Book reviews: Placeholders; The Long Look Back; Leaning on Gates
New fiction and memoir by James Roseman, Tom MacDonagh and Seamus O’Rourke includes a book that deserves a place among the classics
Samuel Beckett
Julianne Moore: ‘When a friend really needs to unburden themselves, what are they asking you to do?’
The Oscar winner stars in The Room Next Door, a euthanasia drama that is Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature in English. It’s an ideal film for her to appear in
Sam Thompson: ‘I really don’t think there is a distinction to be made between writing for adults and writing for children’
Thompson’s new book, The Forest Yet to Come, is part of the Wolfstongue saga, which began as a direct response to his son’s difficulty with speech
Shades Through a Shade: Experimental theatre that pulls itself apart even as it transports you
Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: Gare St Lazare Ireland’s virtuosic, mesmeric ensemble brings texts by Beckett, Dante, Melville and others to life
Walking in Samuel Beckett’s footsteps: In some mysterious way, the landscape captures the soul of the artist
Alan Gilsenan, who leads a walk, Samuel Beckett: Walking After My Father, explains why the Wicklow and Dublin mountains exerted such a pull on the author
Author Charlotte Mendelson: ‘There’s nothing more fascinating than other people’s marriages, particularly when they start to go wrong.’
The author on her ‘darkest, queerest novel yet’, what makes Iris Murdoch special and the words she would abolish
Endgame review: Druid’s exquisite production brings a lightness of step to Beckett’s indestructible tragicomedy
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Garry Hynes directs Rory Nolan, Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen and Bosco Hogan
Francis Bacon’s Nanny: A peek into the darkness of the artist’s childhood
Maylis Besserie’s novel lays bare the cruelty of Bacon’s father as seen through the eyes of the family’s domestic servant Jessie Lightfoot
I wanted to write a book about Irish women’s writing. They told me to include men
If anything will embitter you, it is researching and writing a history of Irish women’s writing
Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan take on Beckett: ‘To understand Endgame is to understand that you can’t understand Endgame’
Galway International Arts Festival 2024: For Druid’s Endgame, Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan are immersed in Beckett. It’s surpringly enjoyable, they say
Adrian Dunbar on Beckett: ‘I seemed to be getting knocked around emotionally but didn’t know how he was doing it’
For Beckett: Unbound 2024, the actor has teamed up with the composer Nick Roth to stage a festival of the writer’s work in Paris and Liverpool
In a Word...Good Friday
Seamus Heaney was born on Thursday, April 13th, 1939. ‘Thursday’s child has far to go.’
A sense of foreboding descends on Liveline. Then Joe Duffy takes an unexpected turn
Radio: Talk of saints and babies has the RTÉ broadcaster in flighty mood. Over on Today FM, Matt Cooper has the better show
John Montague: An Ulster Catholic who was ‘a marooned northerner and an apprentice southerner’
The charismatic poet whose intimacy and boldness continues to inspire was born 95 years ago
Olwen Fouéré: ‘I didn’t feel Irish. There’s a great advantage to being an outsider’
The distinctive actor and performer, currently on television in The Tourist, resists convention in both her work and personal life
Krapp’s Last Tape review: Stephen Rea invites us to applaud the tape recorder – but the triumph is his
The actor had the forethought to record Krapp’s early tapes 12 years ago. What a pleasure to see, and hear, the result in the intimacy of Project Arts Centre
Krapp’s Last Tape: The acting greats who have taken on Samuel Beckett’s one-man play
Stephen Rea is about to join an illustrious line-up that includes John Hurt, Michael Gambon and Patrick Magee
2024 on stage: 20 plays, operas and dance works to see over the next 12 months
Stephen Rea brings Krapp back home, Hamilton comes to Dublin and Irish National Opera stages Salome
Picture post - Frank McNally on Cork nuances, the late Colm Ó Briain, and a photo exhibition in Rathmines
Himself and yer man, from Cork to Dublin
Waiting for God-oh: Advent reminds us why we must exercise patience
Thinking Anew: Christian waiting and looking forward is never just a passive thing
Atelier Samuel Beckett residency to welcome first artists as Irish theatre couple repay generosity
Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett hope to nurture creativity in the same way their acclaimed interpretations of the playwright’s work were supported
Nobel prize-winning author Jon Fosse on giving up alcohol and converting to Catholicism
The Nobel laureate is a master of the short novel – but none of them rivals Septology, an 800-page, single-sentence masterpiece
Dance First: Finely acted Samuel Beckett biopic undermined by lit-flick cliches
Film review: Gabriel Byrne and Fionn O’Shea play the writer to great effect but the pedestrian writing bogs proceedings
Fionn O’Shea on being cast as Samuel Beckett: ‘There was a moment of elation followed by crippling anxiety’
In the film Dance First, the young Irish actor joins Gabriel Byrne as the older Beckett and Aidan Gillen as James Joyce
Famous images by Irish photographer John Minihan to feature in Kinsale festival
Big Picture Festival of Press Photography this month is being organised by the Press Photographers Association of Ireland
Waiting for Google: In search of rugby-loving Samuel Beckett around Paris
If he were alive today there’s little doubt rugby fan Samuel Beckett would have been keenly interested in Ireland’s World Cup progress
Michael Gambon: Actor was both a cult icon and national treasure, on both sides of the Irish Sea
The Irish actor was capable of threat and pathos, with the ability to boom and to shrink into his large frame
Michael Gambon, Irish actor and Harry Potter star, dies aged 82
Dublin-born performer made his stage debut at the capital’s Gate Theatre in 1962
Dublin Marathon misattributing a quote to Yeats makes a mockery of him and his Nobel Prize
Presenting runners with a tribute to Yeats featuring a line he almost certainly never said is an embarrassing travesty for a city that prides itself on its literary heritage
Antonin Artaud in Ireland: Myth and influence of avant-garde genius we arrested and deported in 1930s
Legacy of French writer and dramatist Antonin Artaud who was detained in Milltown, Donnybrook and Mountjoy is focus of Ranelagh Arts
The story about WB Yeats’ bones being sought from a French ossuary inspires French writer
An Irish Times article on the controversy over the poet’s remains provided the creative spark for young French radio journalist Maylis Besserie
Happy Days: Siobhán McSweeney brings all her intuition to Beckett’s work of tragicomic genius
Theatre: As Winnie, the actor makes the location and circumstance of Happy Days seem normal, although sorrow keeps breaking in
The Guide: The events to see, the shows to book and the ones to catch before they end
The best music, comedy, art and more coming your way this week
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