New Plays from the Abbey Theatre

In Hugh Leonard's Love in the Title, a woman's visit to the Irish countryside leads to a surreal meeting with her own mother as a thirty-year-old in 1964 and her grandmother as a twenty-year-old in 1932. The frank exchanges that mark this meeting allow the women to remain in and represent their times, yet still communicate with each other. The next play, Frank McGuinness's Dolly West's Kitchen is set a small house in Donegal, 1944, a meeting place where two American GI's, a British Army captain and the fiercely nationalistic West family share meals and talk of love, war and betrayal. Finally, The Muesli Belt by Jimmie Murphy examines the ramifications of renewal and relocation in the urban centers of western Ireland, as a greedy property developer bent on buying up everything in sight to build high-rent flats and chic eateries throws locals into dispair.