Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2008
Dates: 25th September - 12th October
Venues: Various (see below) 

Following on from last year's record-breaking festival, which made over €1m at the box office for the first time ever, Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival returns with another fantastic programme of top-quality home-grown and international theatre.

With 27 shows in 16 venues, and productions from 12 countries (Ireland, South Africa, England, Scotland, USA, Belgium, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Colombia and Argentina) this unique celebration of theatre promises to be one of the biggest and most exciting performing arts festivals in the world!

With highlights including Vanessa Redgrave's remarkable turn in the brilliant The Year of Magical Thinking, a 7-hour theatrical marathon in Gatz and a whole host of Irish Premieres - as well as the introduction of the fantastic ReViewed programme, designed to showcase some of the most interesting Irish productions of the last year - theatre lovers are sure to find plenty to suit their tastes.

There's also an amazing line-up of ancilliary events including discussions, conference and networking opportunities, stage to screen presentations, an International Critics' Forum, Creative Dance Workshops and a young critics' panel - guarnteed to get true theatre buffs chomping at the bit with excitment.

So check out the full programme of play below, then book your tickets online, by calling the Festival Box Office on (01) 677 8899 or by picking them up in person from 44 East Essex Street, Temple Bar.


THEATRE PROGRAMME

Black Watch
Venue: RDS Shelbourne Hall
Date: 30th September - 5th October
Time: 15.00 (4th - 5th Oct) / 20.15 (30th Sept - 4th Oct)    
Tickets: €30 - €40
Following its sell-out Edinburgh run, performances around the globe and unanimous critical acclaim, the most talked about international show of the past two years arrives in Dublin before returning to New York for an extended run. Based on interviews with former soldiers who served in Iraq, this taut and uncompromising piece of theatre examines what it means to be part of the legendary Black Watch Regiment, what it means to be part of the war on terror, and what it means to make the long journey hom       

The Year of Magical Thinking
Date: 30th September - 4th October
Venue: Gaiety Theatre
Time: 14.30 (2nd - 4th) / 19.30
Tickets: €20 - €45   
Adapted for the stage by Joan Didion from her best-selling memoir of the same name, and starring Vanessa Redgrave, The Year of Magical Thinking chronicles the aftermath of Joan's sudden death. Capturing the compassion, humour and bewilderment of a fiercely intelligent woman whose world lurches suddenly from the ordinary to the unimaginable. A tribute to an extraordinary, unconventional marriage, told with raw candour and a brilliant storyteller's gift for the absurd.
   
The Magic Flute
Date: 7th - 11th October
Venue:  Gaiety Theatre
Time: 14.30 (9th & 11th) / 19.30
Tickets: €20 - €40
This life-enhancing, joyous production is the greatest piece of music theatre performed as you've never heard it before -the South African way.
                               
The Cripple of Inishman 6 Oct - 11 Oct
Date: 6th - 11th October
Venue: Olympia Theatre
Times: 14.30 (11th only) / 19.30
Tickets: €23 - €38
It's 1934 and news on the island of Inishmaan is thin on the ground. Then word arrives that they're making a Hollywood film on neighbouring Inishmore, and Cripple Billy for once is paying attention. Following Druid's resounding success producing McDonagh's richly dark black comedies  - they now return with the Irish premiere production of another McDonagh classic.
  
Dodgems
Date: 22nd September - 12th October
Venue: O'Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College
Time: 14.30 (28th Sept. 4th & 11th Octo) / 19.30   
Tickets: €20 - €33
Roll up. It's showtime in Ireland. Time to be seduced by the light and dark of the fairground. Capturing the lights, smells and sounds of the funfair, get prepared to step right up for the ride of your lives! Set on a real bumper track, Dodgems sweeps you into a displaced and exotic world where a bawdy band of new arrivals and indigenous misfits play out the dodging and crashing of ordinary lives to a live, earthy and haunting soundscape.

Waves
Date: 7th - 11th October
Venue: Samuel Beckett Theatre
Time: 14.30 (8th & 11th), 19.30
Tickets: €22 - €33
The Waves, first published in 1931, is Virginia Woolf's most experimental novel. A fragmented and dreamlike tale of friendship, loss, identityand love, this playpoem's follows a privileged English family from an idyllic childhood summer to the disillusionment of post WW1 adulthood and, ultimately, to their death.
                               
