The cupboard has been bare – or appeared to be bare – for months, but the Abbey Theatre on Tuesday announced an upcoming feast, in the form of a raft of new shows and new Irish writing, lined up until the end of January 2026. Billing the varied and extensive programme “a celebration of epic Irish storytelling”, it includes six world premieres across both Abbey and Peacock stages this year.
Comedian, actor and TV interview Tommy Tiernan will star in a new play by Irish writer Kevin Barry, The Cave, a black comedy about the McRae brothers, in trouble with the law and sleeping rough in a cave in a dead zone in the mountains of south Co Sligo (Abbey, June 6th-July18th).
And Marina Carr’s long anticipated The Boy is set for the Abbey stage as part of the 2025 theatre festival. Featuring a large cast, the contemporary interpretation of Sophocles’s Theban Trilogy is billed as an unmistakably Irish account of the epic Greek myth told across two plays, and is directed by Caitríona McLaughlin.
Under the banner of the National Theatre of Stories, the national theatre productions for this year, on both the Abbey and Peacock Stages, include work from Irish playwrights Kevin Barry, Barbara Bergin, Marina Carr, Carys D Coburn, Caitríona Daly and Jimmy McAleavey.
Adolescence: Five truths about our teenage boys we need to address urgently
Her ‘no’ was clear. She did not want to go home with him. Still he went on. And on
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 25 to No 1
‘One of the lowest points of my life’: Elizabeth Day on marriage breakdown, IVF and How To Fail
Abbey co-director and artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin says Irish writing across all forms – literature, poetry and film, and theatre too – “seems to be in a period of flowering right now and receiving renewed recognition at home and internationally”.
The six playwrights with work coming up at the Abbey this year “represent an assortment of thrilling voices in Irish playwriting today. While they stand on the shoulders of all those playwrights who have gone before them at the National Theatre of Ireland, they write in an utterly contemporary and inimitable register. Our audiences will witness real newness, a true freshness of ideas and expression, on our stages in the coming year. These playwrights are provocative and challenging without telling us what to think, they give us space to consider and reflect on stories we need to hear right now, stories about survival, resilience and our humanity.”
Since its Christmas show Emma closed on January 25th, the only upcoming in-house production announced by the Abbey has been Youth’s the Season –? by Mary Manning, running from April 2nd, with the bulk of this year’s programme announced now, a quarter into the year.
Static, written by Jimmy McAleavey (June 20th-Friday, July 18th, Peacock) – about isolation, a veteran US astronaut about to land back on Earth after his very last space flight and a lonely ham radio operator in Donegal surfing frequencies – is directed by John King.
During the late summer, after The Cave closes on the main stage in mid-July, and before the theatre festival shows open mid-September, downstairs in Peacock will see Caitríona Daly’s outlandish comedy The Lunch Punch Power Hour in Conference Room 4 (July 31st-September 6th). Directed by Raymond Keane, it’s set in the Irish offices of a fund management firm where three employees determine how to spend the balance of their company’s annual Corporate Social Responsibility budget.
Also during Dublin Theatre Festival is BÁN, written by Carys D Coburn. A reworking of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, BÁN is described as “faithful but not close” and “like the sisters at its heart – bound tightly, neither open nor tender, mourning their father, surveilled by their mother, they long for escape, power, the local eligible bachelor”. It’s a dark comedy, directed by Claire O’Reilly (September 30th-November 8th, Peacock).
The Christmas show on the Abbey stage will be Dublin Gothic, by debut playwright Barbara Bergin and directed by Caroline Byrne (November 21st-January 31st, 2026). A loser’s history, told through a pastiche of literary styles, it’s a tragicomedy following three generations of residents in one Dublin 1 house across a century of societal upheaval, set against the backdrop of a transforming city.
The Boy and Dublin Gothic, along with Youth’s the Season –?, are described as completing The Gregory Project, launched in 2023, to celebrate the trailblazing legacy of Augusta Gregory.
As well as its new plays and playwrights in the National Theatre of Stories announced on Tuesday, this year’s work includes the return of Oona Doherty to the Abbey Stage with Specky Clark, co-produced and presented by the Abbey Theatre and Dublin Dance Festival; a full-scale opera from Irish National Opera on the Abbey Stage later in 2025; the transfer of the acclaimed Abbey production SAFE HOUSE by Enda Walsh and Anna Mullarkey to Berlin’s Schaubühne as part of its FIND festival; a North American tour of the Abbey Theatre and Tom Moran co-production, Tom Moran is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar, following its performance in Australia; further readings as part of the Abbey’s Love at First Sight series.
Abbey co-director and executive director Mark O’Brien said: “Alongside the launch of our 2025-2030 strategy and our revitalised brand, this represents a moment of further renewal as we head into the year’s brighter days, looking forward to the future as the National Theatre of Ireland.”
