Whisk(e)y Wars Solo Show – Belfast Whiskey Week 2025

Name: Belfast Whiskey Week 2026
Start: 2026-07-24
End: 2026-08-01
Location: Belfast

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/25/852

Some events pour a dram and let the whiskey do the talking. Whisk(e)y Wars did something altogether more audacious — it told a story first, and let the uisce beatha seal the truth of it. On the night of 18th July 2025 at the Deer's Head Music Hall, award-winning actor-writer Joyce Greenaway brought her celebrated Edinburgh Fringe solo show to Belfast Whiskey Week for one extraordinary, unrepeatable evening, weaving theatre, emotion and a proper tasting into something that felt less like an event and more like a séance for the soul of Ulster distilling.

About This Event

Tam Tully fights tragedy and treachery to save her Ulster distillery from ruin by crafting the Holy Grail of whiskey, that perfect single malt.

Following standing ovations in Dublin, London, Edinburgh and a sold out run at The Lyric Theatre, Belfast, award-winning actor-writer Joyce Greenaway is delighted to bring her ‘blistering’ Edinburgh Fringe solo show to Belfast Whiskey Week, for one night only! You’ll get to taste what all the fuss is about, literally; whiskey provided!

Laced with dry wit, casked in raw emotion, this is a story you won’t forget!

Joyce has worked at The Royal Court and major regional theatres with debbie tucker green (truth and reconciliation), and with Sandi Toksvig (QI), Georgia Pritchett (Succession) and Alice Birch (Normal People) and was recently chosen to represent NI theatre by Arts Council NI and NI Executive Office, Brussels, at Bozar, Brussels. Gamers might recognise hers as the only NI operative voice, Abrasive Genius, in Ubisoft’s WATCH DOGS: LEGION!

WHISK(E)Y WARS was recently placed in the top 10% of the BBC Writersroom Open Call.

Hypnotic enough to stop time itself’ - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ EdFringeReview
There is also the opportunity to upgrade to the MasterClass tasting post-show, with whiskey experts and Joyce ready to field questions. A special whiskey flight and nibbles to savour.

Looking Back

To call Whisk(e)y Wars a whiskey tasting would be like calling the sheugh at the bottom of a field a river — technically not wrong, but missing the point entirely. Joyce Greenaway's one-woman show centres on Tam Tully, a fictional Ulster distiller fighting tragedy and treachery to craft the perfect single malt. It is, in the best tradition of seanchas, a story rooted in place and struggle, delivered with a rawness that had no business being as funny as it was. The Belfast audience — already warmed by the occasion and a dram in hand — took to it immediately. This was their story, or close enough to it.

Greenaway's credentials speak for themselves: work at the Royal Court, collaborations with debbie tucker green, Sandi Toksvig, Georgia Pritchett and Alice Birch, and the distinction of being the only Northern Irish voice in Ubisoft's Watch Dogs: Legion. But none of that quite prepares you for the experience of watching her hold a room the way she did at the Deer's Head. EdFringeReview called the show 'hypnotic enough to stop time itself,' and that five-star verdict felt entirely earned on the night. There were moments of dry wit that landed like a well-placed cut of peat smoke, and moments of raw grief that settled over the room as quietly and completely as a Belfast fog.

The whiskey — included in the ticket price — was not an afterthought. It was woven into the fabric of the performance, a literal taste of what Tam Tully was fighting to protect. Audience members sipped as the narrative unfolded, and the effect was genuinely immersive: the drama informed the dram, and the dram informed the drama. For those who opted to upgrade to the post-show MasterClass, the evening extended into a proper whiskey flight with nibbles, Greenaway herself fielding questions alongside whiskey experts in what by all accounts became a remarkably candid and wide-ranging conversation. If you were at Pop & Toast: Art Exhibition and Fine Whiskey Tasting earlier in the week, you'll recognise the same instinct at work — that the best way to understand a whiskey is to encounter it in the company of something else that moves you.

It is worth noting that Whisk(e)y Wars arrived at Belfast Whiskey Week fresh from standing ovations in Dublin, London and Edinburgh, and a sold-out run at The Lyric Theatre right here in the city. That the festival was able to bring it back to Belfast — commissioned as part of its own programme — felt like a small act of duchas, of returning something to the place it belongs. The Deer's Head, a venue with its own deep roots in the cultural life of the city, was the right room for it: intimate, unpretentious, alive. For those who kept the evening going, The 19th Hole: Late Night BBQ & Exclusive Drams offered the perfect coda — good food, rare pours, and the kind of conversation that only happens after a show has genuinely got under your skin.

Placed in the top 10% of the BBC Writersroom Open Call and trailing five-star reviews across the festival circuit, Whisk(e)y Wars was always going to be something. But in Belfast, for one night only, it became something more. It was a reminder that whiskey is not just a product of barley, water and time — it is a product of people, of place, of tír, and of the stubborn, magnificent refusal to give up on making something worth savouring. Sláinte, Tam Tully. And sláinte, Joyce Greenaway. If you're curious about the broader shape of the 2025 festival, Whiskey Through the Decades: Part 1 offers another lens on what made this year's programme so richly considered.