Free Music at Farmleigh

There’s free music again at Farmleigh this summer, courtesy of the OPW and Improvised Music Company. Between Tue 21 July and 11 Aug the Farmleigh Salon Series features composer writer singer Julie Feeney, Manchester born jazz pianist John Taylor, the amazing Martin Hayes & Denis Cahill, and a final night of cultural crossover with Francesco Turrisi's Tarab, a melting pot of Turkish, Mediterranean and Irish music, and Chinese trio The Xi'An Si, performing Irish airs on exotic instruments. Check out www.salonseries.ie for the free ticket lottery.

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

Making Strange are at Project from 9-18 July with The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by New York playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis (a regular collaborator with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s LAByrinth Theatre Company). ‘A gloriously intoxicating brew’ said the Guardian of this passionate and poetic play, set in Downtown Purgatory, where a lawyer who believes in divine mercy above divine justice is appealing Judas Iscariot’s sentence of eternal damnation. Matt Torney directs a large cast that features Mark Lambert, Eleanor Methven, Hilary O’Shaughnessy, Karl Quinn and Megan Riordan among others. www.project.ie

After Miss Julie

The resilient PurpleHeart Theatre Company celebrate their 10^th birthday with the Irish premiere of After Miss Julie at Smock Alley Theatre Studio, previewing from Tue 7 July and opening on Thur 9. This is Patrick Marber’s (of Closer fame) take on the Strindberg classic, updated to a sweltering July in 1945 and relocated to an English country house, where celebrations for the British Labour Party’s landslide election victory are in full swing. Tensions rise and tragedy beckons as Miss Julie hangs out below stairs amid a whirlpool of class suspicion and resentment, sexual desire and repressive social mores, with Marber’s skillful drawing of believable and
psychologically astute characters fleshing out Strindberg’s original. Ronan Leahy directs, and the cast includes Maeve Fitzgerald, Stewart Roche and Fiana Toibin. Runs until Sat 25 July.