Crowded Kitchen Players will present the third in its series of plays about the Irish fight for independence and nationhood March 13-16 at The Ice House in Bethlehem, PA
“An Explosion by the Ballyseedy Woods” is an original story of the Irish Civil War of 1922. This follows chronologically CKP’s earlier productions “The Rising of 1916” and “The Irish War of Independence 1919-1921.
“Ballyseedy Woods” is written and directed by Ara Barlieb.
Music of that dark period in Ireland’s turbulent history is performed by singer/songwriter Joey Mutis III of The Electric Farm. Mutis has performed in each of the Irish plays produced by CKP.
SYNOPSIS Barrister Patrick Costello spends long days at Griffith’s Barracks in Dublin, reviewing Military Service Pension applications for an endless line of desperate survivors and their families whose lives have been forever altered by the devastation of that conflict.
Costello’s deeply ingrained sense of national duty and the stingy pension eligibility requirements lead him to clash at every turn with Mrs. DunCannon, his secretary, who cannot tame her impassioned advocacy for the widows, disabled veterans, and their starving children who come seeking their mercy.
An ever more weary Costello closes each day with tea and stew at nearby Madigan’s Pub in Dublin’s Four Corners of Hell , frequented by hardened men with stinging battle scars and their own sorrows in need of drowning with endless pints of Guinness. (Women were not allowed in Irish pubs until the late 1960s).
When a young American tourist stumbles into the pub and begins questioning the causes and outcomes of the recent War, long-suppressed memories are awakened, blood begins to rise, tempers erupt, and each man is forced to confront his role in that conflict’s unimaginable atrocities.
CAST David Oswald, Trish Cipoletti, Dan Ferry, Pamela McLean Wallace, Denise Shelton, Bruce Brown, Sharon Ferry, Fiona Galligan Sweeney, Robert Tollinger, Dan VanArsdale, Aidan King.
The play will be performed March 13, 14, 15 at 730PM and March 16 at 200PM.
The Charles A. Brown Ice House is located at 56 River Street, Bethlehem, PA
All tickets $20
For information, call 610-704-6974 or visit www.ckplayers.com
FACTOIDS All the characters are completely fictional EXCEPT the four women who come begging for pension compensation for their husbands and sons who were killed in the war, and for a grandchild conceived because of a rape perpetrated by National Army troops.
These four women were all real people---
Sharon Ferry plays Brigid Mahoney, who lost a husband and son but is denied a military pension for her three younger children because her village priest writes the authorities a letter claiming she drinks.
Fiona Galligan Sweeney, whose grandfather was a hero in The Rising in 1916 (the failed attempt to throw Britain out of Ireland), plays Kathleen O'Brien, whose daughter was raped and whose grandson had to be put out for adoption at Kathleen's expense (which she couldn't afford, so her grandson was sold by nuns for adoption to Americans; that was quite common in those circumstances).
Denise Shelton plays Mrs. Greehy, who is denied a pension because someone sent a letter to the authorities questioning whether her son, killed in action, was legitimate. If he wasn't, she was ineligible for his pension because, by law, an illigitimate son couldn't have any dependents, not even their own mothers.
Pamela McLean Wallace plays Margaret Skinnider, a woman who fought heroically alongside the men during The Rising and was seriously injured, but was denied a pension because, during the Civil War, she fought on the side that lost, in addition to the fact that women were routinely denied any compensation for their services during the several wars.