Dancing at Lughnasa 2015 Programme

Written by

Brian Friel In association with the Lughnasa International Friel Festival

FROM THE CREATORS OF MISTLETOE AND CRIME

3 Dec 2015 - 3 Jan 2016

24 NOV 2015 – 10 JAN 2016

Written by Marie Jones Directed by Dan Gordon

Written by Derek O’Connor Directed by Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney Music by Ursula Burns

Cast includes: Roisin Gallagher, Charlotte McCurry and Christina Nelson

autumn / winter at the lyric An evening of Wine and Music

Sept 7

Vernon God Little

NOV 3 - 8

Direct Wine Shipments and the Lyric Theatre present an evening of wine tasting with a difference, with each wine perfectly matched to a beautiful piece of music from the same country.

Decadent Theatre presents DBC Pierre’s Booker Prize-winning bestselling story about a Texan highschool student whose best friend murders 16 of his fellow classmates.

VERNON GOD LITTLE Adapted by Tanya Ronder from the novel by

DBC PIERRE

Wed 21 October, 8pm Tickets €18/16 (Early Bird Available)

Sept 15 – 19

Lemonade Sandwich

This is How we Fly

Sept 21

The Flood

NOV 4 - 8

An amazing true-life story about the lengths to which a boxing trainer will go to see his man in the Commonwealth Games. From Brassneck Theatre (Man in the Moon, The Holy, Holy Bus)

Two couples gather to weather the tempest outside as a hidden tragedy stirs up yet another storm within. 2014 New York International Fringe Festival Award for Excellence in Playwrighting winner, presented by Candle & Cloak

NOV 13 - 14

Phenomenally successful Dublin-based group bring their unique blend of traditional and contemporary music to the Lyric.

The intrepid Antarctic explorer and one of Ireland’s unsung heroes is brought to life in this dramatic and humorous solo performance by Aidan Dooley.

St. Mungo’s, Luganulk

NOV 13 - 15

Josef Locke – A Grand Adventure

sept 29 - oct 3

Two Sore Legs

NOV 19 - 21

I ♥ Alice

sept 29 - oct 3

Control Alt Delete

NOV 19 - 20

OCT 6 - 31

The Night Alive

NOV 24 - JAN 10

Christmas Eve Can Kill You

OCT 14 - 18

Shhh! We have a plan

NOV 28

Fast & Loose

Oct 25

Sunday Service with Grimes & McKee

DEC 3 - JAN 3

Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf

Oct 27- 29

Leper and Chip

DEC 9 - 19

NOV 1

Cara Dillon

JAN 19 - 23

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Greenshoots Productions presents a powerful autobiographical play set in Belfast about a young Butlin’s Redcoat who has 6 children by a married man who lives around the corner with his other family. Directed by Martin Lynch. Stars Maria Connolly.

With the internet full of goblin cyber-demons and trolls, do we really know what /who lies behind the keyboard? A funny and hard-hitting play about the darkest corners of the wonderful interweb.

A new co-production with Dublin Theatre Festival of Conor McPherson’s outstanding new play, directed by the author and starring Adrian Dunbar.

Part of the Belfast International Arts Festival.

Cahoots NI presents a new and exciting theatre adventure for young children, based on award-winning Chris Haughton’s popular book. Created and Directed by Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney, with music by Garth McConaghie.

Grimes & McKee bring their unique brand of comedy to the Lyric for this new show incorporating stand-up, sketches and music.

Boy wrecks bus full of pensioners, girl gets chased by machete-wielding maniac and love without madness isn’t love at all. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Breakneck comedy from Bitter Like A Lemon.

A special evening from the extraordinary Irish singer as she performs songs from her fifth solo album, A Thousand Hearts.

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5

“Vernon Little is one of the most engaging firstperson narrators since Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield.”

DAILY MAIL

decadenttheatrecompany.ie

“Fierce, crazed, passionate… it has the venom of Eminem, the humour of South Park and the explosive, colloquial poetry of Rabelais.”

OBSERVER

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Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer

Sept 22 - 27

Grimes & McKee’s new comedy about the worst Gaelic Football team in Ireland, and their heroic march to Croke Park. Based on a true-ish story…

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER 2003

Pavilion_DL.indd 1

Esteemed singer Karl McGuckin joins local musicians for an affectionate look at the life, music and legacy of one of the most popular singers of the 1940s and 50s.

A fresh, human and hilarious piece from HotForTheatre exploring the monumental journey of a most unlikely couple. Part of the Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2015 in partnership with Lyric Theatre.

Christine Bovill’s Piaf

Christine Bovill presents a powerful theatrical homage to one of France’s most endearing icons, marking the centenary of Edith Piaf’s birth.

Written by Marie Jones and directed by Dan Gordon - the creators of last year’s smash hit Mistletoe and Crime - this is the hilarious must-see show this Christmas.

Join Accidental Theatre Company for a bold and breathless experiment in playmaking, happening for the 9th time in Belfast.

The most spectacular family show this Christmas! Written by awardwinning Derek O’Connor, directed by Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney, with music

by Ursula Burns. Stars Roisin Gallagher, Charlotte McCurry and Christina Nelson.

Putting it Together

Blunt Fringe Productions return with the Irish premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s sparkling musical review, led by the cream of musical theatre talent in Ireland.

Egg

Cahoots NI’s magical family show returns to the Lyric following sell-out shows in the US and UK. Two birds find an egg and watch over it lovingly until a new baby bird emerges, and then the fun begins, as they teach the young fledgling to spread his wings and fly the nest.

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welcome theatre opened in 2011 (see page 16) was a touching, generous gesture, and his declaration that “this is your playhouse – come and play with us” perfectly captured the relationship between the theatre and the communities it serves. Brian is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest playwrights Ireland has ever produced, and, as I have said, it is an honour for the Lyric to produce possibly his most acclaimed play once more.

As summer turns to autumn our thoughts turn to the programme for the remaining months of the year, and as Lughnasa makes its way from Belfast to Dublin, so our next major production – Conor McPherson’s latest play The Night Alive – progresses in the opposite direction. I am immensely grateful to Willie White from the Dublin Theatre Festival for the invitation to co-produce this show, which will have its Irish premiere as part of the festival.

The Night Alive is a vibrant, funny, intensely human play which shows off Conor’s extraordinary talent and continues on from other works such as The Weir and The Seafarer. The fact that Conor himself

I am delighted you could join us for this performance of Dancing at Lughnasa.

This iconic play has touched many people over the years, and to be given the chance to stage it in Donegal, Belfast and Dublin in its 25th anniversary year is an extraordinary privilege.

