Latest news with #GlassMaskTheatre
Sunday World
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sunday World
‘I don't give a bo***x, Rex' – Monk gives Gerry Ryan's son blessing for stage show
Ryan family in the dark about show detailing life of notorious gangster Gerry Ryan's son Rex has shied away from sharing details about his upcoming stage role as Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch from his siblings, sister Bonnie has revealed. The eldest child of the late RTÉ broadcaster is set to direct and star in a play based on the veteran criminal's life at Ryan's Glass Mask Theatre in Bestseller Café on Dawson Street next month. 'The Monk', a one-man show, takes place entirely in the holding cell of the Special Criminal Court, five minutes before Hutch is set to receive the verdict of his 2022 trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, where he stood accused of murdering David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in February 2016. Rex Ryan (Pic Frank McGrath) and Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch (Pic Mark Condren) Rex Ryan talks about The Monk But the Ryans have no idea what to expect when it comes to the 65-minute drama – having to wait until June 10 to see their brother transform into The Monk on opening night. 'We actually really know nothing at all about it. It's going to be a total surprise,' Rex's younger sister Bonnie Ryan tells the Sunday World. 'He's been working really hard on it and I've no doubt that it's going to be amazing. Rex initially got his blessing after a half-hour video call with Hutch from Wheatfield Prison back in 2022, organised by Hutch's son Jason. Rex Ryan's mum Morah and sisters Lottie, Bonnie and Babette Speaking to the Irish Independent this month, the 35-year-old explained how he sought permission to tell The Monk's story on stage. ' He told me to do what I like and that if it was my fiction, and not his, I could go ahead. 'I don't give a bo***x, Rex.'' Rex Ryan in The Monk He met Hutch at Glass Mask Theatre last year around the time of Hutch's Dáil election bid 'I asked him loads of factual questions and probed him about his first memory, his childhood,' Rex detailed. This meeting, paired together with research from 'multiple other sources' – including Hutch's appearance on the Crime World podcast last November – helped him piece together the story of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch. Rex is now finally ready to play one of Ireland's most polarising figures on stage. 'The Monk' will take place at the Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street from June 10 to 21. Rex Ryan (Pic Frank McGrath) and Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch (Pic Mark Condren) News in 90 Seconds - May 27th
Sunday World
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sunday World
Gerry Ryan's son Rex shies away from sharing details on upcoming stage role as ‘The Monk'
Ryan family in the dark about show detailing life of notorious gangster Gerry Ryan's son Rex has shied away from sharing details about his upcoming stage role as Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch from his siblings, sister Bonnie has revealed. The eldest child of the late RTÉ broadcaster is set to direct and star in a play based on the veteran criminal's life at Ryan's Glass Mask Theatre in Bestseller Café on Dawson Street next month. 'The Monk', a one-man show, takes place entirely in the holding cell of the Special Criminal Court, five minutes before Hutch is set to receive the verdict of his 2022 trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, where he stood accused of murdering David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in February 2016. Rex Ryan's sister Bonnie But the Ryans have no idea what to expect when it comes to the 65-minute drama – having to wait until June 10 to see their brother transform into The Monk on opening night. 'We actually really know nothing at all about it. It's going to be a total surprise,' Rex's younger sister Bonnie Ryan tells the Sunday World. 'He's been working really hard on it and I've no doubt that it's going to be amazing. Rex initially got his blessing after a half-hour video call with Hutch from Wheatfield Prison back in 2022, organised by Hutch's son Jason. Speaking to the Irish Independent this month, the 35-year-old explained how he sought permission to tell The Monk's story on stage. ' He told me to do what I like and that if it was my fiction, and not his, I could go ahead. 'I don't give a bo***x, Rex.'' Rex Ryan in The Monk He met Hutch at Glass Mask Theatre last year around the time of Hutch's Dáil election bid 'I asked him loads of factual questions and probed him about his first memory, his childhood,' Rex detailed. This meeting, paired together with research from 'multiple other sources' – including Hutch's appearance on the Crime World podcast last November – helped him piece together the story of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch. Rex is now finally ready to play one of Ireland's most polarising figures on stage. 'The Monk' will take place at the Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street from June 10 to 21. Rex Ryan in The Monk News in 90 Seconds - May 27th
Irish Independent
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Gerry Ryan's son set to play Gerry Hutch in one-man stage play next month
Rex Ryan will direct and perform the 65-minute stage production titled 'The Monk' when it opens at Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street next month. The one-man show is set to centre around Hutch's 2022 trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, where he stood accused of murder. During the 52 days of evidence, the court heard testimony from various witnesses, including former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall, who claimed Hutch told him that he and another man had shot Kinahan cartel foot soldier David Byrne at the Regency hotel in 2016. Dowdall was due to stand trial for murder alongside Hutch, but turned state witness and pleaded guilty to a facilitation charge. The three-judge court found his evidence unreliable and acquitted The Monk. While he walked free from the three-judge court, his co-accused, Paul Murphy (61), of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co Dublin and Jason Bonney (50), of Drumnigh Wood, Portmarnock, Dublin 13, were found guilty of facilitating the murder. 'I done lots of crimes. Some of them I got caught. Some I got away with,' a description of the production reads. 'Rex Ryan plays one of the most compelling and polarising figures in modern Irish history, Gerard 'The Monk' Hutch. 'Centred around the trial at the special criminal court, join us in Glass Mask as we witness Gerry bear witness to a lifetime of alleged crimes, triumphs and misdemeanours.' The Monk will be performed at the Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street from June 10 to 21. Rex Ryan is the oldest son of former RTÉ presenter Gerry Ryan, who died in 2009. He has one other brother, Elliot, and three sisters: Lottie, Bonnie and Babette. Rex trained as an actor at The Gaiety School of Acting, appearing in TV shows, films and theatre productions. He is also a writer and director, with his first short film, Funeral Song, garnering a nomination for best actor at the Richard Harris International Film Festival in 2021.
