Druid Theatre 1975-2025: 50 Years of New Irish Plays
Edited & Introduced: Barry Houlihan, Patrick Lonergan, Máiréad Ní Chróinín
Metheun Drama
ISBN: 781350542570 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781350542587 (ePDF)
ISBN: 9781350542594 (ebook)
416 pages
Review author: Laura Rodríguez-Davis
In its fifty years of existence, Druid Theatre has emerged and established itself as a foundational contributor to the Irish theatrical canon. An incubator for new writing, Druid pioneered professional theatre outside of Dublin, particularly in the West of Ireland. Despite its westward locale, Druid’s emphasis on ensuring that high-quality theatre is accessible in one’s own community has taken the company to all thirty-two counties in Ireland and beyond while still remaining rooted in the island’s west, which has frequently served as the inspiration and backdrop for many of its productions.
Commemorating Druid’s fiftieth anniversary, Druid Theatre 1975-2025 reflects on the achievements and legacy of the Galway-based theatre company. The volume is introduced and edited by University of Galway faculty, Barry Houlihan, Patrick Lonergan, and Máiréad Ní Chróinín, who expertly, if briefly, review Druid’s history and impact on Irish playwriting. They serve as guides on the whistlestop tour through Druid’s archives. The lion’s share of the tome’s focus remains on the plays themselves.
Selected from Druid Theatre’s repertoire, the following six plays provide the medium of reviewing and celebrating Druid’s history: The Wood of the Whispering, Same Old Moon, Conversations on a Homecoming, At the Black Pig’s Dyke, The Lonesome West, and The Beacon. Each play is preceded by an introduction offering contextual insight into its production and historical and cultural significance. Readers will also find accompanying images of each show’s programme and production shots featured throughout the book.
Kicking off Druid’s archival journey is M.J. Molloy’s The Wood of the Whispering, which opened in August 1983. While the play did not originally premiere with Druid Theatre, its Druid revival demonstrates the commitment of the theatre company to works featuring rural Ireland, especially from a playwright born and raised in County Galway. Subsequently, the play highlights the impoverished economic conditions of rural communities and consequential emigration due to inadequate government policies.
Just a year later, Same Old Moon by Geraldine Aron, another production with strong Galway roots, came to the Druid Theatre stage. Commissioned by Druid for the city’s quincentennial anniversary, the play follows the story of Brenda Barnes, a Galway native who dreams of being a writer in England. As our editors explain, Barnes’s journey has parallels to Druid’s own ventures, both locally and beyond Ireland.
Conversations on a Homecoming premiered during Druid Theatre’s tenth anniversary in 1985. According to its playwright, Tom Murphy, another County Galway-born dramatist, the play is a means of using the past to explore and understand the present, a common thread in many of Druid’s works. Notably, this production toured not only locally and internationally but also to three Irish prisons, further solidifying Druid’s ethos as a company making theatre accessible to those who would otherwise be neglected on the touring circuit.
At the Black Pig’s Dyke is a standout in the volume’s selection by means of its topic and its presentation. Penned by Country Leitrim broadcaster, Vincent Woods, and brought to the Druid stage in September 1992, the play explores the sectarian conflict and violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland through the art of mumming. At the Black Pig’s Dyke was also seminal in marking Druid Theatre’s one hundredth production.
Opening in June 1997, The Lonesome West was co-produced with London’s Royal Court Theatre. Part of The Leenane Trilogy, the play seethes with Martin McDonagh’s signature black comedy and explosive conflict, which centres on two quarrelling brothers and a disillusioned priest. Our authors offer commentary on the play’s familial and religious dynamics as a mirror to wider societal change and the geographical landscape of Ireland’s rural west.
First raising its curtains in 2019, Nancy Harris’s The Beacon is the book’s only featured play that premiered after the turn of the century. Its exploration of what it means to be an artist and create art, told through Harris’s visual artist, Beiv, and her tenuous relations, is amplified by the production’s set design by Francis O’Connor, as explained by the editors. The Beacon’s critical acclaim testifies to Druid Theatre’s enduring relevance and continued distinction in Irish theatre well into the new millennium.
Druid Theatre 1975-2025 is likely best appreciated as a collection of Druid’s ‘greatest hits’ more than a historical reference for the theatre. The introductions provided by the editors effectively contextualise each play, and the inclusion of production shots and visuals from show programmes augment the offerings of the book. There is a certain thrill of seeing preserved photos and artwork from a time before the advent of social media and graphic design software made all visual imagery ubiquitous and inevitable.
Furthermore, a quick Internet search shows how difficult it is to find accessible published texts of certain featured plays, such as The Wood of the Whispering and At the Black Pig’s Dyke. Anyone wanting to read these works will be well-pleased with their presentation in this record, and their inclusion is a gift to the published Irish theatrical repertoire.
Still, any direct contributions from Druid Theatre appear to be minimal. The compilation, instead, seems to be largely an undertaking of University of Galway faculty rather than the theatre itself. Readers looking for an in-depth account of Druid’s beginnings or subsequent growth, especially from a personal point of view, may find this volume wanting.
Nevertheless, this book successfully highlights Druid Theatre’s pivotal role in birthing new writing and bringing it, not only to all corners of Ireland, but also to the world at large. The continued success of a non-Dublin based theatre company fifty years on, in an era of finite arts funding and film and television dominance, is a testament to the value of Druid’s practice and dramatic artistry. Its guiding ethos of making professional theatre accessible across Ireland holds unwavering resonance, even as a new generation of writers and theatre-goers fill auditoria and parish halls. With no signs of slowing down, future audiences can look forward to seeing more from Druid, and the theatrical community can eagerly anticipate another groundbreaking collection of new Irish plays in fifty years’ time.
References
Druid Theatre (no date) Druid Theatre. Available at: https://www.druid.ie/ (Accessed: January 17, 2026).