It’s not just the play itself that excites me, but also the fantastic team that has taken up the job of bringing it to life. I’ve admired Annabelle’s work for many years and have been looking for the right play to invite her to direct at the Lyric - following her acclaimed productions of Shaw’s Pygmalion, Tom Murphy’s The House and Mark O’Rowe’s version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Abbey, Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa feels like the right one. The cast and creative team working alongside Annabelle are also extraordinarily talented, and I am delighted they have gone on this journey to explore the memory landscape of Ballybeg, Co. Donegal with rigour, commitment and love: a landscape explored by many companies since the original production, directed by Patrick Mason, twenty five years ago.

This has been a year of innovation and collaboration for the Lyric. We have co-produced two plays with the Abbey - The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey, and Death of a Comedian by Owen McCafferty (which was a also a co-production with the Soho

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There is, I hope, a nice symmetry in this too. Two Lyric plays being staged at the same time in the two great capital cities on the island of Ireland, one written by the master of Irish theatre, the other by our most internationally-acclaimed younger playwright. These collaborations with the DTF (Europe’s longest-running theatre festival), and the Lughnasa International Friel Festival (Ireland’s newest cross-border celebration of the arts), shows our commitment to sharing theatre across the island from Belfast to Dublin and up, north by north west, to Donegal.

Jimmy Fay Executive Producer August (Lughnasa) 2015

The Lughnasa International Friel Festival 2015 August 20-31 Sunday 30 August - Naughton Studio, Lyric Theatre

Theatre in London), and have also collaborated with Decadent Theatre Company on the extraordinary The Pillowman; we have taken David Ireland’s riotous Can’t Forget About You to the Tron in Glasgow (a first), and hosted the National Theatre of Scotland with Yer Granny (also a first). Lughnasa continues this theme.

The tour venues – An Grianán in Letterkenny and the Gaiety in Dublin as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival, as well as the Lyric – break new ground for us, and our association with the inaugural Lughnasa International Friel Festival is hugely significant. An annual festival to mark the work of Brian Friel is long overdue, and I’m delighted that our production of Lughnasa forms the centrepiece of this year’s celebration. Sean Doran has, as usual, done a magnificent job in pulling this new festival together, and I have no doubt that the Lughnasa International Friel Festival will become as popular and important as his annual Beckett festival, Happy Days. It’s a privilege to be working with Sean and his team.

• The Long Gaze Back: Lucy Caldwell, Evelyn Conlon and Lisa McInerney with Sinead Gleeson - 12pm, £8/6

Amongst Women inspiring talks and lectures Thurs 27 August - Elmwood Hall • How To Do It Like a Woman: Caroline Criado-Perez 7.30pm, £10/8 Fri 28 August - Elmwood Hall • Loving the Part of History that is Story: Kamila Shamsie and Margie Orford - 3:00pm, £10/8 • Women Leading the Way: Frances O’Grady in conversation with Shami Chakrabarti - 5pm, £10/8 • Transforming Societies: Nuala O’Loan and Gillian Slovo 7pm, £10/8 Sat 29 August - Linen Hall Library • Women and Publishing: Kamila Shamsie and Sinead Gleeson - 12pm, £8/6

And then, of course, there is Brian Friel himself. When I took the job of Executive Producer at the Lyric last year, Brian wrote a typically warm, welcoming and encouraging letter to me, which remains pinned to the wall above my desk. Although he was born in Tyrone and has been living and working in Donegal and Derry for most of his adult life, Brian retains a close, almost familial relationship with this theatre.

His ‘blessing’ of the main stage when the new

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is directing the production, and that it stars such respected actors from North and South of the border as Adrian Dunbar, Frank Grimes, Ian Lloyd-Anderson, Laurence Kinlan and Kate Stanley Brennan, makes the production all the more enticing.

Sat 29 August – Elmwood Hall • Laura Bates and Ione Wells - 2pm, £10/8 • On Liberty: lecture by Shami Chakrabarti - 4pm, £10/8 • Women In Music: Viv Albertine - 6pm, £10/8 • Sandi Toksvig live and unleashed - 8pm, £15/13

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Sunday 30 August – Elmwood Hall • Talking about Revolution: Ahdaf Soueif in conversation with Rachel Holmes - 2pm, £10/8 • Lynn Barber and Kathy Lette - 4pm, £10/8 • Feist: In Conversation and Performance - 8pm, £15/13 Mundy Concerts Sat 29 August - Titanic Suite, Titanic Belfast • Leonora (solo piano) A romantic concert in the romantic setting of The Titanic Suite - 10.30am, £10/8 Sun 30 August – Rosemary St.Church • Ruby (Spirituals & Songs) - 6pm, £10/8 Monday 31 August – Titanic Suite, Titanic Quarter • Katya (piano recital) A romantic concert in the romantic setting of The Titanic Suite - 10.30am, £10/8 Tickets available from

www.lughnasainternationalfrielfestival.com

Director’s note

Dancing at Lughnasa is the first Brian Friel play that I have directed, and this brings with it excitement and apprehension in equal measure. Excitement because it is a truly wonderful play, combining stunningly lyrical writing with a fascinating overarching theme, namely the struggle to come to terms with the past through the perspective of the present. And apprehension because it is such a well-known and well-loved piece that sits right at the heart of the Irish canon, and which challenges any director both to honour its history and at the same time breath life into it.

Photos: Chris Heaney

At its heart, Dancing at Lughnasa is an internal dialogue that seeks to understand and release the past. The adult Michael is trying to understand why, as a seven year old he had such a sense of unease during the summer of 1936, which he spent in Ballybeg with his aunts and uncle. In the opening tableau the characters are frozen in a kind of limbo photographic frame where they neither live nor die, and from this starting point Michael tries to set them free through understanding and coming to terms with the spirit and the complexities that the characters hold within them. Michael’s need to understand the events of that summer necessitates him to reimagine the past into a place where all his family’s contradictions can exist. By freeing himself of the past Michael offers other ways of looking at life and other possibilities about how to live in the future.

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In this sense Michael’s role is not simply that of a narrator. He is, instead, a guide, who allows us to share his journey into the past as he tries to unravel and understand his relationship to that time. There are echoes here of Brian Friel’s own experience of spending time living with his aunts when he was a child, reflected in his short story A Man’s World which he wrote before Dancing at Lughnasa. Michael’s relationship with his aunts, like Friel’s, is complex and changing. At times he finds their over-abundance of love and attention claustrophobic and confusing, but in a sense this is to be expected. These are unusually (for the 1930s at

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least) strong, resilient, dynamic women who welcome the illegitimate child of one of their own into their lives in the knowledge that this will bring with it a form of imprisonment, or at least social exclusion.

