On Aug. 19, Dermot Bolger becomes just the latest Irish playwright to make his American debut when the The Tramway End opens Off-Broadway at the Chelsea Playhouse (125 W. 22nd St.). Bolger, a novelist and poet, received the Samuel Beckett Award for best first play for his inaugural dramatic effort, The Lament of Arthur Cleary In The Tramway End, Eoin, an Irish emigrant living in Germany, realizes he is a man without a country after attending a soccer match between his beloved Ireland and Holland. Ray Yeates, the artistic director of the Chelsea Playhouse and a Dublin native, plays Eoin. Jim Jermonok directs.

Other Irish dramatists to make their New York bows in recent months include Conor McPherson, whose St. Nicholas played Primary Stages last spring. Other plays which have dealt in Irish themes or had Irish settings include Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Frank McCourt's The Irish...And How They Got That Way. The Tramway End began previews on July 30 and runs through Sept. 6.

-- By Robert Simonson