On the second night of the drama festival, we welcome back the Clann Machua Drama Group of Kiltimagh to the stage, with Brian Friel’s ‘The Loves of Cass Maguire’. Clann Machua brought us an excellent production of ‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’ last year, and we look forward to their treatment of the Friel classic at this year’s festival.
The story is of a woman (Cass), who goes home to Ireland having spent over 50 years working as a saloon waitress in America. Nothing at home is as Cass imagined it. Her brother and his family to whom she turns really have no need for her, and ship her off to a rest haven for old dreamers. She begins living off past memories like others in the rest home. Though her memories now have a bitter taste, we know that in time and with the telling, they will be suffused with the aura of pleasant dreams.