Sunday World
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sunday World
Gerry Ryan's son set to play Gerry Hutch in one-man stage play next month
The one-man show is set to centre around Hutch's 2022 trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, where he stood accused of murder. The son of the late broadcaster Gerry Ryan is set to play the role of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch in a play about the veteran criminal's life. Rex Ryan will direct and perform the 65-minute stage production titled 'The Monk' when it opens at Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street next month. The one-man show is set to centre around Hutch's 2022 trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, where he stood accused of murder. During the 52 days of evidence, the court heard testimony from various witnesses, including former Sinn Fein councillor Jonathan Dowdall, who claimed Hutch told him that he and another man had shot Kinahan cartel foot soldier David Byrne at the Regency hotel in 2016. Dowdall was due to stand trial for murder alongside Hutch, but turned state witness and pleaded guilty to a facilitation charge. The three-judge court found his evidence unreliable and acquitted The Monk. While he walked free from the three-judge court, his co-accused, Paul Murphy (61), of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co Dublin and Jason Bonney (50), of Drumnigh Wood, Portmarnock, Dublin 13, were found guilty of facilitating the murder. 'I done lots of crimes. Some of them I got caught. Some I got away with,' a description of the production reads. 'The Monk' written by and starring Rex Ryan is set to open next month 'Rex Ryan plays one of the most compelling and polarising figures in modern Irish history, Gerard 'The Monk' Hutch. 'Centred around the trial at the special criminal court, join us in Glass Mask as we witness Gerry bear witness to a lifetime of alleged crimes, triumphs and misdemeanours.' The Monk will be performed at the Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street from June 10th to 21st. Rex Ryan is the oldest son of former RTÉ presenter Gerry Ryan, who died in 2009. He has one other brother, Elliot, and three sisters: Lottie, Bonnie and Babette. Rex Ryan (Pic Frank McGrath) and Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch (Pic Mark Condren) News in 90 Seconds - May 15th Rex trained as an actor at The Gaiety School of Acting, appearing in TV shows, films and theatre productions. He is also a writer and director, with his first short film, Funeral Song, garnering a nomination for best actor at the Richard Harris International Film Festival in 2021.
Irish Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Jigsaw review: A play so up close we hear the voice in its character's head
Jigsaw Glass Mask Theatre at Bestseller, Dublin ★★★☆☆ Audiences have always been on intimate terms with theatre. In a medium that thrives on its proximity and liveness, even plays staged in small rooms above pubs, and conceived with limited resources, can forge close connections. Just pull up a seat. Lee Coffey's breakout play, Leper + Chip , electrified the close-quartered Theatre Upstairs in 2014. In recent years the playwright's projects have been staged in larger venues and become more kaleidoscopic and sweeping in scale. With Jigsaw, his new play for Glass Mask Theatre, Coffey is going back to the small room in the bar. When Jim, a Dubliner homeless and sober for many years, busily pragmatic and unrestrainedly honest in Alan Devine's performance, is seen leaving his hostel, he gives an instruction that sounds intriguingly commanding; it could be punctuated with a colon. 'I walk. Dublin: talk,' he says, outlining the conceit of many a Dublin odyssey as the play roves past familiar urban scenes. ('On the left is the Spire, a f**king waste of money.') READ MORE He encounters several people from his life before living on the streets, including a schoolmate turned gym overlord and an estranged daughter (all depicted by Craig Connolly), who help recount an incident in which Jim, out of control on cocaine, was accused of assaulting his wife. Connolly isn't here just to portray the play's external characters. During a tense reunion with his spouse, Jim begins hearing things – 'this voice peeping up'. Connolly starts addressing him like a kind of shoulder devil, as if Coffey were giving addiction an internal voice, stirred by triggers and rationalising relapse: 'I head to town!' ('That's the spirit!') It's not the first time Jim has heard voices. When the play's second half goes back 20 years, swapping in Connolly as a younger version of the man, with Devine now providing the back-up as surrounding characters, we see him take cocaine for the first time, at his wife's New Year's Eve party. 'This is the sound of getting f**ked up,' he says, grimly literal. ('We're going to be friends, you and I,' Devine says with a grin.) As the play moves towards an uneasily reconcilable conclusion, asking questions of a society quick to judge, it's possible that this could be delivered with the breakneck pace of Leper + Chip. Ian Toner's production often feels stranded somewhere less certain. (It was the late Karl Shiels, an actor intimate with the plays of Mark O'Rowe, who first recognised that playwright's snappy crosscuts and exhilarating speed in Coffey's work, and chose to direct Leper + Chip.) O'Rowe's early work has its own DNA, its punching henchmen and horny seducers indebted to the contrived machismo of David Mamet's theatre. Coffey is insistently less cartoonish, as if trying to land a whirling Dublin tale, fuelled by thrills and suspense, somewhere as recognisably real as the modern despair of addiction and homelessness. With all the puzzle pieces, that could be a finished picture worth seeing. Jigsaw is at Glass Mask Theatre at Bestseller , Dublin, until Saturday, May 24th
