The Irish Rep, now in its 25th season and thriving

Irish Repertory Theatre marks a quarter of a century

It's hard to believe the Irish Repertory Theatre is celebrating its 25th season already, and this special year may be its most ambitious ever. Featuring a Harold Pinter play directed by John Malkovich, alongside a rare and unmissable staging of Brian Friel's Bloody Sunday play The Freedom of the City and a concert by Phil Coulter in time for Christmas, can you think of a more perfect season to show off Ireland at its best? Cahir O'Doherty talks to co-founder and artistic director Ciaran O'Reilly about what to expect.

Sometimes the best plan is not to have a plan at all. The freedom can allow unexpected things to happen.

When the Irish Repertory Theater was formed by Charlotte Moore and Ciaran O’Reilly back in 1988 the talented pair had a mission statement “to bring works by Irish and Irish American masters and contemporary playwrights to American audiences.”  But that opened-ended policy doesn't even begin to describe their achievement.

Both are meticulous in their respective crafts as artistic and producing directors, and both prefer to let their productions speak for themselves. There's no showboating at the Rep, there's just a relentless focus on the plays themselves and a work ethic that's unmatched in New York theater.

In a typical Rep season you'll see plays by Ibsen, Friel, Shaw, Yeats (and usually back to back). Then they'll stage a spirited revival of a Broadway musical that gives 42nd Street a run for its money.

There's isn't another theater in the city that can do all this as successfully and consistently as the Rep. It's a cause for amazement.

“It feels like yesterday,” O'Reilly tells the Irish Voice, referring to that day in 1988 when the company staged its maiden production of Sean O' Casey's The Plough and the Stars.

“It's such a cliché to say it but that's the truth. You don't think about your legacy, you just keep on doing plays. At the end of the day you've done a lot, and people keep writing them, you know?

The Rep's exciting new season starts on October 3 with a rare, unmissable staging of Irish playwright Brian Friel's toweringly angry, unforgettable play about Bloody Sunday, The Freedom of the City. The play begins as an inquiry into the shooting deaths by British soldiers of three civil rights marchers outside Derry's famous Guildhall, but it quickly turns into a travesty of injustice that starkly mirrors the real life events that unfolded in the aftermath of that watershed day in the North's history.

There are striking parallels to the events of our own time too in the way that three unarmed strangers -- Lily, a middle-aged mother of 11, and Michael and Skinner, two young men -- “occupy” the lord mayor's office and find themselves becoming instant heroes, or martyrs or terrorists, depending on where you're standing.

“There's a lot of reasons for staging it now,” O'Reilly confesses. “The first is that it was the first play I've ever done in my life, away back more than 30 years ago. Just two years ago we watched the British Prime Minister David Cameron standing up in the House of Commons, finally – finally – apologizing for what happened in Derry on Bloody Sunday.

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Nster.com