Cyprus Avenue

Description

Gerry Adams has disguised himself as a newborn baby and successfully infiltrated my family home. Eric Miller is a Belfast Loyalist. He believes his five-week old granddaughter is Gerry Adams. His family keep telling him to stop living in the past and fighting old battles that nobody cares about anymore, but his cultural heritage is under siege. He must act. David Ireland's black comedy takes one man's identity crisis to the limits as he uncovers the modern day complexity of Ulster Loyalism. Cyprus Avenue was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 11 February 2016, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London in April 2016.

David Ireland's work includes Summertime (Tinderbox); Trouble And Shame, Most Favoured, The End Of Desire (Oran Mor); Can't Forget About You (Lyric, Belfast) and Half A Glass Of Water (Abbey Theatre). David is the former Playwright-in-Residence at the Lyric Theatre Belfast, and is a recent winner of the Stewart Parker BBC Radio Drama Award and the Meyer Whitworth Award. Can't Forget About You is published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.

[A] complex, unsettling and provocative play about nationhood and identity * The Stage * Ireland's play slyly makes the case that it is not discrimination that ensures survival . . . but rather the ability to be two opposing things at once: Irish and British, politician and terrorist, even comedy and tragedy. If tragicomedy is the natural Irish form, Ireland makes his own inversion here, beginning with amused splutters, ending in hard gulps. * Irish Times *