The Colleen Bawn is a melodramatic play written by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. A suspense-filled tale of tangled love, misplaced honour and downright skulduggery.
The story of the play involves Hardress Creegan, a young Irish gentleman secretly married to a peasant girl, Eily O’Connor (the Colleen Bawn or “fair-haired girl” of the title), whose family estate can only be saved from foreclosure by his marriage to his cousin and social equal, Anne Chute (the Colleen Ruadh or red-haired girl). Danny Mann acts as Hardress and Eily’s go-between and, through a set of circumstances dictated by melodramatic convention, a glove becomes the token of a misunderstanding that leads Danny to attempt the fair-haired Eily’s murder. All, of course, works out well in the end for the play’s upper-crust characters while Danny pays the ultimate price as a social inferior who goes too far.
Cavan Clarke
Jo Donnelly
Collette Dougal
Enda Kilroy
Patrick McBrearty
Brian Quinn
Maeve Smith
Director: Lisa May
Set & Costume Design: Grace Smart
Lighting Design: James McFetridge
Composer & Musical Director: Matthew Reeve
Choreographer: Jennifer Rooney