Hedda Gabler
Dates: 25th September - 11th October     
Venue: Gate Theatre
Time: 15.00 (4th & 11th Oct) / 20.00 (except 28th)
Prices: €27 - €32
As she struggles to come to terms with a marriage to a man she finds numbingly dull and a pregnancy that threatens to seize hold of her body and future, Hedda quickly realises that the roots of convention run deep and, aided and abetted by her predatory confidante, Judge Brack, begins to indulge in evil games, manipulating the fate of all who enter her orbit. Eighty years after the Gate opened with Ibsen's Peer Gynt, it celebrates its landmark birthday with a wonderful new version, by Brian Friel

Metamorphosis
Date: 29th September - 4th October
Venue: Olympia Theatre
Times: 14.30 (4th Oct) / 19.30
Prices: €23 - €38
A theatrically explosive new version of Kafka's famous short story is brought to brilliant life by a mix of Icelandic and British creative talent. In Gisli Orn Gardarsson and David Farr's darkly comic and physical production, the unremarkable life of the Samsa family is turned - literally - upside down. One of the hottest international shows of 2008, this muscular production bursts onto the stage making Kafka's dream-like vision an electrifying reality.

Happy Days
Date: 2nd - 11th Oct   
Venue: Abbey Theatre
Time: 14.00 (4th & 11th) / 19.30
Prices: €18 - €35
Blazing light, scorched grass. Buried to above her waist and woken by a piercing bell, Winnie chatters away as she rummages in a bag, brushes her teeth, pulls out and kisses a revolver. Her husband, Willie, studies a pornographic postcard. A second bell signals the end of another happy day.  Don't miss this unique opportunity to see one of theatre's richest and most enduring creative partnerships - actress Fiona Shaw and director Deborah Warner - working on one of Beckett's greatest plays.                                

Gatz
Date: 26th - 28th September
Venue: Project Arts Centre
Time: 15.00
Tickets: €40
One morning in a low-rent office in a seedy corner of Manhattan, an employee finds a ragged old copy of The Great Gatsby in the clutter of his desk and starts to read it out loud - and doesn't stop. At first his co-workers hardly seem to notice, until weird coincidences start happening, one after another, so that it's no longer clear whether he's reading the book or the book is in charge...
Gatz is performed over a seven and a half hour period, with three intervals including one hour-long break.

That Night Follows Day
Date: 2nd - 5th October
Venue: Project Arts Centre
Time: 13.00 (5th) / 19.30 (2nd - 4th)
Tickets: €28 - €33
Featuring 16 children aged 8-14 years old, the play catalogues the many ways a child's life is determined by that of their carers. With great clarity and humour it examines the systems of parenthood, upbringing, discipline, care and welfare that define children's and adolescent's worlds. Astonishingly simple and beautifully poetic That Night Follows Day is a playful and provocative performance that holds its adult audience captive and captivated!

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Date: 7th - 12th October
Venue: Project Arts Centre
Times: 13.00 (11th Oct) / 18.00 (12th Oct) / 19.30 (7th - 11th Oct)
Tickets:  €22 - €33   
It's Big Daddy's birthday and he's dying. The heat is rising for his family as they square off to take over his enormous estate. His favoured son, Brick, has turned to the bottle to drown out the hypocrisy surrounding him, the truth he can't suppress, and the incessant clawing of his desperately frustrated wife, Maggie the Cat. Tonight is her last chance to claim her stake in the richest land this side of the valley Nile!

Rank
Date: 30 Sept - 4th Oct / 6th Oct - 11th Oct
Venue: The Helix
Tickets: €19 - €27.50
A terse, darkly comic thriller exploring the boundaries of loyalty, trust and friendship in a cynical world of avarice and betrayal. Rank examines the lure of addiction in all its forms as two gamblers struggle to resist one last throw of the dice, when a taxi-man at Dublin Airport's taxi rank is asked by a criminal to collect a suspicious bag.

