Theatre

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
A play by David Mamet

Aidan's current project is starring as Richard Roma in the West End revival of David Mamet’s highly popular "Glengarry Glen Ross" at the Apollo Theatre. Gillen plays Richard Roma opposite Jonathan Pryce’s Shelley Levene.

In Glengarry Glen Ross, Pryce plays an aging real estate salesman who finds himself struggling to compete with the office's young superstars. Mamet’s 1983 play was first seen at the National Theatre’s Cottesloe, and subsequently on Broadway in a different production.

Mamet later adapted his play for a 1992 film of the same name which starred Jack Lemmon as Shelley Levene and Al Pacino (in an Oscar-nominated performance) as Richard Roma, the roles respectively now being taken by Pryce and Gillen. Pryce also appeared in the film version in the role of James Lingk.

"Aiden Gillen crowns his career as the swaggering Ricky Roma..." - THE STAGE
"...it is Aidan Gillen's shrieking performance...which dominates the stage. He was that good." - THE EXPRESS
"Excellent Aidan Gillen radiates a seedy sexual flamboyance as the ferrety Richard Roma...Gillen suggests the kind of man who might lure you with lingo and liquor to bed and leave you feeling existential nausea when you woke up next to him the next day." - THE INDEPENDENT
"...a motor-mouthed Aidan Gillen delivers a glorious adrenalin surge of a performance..." - VARIETY
"...a brash and confident Richard Roma (expertly and emotionally played by Aidan Gillen)..." - THEATREWORLD
"...Aidan Gillen whose performance as the sharkiest shark in the pool is done with tremendous authority. An electrifying star turn." - THE SPECTATOR
"...Aidan Gillen offers a wonderful blast of stage energy..." - TELEGRAPH

| Coming Soon: Full Reviews | Reviews | Reviews |

February 13th, 2007 saw the opening of Aidan's most recent theatre project, the Gate Theatre’s production of Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet’s American Buffalo (which premiered in Chicago in 1975). In this darkly entertaining story, Mamet draws us into the lives of three small time hustlers inhabiting a pawn shop on the south side of Chicago and their plans to pull off a heist. Laced with comedy, wit and verbal wizardry, The New York Times in 1983 described it as “…one of the best American plays of the last decade”.

Aidan Gillen • Domhnall Gleeson • Sean McGinley
Director: Mark Brokaw
Set Designer: Alexander Dodge
Lighting Designer: Hartley T A Kemp
Costume Designer: Leonore McDonagh

The production is directed by Mark Brokaw, who has previously directed the highly acclaimed Gate productions of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge starring Chris Meloni (2005) and The Price starring Bob Prosky (2004). Mark has also recently directed Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams for the Roundabout Theatre NY and the film Spinning into Butter starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Miranda Richardson and Beau Bridges.

The Gate brought together a stellar cast for American Buffalo - Aidan Gillen as Teach; Domhnall Gleeson as Bob (The Lieutenant of Inishmore, for which he was nominated a 2006 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play and Paul Mercer’s Studs); and Sean McGinley as Don (John Boorman’s A Tiger’s Tale and Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, winner of the Palme d’Or award for Best Picture at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival).

"GILLEN...is squarely in bravura territory...The Teach of a lifetime...The actors plumb extraordinary depths from the language." - VARIETY

"...TEACH - played with wonderfully electric words and gestures..." - IRISH INDEPENDENT

"...Propulsive energy of GILLEN'S Teach..." - IRISH TIMES

| Audience Reviews: | 1 | 2 |

April-June, 2005, Aidan took the stage at London's West End in Frank McGuinness' Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, at the New Ambassadors Theatre. Inspired by true events, the play follows the struggle of three political prisoners held captive by radicals in desolate, war torn Beirut; an Irishman, an Englishman and an American coping with the devastating effects of their incarceration and deprivation. It is the story of their survival, courage, and ultimately, triumph over adversity.

