By Dan Walsh
It is curtains up tonight (Thursday, 8pm) at Wexford Arts Centre for the Irish premiere of a play by home-grown talent Eoghan Rua Finn, titled Amongst Men which is a gripping theatrical production delivering powerful performances from stars of stage and screen, Mark Lambert and Noelle Brown.
Directed by Deirde Dwyer, Amongst Men is the latest play commissioned by Four Rivers theatre group and is set in the1960s in a tight-knit rural community in Wexford still riven by the legacy of the Civil War.
Eoghan Rua Finn is a playwright and a poet and is one of eight participants in the Wexford Playwrights Workshop, supported by Four Rivers, Wexford County Council and Wexford Arts Centre. Amongst Men is the fifth play Eoghan has written about Irish history. The Blackstairs Trilogy and Sons of Thunder were produced in 2016. Having worked so intensely on stories set against the backdrop of revolution, he felt like had no more to say on those topics, at least from a theatre perspective.
“However, when Wexford County Council asked for submissions in January 2022 to write a play around the theme of commemoration and Wexford’s role in the Irish Civil War, an idea came to me, and one that would allow me to explore the period through a different lens,” Eoghan told WexfordLocal.com.
“How might a woman, a participant of the three conflicts between 1916 and 1923, feel decades later when the dust had settled on the revolution but her vision for a more equal and compassionate Ireland had not come to pass?”
“With the assistance of Wexford Library and the Wexford County Archive, I began to research the Civil War period in Wexford to get a greater understanding of the people and events of the time.
“Killurin, in the parish of Glynn, is an ancestral home of mine. My maternal grandmother was born next to the railway track at Killurin Bridge and my grandfather worked for CIE as a goods inspector. Reading about the importance of Killurin as a point of attack during the War of Independence, and later the Civil War, there was no question as to where the play would be set.”
Amongst Men, with a cast of Mark Lambert, Noelle Brown, Arthur Riordan and Dylan Kennedy, is at Wexford Arts Centre from April 6th-8th and 12th-15th, starting at 8 pm. Contact the BOX OFFICE at 053 9123764 or boxoffice@wexfordartscentre.ie
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