A New York Premiere
on the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
By Leo McGann
Directed by Matt Torney
Featuring Michael Hayden, Doireann MacMahon, Daniel Marconi, Samantha Mathis, Molly Ranson, Harrison Tipping, and Annabelle Zasowski
Belfast, 1979. At the height of the Troubles, two off-duty British soldiers think they’ve hit it off with two local girls at a unionist pub on the city’s outskirts. But what begins as a night of flirtation and playful sparring soon turns dark. Decades later, as one of the soldiers recounts the events for an American oral history project, long-buried memories resurface, drawing him back to Belfast in search of answers and revenge.
The Honey Trap was first presented as a staged reading at Irish Rep in 2024 as part of the New Works Fall Festival. Its world premiere was in 2023 with Solas Nua in Washington, DC.
September 17 – November 9, 2025
This production is supported, in part, by public funds from the
★★★★
HISTORY IS NEVER INERT, as the Belfast playwright Leo McGann reminds us in The Honey Trap: it metastasizes across decades, reshaping itself through recollection, omission and remorse.In McGann’s UNNERVING and METICULOUSLY CRAFTED political thriller, what begins as a deceptively simple interview… unfolds into a LABYRINTHINE meditation on the perilous seductions of remembrance.
Hayden delivers a FORMIDABLE SLOW-BURN PERFORMANCE, embodying both the corrosive weight of survivor’s guilt and the volatile charm of a man unmoored.”
–– Marcus Scott, Time Out
The Honey Trap is one of the most RIVETING psychological thrillers I’ve seen onstage in some time.
Samantha Mathis has us hanging on every word as the mysterious Sonia, who may have the answers Dave is searching for.
–– Pete Hempstead, Theatermania
Thanks in part to its STRIKING PRODUCTION by Matt Torney, who makes an IMPRESSIVE DIRECTING DEBUT at Irish Rep, The Honey Trap offers some HIGHLY ENGROSSING theater.
–– Michael Sommers, NY Stage Review
★★★★
“Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap is a play that works on many levels – as a drama that examines the period of conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, as an exploration of post-war traumatic stress and as a murder mystery of sorts.” –– Charles Passy, 100 Word Review
The Honey Trap, Irish Rep’s New York premiere of Leo McGann‘s drama, is a finely wrought, deeply emotional account of a difficult moment in Irish history … culminating in one of the tensest scenes I’ve seen on a stage in years.
–– Marc Miller, Talkin’ Broadway
The Irish have always had a gift for spinning yarns, after all, and The Honey Trap underscores how hard it is to pin down something as subjectively elusive as the truth.
McGann ramps up the tension to an ending that is both shockingly unexpected and yet feels absolutely right.
–– Thom Geier, Culture Sauce