The sisters have an odd, paradoxical relationship with the environment in which they live - trapped within their community, but with their community also being their only lifeline. They know they are destined to remain in small town (literally) Ballybeg (Baile Beag), their lives portrayed in stark contrast to the itinerant Gerry Evans and African missionary Fr. Jack. They know that they are not able to live the lives they would like to lead, and so they live through the boy. All of them have intelligence, passion or artistry which they cannot express or celebrate, and this makes the decision of Agnes and Rose to leave Ballybeg so extraordinarily empowering, and at the same time so completely understandable.

It’s a huge responsibility to be asked to direct this 25th anniversary production by Jimmy and Sean, but my job is made considerably easier by the fantastic cast we have assembled. There’s a great energy among the cast and a great vitality in the Lyric’s rehearsal room, which I hope and feel will come out in the production. Most of the cast, like me, are new to the play, and this in itself brings a freshness to the production - it’s always exciting to see new faces and hear new voices, particularly in such an established work.

Dancing at Lughnasa is now firmly established as one of the great modern Irish plays, and even though it was written 25 years ago it still stands as a very relevant and contemporary piece. I hope those who know it well feel that this production makes the play live for them again in a new, fresh, engaging way, and I also hope that by bringing the production to Donegal, Belfast and Dublin we will introduce a new generation to the play across the island of Ireland.

Annabelle Comyn August 2015

Music in Mouth

“Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary” Set in remote Donegal, Dancing at Lughnasa, like Friel’s earlier masterpiece for Field Day, Translations, portrays a rural culture and community on the cusp of profound change. In the Mundy household, five unmarried sisters eke out a precarious existence with their beloved nephew and son, Michael, until the return home from the African missions of their demented older brother and the opening of a glove factory in the neighbouring town, foreshadow changes beyond both their ken or control but which will shatter their family. “The whole thing is so fragile it can’t be held together much longer. It’s all about to collapse” worries Kate, but her fears for her family far transcend the parish boundaries of Ballybeg as Friel’s Chekhovian sensibility dramatises a family falling apart against the backdrop of belated industrialisation and the Spanish Civil War; itself presaging the greater cataclysm of the second world war.

Lughnasa is a memory play: its setting and action unspooled from the seven-year-old recollection of Michael, the narrator, whose luminous memories of his family’s last summer together summon them onstage, so that as the darkness dissipates, they appear before an audience as vividly as they are in

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his own imagination. Memory is a leitmotif marbling much of Friel’s work, which frequently explores the fraught relations between fact and fiction, truth and memory, history and myth. In Philadelphia Here I Come!, Gar’s only happy memory of fishing with his father in a blue boat is scuppered by his dad’s contradictory account, which cuts the last mooring holding him home and setting him free, whilst in Faith Healer, the braggart Frank Hardy buries traumatic memories with his tall tales, just as Casimir’s confabulations of his family’s history in Aristocrats belies their altogether less auspicious pedigree and past.

appear in ‘a golden haze’ in a dreamy tableau, their bodies gently swaying as if at sea to the swirling music of the thirties. This pellucid image, like memory itself, is deceptive, for there is nothing saccharine or sentimental in this denouement. Any sense of romantic nostalgia is scotched by the sad fate of the family as Father Jack’s sudden death and Rose and Agnes’ secret flight to England, where they end up destitute, drives ‘the heart… out of the house’. The fact that their passage to England must have been paid with the £5 Agnes promised to take her sisters to the harvest dance is heartbreakingly poignant.

Lughnasa opens and closes with Michael’s reflections on the mutability of memory: “When I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936 different kinds of memory offer themselves to me”. His recollection is partial - in both senses of the word - and ‘owes nothing to fact’. It is no more reliable than the malaria-addled memories of Father Jack. In framing the play, however, his mellifluous monologues movingly bookend Friel’s masterpiece. His final speech, comparable to the closing coda of James Joyce’s The Dead, is pure music in mouth, in which movement and memory merge as the Mundy family

Though Michael’s role as narrator is crucial, the play’s pulse belongs to those ‘five brave Glenties women’ modelled on Friel’s maternal aunts. The complex roles and relations of the sisters provides rich material for actors, as the wit and warmth of their badinage is complemented by suppressed emotions, silences, and sideways glances that alternately reveal (and conceal) their innermost feelings. Of course, Dancing at Lughnasa is best known for the eponymous scene in which the sisters’ frustrations with their dreary lives of quiet desperation explode in an ecstatic Dioynsian

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dance. In this exhilarating scene, each sister surrenders to instinct, joining the flour-daubed dervish Maggie in a wild dance that liberates them from domestic drudgery. There’s a giddying sensation of relief and release; a damburst of passions; a primal outpouring of private desires and longings, but this thrilling moment of freedom is but fleeting, as the Marconi radio overheats, cutting off heavy ceili beat so that the dance dwindles and dies.

Afterwards, with the return of ‘Christian conversation’ and respectability, there is a tragic sense of vital things being tamped down, like the dying embers of the Lughnasa fires still smouldering on the backhills of Ballybeg.

Dr Mark Phelan Queen’s University Drama Department and Lyric Board of Trustees

living with lughnasa It’s not every day that a masterpiece drops through your letter box (well, in this case, the postman had to knock at my front door, to avoid forcing the script through the slot). But that is what happened to me one Spring day, twenty five years ago.

Brian Friel had phoned me a couple of days previously to invite me to read his new play. Noel Pearson, recently appointed Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, was going to produce it, and Brian was keen for me to direct it. Would I have a read of the script, and let him know what I thought? The Abbey would post a copy to me (these were the days before couriers and email sucked the suspense out of life).

Suppressing an urge to cheer, I replied that I would be honoured and delighted to read it, and I would get back to him with my response as soon as I had done so. I replaced the receiver, cheered loudly, and waited.

Two days later I was tearing open the manilla envelope, pulling out the typescript inside, and, for the first time, reading the title: Dancing at Lughnasa. I had no idea that my career, not to mention my life, was about to be so completely and pleasantly transformed.

I had been directing at the Abbey from the mid Seventies and throughout the Eighties, and in that time I had come to know and admire Brian Friel’s work. I had seen premieres of plays such as Living Quarters, Volunteers, and Aristocrats, and I had also come to know Brian personally through mutual friends and colleagues; though, much as I would have appreciated it at the time, I had never been invited to direct one of his plays.

But then I had been busy working with playwrights such as Tom Kilroy, Tom MacIntrye, Frank McGuinness, and Tom Murphy. So I was content to remain a huge Friel fan, and a non- participant.

