Enniskillen Drama Festival
Starting 7th – 15th March at the Ardhowen Theatre.
Season Ticket for all nine shows only £60 and mini season 4 shows for £30!
Friday 7th March
Bart Players – The Whiteheaded Boy – A comedy in three acts by Lennox Robinson
“The Whiteheaded Boy” is set in a typical Irish small-town household which is thrown into a frenzy, as the play begins, with the return of son Denis from Dublin’s Trinity College. He is the whiteheaded boy of the title – the apple of his mother’s eye and the butt of his siblings’ resentment as a result – who, we learn, has just failed his exams. Rather than face the shame of this failure, the family plan to ship him off to Canada; he just wants to marry his sweetheart, get a job and settle down in the country. Hijinks, marriage proposals, bribes and counter-bribes ensue as the family members exploit and misinterpret Denis’ situation. Simple on the surface, the play is in fact a pointed analysis of Irish culture that remains eerily relevant today.
Saturday 8th March
Clontarf Players – The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis– Dark Comedy
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking work by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Boasting a large, zany cast of characters, the play asks one of the most plaguing questions in the Christian ideology: What happened to Judas Iscariot? The facts (we think!) we know are these: Judas was the disciple of Jesus who betrayed his friend and teacher to the authorities. He is seen as the man responsible for Jesus’s death; afterwards, Judas fell into despair and hung himself from an olive tree; since then, he has been suffering for his deeds deep in Hell, and will continue to do so for all eternity. Is that really fair? Was Judas the duplicitous master of his own fate, a much-suffering pawn used for Jesus’s ends, or just a man who made a mistake? Set in a courtroom in Purgatory, The Last Days puts Judas’ case to a hilarious, riotous, piercing trial, the results of which are sure to make the inhabitants of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory — and the audience — reconsider what each thought they knew about forgiveness, faith, and the human inside one of the history’s most infamous figures.
Trigger warnings:
Age 16 + Strong Language, slurs, violence, references to sexual assault/domestic violence, adult themes, and religious controversy.
Sunday 9th March
Theatre 3 – The Cemetery Club by Ivan Menchell – Dramatic Comedy
It’s a simple story. Three Jewish widows, long-time friends, meet once a month for tea, then visit their husbands’ graves. There’s sweet Ida, happy in her memories of Murray and in no hurry to “move on”; nascent party girl Lucille, who’s finally getting payback against her unfaithful Harry; and Doris, whose devotion to Abe, even in death, seems borderline unhealthy.
Things are going along swimmingly until the arrival of Sam, a shy butcher whose deceased wife is buried in the same cemetery as their husbands. Sam is immediately pounced on by a purring Lucille, but it’s Ida that Sam has doe-eyes for. The budding romance threatens to destroy the women’s friendship, first because Lucille wants Sam for herself later because Lucille and Doris make a horribly misguided attempt to save Ida from potential heartbreak.
Trigger Warnings:
Occasional language
Monday 10th March
Rosemary Drama Group Can You Ever Forgive Me? By Ian MacDonald
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Lee Israel took New York by storm with her Hollywood biographies. Then it all crashed. Jobless, penniless, a massive vet bill for her beloved cat tipped her to crime as a forger of celebrity letters. Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, Humphrey Bogart: she faked them all. And raked it in. But suspicions circled, and the FBI was closing in…
Outrageous, hilarious, touching and true—ish. Can you ever forgive her?
Ian McDonald: Author Blurb.
Born in 1960, Ian McDonald has been writing professionally for forty years, primarily in genre. He’s written 24 novels, and four story collections and won many of the field’s major awards. He’s a regular guest and international festivals and teaches science-fiction and fantasy and workshop in Ireland, the US and China. His most recent book is The Wilding, a sharp little horror novel, published by Gollancz in September 2024. Ian worked for 16 years in television. His first script was Doomwatch: Winter Angel: a feature by Working Title Television and Vanson Productions for Channel 5, starring Trevor Eve. He worked for many years in development in documentary and lifestyle programming and was Head of Development for Flickerpix Animations. He was deviser and show-runner for Sesame Workshop’s Sesame Tree. In 2024 he completed a MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast and has recently started a PhD.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? is his first full-length piece for stage.
Trigger Warnings: Occasional Strong Language
Tuesday 11th March
Phoenix Players – Translations by Brian Friel
Set in the North West of Ireland, Friel’s classic explores, language, love, relationships, co-existence, colonisation, nationality, and identity. Showing how language can both connect and divide people, while also illustrating the broader historical struggle between different cultures.
While set in the first half of the nineteenth century, this play is as relevant in today’s World as it was in Baile Beag in the 1830s.
