Kiltoom Drama Group performs John B. Keane’s play, The Field, in Ballybay Parish Hall, Kiltoom from Thursday-Sunday, March 10-13. The group’s production is their sixth play by the prolific Kerry playwright. Their past productions include Many Young Men of Twenty, The Year of the Hiker, The Buds of Ballybunnion, Moll, and The Chastitute.
The play’s director, Ollie Hegarty, promises that Kiltoom’s production will extract the maximum drama from this dark story of how one man’s obsession for four acres of land tests a small rural community’s underlying values of loyalty to clan and social class in the heart of rural Ireland in the late 50s. It reveals the morally destructive compromises the characters are forced to make to guarantee the survival of their way of life. The integrity of Bull McCabe’s ideals about this way of life is seen alongside the cruelty of his behaviour. The play portrays the best and worst of the Irish soul in the 1950s, a portrait of rural life, which is simultaneously brutal and funny, loving and damning.
Half of the cast members are familiar faces from Kiltoom’s recent productions and a further three are returning to the Kiltoom stage after lengthy sabbaticals. Specially warm wishes to the two members who are making their debut stage performances. The same applies to another two cast members, who have previous acting experience but are making their Kiltoom debuts.
The play stars Sean O’ Laoide as Bull McCabe, Paul Slevin as Tadhg McCabe, Hughie Glynn as Bird O’Donnell, and Debbie Kilbride as widow Maggie Butler, and is directed by Ollie Hegarty.
