Inishfallen Fare Thee Well

A powerful one-man play on the life of Seán O’Casey, performed by Ronan Wilmot. In 1958, the Dublin Theatre Festival was cancelled after pressure from Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. The cause? Seán O’Casey’s final play, The Drums of Father Ned, was deemed blasphemous. In solidarity, Samuel Beckett withdrew his own work, and a play based on Joyce’s Ulysses was also pulled — silencing the entire festival. From this moment of censorship, O’Casey, now 78, looks back on his life — from growing up in a Dorset Street tenement to the political and artistic upheavals that shaped Ireland and his voice as its greatest socialist writer. Written by Eddie Naughton and first performed at The New Theatre, Dublin, Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well was later staged at Áras an Uachtaráin for President Michael D. Higgins. Renowned actor Ronan Wilmot brings O’Casey’s voice to life in this deeply human and timely portrait of the artist as an older man.