It’s all fun and smiles until it gets physical! That’s certainly what rehearsals for On McQuillan’s Hill look like if these images are anything to go by. Take a look, then book your tickets.
Joseph Crilly’s dark comedy, staged at Finborough Theatre by Doreen productions, runs from 4 to 29 February 2020.
“There’s a lock o’ new houses down in the village and there’s a Sinn Féin advice centre and the shop’s a Spar now, but nothin’ much else is different. The whole world is changin’ and Gentry stays the same.”
Rural Northern Ireland, 1999. Proud IRA man Fra Maline returns home – released early from prison under the Good Friday Agreement – and to celebrate his daughter, Theresa, throws a party at the local community hall on McQuillan’s Hill. Unknown to the revellers the hall has been bought by Fra’s sister, Loretta, who turns up ready to demolish it after a twenty-year absence across the water. With peace on a knife-edge, bitter memories, family secrets and lies long buried in the bog threaten to resurface as an accidental family reunion descends into pitch black farce…
A vicious satire from a playwright hailed as “Ulster’s Martin McDonagh” (The Guardian), On McQuillan’s Hill gets under the dirty fingernails of small town Northern Ireland, confronting the horrors of abuse and the corrosive legacy of conflict with explosive wit and an insider’s eye for detail.
Johnny Vivash leads the cast a Fra Maline, with Gina Costigan as Loretta and Julie Maguire as Theresa. They’re joined in the cast by Helena Bereen, Declan Rodgers and Kevin Murphy. Director Jonathan Harden returns to Finborough Theatre where he previously appeared as an actor in Northern Star.
Actor, journalist and playwright Joseph Crilly took his own life in 2017, having lived much of his life with depression. In addition to On McQuillan’s Hill, his plays include Kitty and Damnation and the award-winning Second-Hand Thunder.
On McQuillan’s Hill rehearsal gallery (Photos: MarkArrigo)
