Dublin the Festival Capital of Ireland |
 Dublin Fringe Festival
Of these events the one grabbing most of the headlines is the Dublin Fringe Festival. Picking up where Edinburgh left off, The Fringe is Ireland’s showcase of visual and performance arts played out at established and makeshift venues throughout Dublin from September 6th to 21st.
Now in it’s 14th year the Dublin Fringe brings 16 days and nights of entertainment with a wide ranging programme encompassing theatre, dance, music and visual arts played out at some very strange places - if you were expecting to be seated comfortably, think again!
The range of venues for the 100 or so shows and spectacles of the Fringe include a crypt, a pub, a disused school, a warehouse, a giant tent, the Unitarian Church on St Stephen’s Green and even a hotel room, as well as the more established venues of Dublin’s Theatres, art galleries and parks.
The hub for the Fringe Festival is the Spiegeltent located in Inveagh Gardens. The Spiegentent will be the venue for a host of events from La Clique, a colourful burlesque circus, to afternoon tea dances for visitors. The Fringe’s visual arts programme is the aptly named ‘Push the Envelope’, featuring Ireland’s first ever flash mob opera with impromptu performances in St Patrick’s Gardens and the ‘Bouffon Glass Menajoree’, a parody of Tennessee Williams’ classic play ‘Glass Menagerie’ in which the audience chooses a different ending each night!
The Fringe will feature 20 premieres of new Irish plays, with everything from musical monologues to three act comedies. The programme includes Patrick McCabe’s ‘Appointment in Limbo‘, set in a strip club and the controversial ‘Thicker Than Water‘, which was written by an inmate currently serving a sentence at Ireland’s maximum security Portlaoise prison. The programme also includes ‘Help!’, described as Samuel Beckett meets Jerry Seinfeld and featuring a directorial debut from Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan.
This year the Fringe boasts its biggest and boldest music programme ever, with acts from around the world including Manchester’s The Fall, and Hip Hop from the Sugar Hill Gang. While outdoor dance performances include a ballet on tightropes with ‘Les Etoiles’ and ‘Transport Exceptionnels’, which is best described as a graceful and romantic duet between a ballet dancer and a JCB digger!
Running in Dublin at the same time as the Fringe is the Bulmers International Comedy Festival. From September 1st - 21st some of the best comedy acts from Ireland and the world take to Dublin’s stages to have the locals rolling in the aisles. The Comedy Festival will feature Americans Chris Rock making his Irish debut, Rich Hall as ‘Otis Lee Crenshaw’, Britons Jimmy Carr, Ricky Tomlinson and the Irish contingent being led by Brendan Burns and Keith Barry.
For opera lovers this September there is the Anna Livia Dublin International Opera Festival at the Gaiety Theatre. Between 7th - 14th September this operatic feast treats you to Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’ on 7th, 9th, 11, and 13th, and ‘Samson and Dalila’ by Saint Saens featuring the American Heldentenor on 8th, 10th, 12th and 14th.
 On 19th September, Dublin Culture Night offers something for all visitors to the city with over 100 of the Dublin’s arts and cultural establishments open for free. Venues involved include; Dublin City Gallery in Hugh Lane, Dublin Writers Museum, The GAA Museum, the Joyce Centre, the National Botanic Gardens, The GPO, The Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Ireland, The Chester Beatty Library, Christ Church Cathedral, The Shaw Birthplace, St Patrick’s Cathedral, The National Gallery of Ireland, The Goethe Institute, Trinity College Library and many more with guided tours, talks and events. All participating venues will be open until 11pm giving visitors to Dublin a great opportunity to see the city’s most popular attractions.
Dublin is one of the friendliest and most popular capital cities in the world. It is also one of the cleanest and most attractive, while Dublin’s compact nature and comprehensive public transport system, the Luas tram, make it one of the easiest to get around.
People come from all over the world to sample the craic of Dublin’s street life, from the buzz of Grafton Street, where you’ll find buskers, exclusive shops and Molly Malone selling her cockles and mussels, to the historic buildings of O’Connell Street and the lively entertainments of Temple Bar.
There are many tours of Dublin organised by the Dublin Tourist Office which will show you a different side to the city’s character. For those interested in Dublin’s heritage, the Historical Walking Tour presents a two hour ‘seminar on the streets’ exploring the main events in Irish history, from the Potato Famine, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and Ireland’s partition, and is hosted by history graduates from Trinity College. The tour passes by Trinity College, Old Parliament House, Temple Bar, City Hall, Dublin Castle and the Four Courts, along the way.
If you’re more interested in experiencing the ‘craic’ of Dublin, you could try the Traditional Irish Musical Pub Crawl. This tour is led by two professional musicians, who tell the story of Irish music, while playing a few tunes along the way. On the tour you’ll visit some of Dublin’s oldest and most famous pubs and the tour runs every night from May to October and just Friday and Saturday nights in November, February, March and April.
For literary buffs the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl is a fun and entertaining pub-crawl led by two actors performing various scenes in pubs with literary connections. Stop for a drink in each pub, but remember there’ll be questions at the end of the tour with a fun-filled quiz.
Whatever time of year you’re planning on visiting Dublin, you’ll find something going on which give you the perfect excuse for returning!
If you’re planning a vacation to Ireland contact one of our guides for the latest offers on flights and accommodation. Contact an Ireland guide .
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