My collaboration with Tom Macintyre had involved an amount of ‘physical theatre’ : an approach to theatre-making that involved developing nonverbal movement sequences, with extensive use of music and heightened stage images. And it was in the light of this work, as I discovered later, that Tom Kilroy had recommended me to Friel as being ‘just the man’ to direct a play which featured so many music and dance sequences.

good deal more besides. With a mixture of joy and trepidation I accepted the offer, and, together with Brian and Noel, set about gathering the strongest production team and cast that could be found.

The Abbey production of Dancing at Lughnasa toured to London at the invitation of the then director of the National Theatre, Richard Eyre. And it was there, on the Southbank, that the full force of the play was revealed. To say it took London by storm would be an understatement: the connection was immediate and electrifying, and it took us all by surprise. Of course we had known the play was good from day one, and even Dublin, with its usual mixture of condescension and begrudgery, had received it with modified rapture. But this? We realized for the first time that the Mundy sisters were to become aunts to the world, and that Michael’s loss of childhood innocence was to become every man and every woman’s fall from grace.

New York followed, where the play was received with unqualified rapture bordering on idolatry, with Frank Rich, the notorious Butcher of Broadway, describing it as everything that theatre should be, and so rarely is. The rest, as they say, is theatrical history.

Or rather, it is the theatrical present: because this splendid play lives on in production after production, performance after performance. Its powerful characters, its superb construction, its dazzling language, and its haunting music give it power and life in each generation.

Bríd Brennan, Catherine Byrne, Bríd Ní Neachtain and Frances Tomelty in a scene from the world premiere of Dancing At Lughnasa by Brian Friel, Abbey Theatre, 1990. Photo: Fergus Bourke

Following on from that Spring morning, I was to spend five happy years directing and redirecting revivals and tours of Dancing at Lughnasa all over the world, and in all that time I never lost my sense of wonder at the brilliance of Friel’s achievement.

I am still in awe of it. The Butcher was right: Dancing at Lughnasa is a miracle of theatre.

Thank you, Brian – thank you for such a wonderful and enduring gift.

Patrick Mason Original Director of Dancing at Lughnasa Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, 1993-1999

And so it was that I received Brian’s call, and the script that arrived in the post that fateful morning (thank you, Tom).

As I read and re-read the play over the next twenty four hours, it dawned on me that, not only would I kill to direct it, but the brilliance of Friel’s play would demand all my talent and know-how, and a

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Anita Reeves, Barry McGovern, Bríd Ní Neachtain, Frances Tomelty, Bríd Brennan and Catherine Byrne in a scene from the world premiere of Dancing At Lughnasa by Brian Friel, Abbey Theatre, 1990. Photo: Fergus Bourke

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Credits

Written by

Brian Friel

CREATIVE TEAM Writer Director Set Designer Costume Designer Lighting Designer Sound Designer Choreographer VOICE COACH

Brian Friel Annabelle Comyn Paul O’Mahony Joan O’Clery Chahine Yavroyan Fergus O’Hare Liz Roche BRENDAN GUNN

CAST (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE) Michael Evans Christina Mundy Maggie Mundy Agnes Mundy Rose Mundy Kate Mundy Fr. Jack Mundy Gerry Evans

Charlie Bonner Vanessa Emme Cara Kelly Catherine Cusack Mary Murray CatherinE McCormack Declan Conlon Matt Tait

PRODUCTION TEAM Production & Technical Manager Technicians CASTING Company Stage Manager Deputy Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager Wardrobe Supervisor Wardrobe Assistants Hair, Wigs and Make up Scenic Painters

Keith Ginty Damian Cox Michael Harpur AnneMarie Langan MORAG KEATING ELLIE COLLYER-BRISTOW Kate Miller Aimee Yates Stephen Dix Pat Musgrove Paula McCafferty Madeleine Owens Maria Moore Stuart Marshall Robin McFarland Seamas Olabhradha

THE LYRIC THEATRE WOULD LIKE TO THANK ABBEY THEATRE, Autism NI, Niki Doherty, Sean Doran, Adrian Dunbar, Diana Fraser, Patrick Mason, Mark Phelan, Christine Sharkey, WILLIE WHITE, AND BRIAN & ANNE FRIEL There will be an interval of 20 minutes after Act 1.

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Brian Friel’s Secular Prayers for the Lyric

Brian Friel The majority of Friel’s most significant works date from the mid-1970s, as his writing style moved away from the overtly political to focus more on the role of the family as a metaphor for his world view.

This drew comparisons with the work of Chekhov, a compliment that Friel returned in the following years with a number of adaptations of Chekhov’s stories, along with those of his compatriot Turgenev.

Living Quarters (1977) was followed by the success of Aristocrats and Faith Healer in 1979. In 1980 Friel co-founded the Field Day Theatre Company with Stephen Rea, and the company’s first production, Translations, was a major international hit. The management of Field Day demanded a significant amount of Friel’s time throughout the 1980s however, and after The Communication Cord in 1982 he did not publish another original stage work until Making History in 1988.

“I pray that this may be a warm house and a welcoming house” On Sunday, May 1, 2011, the brand new £18 million Lyric Theatre opened its doors for the first time with a gala performance of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Just before the performance began, Brian Friel - a long-time advocate of the theatre - addressed the audience:

“I pray that this house never forgets that it is a playhouse, a house of play; and that laughter and merrymaking and wit and comedy and raucous fun and plain ordinary giddiness and silly giggling must be accommodated and indeed encouraged. Because a solemn theatre is a dead theatre.

“I hope it isn’t inappropriate that on an occasion like this I might offer a few secular prayers. Because I would like to pray that this may be a warm house and a welcoming house where we come together to witness the ritual of theatre and to participate in that ritual.

“I pray that Belfast, which must be rightly proud of what has been accomplished here, may reap the rewards of sustaining this theatre and that its excellence and excitement find echoes in the daily lives of Belfast people.

“I pray that by taking part in the ritual here we rediscover - find access again to - those areas of our consciousness where the spiritual has gone silent from neglect.

“I pray that this may be a sacred place because what will happen here - when it’s at its truest - really has to do with the unworldly and the spirit.

“I pray that this will be a place that is impatient of what is conventional and what offers consolation and of all those ideas that we embrace either because they are fashionable or because we have inherited them. This must be a laboratory of questioning and scrutiny and of untried thoughts and practices.

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“And finally a heartfelt prayer for all the creative people who will work here in the coming decades and donate their lives to that strange and almost sacred pursuit we call theatre - because donating their lives is what they do. I pray that they will find their reward in putting us in touch again with our heedless souls, of lifting the veil again on those neglected values that we need to embrace if we are to be fully human. I solemnly pray that they will indeed find great, great reward in that unique venture.

