More theater than we can attend! It is what we’ve all wished for…and now we have it, so get out and see it. Here’s a snip of my review of THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN, currently playing at Deep Dish Theater in Chapel Hill. Directed by Tom Marriott, it has the comic timing and gentle appreciation of human longing and human foible that we’ve come to expect from him in his busy decades of theater work in the Triangle. This is his first time directing at Deep Dish; surely there will be more. Show runs through May 18, and has been selling out. Tickets on the website.

Julie Oliver, left, and Marcia Edmundson in Deep Dish’s THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN. Photo: Jonathan Young.

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has a sharp tongue and a kind heart, and both characteristics inform his play The Cripple of Inishmaan. Set in 1934, on one of the cluster of islands off western Ireland at the mouth of Galway Bay, the play examines various kinds of acting and authenticity. It looks at secrets and stories, news and gossip, and where they intersect. It considers choice, fate, and what makes a community or a family. All this is reeled out in cunningly crafted conversations among the idiosyncratic characters of the rocky, sea-bound village.

Read the rest on CVNC here.

Samantha Rahn and Ishai Buchbinder in THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN. Photo: Jonathan Young.