WHERE would the Traverse Theatre’s Edinburgh festivals programme be without Irish writers, actors and companies? The most cursory consideration of recent years – in which the theatre’s stages have been graced by such shows as Enda Walsh’s Medicine (2021), Michael John O’Neill’s This Is Paradise (2021 and 2022), Meghan Tyler’s Crocodile Fever (2019) and David Ireland’s Ulster American (2018) – show that the festival offerings of Scotland’s new writing theatre rely very heavily on Hibernian talent.
That pattern continues emphatically with Sonya Kelly’s stunning new play The Last Return (Traverse, until August 28). Presented by the excellent Druid theatre company of Galway, it may well be both the funniest and the most politically devastating play on the Fringe this year.
