Abbey Theatre Presents Pan Pan Theatre

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane


23 - 26 May 2018

Booking Information


Dates: 23 – 26 May
On the Abbey Stage

Times: Wed – Sat 7.30pm, Matinee Sat 2pm

Tickets: €13 – €45 / Conc. €13 – €30

Running Time: 2 hours including an interval

To book for a group of 6+ call (01) 87 97 226

There’s something strange in the neighbourhood of contemporary Denmark. Who are you going to call? That is the question.

In Pan Pan’s purgatorial presentation of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, you the audience are faced with a choice: who is going to be, or not to be, Hamlet?

Actors compete to play the title role but as we enter the graveyard world of this icon of individualism can anyone escape playing the Dane? Aren’t we all the main part?

Highly innovative and visually breathtaking, this is an audacious and irreverent riff on Hamlet that does not so much update or deconstruct the play as explode it. Playing fast and loose with our familiarity and expectations, the onstage Director rations out Shakespeare’s text, knowingly excavating its layers in a series of theatrical devices and conceits that focuses the large cast, and the audience, on the existential plight of its characters.

Even the stage is a Hall of Mirrors and the play-within-a-play, enacted by a troupe of Dublin Youth Theatre members, is Hamlet itself.

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost” Hamlet

#PlayingTheDane

Reviews

★★★★
'Extremely funny and engaging'
The Irish Times

★★★★
'The innovation and cheek were non-stop'
Financial Times


'Magnificently stimulating and thought-provoking theatre in an equally devastating setting. Not to be missed.'
Sunday Independent


'A serious, searching work… affecting, provocative and stimulating'
Irish Independent


'Absorbing, sometimes mind-blowing… staging the audition process is ingenious.'
Irish Theatre Magazine

Trailer 

Photos 

Photography © Ros Kavanagh

Credits

  • Performer: Andrew Bennett
  • Performer: Conor Madden
  • Performer: Anna Sheils McNamee
  • Performer: Anthony Morris
  • Performer: Gina Moxley
  • Performer: Amanda Piesse
  • Performer: Daniel Reardon
  • Performer: Fionn Walton
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Rhys Coleman Travers
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Eoin Fullston
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: David Kearney
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Melia McEvoy
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Penny Morris
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Charlotte Murphy
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Tristan Spellman Molphy
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Aoife Connolly-O'Sullivan
  • Dublin Youth Theatre Performer: Lee Stafford
  • Director: Gavin Quinn
  • Designer: Aedín Cosgrove
  • Costume and Prop Design: Sarah Bacon
  • Assistant Director: Kathryn Hamilton
  • Assistant Designer: Grace O'Hara
  • Producer: Aoife White
  • Production Manager: Rob Usher
  • Stage Manager: Sara Gannon
  • Assistant Stage Manager: Aaron Kennedy
  • Chief LX: Lisa Mahony
  • Dramaturg: Simon Doyle
Call Box Office Open in Maps
Abbey Theatre
26/27 Lower Abbey Street
Dublin 1
Ireland
D01 K0F1