Amen.”

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Brian Friel, widely considered to be one of the greatest living English-language playwrights, was born in January 1929 in Omagh, and educated at St. Columb’s College in Derry. Following his father into teaching (his mother was postmistress of Glenties in County Donegal), Friel began a successful sideline writing short stories for The New Yorker and radio plays for the BBC in the late 1950s, before taking a break from teaching in 1960 to pursue a career as a professional writer. His first stage play, A Doubtful Paradise, was produced by the Ulster Group Theatre that summer, but it was another two years before his next play, The Enemy Within, gave him his first taste of success, playing at The Abbey for nine performances before being revived on the stage of the Lyric in 1963. The Blind Mice (1963) was more successful still, and was once again seen in Dublin and at the Lyric and heard through Radio Éireann and the BBC Home Service.

This was nothing, though, compared to the success of Philadelphia Here I Come! in 1964, a play that brought Friel to international attention and which retains its status today as one of the most important plays of the 1960s (as well as being turned into a film in 1975, for which Friel also wrote the screenplay). The Loves of Cass McGuire followed in 1966 – the same year that Friel and his wife Anne moved from Derry to Donegal – with Lovers (1967) building on Philadelphia’s success in Ireland and the US. A staunch advocate for civil rights in Northern Ireland and a sometimes bitter critic of the Irish government, Friel’s writing began to undergo significant changes from 1968 as Northern Irish politics and society edged towards disaster. His next three plays – The Mundy Scheme (1969), The Freedom of the City (1973) and Volunteers (1975) – carry a much stronger political theme than previous work, with The Freedom of the City in particular holding up a mirror to the events and politics of the day, not least the circumstances surrounding Bloody Sunday in 1972.

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Two years after Making History, Friel published what would become his most successful and enduring work, Dancing at Lughnasa. After making its premiere at The Abbey, Lughnasa transferred to the West End and then Broadway where it won three Tony Awards, including Best Play, and an Olivier Award for Best Play. Friel spent many childhood holidays in Donegal before moving to live there as an adult, and his deep connection with the North West of Ireland and those who live there is evident throughout the semi-autobiographical play (Seamus Deane memorably describes Friel’s Donegal as “a powerful image of possibility, an almost pastoral place in which the principle of hope can find a source”).

Like Philadelphia Here I Come!, Dancing at Lughnasa would later be turned into a feature film and would continue to be performed to popular acclaim.

Wonderful Tennessee (1993), Molly Sweeney (1994) and Give Me Your Answer Do! (1997) continued to impress audiences, but with the dawn of the new millennium Friel’s output inevitably began to slow.

His Three Plays of 2001 / 2002 (The Yalta Game, The Bear, and Afterplay) reflect his ongoing interest in Chekhov, whilst Performances (2003) combines drama with the music of Janáček in a meditation on an artist’s fears of ageing. The Home Place (2005) was the last of Friel’s original stage plays, achieving great success in Dublin, London and Minneapolis.

Now aged 86, Brian Friel continues to live in Donegal.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the British Royal Society of Literature, and the Irish Academy of Letters, he was appointed to Seanad Éireann in 1987, and was elected as a Saoi of Aosdána - a select group of Irish artists – in 2006.

(Photo credit: Bobbie Hanvey)

CREATIVE TEAM Biographies ANNABELLE COMYN Director

JOAN O’CLERY Costumer Designer

FERGUS O’HARE Sound Designer

PAUL O’MAHONY Set Designer

LIZ ROCHE Choreographer

CHAHINE YAVROYAN Lighting Designer

Annabelle Comyn most recently directed Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in a new adaptation by Mark O’Rowe for the Abbey Theatre.

Joan O’Clery is a costume designer working in both theatre and film, who designed The Crucible for the Lyric. Three-time winner of the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Costume, including for productions of Peer Gynt, Lolita, The Pinter Festival. She has originated the costumes for several world premieres by major Irish writers including Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, and Frank McGuinness. Her costumes are regularly seen at the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre and many stages around Ireland.

Fergus has sound designed over 250 productions throughout the UK and US. Previous Lyric Theatre credits: Punk Rock and Pentecost which both received an Irish Times Theatre Award nomination.

Paul trained at Dún Laoghaire IADT, Co. Dublin and the Motley Theatre Design Course, London.

Liz is Artistic Director of the Dublin-based Liz Roche Company.

Her choreographies have toured throughout Ireland and internationally, most notably at the South Bank Centre London, the Baryshnikov Arts Centre New York, Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Meet in Beijing Festival.

She is a former recipient of the Peter Darrell Award and from 2009 – 2012 was Choreographerin residence at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL.

Theatre credits: Tuesday’s At Tescos (59e59, New York), Hedda Gabler, King Lear, The House, Major Barbara (Abbey Theatre, Dublin), Hope, The Pass, Let The Right One In (West End & New York), Narrative, Get Santa, Wig Out!, Relocated, The Lying Kind (Royal Court), Bright Phoenix (Liverpool Everyman), Punk Rock (Lyric, Belfast), The Vortex (The Gate, Dublin), Khandan (Birmingham Rep/ Royal Court), A Soldier In Every Son, Measure For Measure, Marat/ Sade, Dunsinane (NTS/US Tour), God In Ruins, Little Eagles (RSC), Farewell, Half A Glass Of Water (Field Day), Uncle Vanya (Minerva), The Lady From The Sea, The Comedy Of Errors, Three Sisters (Royal Exchange, Manchester), Scorched (Old Vic Tunnels), Fuente Ovejuna, Punishment Without Revenge, Dr. Faustus (Madrid), Elizabeth Gordon Quinn, Caledonia, Realism, The Wonderful World Of Dissocia (National Theatre of Scotland), Orphans, Dallas Sweetman, Long Time Dead (Paines Plough), Dr Marigold & Mr Chops (Riverside Studios), Jane Eyre, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (Perth), Il Tempo Del Postino (MIF), How To Live (Barbican).

Other recent work includes The Vortex at The Gate, Major Barbara at The Abbey, and the sell-out 2012 Festival hit The Talk of The Town by Emma Donoghue in a co-production with Hatch Theatre Company (where she is the founding Artistic Director), Landmark Productions and Dublin Theatre Festival; other work includes a critically-acclaimed production of The House by Tom Murphy (Best Director, Irish Times Theatre Awards) and Pygmalion, both produced on the main stage of The Abbey Theatre. Other work for The Abbey includes A Number by Caryl Churchill and Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall.

