The Quare Fellow review: ‘Tom Creed adds to his already extensive catalogue of brilliantly conceived and executed work’
Theatre
Rebecca O’Mara, Eva Jane Gaffney, Kate Stanley Brennan, Taylor McClaine and Ebby O'Toole-Acheampong in 'The Quare Fellow'. Photo: Ste Murray.
The Abbey claims in its programme that its current production of Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow is the city’s first since 1984. Actually, there was a production far more recently (2010) at the New Theatre in Dublin, albeit on a much more limited budget and scale than Tom Creed’s lavish reimagining of the work.
He writes in his programme notes that drag as an art form is simultaneously ironic and sincere, and points out we’re all on a sliding scale of our genetic sexuality. Hence Behan’s savagely all-male cast of prisoners and their fellow inmates, the guards, are played this time around by a cast of women and non-binary people.
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