Afterplay
In 1920s Moscow, Sonya from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya meets Andrey from Three Sisters. Their conversation brings together characters shaped by disappointment and emotional loss in the aftermath of the earlier plays.
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In 1920s Moscow, Sonya from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya meets Andrey from Three Sisters. Their conversation brings together characters shaped by disappointment and emotional loss in the aftermath of the earlier plays.
The five Mundy sisters (Kate, Maggie, Agnes, Rosie, and Christina), all unmarried, live in a cottage outside of Ballybeg. The oldest, Kate, is a school teacher, the only one with a well-paid job. Agnes and Rose knit gloves to be sold in town, thereby earning a little extra money for the household. They also help Maggie to keep house. Maggie and Christina (Michael's mother) have no income at all. Michael is seven years old and plays in and around the cottage. All the drama takes place in the sisters' cottage or in the yard just outside, with events from town and beyond being reported either as they happen or as reminiscence. Recently returned home after 25 years is their brother Jack, a priest who has lived as a missionary in a leper colony in a remote village called Ryanga in Uganda. He is suffering from malaria and has trouble remembering many things, including the sisters' names and his English vocabulary. It becomes clear that he has "gone native" and abandoned much of his Catholicism during his time there. This may be the real reason he has been sent home. Gerry, Michael's father, is Welsh. He is a charming yet unreliable man, always clowning. He is a travelling salesman who sells gramophones. He visits rarely and always unannounced. A radio nicknamed "Marconi", which works only intermittently, brings 1930s dance and traditional Irish folk music into the home at rather random moments and then, equally randomly, ceases to play. This leads the women into sudden outbursts of wild dancing. The poverty and financial insecurity of the sisters is a constant theme. So are their unfulfilled lives: none of the sisters has married, although it is clear that they have had suitors whom they fondly remember. There is a tension between the strict and proper behaviour demanded by the Catholic Church, voiced most stridently by the upright Kate, and the unbridled emotional paganism of the local people in the "back hills" of Donegal and in the tribal people of Uganda. There is a possibility that Gerry is serious this time about his marriage proposal to Christina. On this visit, he says he is going to join the International brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War, not from any ideological commitment but because he wants adventure. There is a similar tension here between the "godless" forces he wants to join and the forces of Franco against which he will be fighting, which are supported by the Catholic Church. The opening of a knitwear factory in the village has killed off the hand-knitted glove cottage industry that has been the livelihood of Agnes and Rose. The village priest has told Kate that there are insufficient pupils at the school for her to continue in her post in the coming school year in September. She suspects that the real reason is her brother Jack, whose heretical views have become known to the Church and have tainted her by association. There is a sense that the close home life the women have known since childhood is about to be torn apart. The narrator, the adult Michael, tells us this is indeed what happens.
In mid-nineteenth-century Russia, anarchic medical student Bazarov visits his friend Arkady’s family estate. His contempt for the family’s complacency conflicts with his own emotions, and his actions have tragic consequences.
After Commandant Frank Butler returns from a successful UN mission, his children and young second wife gather at home. The artificial narrator Sir directs their memories as a family secret gradually reconnects father and son before a grim conclusion.
A two-part play: “Winners” follows teenage lovers Joe and Mag as they revise for exams before their planned marriage, with the narrators foreshadowing their deaths in a lake; “Losers” follows Hanna and Andy's relationship under the scrutiny of Hanna's mother and neighbor, ending in a loveless marriage.
The play presents Hugh O'Neill's leadership of an Irish-Spanish alliance against England during the Nine Years' War and his ill-fated marriage to Mabel Bagenal, daughter of an English enemy. Set before and after Kinsale, it explores Irish nationalism and how historical narratives shape a national hero's legacy.
Blind since infancy, Molly Sweeney undergoes an operation to restore her sight at her husband Frank’s urging and under the care of a surgeon seeking to revive his career. Her story, told in monologues by Molly, Frank and Mr Rice, traces the consequences of the operation for her independent life.
In 1970 Derry, three civil-rights marchers fleeing tear gas mistakenly take shelter in the mayor’s Guildhall parlour. Their presence is treated as an occupation; they discuss their lives while waiting for the violence to pass, then are shot by soldiers as they try to surrender. A tribunal reconstructs their deaths through fictionalized testimony and acquits the soldiers, turning the play’s parallel scenes into an indictment of the violence and its official account.
In 1878 Ballybeg, an English landowner and his son both love their housekeeper while an anthropologist’s racist claims about local people inflame tensions after the murder of a despised landlord. The play follows the village’s reaction amid the Irish Home Rule movement.
In an 1833 Donegal village, a British Ordnance Survey team maps and anglicizes Irish place names. Their interpreter Owen mediates between the soldiers and local residents, while communication across languages shapes the relationships and tensions surrounding the survey, including Yolland and Máire's romance and Yolland's disappearance.