Delirium
Date: 26th September - 11th October
Venue: Peacock Theatre
Times: 14.30 (4th & 6th Oct) / 20.00 (26th-27th Sept / 29th Sep-4th Oct / 6th - 11th Oct)
Tickets: €15 - €22
The Karamazovs are a train wreck waiting to happen. A hated father and his sons battle it out over women, money and God. Uncompromising and on the edge, they don't so much live as burn up. Hilarious, brutal and tragic, Delirium pulsates with energy, bursting at the seams with barely controlled passions as emotion and intellect battle for stage time. Questions of faith and fundamentalism play out against unrequited love and a lust for life in a world that's losing its moral and ethical boundaries.

ENGLAND
Date: 25th - 28th September     
Venue: Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane
Times: 18.00 & 20.00 (26th - 28th) / 19.00 & 21.00 (25th)
Tickets: €22 - €25
Two guides in a gallery. Two lovers with a lifestyle to maintain. Two hearts beating four thousand miles apart. Translations. Transactions. A transplantation. Played in contemporary exhibition spaces, surrounded by works of great beauty and worth, ENGLAND travels the trade routes of art and human beings. It's the story of a search for a new heart - a story about a life saved and an illness overcome at any cost. It's a tour to the end of the world.

You Are Here
Date: 23rd - 28th Sept / 30th Sept - 5th Oct / 7th - 12th Oct   
Times: 13.00, 15.00 (show 1) / 20.00, 22.00 (show 2)
Tickets: €15 - €20 / €25 - €30  (combined ticket)
A funny, moving and up-close piece of theatre, where an audience of potential investors bear witness to the overlapping lives of four Dubliners: a young woman having an affair with a married man, a writer of self-help books who seems in need of help herself, and an estate agent who can't get onto the property ladder. As the light changes and the city goes from Daytime to Nighttime, so do the emotional lives of these four city dwellers.Contains scenes of an adult nature. Daytime (1pm and 3pm) and Nighttime (8pm and 10pm) are separate but complementary shows   

La Omision De La Familia Coleman
Date: 1st - 5th October
Venue: Pavilion Theatre
Time: 15.00 (4th & 5th) / 20.00 (1st - 4th)
Tickets: €20 - €30
A comic and absurd study of an unconventional family on the verge of breakup that gives voice to the many eccentricities of contemporary Argentinean society. Three generations of Colemans live together in a house where violence is regarded as normal and the bizarre is ignored by all. Illness and death is the trigger for change... but does anybody notice except those left behind? Performed in Spanish with English surtitles

It's Only the End of the World
Date: 7th - 11th October
Venue: Pavilion Theatre
Times: 15.00 (11th October) / 20.00
Tickets: €20 - €30
After long years of absence Luis returns home to tell his Mother and siblings that he is about to die. Unfinished business needs to be looked after, loose ends tied up, and peace restored... but families are never that simple. Jean-Luc Lagarce's untimely death at the age of 38 silenced one of the most interesting voices in contemporary theatre. This Spanish translation of one of his most remarkable works is further evidence of the renewed interest in Lagarce -now one of the most performed playwrights in the world.
   
Circus
Date: 25th September - 5th October
Venue: Samuel Beckett Theatre
Tickets: €20 - €28
Times
13.00 (27th & 28th Sept, 4th & 5th Oct)
19.00 (25th-27th Sept, 30th Sept - 4th Oct)
Inspired by Fellini's 1950s film La Strada, this magical and surreal show tells the tale of smalltime circus act Gubu and Harle. They are one man down... but the show must go on. When the beautiful Angelina naively steps into the ring she is seduced into becoming part of their act and once more the show is back on the road. In a world of newfound wonder, love and disorder, they flip, they twist, they win, they lose. Now is your chance to enjoy this high-flying, heartwarming story of love and loss at the Circus.

First Love
Date: 6th - 12th October
Venue: Project Cube
Times: 13.00 (12th) / 19.45 (6th - 11th)
Tickets: €22 - €25
A young man, expelled from the family home, takes refuge on a bench by a canal. There he meets a woman who takes him home, with comically disastrous consequences. One of Samuel Beckett's early novellas, First Love contains much of his distinctive black humour and a plot that is regarded as a masterpiece of Beckettian perversity.

