Aud​ience to decide fate in famine play

It will then move to Brownlow House and the National Famine Museum, Strokestown.

This historical fantasy was commissioned by the Irish Heritage Trust in conjunction with Newpoint Players. It is supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs Shared Island Civic Engagement Fund and is free to all.

Art and history rhyme as long dead characters, who were alive during the Great Famine, argue over culpability and challenge our perceptions.

Like Trevelyan, the Irish Landlord bears the weight of popular disapproval for his (mainly male) behaviour during the Great Famine. Yet, on the landscape there are many tributes to the benevolence of the landlord class, including Scrabo Tower and, controversially, Lady Londonderry’s limestone slab on the Antrim Coast Road. Before this stone was vandalised it reminded those passing of England’s generosity in Black 47!

In ‘Judging Famine’s Follies’ John Mitchel calls Lord Londonderry from the grave to answer in the Tribunal of Natural Justice, how his actions during the Great Famine merited the building of Scrabo Tower. Lord Londonderry is defended by Major Mahon of Strokestown, the first landlord to be assassinated during the Great Famine; perhaps at the suggestion of the parish priest?

The audience is the Tribunal. Experience of Russell’s plays would suggest that the Tribunal’s judgement may not be predicable. Pearse was found not guilty on the Shankill Road; perhaps an indication of balanced writing and engaging performances by the Newpoint Players, as directed by Donal O’Hanlon.