Brigit (World Première) and Bailegangaire

By Tom Murphy

Seamus is an odd-job man with ‘a great pair of hands’. He is given ‘a commission’ by the church to carve a statue. His previous work for the church was none too happy. However, he reluctantly accepts the commission and as he works on the statue his obsession with it grows: it comes to involve his family which is on the breadline – his wife, Mommo, and the three grandchildren they’ve inherited.

Bailegangaire occurs thirty years later.

Mommo tells over and over again a story she never finishes. It relates how the town of Bochtán came to be known as Baileganagaire, the town without laughter. Mary, Mommo’s granddaughter, in between ministering to her, wavers between staying and leaving her. Dolly, Mommo’s other granddaughter, counts down the days before her husband, Stephen, returns from England and this time she’s determined to be ready for him.

Sisters though they might be, will Mary and Dolly even begin to understand each other? Is any sense to be made of what Mommo has to say? What will it take to release each of these women from their private hells?

First premièred by Druid in 1985, Bailegangaire is unique in Tom Murphy’s oeuvre for centering exclusively on the lives of women. It throws an unremitting but tender light on a trinity of women’s lives from a dark time.

With Bailegangaire, Tom Murphy has written one of the crowning achievements of Irish drama.