New Wexford play revisits Civil War

Mark Lambert, Dylan Kennedy and Arthur Riordan rehearsing one of many tense scenes in Eour Rivers’ Amongst Men which premieres on April 7 at Wexford Arts Centre.

Wexford Arts Centre will host the Irish premiere of a play by home-grown talent Eoghan Rua Finn on April 7. Amongst Men is a gripping theatrical tour-de-force which delivers powerful performances from stars of stage and screen, Mark Lambert and Noelle Brown.

The excitement around this Four Rivers production, which has been in rehearsal for weeks in Wexford, arises from the coming together of a terrific cast of four and the direction of this gripping new work by Deirdre Dwyer.

Amongst Men is the latest play commissioned by Four Rivers theatre group and is set in the1960s in a tight-knit rural community in Wexford still riven by the legacy of the Civil War.

Eoghan is both a playwright and a poet, whose earlier plays The Blackstairs Trilogy, Locomotive and The Kill God were premiered at Wexford Arts Centre and the National Opera House.

He was one of eight participants in the Wexford Playwrights Workshop, supported by Four Rivers, Wexford County Council and Wexford Arts Centre: arising from this, Four Rivers and its dramaturg, Louise Stephens, worked closely with Eoghan and two fellow Wexford playwrights, Hannah McNiven and Dominic Palmer, to develop plays in embryonic form.

Wexford County Council in partnership with Wexford Arts Centre supported the open call commission for a playwright to research and develop a new theatre work, addressing themes of Commemoration during the period 1916 – 23. This play is part of Wexford County Council’s Decade of Centenaries Programme ( 2012- 2023) and the Four Rivers production is part funded through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under their Community Strand and also supported by Arts Council and Wexford County Council funding.

Amongst Men is the fifth play Eoghan has written about Irish history. The Blackstairs Trilogy and Sons of Thunder were produced in 2016. Having worked so intensely on stories set against the backdrop of revolution, he felt like had no more to say on those topics, at least from a theatre perspective

Amongst Men, with a cast of Mark Lambert, Noelle Brown, Arthur Riordan and Dylan Kennedy, is at Wexford Arts Centre from April 6th-8th and 12th-15th, starting at 8 p.m.