Irish Blood, English Heart

Synopsis

In a mysterious garage in Southwark, Con Sweeney and his wife, Peggy, ask Con's brother, the infamous comedian turned author, Ray Suede, to meet to divvy up the emotional legacy of their estranged father. Ray's just written a book. About their father. About them. Peggy thinks that if Ray wants to portray them as cartoon troglodytes, then he should pay cash money for the privilege. So, who gets to tell the story of two second generation Irish brothers, a teenage tear up merchant, and a dead London cabbie in a dusty South London lock-up?

Our Review:

6 May 2011

Irish Blood, English Heart is an elegiac scraping away of a life’s debris in an attempt to find truth amongst that most human of failings – memory.

In a patriotically decorated Southwark garage, littered with the trophies of a lost life - mixed CDs, a cross country cup, a favourite jacket - we watch as the complex relationship of two brothers is deconstructed in the wake of their father’s death. Layers are slowly peeled away as the man both simultaneously held to be deity and demon is slowly but surely humanised.

While ostensibly the telling of a story-loving Irish immigrant cabbie who “shrank London down to the size of a lock-up in Southwark”, and the two sons he raised – one typically far more successful than the other, a play in itself – underneath it all are too many undercurrents playing out at once. Success and failure, the relationships of brothers, of fathers and sons, the life of a first generatio...

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Latest User Review

fred - 7 May 2011:

a fine play - complex and compelling, and well directed and acted. recommended....

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