Irish Repertory Theatre has named two productions for its 2027 winter season, and both are North American premieres: a double bill pairing Mark O’Halloran’s Trade with Darren Murphy’s version of Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice, then Clare McMahon’s road-trip comedy The Gap Year.
All three texts reached their first audiences in Dublin or Belfast, and the company, now in its 38th season as New York’s only year-round home for Irish and Irish American drama, is giving each its first outing on this side of the Atlantic. The announcement comes while Irish Rep’s production of The Hairy Ape, extended through December 6, is still running. Casting and full creative teams for the winter season will be announced later.
Trade / The Human Voice
The studio half of the season comes first. Colm Summers, whose credits include Kate Vozella’s Machine Learning for Little Engine Theater, makes his Irish Rep debut directing both one-acts in the W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre. Previews begin January 13, 2027, opening night is January 21, and the limited run ends February 21.
O’Halloran, the writer of Adam & Paul, made Trade for THISISPOPBABY, which commissioned and produced it at the 2011 Dublin Theatre Festival. A young rent boy meets his middle-aged client in inner-city Dublin, and this time the older man arrives with blood on his shirt. As he tries to explain it, the play becomes a slow uncovering of secrets, longing and loneliness.
Cocteau’s monologue of a woman losing her lover over the phone moves, in the hands of the author of The Flats, to Belfast, where the call cuts across the pressures of her working life. Only her side of the conversation is heard. Murphy’s version premiered at the Lyric Theatre Belfast in 2026, produced by Prime Cut Productions.
The double bill plays Wednesdays at 2pm and 7pm, Thursdays and Fridays at 7pm, Saturdays at 2pm and 7pm, and Sundays at 3pm, with no public performance on Thursday, January 21. Tickets start at $55 and go on sale to Irish Rep members on Tuesday, November 17, and to the public on Thursday, November 19, at IrishRep.org. Patrons under 40 can buy $25 seats through the company’s GreenSeats membership.
The Gap Year
The mainstage takes over in February with McMahon’s comedy. Benjamin Gould (I Am Maura) directs, and McMahon’s earlier work includes Shakespeare’s Women. Previews begin February 3, 2027, on the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage, with an opening night on February 11 and a limited run through March 28.
Three lifelong friends decide they are finished living by other people’s expectations: Kate, newly widowed; Roisin, long the one looking after everybody’s children; and Oonagh, a divorcée. They take a campervan around all 32 counties of Ireland on the gap year they never had, by way of castles, coffee and plenty of craic, and find new sides to the country and to themselves. Underneath the jaunt, it is a play about starting over and about the female friendships that make it possible.
It grew out of Fishamble’s A Play for Ireland initiative, premiered at the Lyric Theatre Belfast in 2022 and went back there in 2025 for a sold-out run. New York has heard it once already: Irish Rep gave it a staged reading in its 2024 New Works Fall Festival, the same strand that brought five new works to the company this fall.
The Gap Year plays Wednesdays at 2pm and 7pm, Thursdays and Fridays at 7pm, Saturdays at 2pm and 7pm, and Sundays at 3pm, with no public performance on Thursday, February 11. Tickets start at $55 and go on sale to Irish Rep members on Thursday, December 3, and to the public on Thursday, December 10, at IrishRep.org, with $25 seats for GreenSeats members under 40.