Since its original production in 1960, Harold Pinter’s THE CARETAKER has been recognized as a landmark in 20th Century drama. Written by one of contemporary theatre's greatest living playwrights, the play is a fascinating look at the fragile relationship of two brothers whose lives are profoundly disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious vagrant. Hailed by critics as "suspenseful," "humorous," and "completely absorbing." This new production of Pinter's masterpiece stars stage and screen veteran Patrick Stewart (X-Men, the Star Trek films, The Ride Down Mount Morgan), Kyle MacLachlan (Sex and the City), and Aidan Gillen.

| HAROLD PINTER | Roundabout Theatre | TIMES Review |

            CRITICAL REVIEWS

      | Backstage.Com | Talkin' Broadway |
  | Broadway.Com | Associated Press |
  | USA Today | The New Yorker | Variety|
       | New York Post | NJ Star Ledger |
          | NY Daily News | NY NewsDay |
  | American TheaterWeb| TheaterMania|
Hartford Courant | Dallas Morning News
      | Curtain Up | NY1 | NYTheatre.Com |
  | JournalNews | Poughkeepsie Journal |



PLATONOV is considered a key work of Chekhov’s youth - one of the playwright's "immature" works - written when he was 21, in its original version, it sprawls over six hours. It had never really been shown in Britain. The Royal Court came closest in 1960, but cast as the play's 27-year-old hero, the 52-year-old Rex Harrison. In this adaptation by David Hare, with the Almeida Theatre Company and under the direction of Jonathan Kent, Platonov arrives in the form of Aidan Gillen.

Platonov, is a 27-year-old provincial schoolmaster with a wife and young child. He has squandered his inherited fortune and is angry about everything - not least the stagnant society in which he finds himself and his own failure to live up to his early idealism. He treats everyone cruelly but proves strangely irresistible to the opposite sex, including a widowed landowner, her young stepdaughter and an earnest chemistry student. He is reluctant to consummate his relationship with at least one of the women who are in love with him, and goes on to conduct a succession of disastrous, destructive affairs -- driving the women to rapture, dementia, suicide and murder.

"Platonov is a man unafraid, by a mix of direct address, monologue, farce and tragedy, to let us know just how strongly he feels about the hopelessness and corruption that he sees around him.

This play, above all plays, is a great and terrible tragedy of youth. It's about "classic adolescent problems: how do you escape self-consciousness? Is it possible to be honest in a fallen world?" -- David Hare (PLATONOV)



| JONATHAN KENT | AUDIENCE REVIEWS | DAVID HARE |

"Platonov has, under its fretful surface, a core of a calm, moral even-handedness, a severe, unforgiving compassion that is amazing in a man of 20. Other than that, there is Kent's meticulous direction, his unerring sense of pace and his insistence on giving every character space to breathe."
                               -- John Peter, The Sunday Times

"Aidan Gillen...swaggers and smoulders to great effect."
                                     -- Tony Purnell, Mirror

"Aidan Gillen's Platonov...bursts like a thunderclap in a summer of love. Shock-haired and insolent, Gillen's magnificent, magnetic performance occupies a panoramic production by Jonathan Kent."                                                                 -- Michael Coveney, The Daily Mail

"Platonov arrives in the form of a slick Aidan Gillen. Hair dyed black as pitch, and thickly spiked with gel, he launches tirades against his dead father, most of the gathered guests and reserves his prickliest barbs for the women.

His aphorisms refuse to be drowned by choruses of protest, as one snarling seduction follows another."
           -- G. Thompson, EXCITE: What's On Stage Review



THE TEMPEST, the last comedy of Shakespeare's career, sums up the playwright's stagecraft with a display of seemingly effortless skill.

The wise Prospero (Ian McDiarmid), exiled Duke of Milan, is living on an enchanted island inhabited by a host of characters - his daughter, the innocent Miranda, and her first love, Ferdinand; Ariel (Aidan Gillen), the spirit of the air, and the gross earth monster, Caliban; the drunkard vaudeville clowns, Stephano and Trinculo, among others.

Prospero has the opportunity to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore—as well as to forestall a rebellion, to arrange the meeting of his daughter, Miranda (Anna Livia Ryan), with an eminently suitable young prince, and, more important, to relinquish his magic powers in recognition of his advancing age. Richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, the play's theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.

| The Tempest: Articles & Reviews | | Audience Reviews |