Star-Studded Theater Season
It’s Ireland meets Hollywood on New York City’s stages this theatrical season.
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter – famous for their “excellent adventures” as Bill and Ted in their younger days – will star in a highly-anticipated revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In preparation for his Broadway debut, Reeves leaned on James Knowlson, “a twinkly-eyed 92-year-old Beckett biographer whose work is informed by his decades of friendship with the Nobel-winning Irish writer, who died in 1989,” the New York Times noted. They also discussed “Beckett’s connection” to that other giant of Irish literature James Joyce.
Meanwhile, Irish actor Stephen Rea performed another Beckett play, Krapp’s Last Tape, at NYU’s Skirball Center. And the Irish Arts Center made it a Beckett trifecta with Endgame running until the end of November.
The Irish are also part of the sprawling cast of a new Broadway revival of Ragtime. And in Brooklyn, Academy Award winner Michelle Williams will star in Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christine at St. Ann’s Warehouse, while Kelli O’Hara stars alongside
A-lister Tom Hanks in The World of Tomorrow, based on Hanks’ short stories, at The Shed theatre.
Finally, Northern Ireland’s Troubles are at the center in Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap at The Irish Rep through November.
Street Named for Malachy McCourt
Posters in the area ominously announced the impending “hanging of Malachy McCourt.”
But it was just a chance for friends and family to remember the celebrated “Author, Storyteller, Actor, Raconteur,” as the poster noted. In September, the corner of 93rd Street and West End Avenue – where McCourt lived with his family – also became known as “Malachy McCourt Lane.”
A cheerful gathering included speeches, songs and memories, as well as a reminder that Malachy often liked to say: “I Love Ya New York,” Brendan Rose reported in West Side Rag. “Of all the honors this great city can bestow on its citizens, to name a street after you is just about the greatest one of all,” said actress Kate Mulgrew, addressing the crowd.
“And for those who don’t know who he was – and there are very few – but there will be strangers, there will be foreigners crossing from there to there, and they’ll look up, Malachy McCourt Lane, and they’ll carry on,” said Mulgrew. “And as they carry on, they’ll carry on with him. So he’ll go with them wherever they go. And that’s the legacy of this great man.”
– Brendan Rose
John Malkovich to Play President Snow
Malkovich said he is “delighted” to play President Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games: On Stage, which is currently in rehearsals ahead of its opening at the purpose-built Troubadour Theatre in London’s Canary Wharf later this month.
“I’m delighted to join the World Premiere production of The Hunger Games in London, bringing this iconic story to the stage,” he said.
“Playing President Coriolanus Snow will be thrilling, because I have long been an admirer of Suzanne Collins’ novels, the films, and Conor McPherson’s writing, and it is a privilege to take on this role.” Dubliner McPherson has adapted Collins’ first book for the stage production, which is directed by Matthew Dunster.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Fall 2025 issue of Irish America. ♦
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