Theatre review: Games for Lovers

Ryan Craig wrote the English version of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class, which would probably have been my show of the year in 2009, except I didn’t start doing an annual theatre roundup until the year after. It’s not a connection you would easily make from seeing his latest, the light, slight relationship comedy/drama Games for Lovers. Logan’s (Calum Callaghan) relationship with Jenny (Tessie Orange-Turner) is quickly going tepid, and he tries to reinvigorate it by inviting her to move in with him. Logan’s continuing pursuit of something that’s not really working means his best friend Martha (Evanna Lynch) can’t make a move on a mutual attraction neither of them has wanted to be the first to admit to for years. She answers an ad for a flatshare with deluded wannabe lothario Darren (Billy Postlethwaite) who, in something of a coincidence pileup, is both an old acquaintance Logan has recently reconnected with, and someone who crashed and burned when he tried his pickup techniques on Martha only a couple of weeks earlier.

Theatre review: Disco Pigs

I almost skipped the 20th anniversary production of Disco Pigs because I felt like I’d seen a version at the Young Vic quite recently; as it turns out that production was actually six years ago and besides, casting a Harry Potter actor I hadn’t “collected” on stage before is always a good way of making me stump up for a ticket. Enda Walsh’s two-hander uses a mixture of strong Cork accents and dialect with a convoluted, poetic style of speech that channels Joyce, Beckett and A Clockwork Orange to tell a story of two teenagers, Darren aka Pig (Colin Campbell) and Sinead aka Runt (Evanna Lynch,) who were born a second apart in the same hospital. Ever since being placed on adjacent tables they’ve been closer than real siblings, to the point in fact of isolating themselves from their families, speaking in their own language and dealing with the outside world mainly with violence.