For Hatch Theatre Company she has directed Love and Money by Dennis Kelly; Further Than The Furthest Thing by Zinnie Harris; Cruel and Tender by Martin Crimp; Pyrenees by David Greig; Blood by Lars Norén and The Country by Martin Crimp, all in association with Project Arts Centre.

Freelance work includes My Child and Contractions; The Clearing (The Lir); The Sit by Gavin Kostick (Bewley’s Theatre); Dublin Noir; My Brother is Disappearing and Eclipsed 1 and 11 for The Irish Times Award winning Whereabouts (Fishamble).

She has also directed Churchill x 3 (Three More Sleepless Nights; Ice Cream and Hot Fudge); Terrorism; Loveplay; The Strip; The Possibilities and Mad Forest for the Samuel Beckett Centre. For the Royal Court Theatre she directed Good-bye Roy (Exposure); B22 (Young Writers’ Festival). Other work in London includes The Lament for Arthur Cleary (Brockley Jack, London) and The Rock Station (Finborough, London). In 2003 she directed Ashes and Sand by Judy Upton (Nukutheater, Tallinn, Estonia),

Highlights of her costuming work include Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company (2008), An Enemy of the People at the Gate Theatre (2013), DruidMurphy trilogy of Tom Murphy plays for Druid, and She Stoops to Conquer at the Abbey Theatre. Her screen work includes King of the Travellers, Swansong, Snap and the forthcoming Out Of Innocence. Joan costumed the dramatised sections of the documentary Learning Gravity for Littlebird Films, the short film Brixton Bob for Fastnet Films and the installation film Questions for visual artist Gerard Byrne.

Most recent work includes: Hay Fever and Passion Play (Duke of York’s), Volpone (RSC), Closer (Donmar), Tiger Country and The Wasp (Hampstead Theatre), The Rehearsal (Minerva), Way Upstream (Chichester Festival Theatre), Educating Rita and Juno and the Paycock (Liverpool Playhouse), Young Writers Festival (Pentabus), Kafka’s Dick (Theatre Royal Bath), Hope Place and Twelfth Night (Liverpool Everyman), Daytona (Theatre Royal Haymarket / Park Theatre), Pygmalion (Theatre Royal Bath / Tour), Relative Values (Pinter Theatre), Another Country (Trafalgar Studios), King Lear (Chichester/BAM NYC), Jungle Book (West Yorkshire Playhouse), In The Next Room (Ustinov/St. James), The Winslow Boy (Old Vic/Roundabout NYC), Macbeth (National Theatre of Scotland / Barrymore Theatre, Drama Desk Nominee, BroadwayWorld.com Award), Street Scene (Chatelet, Paris and Liceu, Barcelona), A Chorus of Disapproval (Pinter), Noises Off (Old Vic / Novello), No Quarter (Royal Court), Glasgow Girls (NTS / Stratford East), Uncle Vanya (Chichester) and The Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

Paul’s previous theatre set designs include Hedda Gabler, Major Barbara, The House, Pygmalion, Macbeth, The Seafarer, Fool for Love, Saved, Blue/ Orange (The Abbey and Peacock Theatres), Wuthering Heights, The Vortex, An Enemy of the People, Little Women, Faith Healer [2010] (The Gate Theatre), Breaking Dad, Underneath the Lintel (Landmark Productions), The Talk of the Town (Hatch Theatre Company, Landmark Productions and Dublin Theatre Festival), Love and Money, Further Than the Furthest Thing, Pyrenees, Blood, The Country (Hatch Theatre Company), A View From the Bridge (Everyman Playhouse, Liverpool), The Importance of Being Earnest, Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer, Is this About Sex?, Don Carlos (Rough Magic Theatre Company), The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly (The Ark / Theatre Lovett), Medea (Siren Productions), Pineapple (Calipo Theatre Company), Celebrity (Peer to Peer Theatre Company), Black Milk (Prime Cut Productions), Benefactors (b*spoke theatre company), This is Our Youth, Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnon’s, Roberto Zucco, This is Not a Life, Pale Angel (Bedrock Productions), Hades, The Two Houses, The Green Fool, Epic (Upstate Theatre Project), The Clearing (The Lír), Dodgems (CoisCéim Dance Theatre and Dublin Theatre Festival), Grease (Cork Opera House) and Rusalka (Lyric Opera).

Annabelle is Resident Director at The Lir.

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Her work has been commissioned by the National Ballet of China, Scottish Dance Theatre, Cois Ceim, Arcane Collective, Croi Glan and Maiden Voyage Dance. Her most recent work Bastard Amber premiered at The Abbey Theatre Dublin during the Dublin Dance Festival 2015, the first time an Irish choreographer was commissioned to make a full length work for the Abbey stage.

Liz has also worked extensively in theatre and opera, most notably choreographing King Lear, Drumbelly, Alice in Funderland, The Government Inspector at the Abbey Theatre, The Gate Theatre’s The Mariner, Landmark Productions’ Miss Julie, The Talk of the Town, Siren Production’s Medea and A Tender Thing, the Ark’s Dublin 1742 and The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish, Aida for the National Opera of Korea, Semiramide for the Rossini Opera Festival, Lucio Silla for Opernhaus Zurich, Don Carlos, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Queen of Spades, Aida, La Cenerentola and The Silver Tassie for Opera Ireland.

Dance credits: Jasmin Vardimon Dance, Bock & Vincenzi, Frauke Requardt, Colin Poole, Candoco, Ricochet, Rosemary Lee, Arthur Pita.

Music credits: XX Scharnhorst (HMS Belfast), Sevastopol, Home, Dalston Songs (ROH2), Plague Songs (Barbican), The Death Of Klinghoffer (Scottish Opera), Jocelyn Pook Ensemble and Diamanda Galas (International).

cast Biographies

CHARLIE BONNER Michael Evans

DECLAN CONLON Fr. Jack Mundy

CATHERINE CUSACK Agnes Mundy

VANESSA EMME Christina Mundy

CARA KELLY Maggie Mundy

CATHERINE McCORMACK Kate Mundy

Charlie Bonner was born in Co. Donegal, and last appeared at the Lyric in 1994 in Volunteers by Brian Friel.

Lyric Theatre credit: Uncle Vanya.

Lyric Theatre credits: The Crucible, How Many Miles To Babylon?

