Dublin influence strong at 1st Irish

Sonya Kelly stars in "How to Keep an Alien."

By Irish Echo Staff

Dublin will feature prominently in the 9th Annual 1st Irish Festival, which was officially launched in New York last evening by George Heslin’s Origin Theatre Company.

The Fair City in 1966 and 1999 are the settings, for instance, in Honor Molloy’s “Crackskull Row,” which debuts tonight at the Workshop Theater Main Stage, 312 West 36th St. New York, N.Y.

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Three of the four actors in the production, directed by Kira Simring, are Dubliners – Gina Costigan, Terry Donnelly and Colin Lane. The fourth is John Charles McLaughlin, an American. The playwright, the daughter of pioneering Dublin actor John Molloy, was herself was born and spent her first eight years in the city before returning to it as a college student. “Crackskull Row” will run through Sept. 25.

Derek Murphy, like Molloy, is another Dublin-born playwright now living in New York. “Appendage,” his tale of what happens when a man hit by a car is carried into the home of his vehicular assailant to meet the family, will be performed at the Cell Theatre from Wednesday, Sept. 28 through Sunday, Oct. 2.

Dublin’s Rough Magic Theatre are bringing “How to Keep an Alien” to the Irish Arts Center, 553 West 51st St. It runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 1. Sonya Kelly’s “tearfully funny” tale of two girls trying to persuade the Department of Immigration to let them live as a married couple in Ireland won the Tiger Dublin Fringe Best Production Award in 2014 and toured Ireland and Britain extensively in 2015. It was also part of the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Another Dublin company, the Abbey (the national theatre of Ireland), officially joins the festival this week. The action, though, switches north of the border in its production of Owen McCafferty’s “Quietly,” which has been playing at Irish Repertory Theatre’s newly refurbished mainstage theater at 132 West 22nd St. since July 20. It tells the story of the chasm between sides as it’s experienced in the silence following the Good Friday Agreement when two friends meet after 20 years. Its run has been extended through Sept. 25.

Yet another Dublin entry is “Bears in Space,” Eoghan Quinn’s cult-hit comedy, which will play at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th St., Sept. 6 to Oct. 2 with its original cast, including Jack Gleeson, Aaron Heffernan, Cameron Macaulay and Eoghan Quinn. Collapsing Horse’s production has already played to sold-out crowds in Dublin, London and in last year’s Edinburgh Festival.

“The Birds,” also at 59E59 Theaters, from Sept. 9 to Oct. 2, is a presentation by the New York- and Toronto-based BirdLand Theatre. Directed by Stefan Dzeparoski, and starring Antoinette LaVecchia, Tony Naumovski and Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, it’s about sanctuary-seeking travelers who look for safety in all the wrong places. The Dublin connection is the writer Conor McPherson, whose play is a retelling of Daphne Du Maurier’s “The Birds,” which was also the basis of Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name.

For more details about these and the other events in 1st Irish go to the full schedule at 1stirish.org.

 

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