NYT Critic's Pick 'The Honey Trap,' Directed by Matt Torney '06, Returns to Irish Rep
After a sold-out run in Fall 2025, The Honey Trap extended its tenure at the Off-Broadway Irish Repertory Theatre into January and February 2026. The play, inspired by Boston College's oral history archive of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is directed by Belfast native and Directing alum Matt Torney '06.
Fellow son of Belfast Leo McGann wrote the play. Its title refers to a con where a woman seduces a member of an enemy faction for intel or assassination. The play follows the victim of a honey trap plot, a former British soldier, as he confronts the woman who wronged him during the peak of the Troubles, as well as his own involvement in a morally fraught conflict.
McCann developed the play through the Kennedy Center’s Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards Program. The production premiered in 2023, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, in Washington, DC's Solas Nua. The Washington Post heralded the premiere as "riveting." "With a thriller’s pace, the play muses on guilt, intractable conflict and collateral damage," wrote critic Celia Wren. The Solas Nua production was nominated for ten Helen Hayes Awards, including Best Director, Best New Play and Best Production.
The Honey Trap quickly garnered acclaim once the production made it to the Irish Rep, where it was first read onstage as part of the New Works Fall Festival. "In Torney’s staging, Charlie Corcoran’s set and Michael Gottlieb’s lighting neatly accommodate the layering of past and present," wrote critic Laura Collins-Hughes for The New York Times in her Critic's Pick review, "this is taut, suspenseful storytelling, the kind that leaves an audience rapt—and dabbles in deception until the very last line."
"The Honey Trap is an unnerving and meticulously crafted political thriller. Hayden delivers a formidable slow-burn performance. Under Matt Torney’s brisk, tightly calibrated direction, The Honey Trap comes together with devastating force in its final moments," wrote critic Marcus Scott for Time Out New York.
The Off-Broadway premiere sold out its run, which lasted from September 17 through November 23, 2025. Due to demand, the Irish Rep reengaged The Honey Trap for a limited run from January 10 through February 15, 2026. Tickets are available online and at their box office on 22nd Street.
Matt Torney is currently the Artistic Director at the Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta, Georgia. This season, he is staging Stefano Massini's The Lehman Trilogy at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and The Price by Arthur Miller at the Theatrical Outfit in addition to the encore of The Honey Trap. Originally from Belfast, Torney worked as a freelance director in Ireland before he moved to the United States in 2006 to complete an MFA in directing at Columbia University. He has directed an extensive body of work both in the USA and internationally, and his productions have been nominated for numerous awards. Prior to joining Theatrical Outfit, he was the Associate Artistic Director of Studio Theatre, one of the leading contemporary theatre companies in DC. Before that he was the Director of Programming for Origin Theatre, an Off-Broadway company whose mission is to bring the best of European new writing to the USA. From 2007 to 2015 he was an Associate Director of Rough Magic in Dublin, one of Ireland’s leading independent theatre companies.