Bare Bodkin Theatre Company

[blockquote_left]Monday 7th – Saturday 19th March at 8pm in The Boys’ School[/blockquote_left]

“A treat for the ear, the eye and the imagination” Down Recorder

Peter Duffy’s powerful theatrical performance of Patrick Kavanagh’s poetic masterpiece The Great Hunger has been touring for the past eighteen months to popular and critical acclaim including performances in the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris, the Cathedral Quarter Festival in Belfast and in virtually every theatre venue in the country.

Kavanagh is generally regarded as one of the foremost poets of the twentieth century and his works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems On Raglan Road and The Great Hunger. Louise Bogan said in The New Yorker that the poet had “an astonishing talent” that “kept renewing itself not so much by a process of orderly growth as by a continual breaching of boundaries”. Richard Murphy in The New York Times Book Review describes The Great Hunger as “a great work” and Robin Skelton in Poetry praised it as “a vision of mythic intensity”.

Generally considered to be Patrick Kavanagh’s finest work, “The Great Hunger” sharply delineates a life of economic and imaginative privation. A large part of the hunger the poem describes is sexual; its protagonist is bachelor farmer Patrick Maguire who has spent years at his mother’s beck and call. When she finally dies aged 91, he himself is 65 and has missed the boat in terms of finding a wife and having a family of his own, a source of acute sorrow and regret to him.

“..a finely-achieved and compelling production. Its conclusion was greeted with a standing ovation from the appreciative audience and the accolade was fully merited….it is an outstanding performance” – Galway Advertiser

“Peter Duffy’s one-man performance of the poem is as epic as the work…softly spoken, with despair and regret pouring out of his being, Duffy hypnotises his audience; constantly drawing us into his tale. He captures all the lyricism of the verse and the emptiness of a man who has stood guard over an empty castle for far too long.” – Waterford News and Star

8pm nightly (excluding Sunday)
3pm matinees on Saturday 12th & Saturday 19th March

[cta headline=”Tickets €15/€12 conc” buttontext=”Book Now” buttonlink=”httpss://smockalley.ticketsolve.com/shows/873546760/events” ] Book tickets for The Great Hunger today![/cta]