Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls lives in the public imagination foremost as one of those banned and burned books, testament to post-independence Ireland’s absurd prudishness, hypocrisy and philistinism.

Druid’s staging of Beckett’s pre-eminent classic was the actors’ idea, and, looking at the play, it’s easy to see why it seemed like a good idea to Aaron Monaghan, Garrett Lombard, Marty Rea, and Rory Nolan. 

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The shift to shopping centres and chainstores, copying the UK model, is destroying the city centre’s retail business, says Joe McNamee