Once Before I Go

The Gate Theatre presents Once Before I Go, a world premiere play from Phillip McMahon, co-creator of the iconic sensation RIOT!

Told against the backdrop of Dublin’s burgeoning gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the contemporary LGBTQ+ community of today, the play charts the close friendship of Lynn, Daithí, and Bernard, and sits on the exhilarating edge between comedy, tragedy and melodrama.

Exploring the fragile yet resilient bonds of Irish queer lives across four decades in Dublin, London and Paris, Once Before I Go steps between the early days of the AIDS crisis and today’s LGBTQ+ community, living in an era of marriage equality, gender self-determination, and untransmittable HIV.

At once political, joyous and heartbreaking, Once Before I Go honours the people we lost along the way, and celebrates those who fight on.


PRESS

Nominated for 3 Irish Times Theatre Awards 2022

★★★★ - The Irish Times

★★★★ - The Guardian

★★★★ - The Arts Review

Irish Independent | We don’t often come out of the Irish theatre these days feeling we have encountered an important national play, but that is what we get here.

Totally Dublin | The Story Behind The Image

RTE | Arena

Written by Phillip McMahon

Cast:

Lynn: Aisling O’Sullivan
Jase: Sam Crerar
Daithí: Sean Campion
Young Lynn: Martha Breen
Young Daithí: Desmond Eastwood
Bernard: Matthew Malone

Director: Selina Cartmell
Associate Director: Darren Sinnott
Set Designer: Francis O’Connor
Costume Designer: Katie Davenport
Lighting Designer: James F. Ingalls
Sound Designer: Alma Kelliher
Movement Director: Liz Roche
Intimacy Director: Sue Mythen
Voice Director: Andrea Ainsworth