The action of this play takes place in late August 1833 at a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag – an Irish speaking community in County Donegal. The ‘scholars’ are a cross-section of the local community, from a semi-literate young farmer to and elderly polyglot autodidact who reads and quotes Homer in the original.
In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, engaged on behalf of the British Army and Government in making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes of cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and transliterated – or translated – into English, in examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group of people, Irish and English, Brian Friel skilfully reveals the unexpectedly far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative and ‘harmless’. While remaining faithful to the personalities and relationships of those people at that time he makes a richly suggestive statement about Irish – and English – history.
Wednesday 12th March
Castleblayney Players – The Woodsman by Steven Fechter
Walter is trying to rehabilitate into society after serving prison time for something no one can forgive him for, not even himself… molesting a child. He must battle his demons, resist temptation and confront his past on the impossible path to redemption.
“An interesting, valuable and insightful play” – The Stage, London
“I loved this clear-sighted, balanced, non-judgmental, no-frills, linear story… It’s seriously thought-provoking, and all the more gripping for its restraint.” – British Theatre Guide
“The Woodsman is an unsettling play, but one that deals with important and thought-provoking issues of rehabilitation and forgiveness.”
Trigger Warnings: References to child abuse and references to violence are in the play. Some strong language of a sexual nature is used.
Thursday 13th March
Newtownstewart Theatre Company
The Remains of Maisie Duggan by Carmel Winters
“Now I’m dead there’ll be changes. I won’t keep rolling over. I won’t wag my tail at every insult and injury”!
Kathleen Duggan has rushed home to Ireland upon hearing the news that her mother, Maisie, has died. Only when she gets back to the house, she finds that her mother is alive and well. Almost. However, after a routine car accident, Maisie believes that she is now dead and wandering around the homestead, awaiting her funeral. Still able to talk to her childish adult son and her violent, temperamental husband, she will no longer be silenced by the male-dominated, pugnacious atmosphere that has kept her quiet all these years. So when Kathleen comes back for the ‘funeral’, Maisie expects to find her final resting place, safe from the threat of domestic violence once and for all. The Remains of Maisie Duggan received its world premiere on the Peacock stage of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in autumn 2016.
Trigger Warnings: Violence, domestic violence, strong language, adult themes
Friday 14th March
Newpoint Players Adaptation of Ghetto by Joseph Sobol
The true story of the flourishing of a theatre in a wartime Jewish Ghetto. Winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Play and the Critics Circle Award for Best New Play.
Set in the Jewish ghetto of Vilna, Lithuania, in 1942, and based on diaries written during the darkest days of the holocaust, Ghetto tells of the unlikely flourishing of a theatre at the very time the Nazis began their policy of mass extermination.
For the Festival Season 2025, Newpoint Players present Sean Treanor’s adaptation of Joshua Sobol’s 1984 play “Ghetto”.
In his play, Sobol dramatises the recorded experiences of the Jews of the Vilnius Ghetto, some of whose memories inspired the work. Names of characters, songs performed and events portrayed are historically correct. In the years from 1941 to 1944, four fifths of the inhabitants of the Ghetto lost their lives, many executed at the nearby Ponar camp, others executed as punishment and others died resisting their treatment. German officers, such as Kittel, who directed the life of the Ghetto, showed unmitigated cruelty. Some Jewish leaders tried to appease and as far as possible manipulate their oppressors in an attempt to maximise the numbers who might survive. Organising workshops to mend uniforms, recording the details of endangered libraries, playing music, acting in plays, all counted as a means of getting the work permits which could mean survival until the arrival of the Russian liberators. For some prominent Jews, such as Gens, the head of the Jewish Police, there was a dilemma as to how far collaboration should go. For others, such as the librarian Kruk or for the partisans any form of collaboration with the Nazis was unacceptable.
For this touring production, it has been decided that the essence of Sobol’s play should be entirely respected. It was considered that there should be no interval and that the longer speeches and varied times and locations of the action should be reduced. Some violent scenes are taken offstage in the hope that they may be more striking as played in the minds of the audience. Some songs and musical underscoring are added and other songs left out.
Trigger Warnings: Adult themes, violence and references to genocide
Saturday 15th March
Bridge Drama – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Simon Stephens
Teenaged Christopher, stands beside Mrs Shears’ dead dog. It is seven minutes after midnight, Christopher is under suspicion. He records each fact in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington. He has an extraordinary brain, exceptional at maths, but he is ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched, and he distrusts strangers. But Christopher’s detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that turns his world upside down.
**Winner of 7 Olivier & 5 Tony Awards**
Trigger warnings: Age 14+
Strong language, Depictions of domestic violence, bullying, child abuse, the death of an animal,
Sensory overload: Bright and flashing lights, intense soundscape, strobe lighting, smoke, and haze
Discussions of divorce, adultery, and abandonment
