The new director of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Mr Fergus Linehan, announced his first festival programme yesterday.
Regular festival-goers will be pleased to see that Footsbarn, the travelling, international theatre company, is again pitching its tent in the Iveagh Gardens. This time it is presenting The Inspector, adapted from Gogol's The Government Inspector.
Australia's Company B, which thrilled festival audiences last year with its wonderful five-hour epic, Cloudstreet, returns with a very different show. The Small Poppies, a play for families by David Holman, is about the first day at school.
Societas Raffaello Sanzio, which brought a challenging version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to the 1998 festival, returns with a show about birth called Genesi. Theatre de Complicite, whose Street of Crocodiles Tony O Dalaigh considered the best show he programmed in his years with the festival, is presenting Light, a peasant fable adapted from a book by Torgny Lindgren.
Mr Linehan aims to expand the audience of the festival by programming shows which have "crossover" appeal. Dracula will feature the composer Philip Glass performing his own music to Tod Browning's terrifying film of 1931.
The Well, devised by Tony McMahon and John Comiskey, is woven from traditional music and dance from England, Ireland and Scotland. It is produced by Abhann Productions, run by Mr Linehan and John McColgan.
Mr Linehan denies this indicates any conflict of interest; it is, he says, "a labour of love" and comes to the festival fully resourced.
The Abbey will present its version of Sebastian Valle-Inclan's four-hour epic tale of blood and lust in deeply Catholic, 19th century Spain. The show, a co-production between the Abbey and the Edinburgh Festival, has its premiere on August 14th in Edinburgh.
The Gate presents a new production of Conor McPherson's searing tale of an alcoholic's Christmas, Dublin Carol, featuring Donna Dent, John Kavanagh and Sean McDonagh.
Premieres of new Irish plays include bedbound by Enda Walsh, whose Disco Pigs was such a hit, and Down the Line by Paul Mercier, which is directed by Lynne Parker at the Peacock Theatre. John Banville has adapted Kleist's Amphitryon for the innovative Barabbas company, and called it God's Gift.
The programme also includes a series of three productions from Argentina and the Royal National Theatre's Hamlet. The festival runs from October 2nd to 14th, and the box office will open at 44 East Essex Street on August 23rd.