At the furthest reaches of Temple Bar you'll find the New Theatre, actually located in the rear of the James Connolly bookshop.
It's a nice studio sized theatre space, around a 50-seater venue with raked seating. Despite it being at the Parliament street end of Essex Street, it is still extremely well situated, and really deserves to be better known than it is. I think Dubs that go see fringe theatre generally & when the theatre festivals on will know it. But a lot of people don't know this is here, it's reputations growing however. They produce their own work as well as it being an umbrella venue for independent productions. The Tailor and Ansty by Eric Cross, and Raglan Road by Tom O'Brien are two notable plays performed here and in London in the last year.
The bookshop which is the communist party one is alright and you can have a look at some interesting & not widely available writings of James Connolly, for example the plays that he wrote, but it's not a terribly inspiring environment, and could be better stocked. A proper coffee area with seating would improve things, there's enough space for a few sofa's maybe, and more theatre related stuff would be good.
It could be though that the bookshop detracts from the theatre. It is also too easy to miss the sign saying 'new theatre', so I believe they need to push the venue more, and make it generally more accessible for the casual theatre goer. read more