The First Pegeen – presented by Bewley's Café Theatre @ the Irish Georgian Society.

She was a stage-struck nineteen-year old, he was a director of the Abbey Theatre approaching middle age. She was a caution, he was just cautious. She was a city girl, he liked country roads best. Theirs was an unlikely love from the start. And yet this cockeyed Romeo and Juliet were so enraptured by each other that the affair, between JM Synge and Molly Allgood, remains one of Irish theatre's most endearing and enduring stories. She made her name as the first Pegeen Mike in The Playboy of the Western World. And her performance and his script made that play – as notorious as the two of them were, in its day – one of the Abbey's most lasting contributions to world theatre. But only Molly lived to tell the tale. For, prematurely, death did them part.

The First Pegeen is a portrait of Molly on the day of her beloved's funeral, as she walks distractedly around Dublin without direction and without relief, her mind a mix of memory and desire, the footsteps echoing the harsh clash of past against present, trying – and eventually succeeding – to find in herself how best life and love might be reclaimed even as she is riven by the pain of loss.

“A beautifully written piece: O'Brien's writing and Aisling O'Mara's interpretation give Molly layers of pain and sweetness under Michael James Ford's thoughtful direction” – Sunday Independent

Booking information
Wed 19^th, Thu 20^th, Fri 21^st, Sat 22^nd
Wed 26^th,Thu 27^th, Fri 28^th, Sat 29^th

*Masks are required to attend the performance.