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Late at the Gate
Writer and Performer: Emmet Kirwan
Directed by Oonagh Murphy

Late at the Gate is a fascinating event which  allows artists to express the innermost motifs of the performed plays by intertwining them with some current social issues. It was incredibly satisfying to attend to post-show performances and obtain different perspectives of the subject matter by linking illusionary characters to the contemporary zeitgeist of the real world.

After attending Look Back in Anger, a 1957 play written by John Osborne and directed by Annabelle Comyn, the spectators were welcomed to join the ‘Late at the Gate’ session which was directed by Oonagh Murphy and beautifully written and performed by Emmet Kirwan—a graduate of the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin. After the aforementioned play, Kirwan explored the magnificent power of the written and spoken word to evoke and emphasize some compatible obstacles of the play and our society. Thus, creating a magical-realist atmosphere as if the audience members were also a part of such an intense and problematic play. Kirwan’s response to Look Back in Anger was a performance filled with some very admirable poems, such as ‘Mam and Dad Are Worried’ and ‘I Love You, Woman’. Consequently, Kirwan grabbed the audience’s full attention with his unique poetic words, hip hop rhythm, and its powerful content.

Kirwan’s experience of working-class Dublin is a realistic reflection of characters of the play, such as Jimmy Porter. The difficulties of the real world were appealingly transmuted into the realms of poetic sound. Kirwan’s poems emphasized gender inequality issues, sociopolitical, and psychological problems which can be found within the theatrical and social dimensions.

Emmet Kirwan’s performance intriguing in two ways: The Gate Theatre’s a national venue and Looking Back in Anger’s mise-en-scène where Kirwan wisely explored the formidable essence of the art of the written (and spoken!) word as a powerful weapon to highlight the obstructions of the society we live in, and to make people consider this problematic reality in order to make ethical changes on a social spectrum. Finally, the spectators left the theatre with a range of benefits: a deeper comprehension of the premier play and heightened reflections on the current social condition.