‘a rarely performed Friel play in an evocative heritage setting in Sion Mills, Co.Tyrone’
August 23, 24, 25 – 2.30pm with free Hedge-School interval, tea and tray bake
Sion Stables Heritage Education Centre, Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone.
The Home Place (2005), Brian Friel’s last full-length play, returns to business left
unfinished by Friel’s Translations (1980). Scheduled on the same weekend as its
older sister play of Translations, to be performed Donegal, but sited in Co. Tyrone,
The Home Place also deals with cultural identity, but this time with that of the Anglo-
Irish community. Friel’s final coup de theatre for his last play in 2005 was to focus on
the increasingly distraught condition of Ireland’s Big House culture within the growing
confidence of its surrounding indigenous community.
It is 1878, nearly half a century later. A new drunken Schoolmaster O’Donnell is
firmly ensconced in the National School, but this time it his daughter Margaret, not
his son, who is fraternising with the English colonists. And anthropology has
replaced cartography as English scientists rather than Royal Engineers intrude on
the privacy of Ballybeg. Tensions rise as the first stirrings of the Home Rule
movement are felt and the assassination of a local landlord threatens the easy
coexistence of Planter and Gael. Sion Stables and its cultural history of the
Herdman family provides the perfect setting for this reading of the play, close to
Friel’s own home place in Killyclogher and built by benign landlords at the very
period the play takes place – a perfect harmony between play and place.
CAST
Christopher Gore: Ruairi Conaghan
Margaret O’Donnell: Laura Borland
Dr Richard Gore: Sean Donegan
Clement O’Donnell: Conor Barr
David Gore: Patrick McMahon
Con Doherty: Conor Sanchez
Sally Cavanagh: Sanna Martin
Perkins: Tomás Harkin
Mary: Aisling McCorkell
Tommy: Harry Thompson
Director: David Grant
Mise En Scene: David Grant
AOB
Festival Director: Seán Doran
Literary Director: Liam Browne
Festival Producer: Jonathan Burgess
Tickets: £25 & £20.05 (Concession). Includes Hedge-School interval with tray bake.