Theatre credits include: Fasto in Pitcairn (Chichester, The Globe and Tour), Linda in Stags and Hens (New Theatre, Dublin). At The Lir: Desiree in Pains of Youth, Florinda in Into the Woods, Maud in The Night Season, Marie in Bold Girls, Sharon Lawther in Scenes from the Big Picture, Antigone in Antigone, Sancho in The Rover, Joanne in The Sin Eaters, Jacquenetta in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Theatre credits include: Molly Sweeney (Citizen Theatre) for which Cara won Best Actor from the Critics’ Award for Theatre in Scotland; On Raftery’s Hill (Druid Theatre Company), Translations (Donmar), The Steward of Christendom (Gate Dublin and Royal Court), King Lear and All Things Nice (Royal Court), The Beauty Queen of Leeane, Romeo and Juliet, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Macbeth (Royal Lyceum Edinburgh), Unfaithful (Traverse Edinburgh, and Nova Scotia), Elizabeth Gordon Quinn (National Theatre of Scotland), Henry VIII (RSC), Top Girls (Old Vic, Stoke), Life of Galileo (Almeida), Miss Julie (Young Vic), You Never Can Tell (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Odd Couple (female version, Perth Theatre).

Theatre credits include: Goneril in King Lear (Chichester Festival Theatre / BAM), Sor Juana in The Heresy of Love (RSC), Lady Nijo / Win in Top Girls (Trafalgar Studios), The Producer in Six Characters in Search of an Author (Headlong Theatre / Sydney), Nora in A Doll’s House and Isabel in The Portrait of a Lady (Theatre Royal Bath), Jo in The Lady from Dubuque (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Margaret / Pamela / Annabella in The 39 Steps (The Tricycle Theatre / West End), Miriam in Vermillion Dreams (Salisbury Playhouse), Anna Weiss (Whitehall Theatre), Lead in Kiss Me Like You Mean It (Soho Theatre), Lie of the Mind (Donmar Warehouse), White Horses (The Gate), Ann Deever in All my Sons (Olivier Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, National Theatre), Sophie in Free (National Theatre), Sian in Dinner (National Theatre), Claudia in Honour (National Theatre), Iphigenia in Under the Curse (Gate Theatre), Jane in When the Night Begins (Hampstead Theatre).

Other theatre credits include Philadelphia Here I Come!, Good Evening Mr. Collins, Monkey, Melonfarmer, Macbeth, Observatory, Living Quarters, The Shaughraun, Toupees And Snare Drums and Portia Coughlan at the Abbey and Peacock theatres, Dublin; and most theatre companies in the Republic including the Gate, Bedrock, Pan Pan, Red Kettle, Corcadorca and Second Age amongst others.

Film & TV includes Red Rock, Omagh, The Tudors, This Is Nightlive, The Race, Starfish, Proof, Fair City, and the Oscar-nominated The Crush

by Michael Creagh. Charlie will also appear in RTE’s Rebellion.

Directing credits include The Flamboyant Bird by Damian Kearney, What’s Left Of The Flag

by Jimmy Murphy, April Bright

by Dermot Bolger, Within 24 Hours and Another 24 Hours with Semper Fi (Ireland), and Deathrow Cowboy with Three Peas.

Other theatre credits: The Gigli Concert, An Enemy of the People, The Last Summer, The Importance of Being Earnest, Book of Evidence (Gate Theatre), Hedda Gabler, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Hanging Garden, Drum Belly, The House (Irish Times Theatre Awards 2012, Best Actor), The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, The Recruiting Officer, A Month in the Country (Irish Times Theatre Awards 2006, Best Supporting Actor), All My Sons, Henry IV Part I, Whistle in the Dark, Famine (Abbey Theatre), Quietly (Peacock Theatre / Irish Tour, Soho Theatre London / Edinburgh Festival), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Corn Exchange), The Burial at Thebes (Peacock Theatre), Miss Julie and Greener (Landmark Theatre Company), The Country (Project Arts), Improbable Frequency, Copenhagen (Irish Times Theatre Awards 2002, Best Actor nomination (Rough Magic)), Terminus (Young Vic), The Sanctuary Lamp (B*spoke Theatre Company at the Samuel Beckett Centre/Arcola Theatre), The Book of Evidence (RSC Fringe/The Gate), The Walls, The Ends of the Earth, The Machine Wreckers (National Theatre), As You Like It, La Lupa, The Mysteries, The Spanish Tragedy (RSC), Macbeth (West End), Our Country’s Good (Young Vic/Out of Joint).

Film and TV credits include: Vikings, Sacrifice, My Name Is Emily, Debris, Love Eternal, Calvary, Hereafter, Basket Case, Honest, The Trouble With Sex, All Souls Day, Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone, Inspector Jury, Amber, Raw, Fair City, Single Handed, Trouble In Paradise, Hide And Seek, Proof, The Tudors, Bachelors Walk, Hot House, Dangerfield, The Family.

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Other theatre credits: Ghosts (New Vic, Stoke), All That Fall (Arts Theatre/ 59E59 New York), The Seagull (Headlong), Bingo (Chichester/Young Vic), Judith (Cock Tavern), The Two Character Play (Jermyn St. Theatre), The Early Bird (Natural Shocks, London and Project, Dublin), What Fatima Did, Bold Girls (Hampstead), King Lear (Second Age), Fragile, The Factory Girls (Arcola), Mary Stuart (National Theatre of Scotland), The Mushroom Pickers (Southwark Playhouse), The Gigli Concert (Finborough), Bronte, Mill On The Floss (Shared Experience), Blood Red Saffron Yellow (Drum, Plymouth), Our Lady Of Sligo (Out of Joint), Measure For Measure (ETT), Prayers Of Sherkin (Old Vic), Phaedra’s Love (Gate), Mrs Warren’s Profession (Lyric Hammersmith), The Glass Menagerie (Bolton Octagon), Moonlight, The Seagull and You Never Can Tell (Gate Theatre Dublin), Lovers Meeting (Druid), Poor Beast In The Rain (Bush).

Films include: Amanda in Every Second Sunday, Wendy in The Anti-Love Pill, Louise in The Inside and Elizabeth in Ghostwood.

TV and film credits include: Sunday (Channel 4), The Precious Blood, Holy Cross (BBC NI), Taggart (STV), State of Play, Waterloo Rd (BBC), Shetland, Garrow’s Law, River City, Monarch of the Glen, Rebus (BBC1 Scotland).

Cara is a previous winner of the Radio 4 Carleton Hobbs Award and was a member of the Radio Drama Company.

Film, TV and Radio credits: The Last Days of Anne Boleyn, Doctors, Jonathan Creek, Ballykissangel, Sophia and Constance, Dr. Who (BBC), The Bill, (ITV) and Coronation Street (Granada), Finding Neverland (Miramax), Conspiracy of Silence (Flick Features), Boxed (Fireproof Films), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (HandMade Films), Poetry Please, Fragile, The Steward Of Christendom (Radio 4).

