LANDMARK PRODUCTIONS BY DEIRDRE KINAHAN DIRECTED BY LOUISE LOWE STARRING MARIE MULLEN AND BRIAN GLEESON WORLD PREMIERE BY DEIRDRE KINAHAN DIRECTOR LOUISE LOWE COMPOSER CONOR MITCHELL COSTUME DESIGNER JOAN O’CLERY LIGHTING DESIGNER MARY TUMELTY SOUND DESIGNER CAMERON MACAULAY BROADCAST LIVE FROM THE EVERYMAN THEATRE AS PART OF CORK MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL SATURDAY 19 JUNE 2021, 3PM AND 8PM SUNDAY 20 JUNE 2021, 8PM ON DEMAND 21–27 JUNE Marie Mullen in rehearsal. Photo: Barry Cronin 2 3 CONTENTS LANDMARK PRODUCTIONS Landmark Productions is one of work – plays, operas and musicals Ireland’s leading theatre producers. – in theatres ranging from the 66- It produces wide-ranging work in seat New Theatre to the 1,254- PAGE 5 LANDMARK PRODUCTIONS Ireland, and shares that work with seat Olympia. It co-produces international audiences. regularly with a number of partners, including, most significantly, Galway PAGE 6 THE SACRED TRUTH In January 2021 it launched Landmark International Arts Festival and Live, a new online streaming platform Irish National Opera. Its 21 world OF MÁIRE SULLIVAN to enable the company to bring the premieres include new plays by major thrill of live theatre to audiences Irish writers such as Enda Walsh and around the world. Mark O’Rowe, featuring a roll-call of PAGE 9 CAST / CREATIVES Ireland’s finest actors, directors and Deirdre Kinahan’s The Saviour is the designers. fourth production to be streamed to PAGE 26 LANDMARK LIVE date. In August, Landmark, in a co- Numerous awards include the production with Galway International Judges’ Special Award at The Irish Arts Festival, will present the world Times Irish Theatre Awards, in premiere of a new play by Enda Walsh, recognition of ‘sustained excellence PAGE 28 THANK YOUS / FUNDING Medicine, as part of the Edinburgh in programming and for developing International Festival. Walsh will imaginative partnerships to bring direct Clare Barrett, Aoife Duffin, and quality theatre to the Irish and PAGE 29 JOIN THE CONVERSATION Domhnall Gleeson, with drummer international stage’; and a Special Sean Carpio, in a devastatingly funny Tribute Award for Anne Clarke, for her and moving meditation on how, for work as ‘a producer of world-class many decades, we have treated those theatre in the independent sector in we call mentally ill. Ireland’. Led by Anne Clarke since the www.landmarkproductions.ie company’s foundation in 2003, Landmark’s productions have Join the Landmark Mailing list received multiple awards and have HERE to find out more about been seen in leading theatres in upcoming shows. London, New York and beyond. It produces a wide range of ambitious 4 5 THE SACRED TRUTH Truth with a capital T is spoken, only Mother, Deirdre Kinahan’s edition is a unravelling can follow. Her creatures terrifying manifestation. OF MÁIRE SULLIVAN are locked in patterns of control that make truthful utterance a threat to Underlying the show’s sparking BY PAULA MEEHAN carefully-wrought consensus. energy is the most serious consideration, even accusation, That we can laugh our heads off that as a State we have reneged IF THERE WAS a Venn diagram for as we witness disintegration and on our commitment to protect our this play we might see transgression is because one of the children in the past and that, for all Crazy-Old-Long-Widowed-Religious- many arrows in Deirdre Kinahan’s the commissions and reports and Maniac-Talking-Out-Loud-To-Jesus- capacious quiver is her sense of investigations, we are still failing After-Getting-Her-Hole humour. Gallows humour to be sure: them. Dig a bit deeper and this overlapping with Massive-Cultural- deadly. play urges a complete separation And-Constitutional-Change-On- of Church and State. The price of The-Island-In-The-Last-Decade The old chestnuts are here: How can Theocracy has been horrendous; overlapping with a God of Love allow such suffering? living hells in the Magdalen Laundries Family-Traumatised-Through-The- What do we make of Máire’s direct (evoked here with accurate terror), Generations-Karma. conversation with Him? What kind of the social torture of citizens who are Prayer is this? Máire imagines Jesus different, the tyranny of the family That we come to love Máire up in the mountains of Tibet where become ‘enforcer’ of a dysfunctional Sullivan by the end of the show the white mountaintops touch the and unholy alliance of said Church is a testimony to the playwright’s clouds where you can just sit yourself and State. dark and mysterious art, an art that down and have a breather and not alchemicalises evil, and shows us be being bothered by World Wars or The historical roots of that alliance the human heart as a wilderness, Mass Murders or Screaming Auld- go back to the power vacuum left a zone beyond manmade (gender Ones having sex. when the British pulled out, the first intended!) laws. minor chord