Seven Drunken Nights - The Story of The Dubliners

Few shows can claim to embody the spirit of an entire city onto one stage, but Seven Drunken Nights: The Story of the Dubliners managed exactly that at Stevenage's Gordon Craig Theatre last night. Presented in association with Dublin's world-famous O'Donoghue's pub, the show celebrates the legendary Irish-folk band The Dubliners, spanning over 50 years of iconic music. With the stage dressed as a traditional Irish pub, the room was alive from the off with the warmth, craic and communal spirit of a Dublin session in full swing.

What immediately sets this show apart is its refusal to follow the biographical musical playbook. Nobody on stage pretends to be a Dubliner. Instead, a cast of narrators guide the audience through the story of how ‘The Lads’, as they were affectionately known, became icons of Irish culture. We follow their journey in broadly chronological order from their earliest days through to the lasting legacy they left behind. Along the way, projected TV adverts from the era punctuate the storytelling, transporting the audience back to the Ireland of the 1960s in a way that is as clever as it is charming. Woven throughout are personal anecdotes about the band and their music, giving the show an intimacy that a straightforward imitation could never achieve.

The musicality on display is nothing short of outstanding. The cast are all exceptional musicians, delivering guitars, banjos, fiddles, whistles and bodhran with a precision and passion that fills every corner of the room. It is when they come together that the show truly soars, with the harmonies alone being well worth the ticket price. The audience barely needed an invitation to join in, and by the end of the opening medley the whole room was already singing and clapping as one.