In the hot Donegal August of 1878, the fruits of Colonialism and the ambiguities of loyalty are tested within the background of impossible love. Christopher Gore, the liberal minded Anglo-Irish landlord and his son, David, reside at The Lodge with their “chatelaine” Margaret, with whom they are both in love. Christopher’s cousin, Dr. Richard Gore, arrives with the intention of pursuing a Darwin-inspired scientific theory: by measuring the craniums of the indigenous Irish, he hopes to crack the genetic code of the indigenes…demonstrating their inferior place in the natural order. Set in the era of the rumblings of violence and uncertainty at the dawn of The Home Rule movement, Brian Friel explores the aftermath of Dr. Gore’s experiment as deep animosity is dangerously ignited amongst the suspicious villagers of Ballybeg.

Brian Friel’s oft-used fictional town of Ballybeg, Co. Donegal, marks a Chekhovian outline as well as the path to Friel’s own hopscotch bearings either side of the nearby Irish border. The Home Place, the last of his full-length original plays, is set in the year 1878, 40-odd years before partition, conspicuous by the ascendance of the Irish Home Rule movement and the murder of local landowner Lord Lifford (based on the real murder of William Clements, 3rd Earl of Leitrim in that same year). Landlord Christopher Gore (John Windsor-Cunningham) and his son David (Ed Malone), natives of Kent, inhabit The Lodge. Both harbor desires for housekeeper Margaret (Rachel Pickup), who straddles the divide between her people, in part personified by her father Clement’s (Robert Langdon Lloyd) disheveled pride in homegrown ability (“Tom Moore is the finest singer we have, the voice of our nation…”) – and her English employers, one of whom she is in love with. While guileless dreamer David’s affections for Margaret are reciprocated, Christopher is preoccupied and burdened by his guests, cousin and ethnologist Dr. Richard Gore (Christopher Randolph) and his assistant Perkins (Stephen Pilkington). …Read more