CLASSIC POP/ROCK

The Drays

The Leeson Lounge, Dublin 4, 8pm Adm free

For those who aren’t aware of it (and there are a few), Dubliner Stephen Ryan, formerly of Stars of Heaven and The Revenants, is one of the best songwriters Ireland has ever produced. He has been out from the public eye for some years, but his return with The Drays is worth both your time and attention. A free gig? Yep, cheap thrills ahoy!

THEATRE

By the Bog of Cats

Abbey Theatre. Aug 14-Sep 12 7.30pm €13-€45 (Sat mat 2pm) abbeytheatre.ie

Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned, whether it happens in Corinth or in a mythical version of the contemporary Irish Midlands. Marina Carr has often found fertile terrain in Greek classics, transposed to the less productive landscapes of bogs and lakes, with female protagonists stalked by ghosts, abandoned by mothers, deserted by lovers. Like Medea, Carr’s Hester Swane is a marked outsider: a “savage” living by the bog, abandoned by her mother at the age of seven, preparing for the father of her child to marry someone else while the town await her banishment. And it is Hester, and her strange allies in this world and the next, that will bring down this monstrous settled community. Selina Cartmell, who has become a frequent Carr collaborator, directs the first major Irish revival of the play since 1998.