Actor Rex Ryan and Gerry Hutch ahead of the theatre production of The Monk, in the Ambassador Theatre, Dublin. Photograph: Sam Boal/Collins Photo
The Ambassador Theatre in Dublin is preparing to host a run of a play about a person its website describes as “one of the most compelling and polarising figures in modern Irish history”.
Sinéad O’Connor? Bertie Ahern? Roy Keane?
“It’s a working-class story,” said Rex Ryan, director, writer and star of The Monk, in which he plays Gerry Hutch, the veteran criminal and aspirant Dublin Central byelection candidate who is being pursued for almost €800,000 by the Criminal Assets Bureau and Revenue.
Ryan (35) and Hutch (62) this week spoke to reporters at the Ambassador in advance the play’s run from this Monday to Saturday. The director denied glamorising a man who in late 2024 was released on €100,000 bail after being arrested as part of a Spanish money-laundering inquiry.
Ryan said he was offering an honest representation of Hutch’s life, beginning in the Special Criminal Court in 2023 just before he was acquitted of the murder of Kinahan orga
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