A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match. Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness.
A major play from a major Irish playwright
"Bailegangaire is as complex and haunting as one of Yeats' later poems ... A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match ... Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness. Here is a potent allegory - of the need to exorcise the past and its myths if one is to be happy in the future." (Sunday Telegraph)
Murphy's writing has the emotional weight and the intellectual athleticism of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.