In 1920s Moscow, Sonya from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya meets Andrey from Three Sisters. Their conversation brings together characters shaped by disappointment and emotional loss in the aftermath of the earlier plays.
The five Mundy sisters (Kate, Maggie, Agnes, Rosie, and Christina), all unmarried, live in a cottage outside of Ballybeg. The oldest, Kate, is a school teacher, the only one with a well-paid job. Agnes and Rose knit gloves to be sold in town, thereby earning a little extra money for the household. They also help Maggie to keep house. Maggie and Christina (Michael's mother) have no income at all. Michael is seven years old and plays in and around the cottage. All the drama takes place in the sisters' cottage or in the yard just outside, with events from town and beyond being reported either as they happen or as reminiscence. Recently returned home after 25 years is their brother Jack, a priest who has lived as a missionary in a leper colony in a remote village called Ryanga in Uganda. He is suffering from malaria and has trouble remembering many things, including the sisters' names and his English vocabulary. It becomes clear that he has "gone native" and abandoned much of his Catholicism during his time there. This may be the real reason he has been sent home. Gerry, Michael's father, is Welsh. He is a charming yet unreliable man, always clowning. He is a travelling salesman who sells gramophones. He visits rarely and always unannounced. A radio nicknamed "Marconi", which works only intermittently, brings 1930s dance and traditional Irish folk music into the home at rather random moments and then, equally randomly, ceases to play. This leads the women into sudden outbursts of wild dancing. The poverty and financial insecurity of the sisters is a constant theme. So are their unfulfilled lives: none of the sisters has married, although it is clear that they have had suitors whom they fondly remember. There is a tension between the strict and proper behaviour demanded by the Catholic Church, voiced most stridently by the upright Kate, and the unbridled emotional paganism of the local people in the "back hills" of Donegal and in the tribal people of Uganda. There is a possibility that Gerry is serious this time about his marriage proposal to Christina. On this visit, he says he is going to join the International brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War, not from any ideological commitment but because he wants adventure. There is a similar tension here between the "godless" forces he wants to join and the forces of Franco against which he will be fighting, which are supported by the Catholic Church. The opening of a knitwear factory in the village has killed off the hand-knitted glove cottage industry that has been the livelihood of Agnes and Rose. The village priest has told Kate that there are insufficient pupils at the school for her to continue in her post in the coming school year in September. She suspects that the real reason is her brother Jack, whose heretical views have become known to the Church and have tainted her by association. There is a sense that the close home life the women have known since childhood is about to be torn apart. The narrator, the adult Michael, tells us this is indeed what happens.
In mid-nineteenth-century Russia, anarchic medical student Bazarov visits his friend Arkady’s family estate. His contempt for the family’s complacency conflicts with his own emotions, and his actions have tragic consequences.
After Commandant Frank Butler returns from a successful UN mission, his children and young second wife gather at home. The artificial narrator Sir directs their memories as a family secret gradually reconnects father and son before a grim conclusion.
A two-part play: “Winners” follows teenage lovers Joe and Mag as they revise for exams before their planned marriage, with the narrators foreshadowing their deaths in a lake; “Losers” follows Hanna and Andy's relationship under the scrutiny of Hanna's mother and neighbor, ending in a loveless marriage.
The play presents Hugh O'Neill's leadership of an Irish-Spanish alliance against England during the Nine Years' War and his ill-fated marriage to Mabel Bagenal, daughter of an English enemy. Set before and after Kinsale, it explores Irish nationalism and how historical narratives shape a national hero's legacy.
Blind since infancy, Molly Sweeney undergoes an operation to restore her sight at her husband Frank’s urging and under the care of a surgeon seeking to revive his career. Her story, told in monologues by Molly, Frank and Mr Rice, traces the consequences of the operation for her independent life.
In 1970 Derry, three civil-rights marchers fleeing tear gas mistakenly take shelter in the mayor’s Guildhall parlour. Their presence is treated as an occupation; they discuss their lives while waiting for the violence to pass, then are shot by soldiers as they try to surrender. A tribunal reconstructs their deaths through fictionalized testimony and acquits the soldiers, turning the play’s parallel scenes into an indictment of the violence and its official account.
In 1878 Ballybeg, an English landowner and his son both love their housekeeper while an anthropologist’s racist claims about local people inflame tensions after the murder of a despised landlord. The play follows the village’s reaction amid the Irish Home Rule movement.
In an 1833 Donegal village, a British Ordnance Survey team maps and anglicizes Irish place names. Their interpreter Owen mediates between the soldiers and local residents, while communication across languages shapes the relationships and tensions surrounding the survey, including Yolland and Máire's romance and Yolland's disappearance.