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theatre · Friday 16 October 2026 · 8:00pm 
Shakespeare's Secrets
At The Garage Theatre · Monaghan Education Campus, Armagh Road, Monaghan, Co. Monaghan
At The Garage Theatre · Monaghan Education Campus, Armagh Road, Monaghan, Co. Monaghan
Shakespeare’s Secrets plays the Garage Theatre on Friday, 16 October 2026, at 8pm, a new drama written by Michael Barry, whose previous credits include The Eva Cassidy Story. The play looks at William Shakespeare in 1606, a year in which England was living through a deadly outbreak of plague, and the pressure that put on him as he worked on some of his best-known plays.
The play sets out to show the man behind the legend rather than a retelling of any single Shakespeare play, following him through a period of isolation in 1606 while he was writing King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. According to the Garage Theatre’s own listing, the writing draws some of its inspiration from the Oscar-winning film Hamnet, and it examines Shakespeare in his other roles beyond writer, as a father, a working actor and a businessman managing a theatre company. That combination of domestic pressure, professional demand and a public health crisis running through the background gives the play a different angle on Shakespeare than the usual costume-drama approach, closer to a character study of a man under strain than a history lesson. The Garage Theatre notes that group rates are available for this show on request, which suggests it is being pitched partly at book clubs, drama groups and school transition-year audiences as well as the general public.
The Garage Theatre is part of the Monaghan Education Campus on the Armagh Road, on the edge of Monaghan town, with its own car park on site.
Monaghan town’s Diamond and Market Square are a short drive from the theatre for a meal before the show. There is more to see in Monaghan and across Co. Monaghan.
Heading to The Garage Theatre in Monaghan? Monaghan has plenty more to see. Read the Monaghan area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.