The Nose – Irish Examiner and The Irish Times Review

Few of those adaptations could match Bruiser Theatre Company’s new show for sheer intensity and verve in immersing us in Gogol’s delirious world. Writer Patrick J O’Reilly relocates the tale from Gogol’s St Petersburg to 1920s New York. This allows director Lisa May to mobilise all manner of enjoyable conceits, from a ragtime music score to silent-era slapstick, vaudeville, and the gangster film.

To the strains of Matthew Reeve’s evocative Scott Joplin-inspired score and the distant pounding of typewriters, O’Reilly and Rose explode on stage, striking a note of frantic desperation and sweaty enthusiasm for the task in hand.