum Belly runs until May 11 and tickets (including €10 Test Drive tickets) are available here.

Today is the first day of Collaborations 2013. This is a theatre and arts festival run by the Jack Burdell Experience and will take place in Smock Alley over the next two weeks. This is the second year of the festival. There were 16 new theatre productions in last year’s festival which has grown this year to 31 shows, 5 special events which include play readings and panel discussions, and an exhibition.

While The Theatre Machine Turns You On featured a lot of devised work, here the focus is more on New Writing. Two of last year’s productions were selected for Dublin Theatre Festival’s Play On initiative, while one of last year’s rehearsed readings is this year’s full length production.

The festival kicks off today with In Rainbows by Paperdolls at 6pm. They will be performing at 6 and 6.30pm, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. After that, the 6pm slot is generally taken up by double or triple bills of short works-in-progress. There are more short pieces at 7.30pm and longer pieces at 8pm and 9pm. Shows don’t run on consecutive nights and there isn’t something on in all time slots every night, which makes the programme a little difficult to get to grips with. Best to figure out what you want to see and then find out when it’s on. And there is a lot of great show on offer.

Full listings here.

This year, for the first time in four years, I’m not involved in any V-Day events. I have no Vagina Monologues rehearsals to go to, no vagina cupcakes to make and no tickets to sell. I feel a bit weird about that. This year is the 15th anniversary of V-Day. I did my first V-Day event five years ago this year. Getting involved in something like that can feel really powerful. Suddenly it feels possible that you could change the world – you could re-educate people, get everyone to start being nicer to each other and treat each other with respect. The Vagina Monologues really does make people see things in a new way and I really felt that that first year. We did the show on our college campus and meet a lot of the audience in the bar afterwards, men and women who were all fired up and ready to take down the patriarchy!

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t change over night and terrible things keep happening to women all over the world. In 2008, the V-Day Spotlight Charity was New Orleans. The next time I did it, it was the Democratic Republic of Congo and the stories coming out of that country would just make you want to give up on the entire human race. Stories of entire villages of women being raped, from six month old girls to women in their sixties. Don’t let anyone tell you rape is about sex or desire. It’s not. It’s about power. It’s about putting people in their place. The terrible stories from the Congo make that very clear.

Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day, is not the type of woman who gives up. Instead of throwing her hands in the air, V-Day built the City of Joy – a place where women could be safe and recover from the violence that had been done to them. Eve Ensler believes in changing the world because she seen it happen. This year she’s launched One Billion Rising – a worldwide uprising to protest the fact that one in three women will be beaten or raped in her lifetime and a declaration that that needs to change.

There will be men and women dancing for change on the streets of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Sligo, Mayo, Clare, Kerry and Tipperary. They will be joining people rising in 190 countries worldwide. So get out there, dance your socks off and feel like you could change the world. It’s a good feeling, even if it only lasts an hour or two, you still feel like you’re achieved something.

Details of all the Irish events are here.

It’s the shortest day of the year and if you have successful done all your Christmas shopping, sent all your cards and feel ready to start enjoying the holiday season, why not treat yourself to some Christmassy theatre in Dublin this weekend. Here are a couple of Alternative Christmas shows:

Moonfish are back in Smock Alley with their bi-lingual version of Pincchico – Tromluí Phinocchio – A Nightmare. This was a huge success in the Dublin Fringe Festival and they have developed and added to the show since then, making it bigger and better than ever. When I first saw this show in Nun’s Island Theatre in Galway at the beginning of the year, I was impressed with how well they combined the English and Irish languages. They find clever ways to make sure that even someone like me, who has never got on particularly well with the Irish language, could understand and enjoy the show. This creative inventiveness extends to every aspect of the show; where sound effects are created live on stage and props and lighting transform the space from Geppetto’s workshop, to a dark and scary wood, to the stomach of a whale. It’s a very enjoyable show for adults and (slightly older) kids alike. It might be a bit too scary for the smallies!

It’s on tonight at 7.30pm and there are two shows on Saturday, December 22 at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Tickets available here.

Pony Panto is probably not suitable for children but I can guarantee that adults will get some childish delight out of it. I saw Pony Dance in action for the first time during this year’s Dublin Fringe and they did not disappoint! Despite the technical and physical virtuosity, Straight to DVD was dance at it’s most tongue-in-cheek. It’s funny and silly and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s like a dance-based sketch show wonderful fun. Pony Dance and panto are a great fit and I imagine this will be an all-singing, all-dancing festive night out!

Pony Panto is on at Project Arts Centre, December 21 and 22 at 8pm. Tickets available here.

A few weeks ago I talked to Erica Murray about Sugarglass Theatre’s production of Philip Ridley’s Tender Napalm. The play sounded odd and interesting and I was delighted to finally see it when it opened in Project Arts Centre.

