“These are provocative plays and we’re living in provocative times,” said Artistic Director Garry Hynes as she announced Druid Theatre Company’s slate of shows for 2017, which will continue to explore through theatre the pervasive sense of dread faced in today’s tumultuous world.
With a mixture of new and old productions, Druid are carrying their momentum from 2016 into this year with their 20th anniversary production of Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, currently on a successful coast-to-coast tour of the United States, returning to Dublin's Gaiety Theatre at the end of March for a two-week run.
Critically acclaimed Galway International Arts Festival (GIAF) hit Waiting for Godot will be brought to the Abbey Theatre on the back of its sold-out GIAF appearance last year and the inventive 'country-roads' tour which saw it play to small audiences on Inis Meáin, the Céide Fields and in Wicklow.
Running from 22nd April to the 20th of May, this will be a chance for Dublin audiences to catch the production before it tours to the Spoleto Festival in the US in June. Historically, this is the first Abbey main stage production of Beckett’s masterpiece since 1977, when the Schiller Theatre Company brought the play over from Berlin, in a production directed by Beckett himself.
Druid have two new productions to showcase to audiences in 2017. One of the centrepieces of the GIAF will be the first major revival of Mark O’Rowe’s poetic drama Crestfall, to be directed by Annabelle Comyn. Opening in the Mick Lally Theatre during the festival in July, it will then travel to the Abbey’s Peacock stage for a fortnight in August.
In September, Druid will present Eugene McCabe’s King of the Castle at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway. Directed by Garry Hynes, this play about success, greed and gossip will see Druid founder member Sean McGinley return to the stage to play the lead character, Scober McAdam.
“Crestfall is an unforgiving portrait of three women who are fuelled by love but driven to hate. It’s beautiful but it pulls no punches,” says Hynes. “King of the Castle is very much a play of its time steeped in a world of patriarchy and religion that invades the personal and the intimate.
“They present a challenge and a necessary look at where we are and where we’ve come from and have both a national and a global resonance.”
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Druid 2017 programme:
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
The Gaiety Theatre ¦ 28th March – 15th April
Pittsburgh | Michigan | Hong Kong
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Abbey Theatre | 22nd April – 20th May
Spoleto Festival, USA | 25th May – 10th June
Crestfall by Mark O’Rowe
The Mick Lally Theatre (Galway International Arts Festival) ¦ 14th – 29th July
Abbey Theatre (Peacock stage) | 1st – 12th August
King of the Castle by Eugene McCabe
Town Hall Theatre, Galway ¦ September
