Search results for ""Author Frank McGuinness""

This second collection of Frank McGuinness contains his beautifully lyrical plays from 1989 to 1999. The Bird Sanctuary is published here for the first time. The collection also includes Mary and Lizzie, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Dolly West's Kitchen, and is introduced by the author.Mary and Lizzie'An extraordinary, outlandish script . . . Intriguing and sharply irreverent.' Time OutSomeone Who'll Watch Over Me'Frank McGuinness's brilliant play, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, not only penetrates the minds of three disparate man who fetch up as hostages in Lebanon, but also evokes a terrifyingly unnatural situation with remarkable conviction.' Sunday ExpressDolly West's Kitchen'No play has ever looked into Ireland's past and found there its future with the mix of wit and wisdom, death and despair, life and love, that characterises every line and every corner and every moment of Dolly West's Kitchen.' Spectator

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In the summer of 1967 Greta Garbo comes to Donegal.Ireland is on the verge of violent change. Two couples are on the verge of parting. A woman tries to save her family, while a girl tries to save her future. Seemingly above it all is the loveliest and loneliest of all women, the great Garbo. But when the gods arrive, they can cause havoc, not least to themselves, as the divine Greta is to learn.Frank McGuinness's Greta Garbo Came to Donegal premiered at the Tricycle Theatre, London, in January, 2010.

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And she grew to be a girl, my daughter. Sing a song, Mary. Sing for grandma and Granda. Sing. The ties that bind can never be broken. For Sal, they hang like a noose around her neck, just loose enough to keep a small but potent flame burning inside. A passionate story of love and hate, The Match Box by Frank McGuinness premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in June 2012.

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The McKenna family convenes at their remote West Ireland holiday home to mark the 21st birthday of their late son Gene. Eccentric cousin Bridget appears along the causeway, inviting herself for birthday cake and conversation, and ready to expose a family secret. Even Margaret, the unstoppable mother, and Leo, the ever-calm father, can't hold things together in the face of an unexpected visit from the past.There Came a Gypsy Riding premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in January 2007.

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The year is 1904 in the city of Dublin. Gretta and Gabriel Conroy attend the Morkan Sisters annual dinner on the Feast of the Epiphany and the last day of Christmas. An evening of laughter, music and dance ends in an epiphany for Gabriel.Recognised as a masterpiece, The Dead, the short story from James Joyce's Dubliners, is dramatised by Frank McGuinness. The play premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in December 2012.

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This first collection by Frank McGuinness contains plays from the 1980s, including his major work of that decade, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, a powerful and profoundly moving study of a group of Ulster Protestant volunteers in the Great War. The book also contains Carthaginians, set in a Derry graveyard in the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday killings, Innocence, McGuinness's vigorous drama based on the life of Caravaggio, The Factory Girls and Baglady.

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On 1 July 1916, the 36th (Ulster) Division took part in one of the bloodiest battles in human history, the Battle of the Somme. This enduring war play is a powerful portrayal of mortality, love and loss. In the extraordinary circumstances of World War I, eight ordinary men arechanged, changed utterly.In 2016, one hundred years after the battle, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme by Frank McGuinness was revived in a co-production between Abbey Theatre, Citizens Theatre, Headlong and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse.This edition contains a new introduction by P. J. Mathews.'There is a touch of genius in McGuinness's, sensitive, often bleakly comic exploration of the men's situation.' Daily Telegraph'This is an epic drama that demands recognition for the male human animal in all his complexity, across any boundaries of belief or belonging we care to construct.' The Scotsman

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You used to swing me on our garden gate. In and out, in and out - out and in, me, on top of the gate, safe because I was in your arms, my father's big strong arms.Recalling events that may or may not have happened, people he may or may not have known, an elderly father weaves his life, funny, angry, poignant, as if in a dream.His daughter, perched outside his window, as close as the pandemic allows, responds with conflicting memories. They sing and argue, they broach dangerous ground, their profound love apparent despite themselves, until the visiting hour is up.Written during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020, Frank McGuinness's The Visiting Hour premiered in April 2021 at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in the first online Gate At Home production.

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Nora Helmer, wife to Torvald and mother of three children, appears to enjoy living the live of a pampered, indulged child. But as her economic dependence becomes brutally clear, Nora's acceptance of the status quo undergoes a profound change. To the bewildered Torvald, himself caught in the tight web of a conservative society which demands that he exert strict control, Nora comes to see that the only possible true course of action is to leave the family home.

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I am honoured to meet you.You are, as they say, a man after my own heart.And you have lifted mine.My heart, that is.Two men, together, on the edge of heaven. In a strange restaurant, two American giants who revere each other, Groucho Marx and T. S. Eliot, meet for dinner. Both in their own ways great defiant spirits, they create magic and anarchy, revealing secrets and sorrows. The evening is presided over by the Proprietor, who seems to control the workings of the universe. Or perhaps not.All is revealed, or nearly so. A fast-paced fictional dinner date like no other, Frank McGuinness's Dinner With Groucho was first produced by b*spoke theatre company at The Civic, Dublin, in September 2022.

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Obsessed with his own salvation, the hermit Paulo dedicates himself to ten years of prayerful penance. When his faith wavers, the ever-watchful Devil seizes the moment to convince him that he shares the fate of one Enrico, a notorious Neapolitan gangster destined for damnation. Swearing vengeance, Paulo lashes out against God and assembles a band of rival outlaws. I'll match Enrico in mad badness. So, we're damned, both of us, are we?Then I'll be revenged on the whole world. And yet, even as their villainous crimes escalate, the possibility of redemption hovers over the two men, perhaps within reach.A fast-paced adventure story embracing bandits and beautiful women between glimpses of heaven and hell, this subversive and at times riotous exploration of faith and the transformative power of love races across the Italian landscape, relishing the unpredictability of fate, an extraordinary array of characters and their very real dilemmas. Sinner I am - pray for me.Damned by Despair, written in 1635 by the great Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina, is brought to vivid life in Frank McGuinness's new version, whichopens at the National Theatre, London, in October 2012.

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God is on fire - his fever is plague.All that was sweet is spilt and gone.The people of Thebes look to Oedipus to lift a terrible curse from them and their city. He consults the oracle and learns that he must root out the late king's murderer. But his relentless interrogation of one man after another leads inexorably, and in the space of a single day, to his own savage conclusion.You are who you are seeking to find. Frank McGuinness's version of Sophocles' Oedipus premiered at the National Theatre, London, in October 2008.

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Let's see how crafty a picture you paint. You're making a demon out of a saint.In this spectacular dramatic comedy, the villainous Tartuffe shocks and enthrals with his deceptive powers. Charming to some, a danger to others, one family risks losing everything if he gets his way. Molière's exuberant seventeenth-century classic is brought back to life in an audacious contemporary Irish version by Frank McGuinness. Tartuffe premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in March 2023.

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