Brian Friel’s 1967 work comprises two one-act plays. In Winners, two teenagers meet at the top of a hill. Mag, played with vigour by April Bracken, and Joe, a worthy match in Martin Burns Jr, are expecting a baby and are to be married in three weeks’ time. Joe is engrossed in maths revision for the impending state examinations while Mag talks a mile a minute about the aunts of second cousins of friends. Narrators inform us that the lovers go missing later that day, and an upturned boat is discovered in a nearby lake. In Losers, romance flourishes between a couple in their forties. Hanna (Sharon Coade) lives at home with her bedridden mother who rings a bell whenever the talk from downstairs stops.
Lovers and Losers
These two introverted works set away from fictional Ballybeg are a worthy rival to the Brian Friel productions running at Dublin’s bigger theatres