Director: Claire O’Reilly

Writer: Carys D Coburn

Producer: Craig Flaherty

Set & Costume Designer: Sarah Bacon

Lighting Designer: Lee Curran

Composer & Sound Designer: Jenny O’Malley

Movement Director:

Hair & Makeup: Tee Elliott

Voice Director: Andrea Ainsworth

Assistant Director: Úna Nolan

Company Manager: Danny Erskine

Production Manager: Andy Keogh

Stage Manager: Clive Welsh

Deputy Stage Manager: Roxzan Bowes

Assistant Stage Manager: Aidan Doheny

Cast: Liadán Dunlea, Yvonne Gidden, Bebhinn Hunt-Sheridan, Bláithín Mac Gabhann, Niamh McCann, Malua Ní Chléirigh & Bríd Ní Neachtain

All of us running around,

thinking we’re so clever,

so good at keeping secrets,

and actually everyone knows everything and just never says.

‘Bán’ (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Nominee) is a faithful but not close reworking of Lorca’s ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’. Like the sisters at its heart – bound tightly, neither open nor tender, mourning their father, surveilled by their mother. They long for escape, power, the local eligible bachelor. The question isn’t who can have which, it’s can any of them have any?

‘Bán’ isn’t simply mapping Franco’s Spain onto de Valera’s Ireland – Catholic Fascism = Catholic Fascism = duh. It’s speaking to anyone anywhen who denial kept alive, but who then wished it hadn’t. (Not exclusively Irish, but VERY Irish.) It’s raw and raucous; dark but not unduly despairing; loving but not unduly merciful. 

Runtime: ~110 mins

Peacock Stage, Abbey Theatre

30 September-8 November, 2025. Dublin.