in the swan song of There is a merciful refusal to sanitize empire, into which vacuum stepped We can empathise with her fall from or glorify victimhood: Máire Sullivan’s the Catholic Church, whose absolute grace. We witness the corruption of baggage is packed with enough authority became unquestioned her already trammelled innocence, incidents to derail any human authority and led to inevitability of the havoc her unexamined actions being, and it is our identification systemic abuse. The internalising of have unleashed, the horrendous with her suffering that engenders all that oppression, of the shame and consequences of her gullibility - all compassion. In a theatre tradition trauma, has meant the reverberations this a tribute to a playwright whose that does a great line in the of that shift in power and its abuse gift is for capturing the transgressive Monstrous Irish Mother, even the continue to sound through the moment. In Kinahan’s world, when Religious Maniacal Monstrous Irish generations. To find language for this 6 7 – the Great Amnesia also known as by her derangement, as the truth is the Great Silence – has largely fallen uncovered by the stripping away of DEIRDRE KINAHAN to artists. the layers of her illusion. We bear WRITER with her the terrible cost of hearing The Saviour breaks silence around that truth and the massive betrayal at a particular obscenity. The root the heart of it. AWARD-WINNING PLAYWRIGHT of that word, obscene, goes back Deirdre Kinahan is a member of to the very foundation of western In this Midsummer of 2021, the play Aosdána, Ireland’s elected body of drama, to the great Greek tragedians. is staged against the backdrop of outstanding artists. What cannot be shown in the scene, endless daily talk of ‘getting back because it is too horrendous to to normal’ after a year and a season Her recent work includes Embargo, be shown, happened obs skené, of lockdown and governance by Rathmines Road (Fishamble); Dear off stage, and is reported back metadata. Máire’s story is a powerful Ireland, The Bloodied Field, The to us - Oedipus stabbing his own argument for never going back to Unmanageable Sisters (Abbey eyes, blinding himself for what he any normality out of which that story Theatre); Crossings (Pentabus UK); considers his moral blindness; Jason comes. Wild Notes (Solas Nua DC); Renewed eating his own children baked in a pie (Old Vic London). by Medea, her revenge for his taking If we are lucky, we move too towards another woman. If it can’t be shown, compassion and forgiveness, Forthcoming projects include the it can and it must be imagined. Our especially for ourselves in our own opera Fallen for Meath County own imaginations provide all the fated dance with history. If great Council, Creative Ireland, and drama needed, conjured by language, theatre has a great function, it is Belfast Ensemble; the musical Ettie in this instance by the incantatory to reveal our own hand in our own for Irish Arts Center NYC; a play power of the text and by the passion suffering. commemorating the Civil War for of skilled theatre artists. Meath County Council; a new play, This is great theatre. Grace, for Landmark Productions; We are the appalled witnesses to and In the Middle of the Fields for the obscenity, to this opening of a Paula Meehan Solas Nua DC. festering wound, as we move through Dublin, June 2021 the action, inexorably towards Deirdre is an Associate Artist with revelation. If revelation is the end of Meath County Council Arts Office. the journey, it is an apocalyptic one Her plays are translated into many for this Carlow family. languages, published by Nick Hern Books and produced regularly in In The Saviour we are immersed in Ireland and on the international stage. Máire’s psyche to such a degree that, as in zero gravity, we find it hard to discern direction, we are disoriented 8 9 MARIE MULLEN BRIAN GLEESON MÁIRE MEL THEATRE CREDITS include BRIAN RECENTLY WRAPPED filming Testament (Landmark Productions/ the role of Ross in the television Dublin Theatre Festival); many series Extinction for Sky. He was productions for Druid, including recently seen in Frank of Ireland, DruidShakespeare: Richard which he wrote with Domhnall III, Sive, Brigit, Bailegangaire, Gleeson and Michael Moloney for DruidShakespeare: Richard II, Henry Channel 4, Amazon and Merman. IV (Parts 1 and 2), The Colleen Bawn, DruidMurphy (Best Supporting Theatre credits include The Walworth Actress, Irish Times Irish Theatre Farce (Landmark Productions); Awards), The Cripple of Inishmaan, Beckett’s Room (Dead Centre/Gate Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Theatre); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof DruidSynge (Best Actress, Irish (Young Vic); The Weir (Lyric Theatre); Times Irish Theatre Awards), The and The Night Alive (Donmar Beauty Queen of Leenane (Best Warehouse; Atlantic Theatre).