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Film and TV credits include: Magic in the Moonlight, The Fold, 28 Weeks Later, The Moon and the Stars, A sound of Thunder, Spy Game, Tailor of Panama, Born Romantic, The Weight of Water, A Rumour of Angels, Shadow of the Vampire, The Debtors, This Year’s Love, Dancing at Lughnasa, Land Girls, The Honest Courtesan, Braveheart, Loaded, Sherlock, Life in Squares, Lucan, Lights Out, Ancient Rome, Midnight Man, Stevie, Elizabeth David, In Praise of Hardcore, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot, Armadillo, Deacon Brodie, How to do Love in the 21st Century.

THE

cast Biographies

6 – 31 oct 2015

By Conor McPherson

MARY MURRAY Rose Mundy

MATT TAIT Gerry Evans

Mary has performed with renowned companies such as The Abbey Theatre, Landmark, Fishamble, Druid, Tron, Royal Court and Cork Opera House. Favourite theatrical productions include Ulysses, No Smoke Without Fire, Tiny Plays For Ireland, Noah and the Tower Flower, Arrah Na Pogue, Macbecks, Pride Of Parnell Street (Winner of Best Actress at the First Irish Theatre Festival and the MAMCA Awards), The Alice Trilogy (Winner of Best Supporting Actress at the IT Theatre Awards), Macbeth, Family Stories (IT Theatre Awards nominee for Best Supporting Actress) and On Raftery’s Hill.

Theatre credits include: Young Doug in The Ancient Secret of Youth and the Five Tibetans (Bolton Octagon), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime (West End / National Theatre), Andrew in Transports (Analogue), Joey in Warhorse (National Theatre / West End), Joe in Beachy Head (No 1 Tour / New Wolsey Theatre and Wales Millennium Centre), Dr Schweyk in War Horse (National Theatre / West End), Miles in Polythene (Theatre 503), Concierge in Punchdrunk (Punchdrunk), Edmund Earl of Kent in Edward II (Battersea Arts Centre), Val in Shelf Life (Old Red Lion), Andre Breton in The Lightening Conductor (Things on Fire).

Film and television credits include: Penny Dreadful, Poison Pen, Love/ Hate 3, 4 and 5 (IFTA nominations for Best Lead and Supporting Actress in a Television Drama 2014/2015), On The Edge, My Whole Half Life, Thor - The Edda Chronicles, Adam and Paul, Situations Vacant, Love is the Drug, The Magdalene Sisters, Accelerator, Crushproof, Ambassador, Random Passage, Fair City, The Big Bow Wow, The Very Stuff.

Film and TV credits include: Hector Fox in Captain America, Wise Man/Cromwell in Drunk History (Comedy Central), Paul in Doctors (BBC), Marc in Cyderdelic (BBC).

Mary has also performed in numerous radio dramas and animations. She is a multi-awardwinning singer and the director of Visions Drama School, Dublin.

Tickets from £10 CAST: Adrian Dunbar, Frank Grimes, Laurence Kinlan, Ian Lloyd-Anderson, Kate Stanley Brennan

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Lyric Theatre Trustees Sir Bruce Robinson (Chair) Stephen Douds (Vice Chair) Phil Cheevers Nicky Dunn Henry Elvin Patricia McBride Sid McDowell Dr Mark Phelan Patron Liam Neeson OBE Writer in Residence Owen McCafferty Executive Producer Jimmy Fay Chief Operating Officer CiarÁn McAuley Marketing & Communications Simon Goldrick Ryan Crown Aisling McKenna

Administration Morag Keating Cat Rice Finance Deirdre Ferguson MicheÁl Meegan Catering Marion Sanderson Creative Learning Philip Crawford Pauline McKay Niki Doherty Wardrobe Pat Musgrave Erin Charteris Paula McCafferty Stage Management Kate Miller Tracey Lindsay Aimee Yates Louise Bryans Stephen Dix

Production & Technical Management Keith Ginty Damian Cox Michael Harpur Anne Marie Langan

Box Office & Customer Service Ciara McCann, Emily White Paul McCaffrey, Aaron Hughes Adele Gribbon, Bernadette Owens Bobbi Rai Purdy, Carla Bryson Cathal Henry, Catherine Davison Catherine Moore, Catriona Grant Chris Grant, Colm McAteer Darren Franklin, Dennis Tyrell Ella Griffin, Ellison Craig Emma Gornall, Emmett Costello Gary Crossan, Geraldine Reynolds Gerard Kelly, Helen Lavery Laura Hamill, Luke Bannon Marina Hampton, Mary McManus Michael Shotton, Pamela Armstrong Patricia McGreevy, Peter Hackett Sarah Mulgrew, Teresa Hill Thomas Saunders Housekeeping Samantha Walker, Debbie Duff Mollie McCrum Volunteers Jennifer Kerr, Katie Egan, Frances McAree, Kerry Anderson Bernadette Fox, Edite Muceniece

Coffee - the drink of the cosmopolitan, the cultured and the conversational.

LUGHNASA INTERNATIONAL FRIEL FESTIVAL

Founder / Artistic Director Sean Doran Deputy Artistic Director Liam Browne Festivals and Artistic Planning Manager Deborah Dignam

Our script is simple. We source, buy, import, roast and deliver the best coffee and we never stop asking ourselves how we can make it better. Our speciality beans are roasted in Belfast and delivered fresh to the Lyric Café for you to enjoy. We act with precision, perfection and passion every time.

Executive Producer Ali Curran Production Manager Barry McKinney Marketing Aly McAlroy Rachel Gregg Artist Liaison Lucy Healy Kelly

We are Bailies. Belfast born and brewed.

Event Managers Linda Nevins Pete Jordan Padraig o Duinnin SeÁmus Coyle

DESIGN: www.darraghneely.com

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Mary Heaney (CHAIR) Alison McArdle (DEPUTY CHAIR) Carlo Gebler Oliver O’Connor Dearbhail McDonald Paul Sternberg William Morrison Mary Campbell Sally Everist

Box Office Co-ordinator Sascha White

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Turandot

by Giacomo Puccini

From £29 per person To book call 028 9038 8000 or email eventsmgr@malonelodgehotel.com malonelodgehotelbelfast.com All photographs courtesy of Ludwig Olah/State Theatre of Nuremberg

UK AND IRELAND PREMIERE In association with Belfast Festival 2015. Directed by Calixto Bieito Fri 30, Sat 31 October & Sun 1 November, 7.30pm at the Grand Opera House, Belfast Tickets: £18-46 (concs available) - Box Office: 028 9024 1919. Book online at www.goh.co.uk

Sung in English.

Contains graphic scenes.

Suitable for ages 16+ Co-produced by the State Theatre of Nuremberg / Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse / Northern Ireland Opera

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