Caligula
Date: 30th September - 5th October   
Venue: Project Cube
Times: 14.25 (4th Oct) / 18.00 (5th Oct) / 19.45 (30th Sept - 4th Oct)
Tickets: €18 - €25
What would you do if you found you had absolute power, and realised at the same time you could never have what you really wanted? Camus' Caligula is set in Rome as the empire starts to decay, strangled in the grip of its most notorious emperor. This new version by David Greig is a darkly poetic, savagely funny exploration of the meanings of power, life and love.

Heart of Darkness
Date: 1st - 5th October   
Venue: Number 10
Times: 16.00 (4th & 5th) 17.00 (1st & 2nd)
Tickets: €25 - €28
The greatest and most influential novella of the 20th century performed entire and complete. A penetrating psychological study, a troubling masterpiece of modernism, a passionate denunciation of the secret crimes of the West. Winner of the Spirit of the Fringe Award in 2007, the performance will be accompanied by live performance of Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations transposed for the piano.   

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Date: 25th - 27th September   
Venue: Project Cube
Date: 22.00
Tickets: €22 - €25
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea cleverly combines 1920s cabaret, live music, and performance with impossibly glamorous movies and wickedly funny animation. Using the aesthetic of silent film, a series of comic vignettes unfold which take its audience on a deliciously surreal journey from the wild woods to the shipwrecked seas, from the weird underbelly of the suburbs to the tweedy world of the fading aristocracy. A delicately deadly delight!

While We Were Holding It Together
Date: 1st - 4th October
Venue: Project Arts Centre
Time: 22.00
Tickets: €22 - €25   
Five performers on a bare stage strike a deceptively simple tableau. While they struggle physically to hold it together for the next 67 minutes, our perception of what the theatre is and what it means to be an audience is constantly challenged. Often hilarious and always stimulating. While We Were Holding It Together continuously provokes shifts in our thinking and makes us question what it is we are seeing - a rock band on tour? A family picnicking in a forest? Or something more sinister altogether?
                               
The End of Everything Ever
Date: 10th - 12th October   
Venue: The Ark
Times: 12.15 (10th), 14.00 (11th & 12th), 16.30 (11th & 12th), 19.00 (10th),
Tickets: €6.50 - €10
Agata is 6 years old, and she is going to the railway station with her father. He smiles at her and seems very happy, but Agata has the strange feeling that she will never see him again. Accompanied by live music, The End of Everything Ever draws on true stories and accounts of the Kindertransport - 10,000 Jewish children who were saved by their parents' decision to send them out of Nazi occupied Europe. The award-winning NIE shine a light into some of our continent's darkest history and emerge with a story of survival, love and hope.

The Attic Under the Sky
Date: 7th - 9th Oct
Venue: The Ark
Times: 10.15 / 12.15 (7th & 8th) / 19.00
Tickets: €6.50 - €10
When entering this tiny attic you may discover a place full of dusty old boxes, broken toys and what may look like junk and rubbish, but to one little girl this Attic Under the Sky is a very special place! Many strange things are hidden in this attic - the most important of which is her only friend, the head of a puppet in search of a fitting body. Together they discover past memories, stories and dreams of other lives and other places hidden inside the broken, torn and worn-out toys. This is a performance for people who love beautiful images, exquisite music and are fond of memories...

The Wolf and the Goat
Date: 27th - 5th October      
Venue: The Ark
Time: 14.00, 16.00 (27th & 28th Sept/4th&5th Oct), 10.15, 12.15 (30th Sep - 2nd Oct)
Tickets: €6.50 - €10.00
This magical story is about a wolf and a goat who meet on a dark night far away from home but don't recognise each other. Forgetting that they are usually enemies they discover that they are closer than they imagined. Will the goat really be brave and the wolf frightened? Or maybe nothing changes and the wolf will eat the goat? Or maybe the frightened goat will escape? Like the wolf and the goat we don't know what is going to happen - do you?