In EilÃs Dillonâs novel The Bitter Glass, set in west Co Galway during the Irish Civil War, there is a line of dialogue that is quietly extraordinary in showing some of the turns the English language has taken in Ireland: âWasnât it herself told me ye were coming today . . .â
Few Irish people would bat an eyelid at this â or pause to deconstruct it, such is the storyâs momentum. And it borders on cryptic for readers uninitiated in Irish English dialect; certainly its nuances and cadences are likely to be lost en route. So humour me while I marvel at some of its features.
The revival of
Our New Girl by Nancy Harris at the Gate was a welcome slice of the urban contemporary. First produced at the Bush in 2012, this psychological drama in which the idea that a woman can have it all gets a spectacular kicking. Directed by Annabelle Comyn, the show had a strong thriller-ish edge, with genuine uncertainty about how the story would twist. The dominant uncertainty was offstage however, and having opened in March, it halted its run early as the country went into its first lockdown. In the words of Druid director Garry Hynes, companies started “unproducing”, scrambling to cancel and rearrange their plans while at the same time trying to invent a new way of serving the theatre audience during a pandemic.