On January 7th, 2015, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo paid an absurd, immeasurable price for printing cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed, when two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, members of the Yemen branch of al-Qaeda, opened fire in …Read more

Origin’s 1st Irish Festival is back. Despite the festival title’s first word and subsequent number, this is in fact its ninth annual year of showcasing the work of Irish playwrights in New York City.   In the gathering is The Cell’s production of Cra …Read more

Should Madonna ever leave a message on your voicemail offering to lend kabbalah books, you’ve either joined a high-end, wearisome book club or you’ve gone too far. Laura Albert, the woman behind the early noughties “avatar” publishing sensation JT Le …Read more

As a wee boy in Scotland, Alan Cumming was visited by a strange man who turned up outside his house and bestowed upon him a plastic Kodak camera that he’d won, it transpired, via a tombola ticket at the church jamboree. This treasured item could be i …Read more

The National Theatre of Ireland, Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, has a history that, other than a bit of infamous seat-tearing, was instrumental in the country’s vast political changes in the first quarter of the 20th century. In its newest transatlantic off …Read more

Richard Strand’s Butler, making its New York debut with the New Jersey Repertory Company at 59E59 Theaters, is, we are told, based on real events.  Elegantly directed by Joseph Discher, the well-written play takes place within the first year of the A …Read more

In its 30th anniversary season, PTP/NYC’s (Potomac Theater Project) directors and co-artistic directors Richard Romagnoli and Jim Petosa have revived two 1981 plays from the company’s infancy, Howard Barker’s No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming, an …Read more

To begin with, the Girl (Aoife Duffin) is barely formed. Her body is still, her face pallid in scant light. But the signs are clear, the life ahead of her will not be easy. Her language stops and starts, it pulls and pushes those around her whom we m …Read more

Irish writer Eimear McBride’s debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing took a mere six months to write but a further nine years to get published, such is the struggle of the burgeoning scribe. McBride however, may well consider that time well worth …Read more

Political theorist Hannah Arendt cuts a striking figure. In a rare 1964 German television interview and in selected stills, her physical profile summons the shadows. A succession of cigarettes aid her unvarnished demeanor with a noirish, vaporous fin …Read more