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Theatre Medea EXHIBITION Ireland in Focus: Photog
raphing the 1950s Buoyed by the critical acclaim and sell-out run of A Christmas Carol, The Gate stride into the new year with the first offering from their Power and Freedom season. Euripides Greek tragedy was first produced in 431BC so director Oonagh Murphy has a fair few reference points at her disposal. However, this staging takes its lead from Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sarks’ radical refresh of the source material in which they frame the tragedy from the perspective of the heroine’s children. Melding contemporary concerns upon mythological moorings whilst paying deference to the ‘out of the mouth of babes’ insights adds up to the prospect of a thrilling piece of theatre. Gate Theatre, Thursday January 30 to Saturday February 22, €15-€35 There’re some big names attached to this relatively compact exhibition in Collins Barracks. Ireland in Focus sees what heavyweight photographers Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Cresswell saw when they were sent here on assignment in the 1950s. Welcome to a world of fair days, roadshows, Corpus Christi processions, sheep-shearing, ebullient seminaries and race days. Lange’s look at us for Life Magazine entitled: ‘Irish Country People: Serenely They Live in Age-Old Patterns’ seems to play to its prescribed gallery. Cartier-Bresson’s work for Harper’s Bazaar also seems to have a rose-tint to its observations. Cresswell is probably the most intriguing of the three as the was here researching his seminal anthropological study, A Rural Community in Ireland. His Kodachrome slide prints taken in Kinvara in Clare in the mid-fifties have less sheen and, therefore, the closest sense of authenticity. Nostalgia tripping stuff for more ‘innocent’ times is on full exposure. Gently absorbing. National Museum of Ireland until April 2020 LIVE MUSIC & LATE BAR CLUB NIGHTS EVERY FRIDAY & SATURDAY till late LOST LANE CAROUSEL BAR OPEN 5PM till late COCKTAILS • CRAFT BEERS • DJS LOST LANE • ADAM COURT - GRAFTON ST • See LOSTLANE.IE for all gig and club night listings photo: Andreas Peterson