When someone treats me like a piece of shit… I bring out my Academy Award.
It has something to say. It’s saying I’m right. Read more …
Winner of the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award as well as a Scotsman Fringe First, the most talked-about show of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018 returns fresh from a smash-hit, sold out festival run.
Jay is the American Oscar-winning actor taking the lead in a new play that connects with his Irish roots. Leigh is the English director who will do anything to get noticed. And Ruth is the Northern Irish playwright whose voice must be heard.
The stage is set for great success but when the three meet to discuss the play’s challenges and provocations a line is crossed, and the heated discussion quickly escalates to a violent climax.
Exploring abuses of power, the confusion of cultural identity and the silencing of the female voice, Ulster American is confrontational and brutally funny – not for the faint of heart, and not to be missed.
Written by David Ireland, whose play Cyprus Avenue won the James Tait Black Award 2017 and Best Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards 2017, and directed by the Traverse's Interim Artistic Director Gareth Nicholls (How to Disappear, Letters to Morrissey, Trainspotting).
A theatrical thrill ride.
A clever, funny and poignant performance, perfectly written by David Ireland.
Ireland brilliantly captures the bewilderment of a generation that knows the rules of social engagement have changed – whether on gender relations, national identity or global politics – but is hopelessly and hilariously inadequate when it comes to putting the new-found knowledge into practice.
The play’s problem is that beneath the sound and fury, it has not much to say beyond the fashionable idea – increasingly complicit with far-right thinking – that people with liberal views are all hypocrites and moral weaklings, whereas bigotry, intolerance and violence are marks of authenticity. These are, though, the times we live in and no writer conjures that zeitgeist with more theatrical nerve than David Ireland.
A brutal, unsettling and uncompromising dark comedy about power.
Ireland’s hilarious play makes us laugh until it hurts, but it also asks us to question exactly why we find it so funny and the answers could be disturbing.
Trailing clouds of glory from the 2018 Fringe, David Ireland’s Ulster American has returned to the Traverse with a bang. If it is not quite as good as some have said, it is still impressive – and certainly is impressively nasty.
This is a dark smart comedy which sends up virtue signalling and satirises men professing feminism.
It may seem premature to say so just seven months after Ireland’s play premiered on the Edinburgh Fringe, but this revival (which keeps its fantastic original cast and creative team) reasserts Ulster American’s claim to classic status.
David Ireland and Gareth Nicholls--Ulster American
Ulster American: Gareth Nicholls @ Traverse
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Wednesday February 20, 2019, until Saturday March 2, 2019. More info: www.traverse.co.uk