t’s been 30 years since the world was introduced to the Dublin suburb of Barrytown. The film version of The Commitments became a global phenomenon, not only because of the music, but because of the connection it made with people who’d never even heard of the Northside, let alone Barrytown. This fictional suburb and its characters were a microcosm – not only of Dublin or Ireland at that time, but of ordinary lives: their dreams and ambitions, their triumphs and failures – all of it documented in Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy: The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van.