Cork Midsummer Festival 2019: Daring work and delicious food

Plays for an audience of one and a Mick Flannery musical are among this year’s ambitious programme

Directing a Martin McDonagh play? It’s the stuff of dreams

The challenge is to honour his writing. When the cast find the rhythm, the work sings

Abbey Theatre uproar: 300 actors and directors complain to Minister

National theatre’s new policy sees pay ‘fall 25%’ and overall employment ‘dry up’

‘On Raftery’s Hill’ review: a striking and pummelling production

Marina Carr’s bleak topical tragedy is like the fresh jolt of a recurring nightmare

Angling Notes: Anglers expected to lobby against EU proposal to limit bass fishing

By the Bog of Cats review: a warped family drama

Marina Carr’s bitter stretch of the Irish midlands is a sunken place full of ghosts and vengeance – will anyone make it out alive?

Culture Shock: Were there any justice, ‘The Field’ would never have been written

John B Keane created the fearsome Bull McCabe in response to a brutal murder. Can the dramatisation of unsolved crimes and miscarriages of justice bring closure?

Review: Defender of the Faith

Decadent Theatre’s canny revival of Stuart Carolan’s play carries echoes of his TV show Love/Hate

Standing on ceremony

Ibsen meets Jerry Springer in Carmel Winters’s new play, which features infidelity, revenge and a bitterly disintegrating family

Roaming the fringes of Youghal

Peter Gowen’s latest work is a tale of our times, told by an idiot savant