Cillian and Enda are back for a blockbuster

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers opened on Good Friday in the O’Reilly Theatre, unfortunately too late for review this week, and runs until April 7. It’s a dramatisation of the book by Max Porter about the trauma of a father whose wife has just died leaving him with two young sons. The father is an academic specialist, one of whose persistent images is of Crow, a mythological creature, trickster, highly intelligent, villainous and playful, who can take various shapes, and in the book is the embodiment of grief, dominating the father’s thoughts and threatening: ‘I won’t leave until you don’t need me any more.’ The performance renews the explosive combination of actor Cillian Murphy and Enda Walsh as director and adapter. The production will tour in 2019. The Curse Of The Button Accordion finishes its tour with visits to The Mill, Dundrum on April 5 and is in The New Theatre from April 23 to May 5. Written and performed by comedian Sharon Mannion, (Bridget & Eamon, Moone Boy, Callan’s Kicks) it traces her attraction to the box from her early years and her not always happy relationship with the instrument. It has been well-received, described as both hilarious and energetic.