Nuala by Decadent Theatre Company at Black Box Theatre

What to Expect

In 2008 the novelist Hugo Hamilton travelled to Berlin with the writer Nuala O’Faoláin, who was dying. This play adapts his account of that trip. It is not a biography and it does not try to sum her up. Instead it stays with the ordinary business of the days themselves, the meals and the walks and the arguments, and lets the pressure of limited time do the work.

Decadent Theatre Company, Galway’s own touring producing house, stage it across four nights at the Black Box. The ninety-minute piece keeps Hamilton’s tenderness towards a difficult, brilliant subject while circling the questions she was asking at the end: what beauty is for, what memory holds onto, how much of a life is actually lived. For anyone who read Are You Somebody? when it came out this will land hard, but the play does not assume prior knowledge of O’Faoláin’s work.

Good to Know

• Wednesday 30 September to Saturday 3 October 2026 at the Black Box Theatre, Dyke Road, Galway City.
• Running time 90 minutes.
• Produced by Decadent Theatre Company, based in Galway.
• Adapted from Hugo Hamilton’s account of travelling to Berlin with Nuala O’Faoláin in 2008.
• Ticket prices and nightly start times are not printed on the Town Hall Theatre listing, so confirm at booking.
• Booking through Town Hall Theatre at tht.ie.

Getting There

The Black Box Theatre is on Dyke Road, a fifteen minute walk north of Eyre Square through Woodquay and past the Galway Sportsground. Approach by car on the M6 and N6 from Dublin and Athlone, or the M18 and N18 from Limerick and Ennis, then follow the Headford Road into the city. The venue has its own large car park on Dyke Road, which makes it the simplest Galway city theatre to drive to. City buses run the Headford Road route, and Ceannt Station is about twenty minutes on foot for anyone arriving by train or coach.