Stewart Parker’s play Northern Star travels home to Belfast this May for a two week run at the Lyric Theatre. This masterpiece of modern Irish drama will be directed by Lynne Parker with an impressive cast line up including Richard Clements, Darragh Kelly, Paul Mallon, Charlotte McCurry, Eleanor Methven, Rory Nolan, Robbie O’Connor and Ali White.
Northern Star is based on the intriguing story of Belfast-born United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken, as he dissects the reasons for the failure of the 1798 rebellion, and its attempt to forge a new nation, in a journey through the missed opportunities of Irish history.
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We meet charismatic rebel Henry Joy McCracken in Belfast on the eve of his arrest and subsequent execution in August 1798. First produced in 1984, it is a play that both contains - and critiques - the Irish theatrical canon. Stylistically, it recalls the seven ages of McCracken’s life, each presented in the speech, setting, and style of a great Irish playwright from Synge and Wilde, to Behan and Beckett.
In this elegant, witty and moving play, a lunatic sense of invention is harnessed to a virtuoso Rough Magic ensemble - for a freewheeling journey, from the sublime to the ridiculous, through Irish political and theatrical history.‘A directly political play that manages to be vastly entertaining as well as intellectually supple...’ Fintan O’TooleBOOK NOW