About the Show

Siblings face a difficult choice when their lives are put on hold to care for their ill father.

Multi-award-winning novelist Kevin Barry pens his first original play, a dark comedy about familial relations. In it, siblings May and Timothy carry the burden of their father's illness while also wrestling with dreams of their own. Since they are not getting any younger, they question whether it is best to stay and help the father, who has taken to bed, or if it's time to move on. The witty, dark comedy was called "brilliant" by The Irish Independent and marks the reopening of Irish Rep's Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage.

Critic Reviews (4)

The fate of May and Timmy would be tragic, almost unbearably so, but for that fact that so much of their dialogue is spiked with bilious hilarity. When it comes to black comedy, it's always a great day for the Irish.
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"First-time playwright Kevin Barry brings the same full-hearted doom and gloom to the stage in Autumn Royal that was evidenced in his Booker-Prize-longlisted Night Boat to Tangier...In other words, Autumn Royal is the perfect midlife-crisis-cum-Covid play."
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"Autumn Royal is a thinly plotted effort, dependent more on language and atmosphere than dramatic tension. Unfortunately, as directed by the usually reliable Ciarán O’Reilly, the performances come off as just that, performances."
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"Succeeds in delivering the disquieting goods of hopelessness, along with a bonus dose of family turmoil."
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