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TheaterOctober 2009 Luck of the Irish On After Luke & When I Was God at the Irish Repertory Theater, New York, A Lifetime of Burning at e59e, New York & The Bacchae in Central Park. Much of Irish history and a great deal of Irish drama appear to have been cleverly constructed to substantiate the least plausible fancies of Sigmund Freud. All those raging sons of Cuchulainn, The Playboy of the Western World, endless contests of fathers and sons (including Fathers and Sons, as adapted by Brian Friel)—it’s really something to discover anything fresh in that old sod, but happily that is the case with two recent plays at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City. After Luke is a fugue on the theme of the Prodigal Son, while When I Was God is an exploration of sports and the ways its ritualized combat provides an avenue of sublimation for complex, painful, and often unspoken father-son conflicts. After Luke is as much about the real-estate boom as it is about ramshackle lives lived in contemporary Cork. Maneen (Michael Mellamphy), the shiftle ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 28 October 2009, on page 38 Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Luck-of-the-Irish-4286
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On Jude Law in Hamlet, the Atlantic Theater Company's Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet, Collaborative Stages's House of Yes, and The Retributionists by Daniel Goldfarb. On A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare on the Sound and The Europeans at Atlantic Stage 2. by Brooke Allen On Enter Laughing: The Musical at the York Theatre, The Savannah Disputation at Playwrights Horizons, 33 Variations at Eugene O'Neill Theater, and the closing of Forbidden Broadway.  The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
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