Tender Napalm is set on a desert island where the two characters, Man and Woman are stranded. The wooden set manages to capture the barren landscape and the wonderful simplicity of life on a desert island. It is also beautiful to look at. The wooden poles dotted around the set could be a forest or when they are lit from within, they could be tall buildings. The flexibility of the set means the actors have a free rein to interpret the wonderful, intricate script.

It’s a very strong script. The characters create the world they’re in with their words. When Woman describes the scene she sees while writing it in her notebook she talks about the magnificent views, the colour of the sea, the softness of the sand. Man takes up the narrative and now that he is in control of what happens to them, a tsunami comes crashing down on the island. The stories they tell each other are sexy, tender or violent. And sometimes a combination of all three.

It is the relationship between the two characters that is at the crux of the play. The way the control of the story passes back and forth between them gives us more of an insight into this relationship than the words themselves. The chemistry between Aaron Heffernan and Erika Murphy adds a truthfulness to the performance. While they are telling fantastical stories of giant serpents and monkeys who feed you mangos, the way the two characters relate to each other feels very true.

There is a wonderful script at the heart of the show. It is funny and violent and fascinating. It also contains some wonderful twists and turns. Each individual set piece is intriguing and well-told but it is when they start to click together that the magnificence of the script begins to show. Each story is a small building block that makes up the couples relationship. The script is well-served well by two talented actors. Their strong performances are energetic and physically impressive.

It is a very impressive production and I’m very interested to see what Sugarglass do next.

It was around this time last year that I first heard about Blue Raincoat. The director of the company, Niall Henry was one of our Friday speakers in Galway. He gave an interesting talk about the early days of setting up the company and keeping it going as members grew older and started having mortgages and children. This was also the first time I heard about corporeal mime which is the performance technique that Blue Raincoat are most invested in. I don’t think it’s strictly the “Blue Raincoat style” because not everyone who they perform with is trained in this technique but the founding members are and it’s kind of their big thing. All the actors have been trained in a performance style that is very physical and on stage you can see this training come through in their precision of movement and general physicality of the performance.

I saw my first Blue Raincoat production last spring when Rhinoceros came to the Town Hall Theatre in Galway. (I wrote about it for Reviewing class but not for this site.) I liked the show a lot. I thought the free-wheeling playing style of the company fitted beautifully with Ionesco’ surreal script.

The Poor Mouth is another surreal script. It was adapted for the company by Jocelyn Clarke, but he has left Flann O’Brien’s surreal stamp on it. The narrative voice of Bónapárt Ó Cúnasa is left intact, as is the strange world of Corkadoragha, in all it’s damp misery. Bónapárt is played by Ruth Lehane and her simple storytelling style is at the heart of the piece, while the rest of cast switch between a large collection of characters, including a couple of pigs and a cow. It’s almost a collection of short stories and some of the set pieces work better than others. The skill of the cast is still enjoyable to watch and the language is both weird and wonderful. As is the set, which is a large sloped map with small houses clinging to the coastline.

Blue Raincoat are running workshops in January, in voice and mime. They will be held in their performance space in Sligo, the Factory. We went there for a weekend of workshops with college and it’s a beautiful space. We only did two sessions of corporeal mime, with is barely enough to scratch the surface. It’s a very full-on discipline. They are offering one week of mime and/or one week or voice training for €100 a week. I know a few people who did it last year and found it useful and enjoyable but also very hard work. There are more details here.

The Dublin Theatre Festival announced their 2011 programme a few weeks ago and it is really rather wonderful. There are too many great shows to mention so I recommend getting hold of the programme soon and start booking! Short, special mention to The Wild Bride by Kneehigh, a company who I’ve never seen but heard a lot about, The Lulu House which stars the glorious Camille O’Sullivan and Request Programme which is the show everybody seemed to be talking about at the Kilkenny Arts Festival (at least on Twitter anyway!).

What I really want to talk about is all the great stuff hidden away under Special Events – Project Brand New have a new site-specific show there – Tear Down the Walls, The Company are showing a work in progress of their new performance Politik and there are lots of talks and discussions. All these things are free or almost free.

There are also workshops in the brand spanking new Lir Academy! These are participatory workshops and are open to all. They cost €30, which is a little bit steep for a 2 hour workshop but they are with very good people. There’s a good selection there – Movement, Clowning, Intro to Physical Theatre, Intro to Acting, Into to Voice and Text and Theatre Games and Improvisation. My top picks would be Theatre Games and Improvisation because it’s with Annie Ryan, Artistic Director of Corn Exchange who I love and Intro to Voice because I always enjoy a good voice workshop! It’s a timely reminder of how to breath and stand correctly and I always feel lovely and loose afterwards! I don’t know if that’s the best way to choose a workshop but I’m sure there are worse ways! Booking is through the Lir Academy at info @ lir.ie