MORE TWISTED GOINGS-ON IN MCDONAGH’S WILD WEST

Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West runs at The Everyman in Cork from July 31 to August 25, with Gus McDonagh, John McCarthy, Andrew Holden and Amy McElhatton. A typically brutal McDonagh black comedy, it’s the third in the Leenane series of plays that includes The Beauty Queen

Of Leenane and A Skull In Connemara. It’s the tale of two contrasting, bickering brothers. One of them has murdered their father but they squabble over trifles, while an ineffective alcoholic priest tries hopelessly to bring some order into their lives.

A new play by Jimmy Murphy (Kings Of The Kilburn High Road, Brothers Of The Brush) is always of interest and his latest work, Idlewild, runs in Smock Alley from tonight until August 11. In a bitter gangland feud the leaders of two Dublin crime gangs, childhood friends, face a terrifying dilemma over ending the bloodshed. Rex Ryan and Ruairí Heading are the leads in the first of a trio of plays by Murphy, planned for the 2018/19 season in Smock Alley, under the heading The Price Of Life.