Irish Rep Unveils Fall/Winter Programming Featuring BECKETT BRIEFS & More

Irish Repertory Theatre revealed additional programming for their Fall 2024 Season, as well as the first production for the Winter 2025 Season.
 
Irish Repertory Theatre’s Fall 2024 Season will begin with the previously announced North American Premiere of The Beacon, a new play by Nancy Harris (The Dry, BAFTA writing nomination 2023), directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull (Little Gem). The Beacon will star Kate Mulgrew (“Orange is the New Black”) and begin previews September 11, with an opening night set for September 22, for a limited run through November 3, on Irish Rep’s Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage.
 
Irish Repertory Theatre and Dot Dot Productions in association with The American Irish Historical Society will present the long-awaited return of The Dead, 1904 - an immersive adaptation of James Joyce’s classic story, “The Dead,” adapted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon (Joy in Service on Rue Tagore) and novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz (The Plot, The Latecomer, HBO's “The Undoing”). Directed by Ciarán O’Reilly (Philadelphia, Here I Come!), previews begin November 20 at The American Irish Historical Society (991 Fifth Avenue), with an opening night set for November 26, for a limited run through January 5, 2025. 
 
Tickets to The Dead, 1904 include dinner and drinks. Four VIP premium tickets will be available at each performance, allowing audience members to be served dinner at the main table with the cast as they play the dinner scene-–a once in a lifetime experience for lovers of immersive theatre and James Joyce. Tickets will go on sale to Irish Rep members on Thursday September 12 and the public on Thursday September 19 and will be available at IrishRep.org. The Dead, 1904 is also available for group bookings and private events.
 
The Fall Season will also include the return of A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, adapted and directed by Charlotte Moore, with music direction by David Hancock Turner, playing December 4-29; as well as special events including Two Roads, A Documentary Screening and Concert and the New Works Fall Festival, spotlighting Northern Irish voices.
 
In January 2025, Irish Rep will present Beckett Briefs by Samuel Beckett, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly & starring Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus).
 

TWO ROADS

A Shared Journey Between Black and Irish Americans
As told by Mick Moloney and Lenwood Sloan
An Ace Pictures and Irish Repertory Theatre Production
Produced and Directed by Susan Wittenberg
A Documentary Screening and Concert
On the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
Monday October 28 & Tuesday October 29 at 7pm
 
The documentary Two Roads is a shared story told by legendary folklorist and banjo rambler Mick Moloney and 'catalytic agent' and performer Lenwood Sloan. It explores how, despite the troubled backdrop of racism and discrimination, Irish people in the United States and African Americans found common ground and shared humanity through music, song, dance, and humor.
 
Following the documentary screening will be a live concert performance featuring The Auction Project. Fusing Celtic, jazz and Afro-Latin influences, super group The Auction Project—led by saxophonist, flutist, and composer David Bixler, and featuring Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill—create a surprising, richly textured and thoroughly enjoyable sound. The Auction Project explores how a traditional fiddle phrase fits atop a breezy, post-bop groove as this quintet makes history and stakes out uncommon musical territory. In addition to O’Farrill and Bixler, The Auction Project features All-Ireland medalist violinist/fiddler Heather Bixler, Grammy Award-winning percussionist Vince Cherico, and bassist Raul Reyes, and stars the dancer media sensation Kaitlyn Sardin (Kaitrock).
 
 

NEW WORKS FALL FESTIVAL

Spotlighting Northern Irish Voices
On the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
Curated by Nicola Murphy Dubey

Monday November 4, Monday November 11, Tuesday November 12 & Monday November 18 at 7pm

Irish Repertory Theatre’s New Play Development Program includes table reads, staged readings, workshops and commissions from voices that fulfill Irish Rep’s mission and tell stories of Irish and Irish-American people of all ethnicities, genders, abilities, and orientations. The New Works Festival returns this November with four new play readings spotlighting voices from the North of Ireland. This program enables us to hear new work aloud with an audience and discover new plays and musicals for possible future production.
 
 

A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES

By Dylan Thomas
Adapted and Directed by Charlotte Moore
Music Direction by David Hancock Turner
On the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
Previews Begin December 4, 2024
Opening Night Set for December 8, 2024
Limited Run Through December 29, 2024
 
This December, Irish Rep offers up the seventh special return of its joyous holiday classic, Dylan Thomas’s iconic A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Charlotte Moore’s (Aristocrats) musical adaptation of this “never to be forgotten day at the end of the unremembered year” features heartwarming contemporary and traditional Christmas music interwoven with the popular story of that snowy Christmas Day in Wales.
 
A Child’s Christmas in Wales returns to the Irish Rep stage once again this holiday season. Charlotte Moore premiered this adaptation in 2002 as part of A Celtic Christmas. The Associated Press said of a subsequent run in 2010, that the production “leave[s] the audience feeling as though they’re tucked inside a cozy, musical snowglobe.” The production was revived, by popular demand, for the 2011, 2015, 2018, and 2022 holiday seasons.
 
The performance schedule for A Child’s Christmas in Wales is as follows: Wednesday-Saturday at 7pm; Wednesdays & Saturdays at 2pm; Sundays at 3pm. Exceptions: there will be no performances Tuesday December 24 and Wednesday December 25. There will be an added performance on Friday December 27 at 2pm.
 

BECKETT BRIEFS

From the Cradle Through the Grave
By Samuel Beckett
Directed by Ciarán O`Reilly
Starring F. Murray Abraham as Krapp in Krapp’s Last Tape
On the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
January 2025
 
Three short plays by Samuel Beckett that run the gamut of existence from birth to the afterlife, presented on a single bill.
 
Not I – “Practically speechless…. all her days”
The story of a non-verbal woman, abandoned by her parents at birth, who, after living an uneventful life until the age of 70, suddenly hears voices and realizes it’s herself speaking. She feels she is supposed to tell something but strains to discover what.  
 
Krapp’s Last Tape – “Perhaps my best years are gone…But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No I wouldn’t want them back”
An aged man reviews his life with the assistance of his younger self heard on autobiographical tapes recorded in his younger years. 
 
Play – “We were not long together when she smelt a rat”
Eternally together in the afterlife, locked in their urns, a man, his wife and his mistress relay the sordid details of their love triangle. Each is condemned to repeat his or her version for eternity.
 
Full casting, creative team and ticket information for these productions and special events will be announced at a later date.
 

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