A casting update for Tom Murphy’s A Whistle in the Dark at the Abbey Theatre and Britain’s National Theatre has just been announced.
As part of the 2027 Dublin Theatre Festival, A Whistle in the Dark will play on the Abbey Stage from Wednesday, October 13th to Saturday, October 30th, featuring a handful of Ireland’s most talented acting cast.
The play will open in London’s Lyttelton Theatre in the months ahead of its performance on home soil.
Making his debut at Britain’s National Theatre, Paul Mescal will play the role of Michael Carney, an Irish emigrant in the English midlands who tries in vain to escape his violent family.
Marking a historic moment for Irish culture, the late Tom Murphy’s work is finally brought to the National Theatre of Great Britain for the first time since the play originally debuted back in 1961.
Directed by Abbey Theatre Artistic Director Caitríona McLaughlin, she describes the performance as “a taut, explosive, pressure cooker of a play”.
A Whistle in the Dark marks McLaughlin’s directorial return to the Abbey following the run of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.
“It is very meaningful for us at the Abbey Theatre to have such fulsome engagement in this next chapter of the National Theatre of Great Britain. It will be an honour to bring The Playboy of the Western World and A Whistle in the Dark before audiences in London. Every generation deserves to see these two seminal works of the Irish canon.
“I cannot believe my luck – the chance to tackle Tom Murphy both at home, in Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, and abroad, in the UK’s National Theatre.
“I cannot wait to be in a room with this company of curious, intelligent, sensitive, and playful actors,” said director McLaughlin.
Paul will share the stage with a star-studded cast featuring Irish actors Ciarán Hinds, Peter Corboy, Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty and Ryan Donaldson, alongside Aisling Loftus and Julian Moore-Cook.
Paul Mescal’s first professional role was in The Great Gatsby at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 2017, and he appeared at the Abbey for the first time the following year in Asking For It, a dramatisation of Louise O’Neill’s bestselling book.
Now, almost a decade after his professional debut, Mescal takes on one of Tom Murphy’s most acclaimed works and makes his highly anticipated National Theatre debut.
Tickets for the Dublin performances will go on sale in 2027.
Words by Gillian Murphy
