Drama and Theatre Studies (Peer-reviewed publications)

The transnational roots of key figures from the early years of the Gate Theatre, Dublin

Clare, David; Morris, Nicola (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020-11-04)

When considering the avant-garde nature of the early Gate Theatre, critics rightly focus on the queer sexuality and liberal politics of many of the people associated with the theatre at the time. However, it is also important ...

Traumatic childhood memories and the adult political visions of Sinéad O’Connor, Bono, and Phil Lynott

Clare, David (Peter Lang Ltd, 2020-02-17)

Sinéad O’Connor, Paul “Bono” Hewson of U2, and the late Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy are three of Ireland’s most famous rock musicians, but that is not all that these celebrated singer songwriters have in common. Memories ...

Reflections on classic Gate plays by Mary Manning, Christine Longford, and Maura Laverty (Pre-published version)

Clare, David (ISA [Irish Society for Archives], 2018)

Last June, the Waking the Feminists organisation published Gender Counts (its eagerly-anticipated report on gender representation in Irish theatre), and the report confirmed what many Irish theatre fans suspected: during ...

Goldsmith, the gate, and the 'hibernicising' of Anglo-Irish plays (Pre-published version)

Clare, David (Peter Lang, 2018)

In recent decades, Irish theatre-makers have frequently imposed Irish elements onto the “English” plays written by London-based, Irish Anglican playwrights. As discerning critics have long recognised, George Farquhar, ...

John McGahern's 'Oldfashioned' and Anglo-Irish culture (Pre-published version)

Clare, David (Manchester University Press, 2017)

In John McGahern’s 1985 short story ‘Oldfashioned’, he ably demonstrates why a sensitive, bookish, Catholic young man raised in the repressive, anti-intellectual Irish Free State might be attracted to the way of life being ...

Under-regarded roots: the Irish references in Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (Pre-published version)

Clare, David (CUP [Cork University Press], 2016)

Laurence Sterne has always occupied an uncertain place within the Irish literary canon. Important commentators have consistently denied that his work is, in any significant way, Irish. Referring to the fact that the ...

The intertextual presence of Samuel Beckett’s "All That Fall" in Martin McDonagh’s "Six Shooter" (Pre-published version)

Clare, David (EUP [Edinburgh University Press], 2015)

As many critics have pointed out, Martin McDonagh's work for the stage and screen is deeply indebted to the drama of Samuel Beckett. While critics have spotted most of McDonagh's intertextual debts to Beckett, they have ...

Review of Rough Magic's 2013 production of R.B. Sheridan's "The Critic"

Clare, David (University of Toronto Press, 2015)

Review of Druid Theatre Company's 2016-17 production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"

Clare, David (Edinburgh University Press, 2017)

Irish-American identity in Eugene O'Neill's early plays

Clare, David (Penn State University Press, 2018)

This article examines Irish-American identity in Eugene O’Neill’s early work, including his “lost” plays. It demonstrates that characters such as Al Devlin in The Movie Man, Joe and Nellie Murray in Abortion, Eileen Carmody ...

Landlord–tenant (non)relations in the work of Bernard Shaw

Clare, David (Penn State University Press, 2016)

As a child, Shaw was horrified by the appalling poverty of the Dublin slums, and, while working in a Dublin estate office as a teenager, he actually had to collect slum rents. On a more personal level, both sides of Shaw’s ...

Review of "Bernard Shaw, W.T. Stead, and the new journalism: Whitechapel, Parnell, Titanic, and the Great War" by Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel

Clare, David (Penn State University Press, 2017)

MIRR - Mary Immaculate Research Repository