The Irish Rep’s Theatre
@ Home Winter Festival

The Irish Repertory Theatre begins its Theatre @ Home Winter Festival on Tuesday with its first of nine different productions that will run between January 26th – February 21st with each production playing at four different times throughout the month.

MOLLY SWEENEY

Molly Sweeney has lived in happy, capable, and independent darkness since she was ten months old. When Frank, her restless, unemployed, and enthusiastic husband, makes her blindness his latest cause, he recruits Mr. Rice, a once-famous surgeon who, despite being half-drowned in Irish whiskey, agrees to attempt to restore Molly’s sight. When the bandages come off, Molly, Frank, and Mr. Rice discover the differences between seeing and understanding as they face the terrible consequences of a medical miracle.

YES! REFLECTIONS OF MOLLY BLOOM

It is Ireland in the early hours of June 17th, 1904. Molly Bloom’s husband–the wandering philandering Leopold “Poldy” Bloom–has just come home & fallen asleep in their Dublin row house. Molly–a daughter, a mother, a lover, and a long-suffering wife–patrols the pathways of her wild and leaping consciousness. She is lustful. Scared. Exuberant. Heartbreakingly lonely. Vivaciously reckless. And profoundly funny.

THE WEIR

In a remote country pub in Ireland, newcomer Valerie arrives and becomes spellbound by an evening of ghostly stories told by the local bachelors who drink there. With a whiff of sexual tension in the air and the wind whistling outside, what starts out as blarney soon turns dark as the tales drift into the realm of the supernatural. Then, Valerie reveals a startling story of her own…. Conor McPherson’s The Weir is a haunting, evocative evening in the theatre you will never forget.

LOVE, NOËL: THE SONGS AND LETTERS OF NOËL COWARD

Get to know the life and times of one of the 20^th century’s most dynamic creative icons – Noël Coward – through this intimate performance in which Steve Ross and KT Sullivan transform into some of the many characters that made up Coward’s unique life…Gertrude Lawrence, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Elaine Stritch, Lynn Fontanne, Virginia Woolf, Edna Ferber, the Queen Mother and, of course, The Master himself, Noël Coward. Through Coward’s songs, stories and personal letters, cabaret legends Ross and Sullivan will summon up timeless memories of an era that may be gone but is never to be forgotten.

BELFAST BLUES

Passionate, riveting and often humorous, Belfast Blues is a tapestry of autobiographical stories told from Geraldine Hughes’s perspective as a little girl coming of age in the war-torn Belfast of the 1980s. These stories bear insightful witness to the many faces of “trying to live a normal life” amidst the violence born of the longstanding conflict between Catholics and Protestants. At thirteen, Hughes temporarily left “The Troubles” to star in a TV movie, “Children in the Crossfire,” directed by George Schaefer, only to return home to a different kind of confusion and pain. 

GIVE ME YOUR HAND

In this special virtual reimagining of Give Me Your Hand, two of Ireland’s finest actors, Dermot Crowley and Dearbhla Molloy, take audiences on a virtual stroll through London’s National Gallery, discovering afresh the Museum’s masterpieces from Van Gogh and Van Eyck, to Rubens and Gainsborough. With humor and grace, Crowley and Molloy breathe fresh life into each painting’s subjects with poetic stories from renowned Irish poet Paul Durcan.

A TOUCH OF THE POET

In A Touch of the Poet, proud and tempestuous Cornelius Melody (Con) owns a run-down inn and tavern near Boston in 1828. Laden with debt, Con clings to his tenuous identity as a landed gentleman and war hero and chastises his wife and daughter for actions that expose the family’s humble Irish origins. When his daughter Sara falls in love with a wealthy American guest at their inn, Con’s pride drives him to an explosive reckoning with his true place in the New World.

ON BECKETT / IN SCREEN

Bill Irwin can’t escape Samuel Beckett. The pandemic hasn’t changed this. Two years ago, Irwin took the Irish Rep stage to premiere On Beckett, his award-winning meditation on Samuel Beckett’s works and language. Since then, COVID-19 has upended daily life worldwide and live theatre is on hold as venues stand empty. In this time of anxiety and loss, Irwin revisits the words of Samuel Beckett and returns alone to the Irish Rep virtual stage to bring us On Beckett / In Screen, a new meditation filmed for our current times.

In this intimate evening, Irwin mines the physical and verbal skills acquired in his years as a master clown and Tony Award-winning actor to explore a performer’s relationship to Beckett in the time of COVID. Irwin’s approach to the comic, the tragic, to every side of Beckett’s work–including Waiting for Godot, The Unnamable and Texts for Nothing –allows audiences to experience the Nobel Prize winner’s language in compelling new ways.

MEET ME IN ST LOUIS

In this heartwarming musical, based on the beloved 1944 film of the same name, the Smith family grapples with life changes and new love in a bustling St. Louis on the brink of the 1904 World’s Fair. This special digital adaptation from Charlotte Moore (Anna Smith in the original Broadway cast) includes favorite tunes, including “The Trolley Song,” “The Boy Next Door” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” along with the romantic suitors, comedic misunderstandings and jovial pranks that make this classic musical a treat for families of all ages.

The cast of Meet Me in St. Louis includes Shereen Ahmed (My Fair Lady) as Esther Smith, William Bellamy (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) as Lon Smith, Rufus Collins (The Dead, 1904) as Alonzo Smith, Kerry Conte (Mary Poppins National Tour) as Lucille Ballard, Melissa Errico (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) as Anna Smith, Ali Ewoldt (The Phantom of the Opera) as Rose Smith, Kathy Fitzgerald (Wicked) as Katie, Ian Holcomb (London Assurance) as Warren Sheffield, Austyn Johnson (The Greatest Showman) as Agnes, Jay Aubrey Jones (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) as Grandpa, Kylie Kuioka (The King and I National Tour) as Tootie, Ashley Robinson (A Child’s Christmas in Wales) as Postman and Trolley Man, and Max von Essen (An American in Paris) as John Truitt.